Frank Zappa: Garni Du Jour, Lizard King Poetry and Slime
By Tim Schneckloth
In the last 15 years, the boundaries between various musical genres have all but dissolved. And somewhere along the line, people began realizing that serious music doesn't have to be dealt with as a sacred entity – it can be approached with a sense of fun and irreverence; it can be juxtaposed with other, less valid kinds of music to create startlingly original statements.
Frank Zappa seems to have had this kind of vision all along. From the early days of the Mother Of Invention in the mid-'60s, Zappa's composing, arranging and performing have embraced any number of styles. And the question of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the sources doesn't seem to apply in Zappa's case. Everything fits into his unique artistic perspective.
After a long spell between releases, Zappa recently presented his public with Zappa In New York. Recorded live late '76, the album features a number of instrumental works that show off the talents of Randy and Mike Brecker, Ronnie Cuber, Tom Malone, Lou Marini and David Samuels, as well as Zappa's '76 touring unit.
For his most recent road trips, Zappa's band has consisted of Zappa and Adrian Belew on guitars, percussionists Terry Bozzio and Ed Mann, bassist Patrick O'Hearn, and Peter Wolf and Tommy Mars on keyboards. As might be expected from the presence of two keyboardists in the band, synthesizers have a lot to do with defining Zappa's current sound. The following interview focuses on that instrument, as well as observations on the state of contemporary music.
Schneckloth: What are you up to now?
Zappa: I've been in the studio doing overdubs on some live material.
I like that process because you can get rhythm tracks with live
excitement. Then you can go in and add orchestration to them.
Schneckloth: It seem like you've done a lot of live albums
over the years.
Zappa: Some of them have been totally live, some have had
orchestration added on. Fillmore East was about 90% pure live; Just
Another Band From L.A. was 100%. That was a four-track recording
right off the p.a. Roxy And Elsewhere had some things that were
live, some were overdubbed.
Schneckloth: In the last few years, it seems you've been
going away from larger orchestrated things back to a fairly basic
rock band format. Is there a conscious reason for that?
Zappa: No, I do whatever I feel like doing. See, all you know about
what I've done is what's been released on records. And all you know
about that is what you've listened to. Right now, I think there
are about 45 albums out that I've made over the last 14 years. Chances
are you haven't heard all of that, and that's maybe 50% of what's
actually available to be released. I've got orchestra stuff that's
been recorded, more elaborate compositions that haven't been released
yet. They're just sitting around waiting for a home.
Schneckloth: Do you anticipate releasing it all someday?
Zappa: Oh yeah, I hope so. It's very difficult to do because
record companies, in order to protect their investment, try to avoid
putting out more than two albums per year on an artist because they
want to milk the sales on each release as thoroughly as possible.
I think that's a fantasy in my case because we sell so much in catalog.
Whether the album becomes a hit when it's first released is irrelevant,
because the stuff just keeps selling. People hear about it by word
of mouth.
Schneckloth: That's true. Looking through record stores,
I notice most of your stuff is still there, even going back to the
Verve things. That's unusual.
Zappa: Maybe it's because some of the things that were said on those
early albums are things that still remain true today, and there
are young people who want to hear that stuff being said. I don't
need to repeat myself. If I've already done it once on an album,
I don't need to go back and do it again.
Schneckloth: There's a lot of talk about the mellowed-out
'70s – how the world's falling asleep. Do you miss anything
about the '60s? Was there an urgency to making
music then that doesn't exist now?
Zappa: I don't miss the '60s at all. I don't miss anything.
Schneckloth: Things haven't changed that much?
Zappa: Well, they do change, but I feel those changes are
external to the way I do things.
Schneckloth: What about your audiences?
Zappa: Oh, they change. They change every season.
Schneckloth: What about your audiences now? Are they
more jaded? Do they demand more in the way of entertainment?
Zappa: They're more enthusiastic. They're more alert because
there's less acid being used – which is not to say they don't
use other things. But the type of drug that is popular with the
audience has some bearing on the way in which they perceive things.
