He dropped out of community college after one semester and tried making low-budget films. There was an early marriage and divorce. As Miles chronicles Zappa's serendipitous progress toward his first recordings, we get a fascinating panorama of the 1960's counterculture in Southern California, where folk music was cross-fertilizing with hard rock. The cast of characters includes the Byrds and the Doors as well as Grace Slick, Eric Clapton, Eric Burdon and Mick Jagger, who drop by or hang out to jam in the cabins and cottages in the overgrown canyons outside Los Angeles. Miles's description of the bizarre scene, with its squatters, transients and hordes of eager groupies, vividly captures that magic creative moment.

"Freak Out!" (1966) was Zappa's first album with the Mothers of Invention. It was a landmark in rock history -- one of the first integrated concept albums. With its kaleidoscopic moods and vaudevillian jokiness, "Freak Out!" sketched an epic picture of a frivolous, media-addled America under authoritarian surveillance. "Who are the brain police?" one song asked. Another, "Trouble Every Day," was about the Watts riots. Running through it all was a naughty bawdiness, as in Zappa's classic double entendre, "Suzy Creamcheese . . . what's got into you?"

The Mothers of Invention went through many staff changes over the years. Miles unsparingly presents the dismal record of Zappa's grudging, sometimes brutal treatment of his musicians. He denied their contributions to his success and later withheld royalties.

Zappa was a brilliant guitarist -- he called his solos "air sculptures" -- but he aspired to be taken seriously as a composer. His avant-garde work was characterized by complex time changes that were difficult to play. Many classical musicians attested to Zappa's ability to find their strengths and stretch them to the limit. The London Symphony Orchestra performed his music; in 1992, a comprehensive performance of his work by Ensemble Modern at a Frankfurt opera house received a 20-minute ovation.

Miles traces Zappa's credibility problem to his "self-destructive" habit of giving sexual or scatological titles to his serious pieces. Zappa was an incorrigible "namer," he says, who called his daughter Moon Unit and named his son Dweezil, after one of his wife's toes. But Miles is too scolding about Zappa's absurdist sensibility. His titles were hilarious, from the album "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" to such songs as "Help, I'm a Rock," "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask," "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," "Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?" and "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing."