by Neil Slaven
He'd known Ed Mann back in Connecticut and Ed told him, "Frank has a keyboard player already and he's thinking of auditioning another one as well. Why don't you give him a call?" Mars went through a torturous audition, which he sensed was going nowhere, until Frank asked him to sing something. Not one song came to mind. "So I told him, 'Frank, I can't think of anything so I'm going to improvise something.' So I just started playing and singing. I have a style of scatting that is very definitely my own and it's co-ordinated very basically and organically with what I'm playing on the piano. It totally knocked Frank out. He called Gail, his wife, downstairs and said, 'Listen to this guy blow.' And that saved me. My reading was only adequate for what he wanted but the improv saved me, I'm sure."34
Frank put him on a temporary retainer and gave him some music to learn over the next week. "A week later, I came back down from Santa Barbara," he told Robert L. Doerschuk. "I had learned every piece that he gave me as a solo piano arrangement, even 'The Black Page' and 'Punky's Whips'. He thought I would just learn the chords and some of the melodic licks, but I did everything as if I would do it solo. So he was utterly flabbergasted."35
Perhaps not. "I'll tell you, the kind of musician I need for the bands that I have doesn't exist," Frank told Tim Schneckloth early in 1978. "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 compositional techniques function.
"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 organised ... So it requires a lot of memorisation — fast memorisation. You can't spend a year teaching somebody a show." Frank pointed out that three months constant rehearsal was an 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." In order to keep it all on the move, the stage gear required one 22-foot and two 45-foot trucks. "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 travelling. And they all work."36
BABY SNAKES
After a warm-up gig at the University of California in San Diego on September 9, 1977, the band took to the road for the next couple of months, including a four-day stint at the Palladium in New York City that ended with shows on Halloween Night. These shows were recorded on the Record Plant's 24-track mobile facilities, and film crews were also present to shoot footage for Frank's next project, Baby Snakes. With sundry backstage japes, including Roy Estrada's interminable liaison with a full-bodied Ms. Pinky, interpolated into the performance, the complexity of the music is matched by Bruce Bickford's mind-clenching clay animation, including a sequence in 'Disco Boy' where 'Billy The Mountain' and 'Greggary Peccary' are both briefly glimpsed.
A 'soundtrack' album was eventually released in 1983, containing an introductory conversation between Frank and Warren Cucurullo, and versions of 'Baby Snakes', 'Titties & Beer', 'The Black Page', 'Jones Crusher', 'Disco Boy', 'Dinah-Moe Humm' and 'Punky's Whips'. The film also contained an extended preamble to 'Dirty Love', later released (along with 'Tryin' To Grow A Chin') on YCDTOSA 6 as 'The Poodle Lecture', in which Frank enumerated God's three mistakes, those being Man, Wo-Man and the Poodle. Having no truck with snakes and apples, Frank recounts how Eve took a fancy to certain parts of the poodle and sent Adam out to work for the money needed to buy some clippers, scissors and the inevitable zircon-encrusted tweezers, with which to give the dog of her dreams 'the disco look that's so popular these days'. Frank squatted on a suitably primped life-sized replica to show how Eve brought bestiality to the Garden.
This being the site of his previous live New York recordings, he couldn't resist a dig at his previous record company during the preamble to his parody of an English pop-star's recent American hit. Released on YCDTOSA 6 as 'Is That Guy Kidding Or What?', Frank asked his audience, "How many of you people feel that rock has gotten entirely too preposterous?" He went on to be moderately scathing about Peter Frampton's 1976 number two US hit, 'I'm In You', and put forward an imaginary scenario in which a teenage groupie took her pop star idol back to her appropriately lit teenage bedroom, removed her own teenage clothes and granted entry to the pop star appendage, only to have the immortal words of Frampton's song whined in her ear. Frank's parody, 'I Have Been In You', typically dispensed with 'in-you-endo' in its tale of bedroom athletics.
He saved his most scathing record company attack for the ad-lib section of 'Titties & Beer'. "I have been through hell," he spat. "Remember, I was signed with Warner Brothers for eight fuckin' years. Now how bad is that?"
He was about to get his answer.
14: LATHER
"I'm here to play an album for you and I'm rapping a little rapping is one of those words you say when you go on rock'n'roll radio stations I'm rapping a little bit at this point to prepare each and every one of you for the grand and glorious experience of getting your Little cassette machines out. Because I would like to have you tape record this album off the air. Because this album is not going to be available in stores. Because Warner Brothers is trying to ruin my darn career."
Frank was sitting in a studio at KR.OQ in Pasadena. He was about to play Lather, a remixed and re-programmed four-album version of the tapes he'd presented to Warner Brothers in March. When the DiscReet contract ran out in June, he'd set about finding a new record company to distribute his product. First he approached and was declined by Capitol (part of the EMI organisation); they used the same law firm as Warner Brothers and pressed Warners' records at the time. Mercury/Phonogram then agreed to release the set on his own Zappa label on October 31.