There was so much acid during the '60s that it was very easy for
large numbers of people to think they had seen God as soon as the
Beatles went boom, boom, boom, you know? So that particular chemical
made a lot of really peculiar things possible in terms of musical
sales. And since the status of that drug has been wearing off, and
other things are taking its place – notably wine and beer –
you have a different kind of audience mentality.
Schneckloth: I would think you've kept a lot of your
original audience – people who are around 30 now.
Zappa: Some of them still come to the concerts. But usually
they don't, because now that they have wives, kids, mortgages, day
jobs and all the rest of that stuff, they don't want to stand around
in a hockey rink and be puked on by some 16-year-old who's full
of reds. So consequently, our audience gets younger and younger.
We've picked up a larger number of female audience participants
and there's been an increase in black attendance.
Schneckloth: How do European audiences react to your
music?
Zappa: The audience in London is very similar to the audience
in L.A. – which is to say, singularly boring and jaded. The
audiences in some of the smaller places in Germany are more like
East Coast or Midwest audiences – they have a good sense of
humor, they like to make a lot of noise, but they're not obnoxious.
And then you have you pseudo-intellectual audiences like in Denmark.
Paris is a pretty good audience; I'd have to give Paris like a San
Francisco rating.
Schneckloth: Maybe one of these days the State Department
will ask you to go to the Soviet Union or something.
Zappa: I don't think the State Department is ever going
to seek my services. And if I go to the Soviet Union, it won't be
for a long time, I'll tell you. I'm not a communist enthusiast.
Schneckloth: As a rock musician, it seems you're carrying
on a tradition that you don't hear that much of any more –
the long, blues-based guitar solo. Nowadays you
don't hear much that's over three minutes.
Zappa: Well, a reason for that is because you only have
a certain number of minutes to deal with on an album side and it's
a big risk to fill up album grooves with a lengthy solo because
they don't all sustain interest.
Schneckloth: It may be getting progressively harder to
sustain interest with long things. Maybe it's all caught up in the
disco thing – people have to hear things
that are concise.
Zappa: I don't care about that stuff. I figure that a person
that's buying my record is interested in what I'm doing, okay? And
I do him a favor by doing what I FEEL like doing, because then he
hears who I am at that moment in time. If they don't like it, fine.
If they don't, they can go out and buy another record, I don't care.
I don't claim to be a universal entertainer, a man for all seasons
... I don't want to run the entire show.
Schneckloth: What are the ramifications of Discomania?
Zappa: Disco music makes it possible to have disco entertainment
centers. Disco entertainment centers make it possible for mellow,
laid-back, boring kinds of people to meet each other and reproduce.
Schneckloth: Driving around Los Angeles listening to
the AM radio, everything somehow seems more appropriate; it seems
to FIT better than in other places – disco, Tom
Scott, sax solos, country-rock ...
Zappa: Tragic, isn't it? I'm not too much for that laid-back
syndrome. That's the kind of music that, if you had to have something
piddling away in the background while you did your job, country-rock
would be better than clarinet and an accordion and a trombone playing
Anniversary Waltz. It's superior to that kind of music for that
function. But as a musical statement, it doesn't get me too much.
Schneckloth: You're well known as a satirist of many
facets of pop music – things like long, overwritten rock poetry.
You used to call it Lizard King poetry. Does that
kind of comedy writing come easy for you?
Zappa: Oh yeah, you can crank it out by the yards, man.
There's so much negative stimuli to make it happen.
Schneckloth: Do you think you'd make a good gag writer for
somebody like Johnny Carson?
Zappa: Gee, do you think he'd stay on TV if I was writing
gags for him? Only let's face it, there ARE a lot of things to laugh
at. I mean, Lizard King poetry is only scratching the surface. And
there are plenty of proponents of pseudo-Lizard King poetry today.
I've always felt that poets who decided to pick up a musical instrument
and get into the World Of Rock were really not good. There's hardly
anybody around that qualifies for the title poet anyway. And when
they take it to the extreme of playing an instrument badly and having
simplified monotone background so they can recite their dreck over
it – I think it's too fake for my taste. But if hearing that
kind of music or Lizard King poetry reaffirms your belief in life
itself, well, then you're entitled to hear it. I'm glad that it's
available for all the people in the world who need it.
