eBay:

A lively look back at the mid-1960s genesis of Frank Zappa's decades-long assault on rock & roll complacency and mediocrity, Billy James's NECESSITY IS: THE EARLY YEARS OF FRANK ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION explores the iconoclastic bandleader's methods and motivations through the reminiscences of many of his former bandmates, including drummer Jimmy Carl Black, keyboardist Don Preston, and horn men Bunk Gardner and Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood. The old-timers still harbor some grievances, notably about the abrupt way they were jettisoned in 1970 in favor of new blood, but mostly they recall their late boss's creativity and entertainingly scabrous artistic worldview, which incorporated the groupie collective the GTOs ("Girls Together Outrageously"), the mentally unbalanced beach bum Wild Man Fischer, and the legendarily eccentric musician Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart. Full of unrepeatable road stories and anti-social behavior, as well as numerous recollections of the fortuitous musical occurrences that the heady atmosphere of the Sixties often fomented, NECESSITY is a remarkable window into the formative years of one of the 20th century's most creative and prolific rock musicians.

ARF: Bibliography
American Music Resource
Ben Watson review
Peter Feenstra review
Amazon: Customer reviews
Billy James' website

ARF: Bibliography
American Music Resource
Ben Watson review
Amazon: Customer reviews

Italian translation by Tiziana Lo Porto.