And then . . . Warner Brothers announced they'd scheduled Zappa In New York, as per the DiscReet contract; since Lather also contained some of the same performances, Mercury/Phonogram could not issue it. Three hundred box-sets (catalogue number: SRZ 4-1500) had already been produced and were now useless. But Frank had a set of test pressings and he was going to use them. He briefly explained the circumstances to the KROQ audience as they readied their cassette machines.
"Warner Brothers does not have the rights to this material, although it was delivered to them. They refused to pay me for the material and so I claimed a breach of contract and set out to negotiate with some other record companies. And in several instances, Warner Brothers interfered with those negotiations and spoiled the possibility of releasing this material elsewhere. First place they did it was with EMI and the second was with Mercury/Phonogram; they were ready to press the album, the cover was printed. What you're listening to now is actual test pressings that Mercury/Phonogram had prepared. At the last minute, Warner Brothers threatened them with legal proceedings and so they backed out of the deal.
"The way it stands now is my future as a recording artist is dangling in mid-air, pending court procedures which in California can take anywhere from three to five years for civil cases just to get a day in court and get your case heard. So, since I don't think anybody wants to wait three to five years to hear my wonderful music, I've taken it upon myself to come down here and advise anybody interested in the stuff I do to get a cassette machine and tape the album. You can have it for free, just take it right off the radio. Don't buy it, tape it."
Some time later, wouldn't you know it, a bootleg box-set was issued, including his opening preamble. Some time after that, a double-album bootleg, Leatherette, devoted three sides to tracks from Lather, while the fourth side featured a 1972 radio interview with Martin Perlich and the complete conversation with KROQ's Jerry Kay.
It was a frustrating time; access to his film and audio archive had been denied him and Warner Brothers' proprietorial attitude towards Frank meant that he'd become a pariah in the record business. "They had made it impossible for me to get a record contra
ct with anybody," he told Den Simms. "There was a period of time where I was kind of locked out of the music business, and since I didn't have a recording studio at that time, and since I didn't have a contract, and I couldn't go into a recording studio, in an act of desperation, I took my four-track and hooked up a bunch of little dipshit equipment here in (my) basement, just like every other garage band guy would do, and I was making some one-man tapes here."1
The only thing to do was to get out on the road. As in previous years, 1978 opened with another European tour, which this time began and ended with shows at London's Hammersmith Odeon. The first of these was a five-night stand, from Tuesday, January 24 to Saturday, January 28. Paul Rambali interviewed Frank for NME while final rehearsals were taking place. He opened his piece dramatically: "There exists a very real possibility that we won't hear any new recordings from Francis Vincent Zappa until at least the turn of this decade."2
The next paragraphs detailed the machinations of managements and record companies, and revealed that "the fate of Live In New York is undecided due to some defamatory material included therein about a certain Punky Meadows." The Angel story was related, as was a further deterioration in Terry Bozzio's conduct: "He has lately been seen on stage sporting S&M gear replete with fido studs and butt strap." It turned out that the hunk in question had heard 'Punky's Whips', had felt flattered and given Frank his permission to release it, but that wasn't enough for Warners.
Later in the conversation, Frank deflected a question about feminist attitudes to his more lubricious material: "I'm saying simply this: it's as much of a hype as punk rock as far as I'm concerned. Some of the things they wish to achieve are quite noble, but I resent the manner in which they are being advertised. It's not the ideals, it's the packaging. I find it repulsive and think it's an insult to men and demeaning to women."
Finding his stride — and this being England — he roped in an all-too-familiar hobby horse. "Punk rock is a phenomenon manufactured by managers. It's almost a matter of survival the way I sense it here — the pressure to be a part of whatever is the going trend. In the States the pressures are different. You still have peer group acceptance pressures, but they're not based on rock as a culture ... I get the impression that in order to survive in this country you have to be absolutely dedicated to what has been announced as the trend of the day, otherwise you're a nerd — and nobody wants to be a nerd. As an amateur sociologist then, I would say they are in a better mental health condition rock-wise in the States than they are here."
America wasn't completely healthy, though. As far as learning from the cultural upheavals of the Sixties, he was less sanguine. "They haven't learned some of the most important lessons of the Sixties. The single most important one I think is that LSD was a scam promoted by the CIA and that the people in Haight-Ashbury who were idols of people across the world as examples of revolution and outrage and progress were mere dupes of the CIA." Had the government been experimenting on its own people? "I think it's a process they wanted to go through to find out what the applications are in terms of controlling segments of the population. It's one thing to use these drugs on enemy soldiers, but what happens in situations in cities?"3
It was a theme that Frank had developed in a radio interview with Jim Ladd: "Look, in the 1950s a teenager was an unwanted commodity. Nobody knew yet that that was the new big consumer market. They were just troublemakers, you know, so teenagers were just sort of swept under the rug. They were the wild teenage thrill seekers and juvenile delinquents, and nobody had any use for them until they found out that those little spare-time jobs that they were getting and the money they were getting for allowances when added up turned out to be billions of dollars a year for certain products. At the point that that was discovered, one of the great truths of business lit up over the heads of all those people in the places where they work on those kind of things."