Schneckloth: Speaking of humor, I saw you on Saturday
Night Live a while back. How did you get Don Pardo to debase himself
like that? [NBC announcer Pardo had assumed the
title role in a spirited rendition of Zappa's I'm the Slime.]
Zappa: Debase himself? That's not right. That's really
not right. First of all, he has a good sense of humor. Second, he
really enjoyed doing that. And thirdly, he actually came to the
concerts we played in New York after the show and performed with
us live on stage. See, Pardo's never seen on screen on that show.
He's never been seen. The man has been working there for 30 years
and nobody knows what he looks like. So I thought, fantastic, let's
bring Don Pardo live out on stage and let the world see him. We
got him a white tuxedo; he did some narration for some of the songs
we were doing; we brought him out to sing I'm The Slime. And the
audience loved him ... the highlight of his career. He's a nice
guy; I really like him. And I don't think it was debasing at all.
It was giving him an opportunity to expand in OTHER REALMS.
Schneckloth: I was using the term ...
Zappa: Facetiously? Facetiousness hardly ever translates
onto print.
Schneckloth: How do your bands come together? Is there
an element of accident?
Zappa: Well, I found a lot of people just by going into
bars and seeing bar bands. I'll find one guy out of a band that
sounds good to me, get his name and address, and when I have an
opening for that instrument, I'll get in touch with him, bring him
to California and have him audition. Sometimes they make it, sometimes
they don't.
Schneckloth: What kinds of things do you look for?
Zappa: A combination of skill and attitude.
Schneckloth: Does a person have to know how to read to
be in your band?
Zappa: It always helps. The main thing a person has to
have is very fast pattern recognition and information storage capability.
That's because we play like a two, two-and-a-half hour show non-stop
with everything organized. There are solos, and those are improvised.
But the sequence of events is planned out so that the show is tight
and the audience doesn't have to sit around and wait for something
to happen. So it requires a lot of memorization – fast memorization.
You can't spend a year teaching somebody a show. With the band that
I've had on the road for the past two tours, we spent three months,
five days a week, six hours a day memorizing it and getting it just
right. Now that's a very expensive investment, because it's $13,250
a week for rehearsals – we rehearse with full equipment, full
crew and a soundstage. So I prefer people who learn fast.
Schneckloth: There was a time when you had to adjust
your writing to the capabilities of your players.
Zappa: I still do.
Schneckloth: You mean there are times when you'd like
to write some things that are so complex that you can't get anybody
to play them on tour?
Zappa: Every day. I'll tell you, the kind of musicians
I need for the bands that I have doesn't exist. I need somebody
who understands polyrhythms, has good enough execution on the instrument
to play all kinds of styles, understands staging, understands rhythm
and blues, and understands how a lot of different composition techniques
function. When I give him a part, he should know how it works in
the mix with all the other parts. You'd be surprised how many people
who have chops in one department are completely deficient in others.
Schneckloth: Maybe one of the difficulties with performing
your music is the surprise factor – different sound, different
instrumentations, different rhythms come at the
listener in abrupt shifts.
Zappa: See, that's only unusual if you're accustomed to
music that's boring and bland and all the same color. That's not
the way music should be, I feel. What to you is an abrupt shift
is functional orchestration to me. If you change the color of the
instrumentation that's playing a certain part of a line, it changes
the emotional value of the line; it changes its relative importance.
Schneckloth: Leading into the subject of synthesizers,
does it get harder to find sounds that will surprise, sounds that
aren't bland?
Zappa: Absolutely not. That surface hasn't even been scratched
yet. Without even touching a synthesizer, there are so many things
you can make with normal instruments, and in a diatonic context.
There are so many people who are dashing away from diatonic music
in order to give the appearance of being modern – which I
think is a waste of time.
Schneckloth: Do you write specifically with synthesizers
in mind?
