Just curious. How good was he as a guitarist?
On some VH1 special, some musician said something to the effect of “you have to be a musician to really appreciate Zappa”, meaning, the layman listening to him may not understand the quality of what he did, but musicians definitely do. At least I think that’s what he meant.
It’s important to distinguish between the freewheeling guitar improvisation that Zappa indulged in, and the complex, composed music that he wrote.
The former, in terms of platonic guitar technique, is idiosyncratic. Zappa’s guitar solo style was influenced by fairly earthy bluesmen–he often mentioned Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson–and I think that he strove for expressiveness and sheer fun of noise without caring that much about hand position or practicing with a metronome.
As to the complex composed aspect of his music, he preferred (particularly in the latter half of his career) to hire a ‘stunt guitarist’ to play all the written-out, insanely complex stuff. Zappa’s stunt guitarists–the most famous was Steve Vai–were all impeccably versed in platonic guitar technique.
I’ve never seen anybody separate their opinion of Zappa the composer from Zappa the guitarist. Maybe that just says something about the musicians I’m in contact with. But I think Hoops gives a good description.
In fact, you can here both aspects of Zappa’s musicianship quite clearly in a single song: Inca Roads (on the album “One size Fits All”). Most of the song features the carefully composed, often polyrhythmic melodies and harmonies that he would have other musicians perform. But the middle section is Zappa himself performing a gorgeous, blues-scale-based guitar solo over a very simple, repetitive chord pattern.
I think technical virtuosity isn’t the best measure of Zappa’s ability as a guitarist. The intelligence, the ability to communicate ideas inherent in his playing is what really sets him aside as a player.
mm
So, it’s okay to love your guitar, just don’t lo-o-o-ve it? 
Seriously, could you explain to this decidedly non-musician what platonic guitar technique means?
I’ll handle that. Link. Basically platonic guitar playing is perfect technique. It’s striving to play the guitar to the ideal.
About Zappa, he was a pretty good guitarist. There are many who are better than Zappa was. Zappa, though was a hell of a composer and wrote amazing material.
Slee
When you love it too much, it starts telling you to kill your girlfriend’s mama and burn her dad.
In his autobiography he made it a point to differentiate himself from virtuosos. There are guys out there they can play anything, and Zappa was nowhere near that camp. As he put it, “I still have to look at my hands when I play.”
His most famous quote, (not saying much, since none of what he said is particularly well known,) was that he wouldn’t pass an audition for his own band. He had incredibly high standards for his band members; typically, you had to play several instruments amazingly well, and also had to be a fantastic singer. Frank himself was none of that. He was a great guitarist, and that’s it.
As a composer, however, I find him second to nobody.
+1
Thank you Slee. So it’s Platonic as a philosophy of sorts. I’m vaguely aware of that (Didn’t do too well with Philosophy in school.) I was figuring it had something to do with Platonic scales or something