Zappa Workaholic?

There was a quote from Frank Zappa saying that he wasn't a workaholic. Which I find interesting, seeing that I've read many descriptions from several websites and even in Barry Miles biography that will specifically describe Zappa as a workaholic. And even though Zappa would put in 16-18 hrs a day into creating his music, it occured to me that Zappa really didn't regard it as "work". It was a necessity. The messages he was trying to put out into the world was a sort of an inner quest that had to be done.

This was Zappa's definition of a workaholic:

"A workaholic is a guy who works in an insurance agency, a bank, or a ladder of success"

Obviously he viewed work as a meaningless chore. His music may have been a chore, but it certainly was not meaningless. Zappa's music wasn't meant to be listened at leisure. It was politically and socially conscious and was created to confront people with the harsh truth and reality.

Whether or not Zappa was a workaholic, what he certainly was was a perfectionist. Zappa was quite strict about how his music was played and wanted things a certain way. His ideals in music follows the Romantic era that strived for the note-playing perfection. He would force hours and hours of practice on his band members and himself until the closest to perfection was created. Just one example would be when the London Symphony Orchestra performed his pieces, conducted by Kent Nagano. The performance was highly regarded yet Zappa was still critical and commented that "...it wasn't a very accurate performance of the music. There was a lot of wrong notes in the show and the acoustics of the place were really shitty" (pg. 313 - Barry Miles) Franks use of the Synclavier reiterates his obsession with perfection. The perfectionism that was demanded in turn made it difficult to work with Zappa since nothing was ever good enough.