Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story of Frank Zappa

by Neil Slaven

  "Many of the things that I've written have been true stories in songs about obscure people who did obscure things, and they function in the same folk music tradition except that it's been performed on electric instruments." To Frank, Michael Kenyon's anal obsession was "the chance to do a folk song, especially since we were playing a lot of jobs in the Midwest. He's like a household word here, he should have a song. It's not exactly John Henry and the steamhammer, but, you know, he needs to have a song."39

  Other tunes, like 'Black Napkins', had more prosaic origins. The composition had been around for a while but "it was finally named last Thanksgiving when we were having this horrible Thanksgiving dinner in Milwaukee. Sliced turkey roll with the fucking preservatives just gleaming off of it, and this beat-up cranberry material. The final stroke to this ridiculous dinner was the black napkins, sitting next to the dishes. That really said the most about the dinner."40 'Tryin' To Grow A Chin', which began life as a one verse vocal by Frank over 'Black Napkins', was "constructed using every kind of cliche that folk-rock brought to the world — all those stupid bass lines. And it's sung by (Terry Bozzio) who has a squeaky little teenage voice. "41

  The tour ended in Bilbao on March 17 and once back in LA, Frank turned his attention to a backlog of album projects that were at various stages of completion. "There are three things that are important to me right now," he said in April. "The 40-piece orchestra album, the guitar album and the ten record set."42 The previous year, the latter had been a 12-piece set of previously unissued material documenting the history of the Mothers. Then he'd said, "This is a very difficult and expensive project. We currently have someone canvassing retailers. If we can get orders for 5,000, the company will release it."43

  Now, he admitted, "The problem with that we got the 5,000 orders is that if you deliver a double album, that still counts as one album. But if it's a ten record album? I don't feel that it's right to count that as one album. Warner Brothers aren't even sure they want to count it as a single album against my contract et cetera . . . that it's maybe not commercial."44

  That wasn't the only problem Frank faced in the summer of 1976.

  13:

  ZOOT ALLURES

  In addition to all the existing projects, there was the matter of a new album to be considered. For this, Frank block-booked the LA Record Plant and for the first time approached his task literally as a solo venture. He told Steve Rosen, "I did a lot of tracks just starting with a Rhythm Ace and building all the stuff up from there."1 With the exception of a live version of 'Black Napkins', recorded in Osaka the previous February, and the title track, all nine tunes on Zoot Allures were basically duets between Frank and Terry Bozzio, with selected instrumental embellishment from Ruth Underwood, Don Vliet, Dave Parlato and harpist Louanne Nell, and vocal assistance by Roy Estrada, Davey Moire, Ruben Ladron de Guevara and Sparkie Parker.

  Asked whether he'd ever consider using a producer again, Frank replied, "I would if I thought I could find somebody who would produce things the way I want to hear them. But the details that I worry about when I go into a studio are how the board is laid out, what EQ is going to be on the stuff you're listening to in the headphones, what kind of echo you're going to be using, how long you should be taking to do such-and-such, because at $150 an hour you don't want to be wasting your time in there. It's hard once you've got all that stuff set up to just walk in and play and forget about it. I'll spend anywhere from three to nine hours just getting the sound on the rest of the band right before I'll record."2

  But, while this method of working eliminated some of the likely misunderstandings that take place when human beings congregate in a recording studio, Frank discovered, like Paul McCartney, Andrew Gold and Todd Rundgren before him, that the finished product lacked the warmth and accessibility that collaborative effort imparts. Solo albums can be flattering exhibitions of versatility, but they can also be cold and impersonal. And when the subject matter, including soft porn, leisure devices, dead-end jobs and dead-beats, is filtered through Frank's habitually cynical perspective, that can get pretty cold.