According to Frank, the next step was, "We can't just get their bucks, we have to keep them under control because money means power. If these kids have money then they have power, and if they ever find out that they have power, then we're in trouble, you know, they'll be unco-operative. So they have to be dealt with, and there are ways of dealing with them."4
Rambali found all that hard to believe. "That's because you're not in America. But the way I see it is that those crooks who wind up being president of the United States and the other smart little persons they have working for them will do anything. They believe that they are the law." As he'd said in the earlier conversation: "The best thing that the government has working for them is that the people that they are trying to control are willing to be controlled."5
The idea may have seemed bizarre but the logic was devastating. It prompted Rambali to ask whether Frank considered himself the arch-cynic he was portrayed to be. "I think being a cynic is the only rational stance to take in a contemporary society. I would call it quite a compliment to be called an arch-cynic; that almost sounds important."6
What was important about his prolonged stay among his favourite people was that the Hammersmith gigs were being recorded for the next album, for which there was as yet no outlet. But not for a live album; improved technology, via The Basing Street Truck, was finally enabling Frank to achieve the (albeit intermediate) goal of recording live backing tracks on multi-track equipment, of sufficient quality to then be overdubbed in the studio with all the embellishments that he could envisage. The ultimate goal for this approach, which would also be achieved, was the combination of musicianship and technical expertise that would mean his compositions could be performed and recorded live with no additional studio work.
Just to keep Frank's prejudice fresh and corrosive, the British press reported a new outrage to add to their catalogue of Zappa indiscretions. The group were leaving Heathrow on their way to a gig in Frankfurt as the Sunday papers reported the arrest of certain members overnight. The Sunday Express piece bore the headline, "Zappa Group In Hotel Uproar". While Frank had stayed in a hotel 'off Hyde Park', the band were at the Holiday Inn. Frank was quoted: "Four members of the road crew and one member of my group were taken to Paddington police station after police burst into their hotel rooms this morning. They did not have a warrant. They simply broke open the doors and cut the burglar chains with wire cutters. I understand that a member of the hotel management made a complaint. We didn't smash anything, attack anyone or scream blue murder all night."7 A police spokesman said that 'various substances' were found in their rooms. One man was released immediately and the other four were freed on bail "to report back on February 27 to see if analysis of the substances constitutes an offence." Nothing more was heard.
During a four-day stint in Paris, Frank went down the Metro to find a musician he'd read about in the New York Herald Tribune. Harmonica player Sugar Blue and his French girlfriend Cecile were playing blues on the platforms of Odeon station. Frank brought him to the Nouvel Hippodrome, where he jammed in front of 10,000 people. "Zappa," he told Phillipe Manoeuvre, "that mother has a lotta soul. I felt so close to him on stage. I could feel his heart beating while we were playing. He gave me a lot of room to play, and when we went out, he just asked me, 'How much do you want?' I sure didn't know what to tell him."8 Shortly after, Blue played harmonica on the Rolling Stones' 'Miss You'.
COCAINE DECISIONS
Warners finally released Zappa In New York on March 3, 1978, five months after its intended release date, only to withdraw it immediately after the first pressing. The company's legal department were still concerned about 'Punky's Whips' and now took exception to some more ad-lib remarks about Punky Meadows and Jeff Beck in the badinage between Frank and Terry Bozzio during 'Titties & Beer'. The latter was re-edited and, despite Meadows' consent, 'Punky's Whips' was removed altogether. The excision of almost 11 minutes playing time meant the running order of the first two sides had to be changed and the album was drastically shortened overall.
"They took it out," an indignant Frank told Hugh Fielder. "First of
all they had no right to tamper with the tapes. Secondly, they didn't pay me for any of the stuff that I delivered to them. I mean, they're just so far in breach of the contract and they're just so grossly unfair." Reacting to criticism of the short playing time, he said, "It wasn't my fault. I didn't have any control over it."9
"Warner Brothers were never interested in giving people value for money," Frank said to me in 1991. "From my knowledge, I think that that company was probably more infested with white powder than just about any other in the business at that time. It was an industrialised procedure. They had people that would show up at concerts with suitcases full of drugs."
The bowdlerised version of Zappa In New York was released in Britain the following month but the British company quietly let stocks of the original album and cassette reach the shelves of some Virgin stores. The only light note in the proceedings was an advertisement that featured a picture of a facially decorated Margaret Thatcher emerging from her Jaguar at the Houses of Parliament with a copy of the album under her arm, alongside the headline, "I heard Zappa In New York, but it didn't do a thing for me."10
It wasn't until 1991 that the unexpurgated album, with 30 minutes of additional material, was released on a double-CD. For the immediate future, Frank concentrated on the new album, to be called Sheik Yerbouti, a pun on K.C. And The Sunshine Band's 1976 chart-topping hit '(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty.' "We worked for months on that," Tommy Mars remembered. "For instance, on the song 'Baby Snakes', I was watching a Twilight Zone on TV late one night and I got this phone call from Frank. He said, 'Hi, Tommy, how are you? Feel like doing a little singing tonight?' And I said, 'Sure.' I came down to (Village Recorders) and did 'Baby Snakes' that night about six times, my own voice on one line, no harmonies, just a straight linear thing."11