The brash and outrageously funny autobiography of music legend Frank Zappa--now in trade paperback. Here is the real story of how he became the state of the art in weirdness, as only he can tell it: wild rock 'n' roll road stories, confrontations with bureaucratic idiocy, and more. Black-and-white photographs and line drawings throughout.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood". So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to fe...