GENESIS: How long have you been in the music business?

Zappa: The first time I got paid was when I was fifteen.

GENESIS: How did that happen?

Zappa: A friend of mine has rhythm-and-blues band called the Ramblers, and he needed a drummer. I'd been playing drums in the high-school orchestra, so I talked my parents into buying me a set of used drums for fifty dollars. But I couldn't get delivery on the drums until the day of the show. The band rehearsed at the piano player's house. We borrowed all the pots and pans from the kitchen, and I put them between my legs like bongos and played a shuffle beat on them.

GENESIS: You were with some other groups before the Mothers of Invention. Who was Nelda, of Ned and Nelda?

Zappa: Ned and Nelda was the name of a record. It wasn't a group. It was me and Ray Collins. (read more)

Source: zappateers

Total control suited Zappa just fine. "Working on this movie was a dream," he says. "Nobody to report to. Nobody to tell mw hat to do, and the only financial ceiling on it was how much I could afford. I won't say that the finished film is or isn't commercial. In the movie biz people ask 'Does it have legs?' I'd say, 'Yes, this has legs.' Depending on your taste in legs, that's what this film has got." (read more)

Source: The Waldo Scrapbooks