Zappa: I have. I've developed different types of notation
that accommodate the different things that synthesizers can do –
like parallel chord tracking and things like that. There are ways
of indicating what kind of parallel chord the thing is going to
track. Then you can just add a little inscription at the head of
the bar, kind of like a key signature. Next, you write a single
line, and, if the guy sets his synthesizer up right, that single
line will yield parallel chords tracking around. So it saves you
a lot of writing on paper.
Schneckloth: How do you arrive at the synthesizer sounds
you want?
Zappa: Well, obviously the best way to deal with music
is according to your own ear and your own personal taste. And since
most synthesizers that people work with are production models off
the assembly line, and there are slight differences in the way the
settings of the knobs respond, if you're a composer and you're writing
out a complete description of what all the knobs are supposed to
be set at, chances are that you won't get the exact same result
each time from instrument to instrument. It's just because of different
things about the parts. So the first thing you have to know is how
to talk to the synthesizer player. If you're a composer or arranger
and you want to use the synthesizer, you have to know all the basic
language of what the instrument is dealing with. You have to know
what an oscillator is; you have to know what a filter is; you have
to know what an envelope is; and all the rest of that stuff. So
when you tell the guy, No, that's wrong, I want more of THIS, you're
not telling him in romantic terms, you're saying, Give me more frequency
modulation or Open your filter up to make it brighter. Just so you
can communicate with the people who play the instruments. The way
I learned was by buying an ARP 2600, getting the manual, and just
sitting around and piddling with it. Then I got a mini-Moog and
a lot of other kinds of synthesizers and got my own hands on them,
even thought I'm not a keyboard player. I was just familiarizing
myself with them.
Schneckloth: I understand the percussionists in you band
are using drum synthesizers.
Zappa: That's very true. Not only do we use them as drums,
we use them as synthesizers. We started doing something on the last
tour that I think Pollard [manufacturer of the Syndrum] is going
to be pretty thrilled about when he hears it. Terry Bozzio got to
be very good with the Syndrum – he can control them fantastically
well and still be playing his set. He can reach over and change
the setting and still keep time. For some of the things we were
doing, if you put the sustain on the Syndrum up to a very long time,
you can hit it and get like a constant pitch coming out. And if
you move the little knob, you can play tunes on it. So I had chorales
between the two keyboard players and the two Syndrums and the bass.
All I did was conduct a downbeat, and anybody could hit any note
they wanted on that downbeat. And every time I'd conduct a beat,
they'd pick another note. The results were fantastic.
Schneckloth: How about the guitar synthesizers? Have
you tried those?
Zappa: Yeah. The problem with guitar synthesizers, versus
me, is the way I play. There's so much left hand business going
on, and the synthesizer is more interested in what's happening with
the pick. In order for the synthesizer to track what you're playing,
it prefers to see one string, with nothing else being held or rattling,
neatly picked so that the note just comes right out. Then the synthesizer
can make up its mind and play the note for you. But the faster you
play, and the more pull-off, hammer-on stuff you do with the left
hand, the harder it is for the synthesizer to track you ... It requires
a more legitimate guitar technique ... I'm not adverse to guitar
synthesizers. I think the idea is good, but, to me, it's not going
to be a practical musical thing to deal with until the synthesizer
will play exactly what you're playing and not just give you a hint
of it – so that the synthesizer won't get in the way of your
style. Right now, it's kind of like the tail wagging the dog, because
you have to slow yourself down and play in a different way in order
to make the thing talk.
Schneckloth: Have you ever used a really large synthesizer
setup in the studio?
Zappa: I've got one, but I've never used it in the studio.
It's an EU, and it's about a $50,000 system. It's got a computer
and all that stuff. I don't have it set up; it's in storage. Stevie
Wonder called the office the other day wanting to rent it.
Schneckloth: How much work is involved in setting it
up?
Zappa: It requires a technician. It's fairly easy to set
it up and put it all together. It's portable; it was designed to
be taken on the road. But there's so many modules and stuff built
into it that I prefer to have someone who is conversant with the
electronic ins and outs of it set it up for me and tell the keyboard
player what to do with it. I have enough to worry about with the
console without having to worry about the synthesizer. It's got
14 oscillators or something like that.
