Twenty-two years after his death, Frank Zappa is as much of an enigma as ever. In his day, he was a polyglot rocker who drew on everything from 1950s doo-wop to free-form jazz, electronic sound and orchestral scoring. Much of his work married mature, even advanced music to lyrics that were either on-target parodies or frustratingly puerile. Yet even his most cringeworthy texts were strangely fascinating, because Zappa skewered not only easy establishment targets, but also the attitudes and behaviors of his audience and his musical colleagues. He was the misanthrope’s misanthrope.

But...