  'Wind Up Workin' In A Gas Station', 'Wonderful Wino' (co-written with Jeff Simmons in 1970 and part of the Flo & Eddie band's repertoire), 'Find Her Finer' and 'Disco Boy' are repetitive and static, lacking the energy evident in stage versions. Neither the balance nor the sound of individual overdubs was particularly precise and Frank's double-tracked sleazoid vocals seldom varied. The latter song had the distinction of being a good enough parody of its genre to be mistaken for the real thing. Frank's opinion of it was typically scathing: "Disco music makes it possible to have disco entertainment centres. Disco entertainment centres make it possible for mellow, laid-back kinds of people to meet each other and reproduce."3

  By comparison, a marathon version of 'The Torture Never Stops' is a complete success, Frank's quietly salivating vocal enhancing the ominous atmosphere of the arrangement and the lyrics. These conjure up the baroque black humour of The Pit And The Pendulum and The Fall Of The House Of Usher, two of film director Roger Corman's finest moments, although Frank's leering Evil Prince misses the camp elegance that Vincent Price brought to his characters. And throughout, females groan and squeal in a manner more appropriate to the (then double) album's original title, Night Of The Iron Sausage.

  "The sound effects to 'The Torture Never Stops' were an evening's work," he told Pauline McLeod. "We did most of it in the bedroom of my house. There were two chicks there — one was my wife — plus myself. I think they enjoyed it very much. We got four hours on tape and then cut it down to just under ten minutes. My friend opens up with the first grunt and it carries on from there. Er, I don't think it's worth telling you precisely what went on . . . you wouldn't be allowed to publish it."4 From her photograph, McLeod didn't look gullible but, unless she'd done her research, there was no way she'd have known about Frank's bust at Studio Z, otherwise the similarities would have been all too apparent.

  Less epic but unrepentantly disgusting is 'Ms. Pinky', a lumbering and salacious paean of praise to a 'lonely person device'. Frank came across this one in a Finnish porno magazine. 'It was a head with its mouth wide open and its eyes shut and a short haircut.'5 When the band reached Amsterdam, he sent bodyguard John Smothers out to buy one to use on-stage. "Sure enough, for $69.95, he came back with Ms. Pinky. It was even worse than I had imagined. Not only is it a head, it's the size of a child's head. The throat is sponge rubber and it's got a vibrator in it with a battery pack and a two-speed motor. Sticking out of its neck is a nozzle with a squeeze-bulb that makes the throat contract."6 'Lonely Person Devices', recorded in Copenhagen the previous March and released on YCDTOSA 6, tells the story to the accompaniment of much Danish laughter.

  Best of all were the instrumentals. 'Black Napkins' and 'Zoot Allures' are two of Frank's most distinctive themes, the first consisting of a terse introductory riff and a fleet-fingered extended solo of flashing brilliance, the second a measured, chord-based melody with precisely controlled feedback and poised harmonies over the drums' steady pulse and Ruth Underwood's burbling marimba. In fact, so mesmeric is the latter theme that there's an acute sense of regret when the track begins to fade after Frank's solo has only just begun.

  'Friendly Little Finger' opens with a quasi-oriental theme on guitar and marimba and then becomes an extended improvisation on bass and guitar by Frank, with Terry Bozzio's drums shifting accents and tempos. Its principal interest lies in its being an early example of what Frank termed 'xenochrony', or strange synchronisations. Prior to this, the most striking instance of what he would develop as a full-blown technique was 'The Blimp' on Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, when Antennae Jimmy Semens' lyric chant and Don Vliet's horn flourishes were randomly added to a Mothers master with an intriguing result.

  On 'Friendly Little Finger', while the bass and guitar share the same tonality, the tempo and time signature of what they play are unrelated, creating a random but coherent whole. On later albums, Frank would combine instr
umental tracks from different recordings to create the illusion of simultaneous improvisation and paste live guitar solos onto studio backing tracks.

  He explained his attitude toward soloing on record: "I try to have the event that's going on the record make musical sense and fit in with what's going on; because a record is a fixed object, it doesn't change. It's not a song anymore, it's an object. If you're playing a song on the road it can change every night. It can be something, it comes alive each time you play it, and it has its own existence. But once you've committed it to wax, it never changes. So if you're going to leave your guitar solo on, you're stuck with that for the life of the record."7

  To achieve satisfactory results with such precise criteria, he had to have reliable backing musicians. "It's hard to explain to guys just coming into the band, the rhythmic concept I have about playing, because it's based on ideas of metrical balance, long, sustained events versus groupettoes that are happening with a lot of notes on one beat. This is sort of against the grain of rock'n'roll, which likes to have everything in exactly duple or triple, straight up and down, so you can constantly tap your foot to it. But I prefer to have the rhythm section be aware of where the basic pulse of the time is and create a foundation that won't move, so I can flow over the top of it.