Schneckloth: What other kinds of keyboard synthesizers
do you tour with?
Zappa: For the last U.S. tour we had a very elaborate set
up. We had two players and each had about eight instruments. Peter
Wolf was playing a Rhodes, and Electrocomp, a mini-Moog, the Eu,
a Clavinet, an ARP 2600, and a Yamaha Electric Grand. Tommy Mars
had a Hammond, a Yamaha Electric Grand, an Electrocomp, and ARP
String Synthesizer, a Clavinet and a Roland.
Schneckloth: When you get all that stuff together, it
seems like the arranging problems would be really complex.
Zappa: It doesn't make the problems complex, no. It gives
you more latitude. But it makes the performance a little bit more
difficult. The more things there are to stick your hands on, the
more wires there are to get out of whack when you set it up every
day.
Schneckloth: There are those who take a somewhat snobbish
view of synthesizer playing. They feel that a person really has
to know exactly what's happening electronically
with the instrument in order to be a truly good synthesizer player.
Zappa: A guy's got to start somewhere. You've got to mess
around with it. Even if you think you know how they work, there's
always a chance that you'll come up with something new just by doing
a dumb experiment. Remember: dumbness is the American way. Dumbness
has created more progress for this country – just from people
saying, Well, I really don't know what's going on here, but let's
try this. And then they come up with something great. The best example
of that is Thomas Edison. You know about the filament in the electric
light bulb, don't you? He'd tried everything until he finally said,
I'd be willing to try a piece of dental floss with some cheese on
it if I thought it would work.
Schneckloth: What about those who feel that synthesizer,
and electric instruments in general, somehow detract from the humanity
of the music being played?
Zappa: Let me tell you something about that kind of thinking.
People who worry about that are worried about their own image as
a person performing on the instrument. In other words, the instrument
is merely a subterfuge in order for the musician to communicate
his own personal, succulent grandeur to the audience – which
to me is a disservice to the music as an art form. It's the ego
of the performer transcending the instrument. Now when you start
talking about humanity – who cares about that? If you're going
to play music, I think the music is important. And I think the guys
that say this makes it less human aren't really talking about the
feel of the music, they're talking about something that's going
to get in the way of the audience understanding how swell they are.
You've seen soloists get up there – they're not playing music,
they're playing their egos out. And there are whole bands of people
who get together to do nothing but explain to the audience through
their instruments how fabulous they are. Well, who gives a shit?
I don't want to go and see somebody's deep inner hurt in a live
performance. I don't want to hear their personal turmoil on a record,
either. I like music.
Schneckloth: Can't it be a moving thing to hear somebody
express his soul through, say, a very sad-sounding trumpet solo?
Zappa: I don't care about souls; that's the Maharishi's
department. See, I take a real cold view about that stuff. I think
that music works because of psycho-acoustical things – like
the way in which a line will interact with the harmonic climate
that's backing it up. And all the rest of it is subjective on behalf
of the listener. Maybe you WANTED to hear a sad trumpet solo, but
it wouldn't be sad unless the notes he was playing were interacting
in a certain way against the background. The best test is: if it
was a 24-track recording, take the same trumpet solo, change the
chord progression behind it, and see if it sounds sad any more.
People see and hear what they want to see and hear. If you're in
the mood, or have a deep, personal need for sad music or soul-searching
or sensitivity in that stuff, you'll find it wherever it is. You'll
go into an art gallery and be totally amazed by the things you see,
whereas I might go into the gallery and go hah? This is a gross
example, but say a person buys a Kiss album and listens to it and
has a moving experience from it. I mean, are they wrong?
Schneckloth: Well, people go crazy at their concerts,
and that may be understandable.
Zappa: I'm not talking about their concerts. Take the fire
bombs away, take the blood capsules and the rest of that stuff away.
Just listen to the record. There are people who listen to the records
and get off on them.
Schneckloth: Speaking of that band, you once said, Americans
hate music, but they love entertainment.
Zappa: You want me to explain that to you?
Schneckloth: Yeah, if you would.
