Biography

September 5, 1969 · Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa

[on the 'Zappa Plays Zappa' project] We've been doing this since 2006 and we started with the simple goal to give people an opportunity to see and hear the music played live, a chance to hear a selection of songs that, in my estimation, is the best representation of my dad's work. Part of the struggle is that his music is relegated to a novelty section - a combination of novelty and nostalgia at this point. My feelings are very different. To me his music is still very contemporary, if not still from the future. There's stuff he's done that nobody else ever came close to.

[on 'St. Alonzo's Pancake Breakfast'] As a kid, his song about pancakes was the best thing ever. There's a crazy interlude at the end. It's a very short song - under two minutes - but it has this one interlude that's the most difficult thing he ever wrote. I learned it on the guitar.

I didn't really hear any music other than what my dad was working on until I was twelve. My recollection of hearing other music was that I liked some things that I heard but I always thought,'Where's the rest of it?'. It didn't have the same amount of detail or instrumentation in the arrangements. I liked a lot of the things other people liked - Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Van Halen, AC/DC - but if I compared it to my dad's music, there just seemed to be elements missing.