  "It's hard to do, it's hard to get people to do that. And it's also hard to get them to leave some space for where the fast notes occur. Rhythm sections always have a tendency to copy; if they hear somebody else playing fast notes, they want to play fast notes too, and then you can't hear any fast notes any more. I've always had good rhythmic rapport with Aynsley Dunbar I thought he was really good, drum-wise. And Terry Bozzio ... is excellent.

  He has a tendency to frenzy out a little bit, but I just figure that's because he's from San Francisco."8

  He elaborated on the subject in conversation with Nigel Leigh: "I like to find players that have unique abilities that haven't been challenged on other types of music. I mean, a good example would be a guy like Bruce Fowler, who has an incredible range on the trombone. When he plays the trombone, you hardly recognise it as a trombone because his technique is so bizarre. Or Terry Bozzio, whose idea of constructions for drum solos was in a whole musical realm that nobody had touched before. And Tommy Mars, this is a guy that you could hold a conversation (with) and Tommy could harmonise it while you were talking. You would just follow dialogue with chords. How often do you get a chance to apply these unusual skills on other types of music.

  "I could always make do. You can't always get what you want, so a lot of times I would be stuck with musicians that were merely competent. (I) would try and push the envelope and teach them new techniques and see whether they could adapt and grow into another style. But for me, it was always more interesting to encounter a musician who had a unique ability, find a way to showcase that and build that unusual skill into the composition. So that for ever afterward, that composition would be stamped with the personality of the person who was there when the composition was created.'9

  ANY DOWNERS

  It's surprising that Frank had any stamina left for recording during these summer months. After returning from Europe, Frank had gone to Michigan to record the basic tracks for the new album by Grand Funk Railroad. One of America's quintessential heavy metal bands, Grand Funk had received ten consecutive platinum albums but had intended to disband in 1975, after the release of Bom To Die. But when Frank expressed an interest in producing them, they stayed together long enough to record Good Singin', Good Playin'. The album was completed at the LA Record Plant, with engineers Michael Braunstein and Davey Moire, the team he would use on Zoot Allures. As well as producing, Frank played guitar on 'Out To Get You'. The band broke up soon after the album's release in August.

  But the most distracting event was the end of his partnership, after more than a decade, with Herb Cohen. Amidst the lawsuits and recriminations, there were two tangible consequences; both Frank's Zoot Allures and Captain Beefheart's new album, Bat Chain Puller were prevented from being released. "Listen to this," Frank told Miles, "I am the chairman of the board of DiscReet and the president of the company — also those guys (at the Record Plant) are supposed to be my friends but they wouldn't release the master tapes to me unless Warner Brothers indemnified the studio from any legal action that Herbie might take against them."

  Warners agreed to do that but insisted that Frank indemnified them. "Can you believe it? An individual artist having to indemnify one of the biggest record companies in the world so that they can bring his record out?"10 In the event, the album was mastered from Frank's own safety copies, and after several months delay, Zoot Allures was released on the Warner Brothers label on October 29.

  As for Beefheart: Frank hadn't produced the album, but the master tapes of Bat Chain Puller were in his basement. Still, they couldn't be sent to Virgin in England while the Cohen/Zappa dispute continued. Miles' NME article implied that the Beefheart album had been financed with Frank's money, and both he and Herb Cohen were claiming the album advance. Beefheart had no choice but to be philosophical about his situation, but there was a note of sympathy in his comments in a phone interview with Miles. "When Frankie left Herbie, he reckons (it) opened up a whole can of worms a whole new can of worms he didn't even know was there. It seems that over the years Frank had signed these pieces of paper, you know, signed in order to be able to keep on with his art. . ."n If it was true, how ironic that Frank should be as susceptible as Beefheart to fine-print blindness; how different was his reaction.

