Frank Zappa was and remains one of the most popular figures in the history of rock music - but how much his known about this eccentric, multi-talented musician? Written by rock critic Michael Gray, Mother! The Frank Zappa Story recounts the life of one of rock's most enigmatic personalities, from his childhood in Maryland through the formation of his cult band, The Mothers of Invention, to his tragic death from cancer in the winter of 1993.
MICHAEL GRAY IS A WRITER, critic & broadcaster recognised as a world authority on the work of Bob Dylan and as an expert on rock'n'roll and blues history but also writes about travel and history and gives A-V-illustrated talks at arts festivals, theaters, colleges, museums and major libraries.
IN 2006 HIS BOOK "THE Bob Dylan Encyclopedia", a 750,000 word hardback, was published in New York and London. In 2007 came "Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell", published in hardback by Bloomsbury in the UK.
THE FORMER WON THE C.B. Oldman Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship and research, and the latter was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography. Both were published in paperback in the UK in 2008.
"HAND ME MY TRAVELIN' SHOES" is now published in hardback in North America by Chicago Review Press (September 2009).
HIS CAREER BEGAN AT YORK University (UK), where he studied under the brilliant, controversial critic F. R. Leavis, and as a student journalist interviewed the distinguished historian A. J. P. Taylor and the now-legendary American guitarist Jimi Hendrix.
HIS PIONEERING STUDY OF BOB Dylan's work, "Song & Dance Man", first published in the early 1970s in Britain, America and Japan, was the first critical study of this crucial contemporary cultural figure, and is now recognised as a classic in its field.
"THE ART OF BOB DYLAN" was published in the UK & USA in 1981-2, and a selection of pieces on Dylan, "All Across The Telegraph", co-edited by Gray and including work by Christopher Ricks, Aidan Day and David Pichaske, was published in 1987. In 1993 an early version of "Song & Dance Man III"'s major study of Bob Dylan's use of the blues was published in Germany and extracted in Berlin newspaper die Tageszeitung.
IN 1996 HE CO-AUTHORED "The Elvis Atlas: A Journey Through Elvis Presley's America", published in hardback in New York by Henry Holt.
THE MASSIVE THIRD EDITION OF his Bob Dylan study, "Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan" was published by Cassell Academic in London in 1999 and in the US by Continuum in March 2000. A reprint appeared in the US in April 2001, when Gray delivered talks at a number of US universities, and a fourth reprint was published in New York and London in 2002. A fifth reprint was issued in 2004, a sixth in 2006 and a seventh in 2008. It is still in print.
MICHAEL GRAY HAS also lectured for the Institute for Folklore Studies in Great Britain & Canada, the Northern Ireland Arts Council, at York & Exeter Universities and Goldsmiths College, London, and at conventions in Austria, Manchester & Leicester. In 2006 he was the closing speaker at the Dylan Congress at the Institut fur Sozialforschung, Goethe University, Frankfurt. Also in 2006 he spoke by invitation at the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio, gave a packed address at the New School in NYC and attracted the largest audience for any outside speaker in over two years when he spoke at the University of Texas at Austin. In March 2007 he gave the closing address at the University of Minnesota's three-day academic symposium on Dylan's work, at which other speakers included Christopher Ricks and Greil Marcus. In early 2009 he toured in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA, and in October 2009 is giving audio-visually illustrated talks and book signings as follows:
THURS OCT 8, 11am: Farmingdale College (SUNY), Long Island NY
THURS OCT 15, 7pm: Douglass Theatre, Macon GA
THURS OCT 22, 7pm: Georgia Southern University, Statesboro GA
FRI OCT 23, 7pm: Averitt Center For The Arts, Statesboro GA
WHEN NOT TRAVELING MICHAEL GRAY lives in France with his wife (food-writer Sarah Beattie).
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