Zappa: Sure. The reason they hate music is that they've
never stopped to listen to what the musical content is because they're
so befuddled by the packaging and merchandising that surround the
musical material they've been induced to buy. There's so much peripheral
stuff that helps them make their analysis of what the music is.
Here's the simplest example: Take any record, stick it in a white
jacket and hand it to somebody and let him listen to it. The next
day, hand him the same record with a real album cover – with
a picture and some type on the back that gives him some key to what
the music is. The results are completely different. The way in which
the material is presented is equally important as what's on the
record. It's the GARNI DU JOUR way of life. You go buy a hamburger.
If somebody gives you a hamburger on a dish, it means one thing.
If somebody gives you a hamburger on a dish with a piece of green
stuff and a wrinkled carrot and a radish – even though you
don't eat that stuff – it's a Deluxe Hamburger. It's the same
piece of dog meat on the inside, but one's got the GARNI DU JOUR.
American have become accustomed to having a GARNI DU JOUR on everything
... Maybe the world is moving too fast for this now, but in the
old days, you used to be able to go to a record store and listen
to the record before you bought it. You can't do that now, and that's
been one of the major factors in the type of merchandising we have
in music today.
Schneckloth: Over the years you've managed to turn the
system to your advantage. To what do you attribute you longevity
in the music business?
Zappa: What do you attribute Stravinsky's longevity in
the music business to? He didn't want to stop composing. I'm just
using that as an example; I'm not comparing myself to Stravinsky
in any other way. I'm just saying that if a person wants to write
music, he's going to do it whether he's getting performances or
not, and that's the attitude I take. I started off putting a band
together because I wrote music and I wanted to hear it and nobody
else would play it.
Schneckloth: On the subject of performing, you've always
been underrated as a rock guitar player. I guess you'd call it a
blues-based style, but it's very original and distinctive.
Zappa: The basis of that kind of music is derived just
as much from Eastern music as it is from the blues.
Schneckloth: Where does it come from?
Zappa: I think it's just natural to me. Part of the Eastern
influence is like Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian kinds of sounds as well
as Indian sounds.
Schneckloth: Have the various composers who have influenced
your writing had any effect on your guitar style?
Zappa: Well, I think that if there's anything from the
composers I like that's incorporated in my guitar playing, it's
Stravinsky's idea of economy of means, because I'll take just a
few notes and change the rhythm. If you want to look at it in purely
scientific terms, you have a chord that tells you where you harmonic
climate is – where the event is taking place. The chord is
like the establishing shot in a movie – where you see the
exterior of the building, or the alley with the garbage cans. It
tells you where it's happening. Then the action takes place. So
you have a chord, and you have three notes that provide certain
types of emotional activity versus the chord. And that emotional
activity is redefined every time you change the order of the notes
and the space in between the notes. That's the kind of stuff I'm
dealing with. When you listen to the thing in continuity, it sounds
like there's a line going on and there's something happening. But
what's really happening in the solo is this: for each harmonic climate
that's presented, there are experiments being conducted, in real
time, with different notes and weights and measures of those different
notes, versus the climate. And every time you change the position
of the note, it has a different impact. That's especially true of
bent notes.
Schneckloth: Do you still get an exhilaration from playing
live? Does it make the whole thing worthwhile?
Zappa: It's the greatest thing there is. As a matter of
fact, it is the ONLY thing that makes it worthwhile. Some of the
drudgery you have to go through on the road is so boring. And once
you get a chance to do that ... I wouldn't even care if there wasn't
an audience there. It's just that you've got all the equipment set
up, the musicians are there and paid for, the lights are on, it's
just the right temperature, the stage is the right color, it's the
right mood. And then you play, and you can create things right there.
And fortunately, there are cassettes of it so you have a chance
to hear it back later and see if your experiments were successful
or what. That's one of the prime reasons for me going out on the
road and touring.
Schneckloth: Do you think of yourself primarily as a
guitar player then?
