Electric guitar great Dweezil Zappa enjoyed a decades-long friendship with the late Eddie Van Halen.
Famously, Dweezil – the son of Frank Zappa – got to live out the dream of millions of young guitarists, when, at just 12 years old, he got to use (and subsequently keep) Van Halen's own 1982 Kramer for his band's performance of Runnin’ with the Devil at a school talent show.
Decades later, when the Dweezil-led Zappa Plays Zappa band opened for Jeff Beck, Dweezil found himself playing in front of Van Halen once again. When the two met backstage following the performance, the latter guitarist marveled at the complexity of the late Frank Zappa's music, and what it took for his son to master it.
“We [he and Van Halen] had a chance to play a bit backstage and I showed him some of the things I had to learn in order to pull off Frank’s complicated music,” Dweezil remembered in a 2010 Guitar Player interview. “Eddie said, 'I don’t know how your dad came up with that stuff, let alone how you figured out how to play it!'
“At a certain point,” Dweezil continued, “he laughed and said, 'Who would have thought that you would be giving me a guitar lesson!' Understand I say that with all the respect in the world. For him to even remotely acknowledge me showing him anything – that was an amazing moment.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Dweezil reflected on the idiosyncratic nature of his father's soloing, and how the elder Zappa worked around his technical limitations.
Frank, Dweezil said, “was a drummer who became a guitar player, so the rhythmic element within his soloing is ridiculously strong. He didn’t necessarily have the chops to where every single note was executed perfectly, but the charm of his playing is that he’s going for things that he might not be able execute.
“I love that reckless abandon he had. The attitude of, 'I’m going to go for the idea, even if my hands won’t let me do it – my brain says go for it,' is not one you find these days. Not too many people are willing to risk that. I try and capture that spirit in my playing, but I do have some more technical proficiency than Frank did, so I sometimes tone my chops down and slop it up a little bit.”
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