A new Frank Zappa biography by Barry Miles has hit the shelves. Is anyone reading this?
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Meta
Currently reading it — half way, past the breakup of the band with Flo and Eddie. It’s really good, covering material presented by everyone else (he cites David Walley and Nigey Lennon) as well as offering new details and insights that I hadn’t read in either book. It contraducts and corrects Zappa when he’s wrong, but not in a spiteful way. Zappa, so far, has come off as slightly more asshole-ish than in the other books I’ve read, but the image Miles has presented is convincing, and seems true enough.
I haven’t read this book yet, but Barry Miles has good credentials for such a project so it’s probably worth seeking it out. Miles was a key figure in the London hippy/underground scene in the sixties and ran the underground paper ‘International Times’,with other people. (I was a street-seller for the paper for a while). Miles knew most of the movers and shakers of the time such as Lennon, Richard Brautigan, the Stones and Zappa, and the beat poets such as Alan Ginsberg. He’s also a big fan of William Burroughs. Miles has written books about all these people, and he had a hand in running the Beatles’ Zapple record label. I think Miles became disillusioned with FZ by the late seventies, preferrring the ‘original’ Mothers rather than the ‘hired hands’ that FZ used later on.