Frank Zappa Sculpture

Frank Zappa never did anything special for Lithuania. He was never even here. Yet it was in Vilnius that the world's first public monument to him was unveiled, in 1995. We realise how absurd that sounds. So why did we go and put up a sculpture of him, of all people? It was a kind of sign of democracy in the then young Lithuanian state, which had only just become independent. It was also a sign of freedom of speech and creative freedom – the absence of censorship. After all, in the Soviet Union there could be no American speech or Western culture. That is why Vilnius artists decided that the free American rocker Zappa was just what we needed. And why not? What does the legend himself think about it? To be honest, we don't know. We didn't have time to ask. But his son was delighted by the enthusiasm of the people of Vilnius and believes that his father would have loved this situation, which is something like a joke.