The Monk On Zappa's Back

By Wayne Manor

New Musical Express, 22 July 1978

ZAPPA IS READY to talk. After twiddling my thumbs in an impersonal hotel lobby for half-an-hour, a voice at the other end of an in-house telephone is urging me up to his room.

Up the elevator, a short walk down a tomb-like hall, and I'm knocking on his door. I look around with surprise, there's no doggy dung smeared on the doorknob, no dead ducklings on the mat. The door opens, and a large, bald man ushers me into the main room without a word.

Another interview is winding up, so I endeavour to meet the hairless man (John Smothers, 'Security') and the voice from the telephone (Frank's wife of eleven years who giggles and says, "Don't call me Mrs Zappa. Call me Gail. It always reminds me of his mother when people call me Mrs Zappa!").

Mainly, though, I stand staring at the bushy-haired guy in the armchair. Orange pants rolled up over his ankles, snakeskin platforms, cat-eye sunglasses and other fab touches, all being captured on film by greedy photographers on a field day.

This I tell myself, is Frank Zappa. Damn ... How old was I when I scrounged up the money for my first Mothers of Ivention album, to the downfall of my formative young mind. Fourteen? Fifteen?

Since the Mothers of Invention formed way back when – circa 1964 – Frank has racked up a huge list of impressive feats: composing much fine music; using his albums as vehicles for developing his production skills; creating and producing the movie 200 Motels; holding down some of the heaviest touring schedules known to man; and finding time to discover and produce other artists – Alice Cooper, Captain Beefheart, et al – in the meantime. He tells me about the latest addition to that list.

"I started another movie, called Baby Snakes, which we ought to have out by summertime. A bunch of really famous people are in it. You have these baby snakes, see, and you have the universe, and they relate to each other."

Not one to spill the beans, hé refuses to elaborate on that tidbit. He assures us, however, that the musical score, screenplay, direction, and a meaty acting role will all be fulfilled by himself. An album will be released as well.

Zappa's projects invariably reveal previously unknown talent; his ability for picking this rawness from the rest of the mess is uncanny.

He just smiles a shark's smile and shrugs. "Nobody's universal. People have different abilities, and if you're working in a special idiom, you want people who are comfortable in that idiom.

"Sometimes, I go into a bar and find people. The rhythm guitar player in our group (Adrian Belew – since departed for the heady realms of David Bowie's combo) I found in a bar in Nashville. I got his name and address and invited him about a year later to come out and audition ...

"There's plenty of stuff for anyone to learn when they come in the band. It's like, I think my band's probably the finest music school in America. It gives you on-the-job training, and if you're lucky enough to get into the school, you get paid while you learn."

As cameras click away, Zappa talks a bit about his family and background in the California town of Lancaster (smack dab in the middle of the Mohave Desert). "I got a brother who sells college textbooks for McGraw-Hill. He spent three years in the Marines. I got another one who's working in an old folks home." ("In the kitchen," says Gail.)

"My sister started out by marrying an Okie, and later divorced him and married a former basketball player. She spends her time working in a Photo-Mat."

Americana On Parade. Zappa enloys chiding the Great Society.

"I see that people are drifting toward the Right today, in a very hypocritical way. They're not really right-wing people. But they figure that the more they look Right-wing, the more they'll be able to get away with in the closet.

"The whole right-wing trend is people who want to look upstanding while they go home and do as much weird stuff as they can get away with."

Meanwhile, tbe world awaits Mr Zappa's next waxlike outpourings with bated breath. At the moment, he has no less than three albums ready to go: "Studio Tan" (U.S. release pencilled for September), and "Hot Rats 3" and "Orchestral Favourites" which Frank would like to see in the shops as soon after "Studio Tan" as possible.

It seems likely that major parts of these records were recorded last year, when Frank was working on a four-album box set called "Läther" (pronounced "Leather"), two volumes of which came out earlier in the year as "Live In New York".

The non-live cuts, according to Frank, range "from small group recordings all the way to orchestra."

As for content, "there's a bunch of remarks about leather and bondage and stuff. For those of you who are interested in bondage, pain and abuse, you should hsten to the middle part of 'Broken Hearts Are For Assholes'."

And for those of us not really in tune with ainful pleasures?

"Well, let's see. 'The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary' – that's a chamber orchestra with narration; it's the story of a little pig who invents the calendar, and the problems that arise once the calendar is invented.

"And there's also a ballet, a seven-minute ballet called 'Pedro's Dowry', which is straight. And there's an orchestral version of 'Duke Of Prunes' with a feedback guitar solo, and 'Revised Music For Guitar And Low Budget Orchestra'."

So now you know. One thing is guaranteed: it won't be anything like anybody else. Ol' Frank just does the weirdest stuff he can get away with.