Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story of Frank Zappa

by Neil Slaven

  More attention was paid to the album's title track and its attack on the exploitation of punk music. In another sprechstimme sequence, he noted, 'Did you know that in Tinsel Town the people there think substance is a bore?' But, he went on to explain, this was a system where spectacle was more important than content and it was sustained by 'all those record company pricks' who put musical quality low on their scale of priorities. He was also critical of musicians who forsook 'real' music in order to cash in on the latest trend; 'who gives a fuck if what they play is somewhat insincere'. He may have been out of step with the times, but if Frank was to be a 'boring old fart', he'd make sure that someone noticed the stink.

  On April 17 in New York, Frank was able to do his bit for 'real' music by introducing A Tribute To Edgard Varese, an evening of music that celebrated the 90th birthday of his widow, Louise. He'd been invited by Joel Thome, conductor of the Orchestra For Our Time, who visited him in Los Angeles to discuss arrangements and talk about his own music. The concert was to have been held at the Whitney Museum, but at Frank's suggestion it was moved to the Palladium, which had once been an opera house. "What they were trying to do was get a younger audience to come and hear the music of Varese . . . The concert was at the Palladium. They were behaving like a rock'n'roll audience. They sat completely still when the music was being played, but as soon as the music stopped there was pandemonium."25

  Frank had thought that he ought to find out some information to pass along to the audience about Varese, but it turned out that his efforts were unnecessary. It did, however, give him the opportunity to contact Nicholas Slonimsky, the St Petersburg-born pianist and conductor, who'd overseen the world premiere of Varese's Ionisation, as well as the symphonic works of Charles Ives and Bela Bartok's First Piano Concerto. Slonimsky had written several books on music, including the Lexicon Of Musical Invective and the Thesaurus Of Scales And Melodic Patterns, which had inspired Frank to make contact. A friendship developed that enabled him to grasp the theories behind Slonimsky's ways of creating chords and harmonies.

  Around this time, Frank had expected to begin rehearsals with the Residentie Orchestra for a concert of his music as part of the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. After arranging with various organisations including the Dutch government and Columbia Records that sufficient finance would be available, a short European tour was arranged in order to cover salaries and expenses for travel and rehearsal time. Each member of the nine-piece group was to be paid $15,000 for 17 weeks' work. But before the American rehearsals began, two musicians surreptitiously tried to increase their salaries. When this came to light, Frank made it a strictly orchestral event, but not for long. The orchestra committee announced it had hired a lawyer to negotiate a royalty which they expected to be paid over and above the usual session rate. Enough was enough. Having invested $250,000 in preparatory work, Frank withdrew his music, his involvement and his permission from the enterprise.

  WHY JOHNNY CAN'T READ

  Indeed, as Hunter S. Thompson would say. That was the title of one of the solos on Return Of The Son Of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, which along with its companions, became available for mail order on May 11. Tinsel Town Rebellion was released six days later. To general surprise, the mail order albums sold very well right away, while the distributed release struggled. Speaking two years later, Frank said, "Actually, they have surprised everybody because the quantity that we sold mail-order went into a profit within two weeks of being out there. That is, they paid for the cost of manufacturing within two weeks." Asked if any follow-up albums were likely, Frank pointed out, "I'm not funded by any foundation or grants or any money from the sky, so what comes in gets transferred again into the next product that goes out. And I can only spend the money to make the next product versus the profit that comes in on the previous one."27

  There was also the matter of rehearsing a new band for an autumn 1981 tour of America. Chad Wackerman was engaged to replace the venal Vinnie Colaiuta, Bobby Martin came in on keyboards, saxophone and vocals and Ed Mann returned on percussion. Steve Vai, Tommy Mars and Ray White kept their places, but Arthur Barrow was replaced by Scott Thunes. Thunes' guitarist brother Derek had rung Frank in the hope of securing an audition. Frank informed him that he didn't need a guitarist but he was looking for a bass player; Derek unselfishly suggested his older brother. It took three auditions and the memorising of 'Mo 'n Herb's Vacation' for Scott to secure the post.

  You Are What You Is was released in September 1981, just prior to the three California gigs that began an intensive tour taking in more than 50 dates in just over three months. Frank had made a video for the title track but it had been banned by MTV for including a Ronald Reagan lookalike who was eventually strapped into an electric chair. The album's gatefold sleeve included a bizarre article, written for Newsweek but rejected for being too 'idiosyncratic'.