  In the wake of this flurry of legal action, Frank decided not to pursue his argument with the Albert Hall. "It's cost me $50,000 so far," he said to Miles, "and the lawyers want another $8,000 to appeal. It's not worth it." Even so, an appeal was eventually lodged. There was some good news: his lawsuit against MGM-Verve was settled: "We made a settlement in which we get the masters back plus $100,000. But MGM gets a 3 per cent production over-ride on all future use of them."12 Out of the five albums that the Mothers had recorded for them, the label had managed to repackage 11, an inventive abuse of creativity. Unfortunately, these funds too were tied up in Frank's action against Cohen. He wouldn't take physical possession of the master tapes until 1982.

  With so much contention in the air, it was only common sense to dispense with the name, Mothers of Invention. Since the last Mothers had, by most people's reckoning, been the twenty-fourth to bear that name, Frank had every justification in saying "any resemblance between this group and the original Mothers of Invention is purely conceptual." Not using the name would also prevent Herb Cohen from putting any restraint orders on Frank's work schedule and earnings.

  The new group, which began yet another tour in mid-October, was just known as Zappa. It consisted of Terry Bozzio on drums, Ray White on guitar and lead vocals, Patrick O'Hearn on bass and Eddie Jobson on keyboards and vocals. In the early stages, Bianca Odin also played keyboards and sang. Like Bozzio, White and O'Hearn were both from the Bay area, with backgrounds in funk and jazz. O'Hearn was Bozzio's friend and earlier in the summer had been staying at his Los Angeles house while playing with saxophonist Joe Henderson at The Lighthouse. The Mothers had been disbanded and Frank and Terry were laying down tracks at the Record Plant. The drummer invited O'Hearn down to the studio to listen to what had been laid down.

  "I stopped by at about 2.30 in the morning," he told Robert L. Doerschuk. "Not being one to leave my upright bass in the car, I carted it into the studio. Frank, upon seeing me with this bass, remarked, 'Do you play that dog house, fella?' I said, 'Sure do.' Then, without even a formal introduction, he said, 'Well, how would you like to put some acoustic bass on this track?' I said, 'Let's do it.' The cut was finally released as 'The Ocean Is The Ultimate Solution'."13 Frank liked O'Hearn's playing enough to invite him back the following night to play electric bass on another track. As they listened back to the first take, he offered O'Hearn a job in the new band.

  "At one point, Frank, Terry and I were just a trio.
We jammed and played throughout the summer as such. Frank was producing Good Singin', Good Playin' at the time, and those guys would come in and encourage Frank to 'revive the power trio'. This was before the Police; the last trios had been Hendrix and Cream. We thought about that and actually rehearsed it for a while. But eventually Frank felt that he needed at least five guys to make things interesting.'14

  Eddie Jobson had replaced Darryl Way in Curved Air at me precocious age of 17, and then in the summer of 1973 joined Roxy Music as the replacement for the sacked Brian Eno. He was never a full member of the group, merely a salaried employee like the members of Frank's bands. He'd met Frank when Roxy Music supported the Mothers at a gig in Milwaukee in May 1974, when he'd sat in with one of his musical heroes. At the end of Roxy's American tour, he remained in Los Angeles and played with an early incarnation of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. Then Frank invited him to accompany the Mothers on a week of Canadian gigs. Jobson and Frank played together at sound checks and in dressing rooms as Frank assessed both his musical ability and his capacity to memorise arrangements. But he did get to play on-stage at two shows. "He'd sort of say maybe five minutes before he was due on-stage, 'It'd be nice if you played along tonight,'" he told Chris Salewicz. "You know, there's 10,000 people out there and he tells you like five minutes before and you just have to go on-stage and jam, really. I mean, he goes into a riff that you've never heard before in your life and just points at you and you have to do a solo. It was really good for me ... I mean, that's his strength. He stretches his musicians beyond their capabilities all the time. And then when it comes to a performance he'll just relax it slightly to the point where people can actually play what he wants."15