Dweezil Zappa

by Cub Koda & Steve HueySon of Frank Zappa and a heavy-metal disciple of Edward Van Halen and Steve Vai, Dweezil released his first album, Having a Bad Day, in 1986. He worked a stint as a VJ on MTV, appeared in the films Pretty in Pink and The Running Man, and had a brief sojourn in TV situation comedy with his sister Moon Unit, on 1988-89s Normal Life. Zappa also issued his second album, My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama, in 1988, following it in 1991 with Confessions. Zappa subsequently took a break from solo recording; he worked in television for a time, composing the theme song to the sadly short-lived Ben Stiller Show and voicing the character of Ajax on the brilliant USA Network animated series Duckman. He next formed the band Z with brother Ahmet on vocals; the group released two albums together, 1994s Shampoohorn and 1996s Music for Pets. In addition to his work as a session guitarist, Zappa busied himself with Happy Hour, a TV show for the USA Network co-hosted with Ahmet which debuted in 1999, and his first solo album in nine years, 2000s mostly instrumental Automatic. Following Automatic, Dweezil fell back out of the public eye and rededicated himself to learning guitar, changing his style a bit and adopting many of his fathers picking techniques. In 2005, he assembled a crack young band and recruited FZ alumni Steve Vai, Terry Bozzio and Napoleon Murphy Brock for the critically acclaimed Zappa Plays Zappa tour which hit the road in the summer of 2006. The band (with Brock ostensibly as the front man) performed an entire program of Frank Zappa compositions with Vai and Bozzio appearing as guests and Dweezil himself as lead guitarist/bandleader. Between legs of that tour, he released Go With What You Know, easily his most ambitious album to date.