This Europe: East German resort pays tribute to Zappa, the rock hero who helped end Communism

Frank Zappa grins at the flabby holidaymakers who pass him in the German Baltic resort of Bad Doberan. The American rock legend often has a cigarette in his lips and sometimes he is bedecked with garlands stolen from the municipal gardens.

The founder of the Mothers of Invention died in 1993 but last week this former Communist townstaged a Zappa comeback by unveiling a bronze bust of him in the town square. Bad Doberan might seem an unlikely place for a tribute to an American who wrote songs such as "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow". For most of Zappa's life the Warsaw Pact state was cut off from the West by guards, mines and razor wire. The town provided holidays for East German trade unionists. Yet the dreariness and isolation of Bad Doberan made Zappa an inspiration to locals such as Wolfhard Kutz. "It was because we were especially restricted and Frank Zappa strove for freedom and democracy," the electrician said.

In the 1970s, Mr Kutz, 47, was an obsessional Zappa fan and went to extremes to find his "underground" music. Friends in West Germany smuggled in Zappa LPs for him. Other couriers were met secretly on autobahns and records were taken, hidden in his car doors, to East German friends who copied them.

By the mid-1970s, Mr Kutz was being watched by the Stasi secret police, who decided he was "damaging the interests of Socialist Youth". His Stasi file has since revealed that 21 people informed on him.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Mr Kutz could indulge freely in his passion. He created a Zappa fan club and began organising what became an annual Zappa festival in Bad Doberan.

This year's 13th annual event featured 11 former Zappa band members and the three-day event drew some 2,500 fans a day. Mr Kutz convinced the town's conservative council that Zappa not only helped to bring about the collapse of Communism but also might help the tourist trade. He raised £6,000 to pay for a Czech sculptor to make the bust. "It shows Zappa as he was in the mid-1970s – a rebel and an avant-gardist. That is how we want to remember him," he said.