Zappa: No, I think of myself as a composer who happens
to have the guitar as his main instrument. Most composers used to
play the piano. Well, I'm not a piano player, so obviously, because
of the technical limitations of the guitar versus the piano –
in terms of multiple notes and so on – the stuff I write is
determined by my interest in the guitar. And consequently, it provides
difficulties for other instruments. If I hear something in my head
that's guitar based – blends, and stuff like that –
a lot of times, those things can't be executed on other instruments.
So it provides a slight element of frustration when you hear your
lines played on instruments other than what they were intended to
be played on.
Schneckloth: As far as the technical limitations of the
guitar are concerned, with the electric guitar today, it seems you
can do almost anything – legato stuff and
so on.
Zappa: With feed back and sustain you can do some really
beautiful legato stuff which wasn't possible before heavy amplification.
In the earliest days of electric guitar playing, first you had the
advantage of being heard at the same volume as the saxophone player.
Then came fuzz, which gave you a chance to add a different emotional
slant to your notes. In other words, a C note played clean is different
from a C note played with fuzztone. It means two different things.
One of them is wearing little white gloves and the other one has
brass knuckles on.
Schneckloth: When you visualize it, it's the difference
between a thin straight line and a thick, jagged one.
Zappa: Yes, it occupies more space. And when you get right
down to it, what is music, really? Did you ever stop to think about
what's really going on? Here's my theory. First of all, music functions
in the time domain – there's decor and the time domain. That's
the canvas you paint on when you're working with music. Another
distinction: written music is to real music what a recipe is to
real food. You can't listen to music on a piece of paper and you
can't eat a recipe, so I put them both into the same category. And
once the music comes off the paper and goes into the air, what you're
literally doing is making a sculpture with the air, because your
ear is detecting the peturbations in the air. It's decoding the
way the air has been shaken by the different instruments. So the
duration of your piece occupies a space of time – that's your
canvas. And the medium you're working in is the air. So no matter
what you play, you have to be consciously aware that it is not just
a note. It is an impulse which is going to alter the shape of the
air space, which in turn is going to be detected by the human ear.
Now, you compound the misery when you start dealing with recorded
material, because usually the material, if you're doing it in a
studio, is being recorded in a very unimpressive air space. It's
blank, dead, uninteresting. All the reverberation is being added
electronically. Furthermore, the person who finally listens to the
piece is going to be listening to it on equipment that is not quite
as spectacular as the stuff in the studio. So you have to rely on
the efficiency of the home speaker to create your air sculpture
live in person for the listener.
Schneckloth: That must get frustrating.
Zappa: Well, you know that the guy sitting in his house
is never going to hear the sculpture the way it was designed, because
most home units can't reproduce the top and bottom end the way they're
supposed to be. All you're giving them is the mid-range. And there
are also problems with disc recording. Discs can't reproduce everything
you can get on a tape. And neither disc nor tape can give the listener
the dynamic range you get in a live performance. I mean, you can
turn the record up so it's loud, turn the bass up so it's beating
on your chest, but it's not the same thing as sitting in a hockey
rink and listening to an immense mass of air being shaped and moved
around by heavy amplification. So what if there's a lot of echo?
I like to play in hockey rinks.
Schneckloth: Don't they present a lot of problems?
Zappa: The problem about playing hockey rinks is that sometimes
it's hard to hear the words. If you're word oriented, okay, that's
tough. But that air space you have in there is such a great thing
to work with – it's this huge tonnage of air. And when you
go wham and hit a big chord, you've taken ALL THAT and spewed it
over 15,000 people.
Schneckloth: That must be quite a feeling of power.
Zappa: It's not just a feeling of power. If you want to
play really soft, think how soft one note is diluted in the air
space of a 15,000 seat hockey rink. That's REALLY SOFT. And one
note played really loud is REALLY loud. So the dynamic range in
a place like that – softest note versus the loudest note,
the top to bottom of your sculpture – with the right equipment,
gives you a chance to do a more interesting and complicated sound
event. Forget about whether it's a song or a drum beat or a scream
on the microphone or whatever it is – those are sounds that
are moving air around. Taken in the purest abstract sense, the opportunities
in a large, enclosed, resonant place like that are very interesting.
Schneckloth: People still complain about those places
though. I don't know if they're looking for intimacy, or what.
