James Lee wrote: Good choices...interesting he didn't mention Hendrix, I always thought I heard a bit of Jimi in some of Frank's guitar work. Maybe it was just the wah, huh?

Sure he loved him, when Zappa lived in NYC in the 60's he met him several times, apparently Hendrix heard a WAH WAh first at Zappas place. One of Zappas guitar was a "burned" Strat that belonged  to Hendrix and that he offered to Dweezil his son.

"A burned Stratocaster® owned by Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and his son Dweezil Zappa goes up for auction TWICE during the year, reaching a price of £300,000 (510,000 Euros), before being withdrawn from auction."

 Another guitar player Z loved was Johny Guitar Watson, he invited him on OSFA.

Can someone point me to an album on which I can hear McLaughlin actually playing well?

I bought Inner Mounting Flame - and he bluffs like Nigel Tufnell all the way through.

I'm extremely surprised not to see Steve Vai on that list - after all, Vai did play for Zappa in the early 1980s - "Impossible guitar parts" it says on "Ship Arriving Too Late...".

It's a fact. He send the transcriptions to Zappa and Z was so impressed that he engaged him for transcribing before integrating him as full member in the band. Z was very open for integrating talented musicians. Ian Underwood too presented himself to Z and asked him to become a member of the Mothers. The conversation appears on Uncle Meat.

Ian:
My name is Ian Underwood
And I am straight member of the group
( Wowie Zowie)
One month ago I heard The Mothers of Invention at the theater
I heard them on two ocassions
And at the second ocassion
I went up to Jim Black
And I said I like your music,
I'd like to come down to play with you.
Two days later I came up to the recording session
And Frank Zappa was sitting at the control room
I walk up and said
How'd you do, my name is Ian Underwood and I like you music
And I like to play with your group.
Frank Zappa says
What can you do is fantastic
I say I can play alto saxphone and piano
And he said
All right, whip it out....

sigod wrote: James Lee wrote: I remember reading that Vai got the gig with Zappa from doing a bunch of note-for-note transcriptions of Zappa solos. Is that a fact or musical urban myth? I think that's more or less correct. He was transcribing the solos for 'Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar' I hear.

G W How did you first get the opportunity to play with Frank?
Steve Vai While I was at Berklee, the big thing at school was, Who can play Zappa's "The Black Page" [Zappa in New York, Rykodisc, 1978]? A couple of years earlier, when I was 15, I had gotten Frank's phone number from a friend of mine, and I called Frank once a year—I didn't want to overdo it—but I never got a hold of him. But I did speak to Gail, his wife, who was always very nice.
One day I called him from Berklee, and he picked up the phone! I knew that he was looking for some of Edgare Varése's [the modern composer whose music employed dissonance and unusual instrumentiation—G WEd.] scores that were hard to find. The Boston public library had them, so I said that I would Xerox them and send them to him.
I also told him that I played the guitar, and he said to send him a tape. The thought of sending him a tape seemed crazy, because I felt that I would never have the ability to play with him—it seemed completely out of my reach. But I sent him a tape and he really liked it! I also sent my transcription of "The Black Page" and the Varése scores, and he sent me back a copy of his chart for "The Black Page", plus this huge score for a piece of his called "Mo and Herb's Vacation [London Symphony Orchestra Vol. I & II (FZ/Rykodisc, 1995)], which eventually turned into "The Second Movement of the Theme from Sinister Footwear" [You Are What You Is (Rykodisc, 1981)].
I couldn't believe it—here I was, this kid in Berklee, and I get a package filled with all this stuff from Frank, including a handwritten note that said, "Send me a tape of you playing 'The Black Page' as fast as you possibly can." So you can imagine what I did every day for the next month! [laughs]
G W Was Frank impressed with your transcription of "The Black Page"?
Steve Vai Yes. He offered me a ton of transcription work on the basis of what I'd done with "The Black Page". He said, "How would you like to do this for money?" and I said, "Great." That's when I started doing all of the transcriptions for The Frank Zappa Guitar Book.
The first time I ever met him in person was at the Hyatt Regency in New York City, and I was scared to death! We sat and talked a little bit, and he showed me a score of his. He said, "This is an early print, so there may be some errors," and I immediately picked up on some of the mistakes, like too many beams on some of the notes. I also noticed that, in a part written for clarinet, there were notes below the clarinet's range, and I pointed this out.
G W That's a pretty good observation!
Steve Vai He just looked at me and went "Umm...yeah". And that's when he asked me to transcribe some of his music. He gave me these two cassettes filled with wild guitar playing, some of which was released on the Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar records, and some of which has never been released. And the more I transcribed, the more he piled the stuff on. At the time, I was getting paid $10 a page, and it would take me three days to do one page!
And then—I'll never forget this—Frank did an interview with a San Fransisco magazine and he just went off about me. I had never ever seen my name in print before, and here was Frank Zappa saying "There's this kid who's really great, and you should watch for him, because he's going to turn into something."
Mike Keneally Just to demonstrate the power of that interview, I read the same thing in that very newspaper about this kid Steve Vai, who wasn't even in the band yet. All Frank had to do was mention a name in an interview, and it was instantly entered into legend. I sat there in my room, at 15, thinking, "Jeez—this Steve Vai guy must be a monster!"
Steve Vai Hey, I was thinking the same thing! [laughs] I thought, "Where is he getting this from?"
I called Frank after I'd sent him the tape of me playing "The Black Page," and he was so moody. He said, "You played it too fast, which is typical of a Berklee guy, where faster is better." I guess he was in a bad mood, and I was thinking "What's going on?" [laughs]
Mike Keneally This is after he asked you to play it as fast as you could?
Steve Vai Yeah. But then he asked me to come out to Los Angeles to audition for the group. When I said I was only 18, he said, "Forget it, you're too young." I said, "But I'd really like to try." He said, "What makes you think that you wouldn't join my band and become a miserable son of a bitch because of the music?" [laughs] And I said, "Because I have every one of your records and I like every song."