In the last thirty years, the US has established a number of 'Freedom Walls' to remind it's denizens that they live in the land of the free. Zappa is included on the list of 69 people displayed on a wall in Chicago - alongside Geronimo, Muhammad Ali and bell hooks (but not Mel Brooks), plus non-Americans such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mozart, Anne Frank, John Lennon and Jesus Christ.
    This book sets out to justify FZ's inclusion on the Chicago installation, citing his activities in the less celebrated part of his career: the 1980s.
    The Freedom Wall in Buffalo is highly unlikely to ever see FZ added: it's a mural depicting twenty-eight mostly African-American civil rights leaders. Both walls naturally include Martin Luther King, though.
    In this absorbing book, Morgan successfully contradicts FZ's dismissal of his own lyrics as simply a device to get people to listen to his music: they were always so much more than that. And by focussing on Zappa's Reagan-era output and activities, he shows how he had refined his social commentary to greater affect in his later years.
    It goes balls-deep into the You Are What You Is and Thing-Fish albums, plus the Broadway The Hard Way tour, but glosses over Ship Arriving, Man From Utopia and Them Or Us. While bigging-up Zappa's stance on censorship and free speech, the chapter on the PMRC and senate hearings amusingly reproduces the slightly amended Warning/Guarantee sticker from the 2019 Hologram tour.
    The book is factual and even-handed, steering clear of putting words into Zappa's mouth regarding today's political landscape. It is also quite the US history lesson for a dumb Brit like me.