Zappa: That's because people have different desires when
they go to a concert. The prime desire of the concert-goer is to
see the person that they bought the ticket for reproduce the record
they have at home. In other words, they want a human juke box; they
want that replica. And they're never going to get it, not in a place
like that, anyhow.
Schneckloth: Do you think the high amplification thing
can be overdone?
Zappa: No, I think it's necessary, it really is. It's not
just because it makes it louder, but if you have all that wattage,
you don't have to run the thing at full blast, which gives you more
head room and you get cleaner sound.
Schneckloth: How much work is involved in moving all
that sound reinforcement equipment around?
Zappa: In the U.S. we use two 45-foot trucks and a 22.
In Europe we were using two 40s. For every person on stage playing
an instrument, there are two other guys in the crew. There's seven
people in the band, 21 total traveling. And they all work. There
are no traveling hangers-on. It's not like the Grateful Dead tour
or something like that.
Schneckloth: I've seen you take your sound checks right
up to the performance. The audience is already seated, and you're
still working away at getting the sound right.
Zappa: Sometimes the trucks get held up and you can't have
it all set up and waiting when the audience gets there. So you have
to make a choice – are you going to be a star or are you going
to play music? Some groups don't even do a sound check. We do one
every day.
Schneckloth: Getting back to performing, how conscious
are you of the outrageousness factor in your music?
Zappa: Wait a minute, let's examine what outrageous is.
That means something deviates so far from the normal contemporary
accepted standard that it appears outrageous. Well, after Watergate –
finding out that the President of the United States may be a crook
... I mean, what's outrageous? Is it outrageous to go on stage in
a funny costume and spit foaming blood capsules all over the stage?
Well, that's what people think is outrageous.
Schneckloth: It's all entertainment anyway.
Zappa: So you have to assume that Watergate was the finest
entertainment America had to offer. I think the President we have
now is not exactly of Watergate stature but will ultimately provide
a certain amount of entertainment for the history books. The thing
that marketed him in was the more-wholesome-than-thou attitude,
and I don't believe people like that exist. ... You have this desire
among the American people to find something nice. So anybody that
is personally clean-looking and smiles a lot can get away with murder.
It's the GARNI DU JOUR. It's equally true of the jazz world. The
whole jazz syndrome is smothered in GARNI DU JOUR. People who really
have very little to say on their instrument and have built their
reputation on one or two albums have wound up forming and reforming
into supergroups to produce jam session albums of little merit other
than very fast pentatonic performance ...
Schneckloth: The whole fusion thing – is that a
dead end?
Zappa: Well, first of all, in order to be fusion, in order
to match that marketing concept of what people think of as fusion –
it has to SOUND fusion. This has little to do with whether of not
it's actually fusing anything together. It just means that the keyboard
player has to sound like Jan Hammer, the guitar player, drummer
and bass player all have to play in a certain vein. And after each
guy has molded himself into that certain syndrome, then the whole
musical event that they perform has to be further molded into the
syndrome. So what have you got? Nothing. It's wank music. The problem
is that people then start looking down their noses at three-chord
music or one-chord music or two-chord music. And with fusion music,
what do you have? Some of it is three-chord music, it's just that
the chords have more partials in them. Instead of being one, four,
five, they're playing one two flat seven or some other simple progression
that allows them to run a series of easily recognizable patterns
over it. It's all mechanical. See, part of the problem is the way
in which consumers use music to reinforce their idea of what their
lifestyle is. People who think of themselves as young moderns, upwardly
mobile, go for the fusion or disco – that slick, cleaned-up,
precise, mechanical kind of music. And they tend to dislike everything
else because it doesn't have its hair combed. Three-chord fuzztone
music is not exactly the kind of thing that you'd expect a young
executive to be interested in. He wants something that sounds like
it might be really good to listen to riding around in a Maserati.
So ultimately, that cheapens the music and whatever the musicians
have done. ... But like I said, it's a good thing that all that
music is there for all those people. Because without it, their lifestyle
would lack something.
Read by OCR software. If you spot errors, let me know afka (at) afka.net