Avant-garde rock musician and composer, born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He played guitar in a high school blues and rock band and briefly studied music theory in college. He led the satirical ‘underground’ band The Mothers of Invention (with varying line-ups) in the 1960s and 1970s, making inventive and often scabrous albums such as Freak-Out! (1966) and We’re Only in it for the Money (1967, a parody of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album). Influential solo albums included Lumpy Gravy (1968) and Hot Rats (1969); and from various new groupings of Mothers came Just Another Band from LA, Over-Nite Sensation, and more. He created and scored the film 200 Motels, and composed ‘serious’ music, performed by Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, and others.