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."...

There is a gap between the "juvenile and prurient" Zappa he describes and the one we see in the book's sensational photographs, which show a man of burning magnetism and piercing intellect. Miles calls Zappa a "cold nihilist" who felt no real emotions for anyone. Along with "cynicism and misanthropy," he detects Catholic guilt and "deep-seated problems with women." Zappa was "stuck in a 50's time warp" -- yet the bold feminist Germaine Greer was a Zappa fan.