  Headed 'Say Cheese', it suggested that modern America was wilfully deluding itself into accepting a number of fictions about its status and that its self-regard prevented it from acknowledging a woeful lack of true values or accomplishments. "No society has managed to invest more time and energy in the perpetuation of the fiction that it is moral, sane and wholesome than our current crop of Modern Americans." In addition, these Modern Americans behaved as if intelligence was some sort of hideous deformity. In order not to be ostracised as intelligent, the population was prepared to be guided by COMMITTEE CHEESE, UNION CHEESE and, worst of all, ACCOUNTANT CHEESE.

  In this proscribed society, art was judged by its financial cost and, along with "taste" and "the public interest", was "all tied like a tin can to the wagging tail of the sacred Prime Rate Poodle". Frank concluded, "Yes, Virginia . . . there is a FREE LUNCH. We are eating it now. Can I get you a napkin?" The implication was that it was already too late to reverse the insidious progress of statecontrolled aesthetic judgement. The deeply ironic tone of the piece and its allusive terminology rendered it incomprehensible to many, thus making it 'subversive' and probably 'unpatriotic' in the minds of the Moral Majority. The article was dated April 1, 1981, but Frank wasn't fooling. However, he was being idiosyncratic, and that was enough for Newsweek to protect its readership from the pain of original thought.

  17:

  DROWNING WITCH

  How many of those that came to a Zappa concert thought about what Frank tried to bring to their attention? For many, it was the opportunity to see a highly talented and regimented band being put through its paces for a couple of hours. And during the evening, they'd get to sing along with 'Bobby Brown' or 'Broken Hearts Are For Assholes', with the prospect of 'Dinah-Moe Humm' or 'Muffin Man' as an encore. For all of his sarcasm, Frank adopted a paternal attitude towards his young audiences. Old enough to be their father, he delighted them by ridiculing political figures their parents believed in and the antics of pop stars whose shows they nevertheless attended with equal enthusiasm. During the show, many rock conventions were so accurately satirised that at least part of the audience may not have noticed the difference.

  Frank's hectoring tone was reminiscent of their teachers, but in his case, you got the music as well. Sometimes, though, people went too far. Arthur Barrow recalled an incident at an East Coast gig: "I was standing near Frank on the stage and he was playing one of his long guitar solos. He was just there enjoying himself; he had his eyes closed, playing away. And I look at him, and all of a sudden he's like knocked back. I think, 'Oh my God, he's been shot or something.' He almost fell over. And it turns out somebody from the upper level seats had thrown a pint vodka bottle and it struck him on the shoulder. It didn't really hurt him, but it scared him.

  "He was so great at this, I guess it was all those years of handling an audience. He really knew how to do it. He says, 'Hey, wait a minute, stop the music. Everybody stop playing.' So we just stopped. And he said, 'Turn on the lights. I wanna find out who threw that bottle at me.' And the light guy starts flicking the spotlight around the audience. 'No, no, I don't mean the spotlights, I mean
the fucking house lights, turn on the big light' . .. And people sort of pointed their fingers in a certain direction, the security guys walked up there and they found the guy, and they took him off. Because Frank says, 'We're not playing another note until the guy who threw that bottle at me goes to jail.' They went and got him and took him off and then we resumed playing."1

  Another unfortunate went too far at the Santa Monica Civic Center on December 11, 1981. The band were playing 'Broken Hearts Are For Assholes' and had just begun the last verse when someone threw popcorn onto the stage. "Stop! Stop!" Frank shouted to the band. "That was very wrong to do. Bring that man back and make him lick this shit up." Smothers was detailed to lift the culprit by his ankles and run his face through the mess. When he was brought to the stage, Frank exclaimed, "All right! Now at last, the attention that you so justly deserve! Step right up, introduce yourself and prepare to dine as you've never dined before." The plaintiff babbled some nonsense and tried to protest, but Frank just said, "Get your face in it, buddy." As a struggle ensued, he made sure that there was no violence. After an 'enormous napkin' had cleared up the residue, he led the band into the last verse.

  The Santa Monica gig was notable for the appearance of Nicholas Slonimsky during 'A Pound For A Brown On The Bus'. Frank brought the band down behind him and addressed the audience: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to a real national treasure, Nicholas Slonimsky. He's 83 years old. If there's any musicians in the audience, then you know who Mr Slonimsky is. If you're not a musician, well, let's see, how can I put it to you? This man has not only conducted the world premieres of many of the greatest works of modern classical music, but he's the author of many books, including the bible of improvisation, the Thesaurus Of Scales And Patterns [published when Frank was six years old] . . . Besides writing these books, Mr Slonimsky plays the piano and that's what he's gonna do right now."

  With that, the octogenarian launched into the 51st and final piece from his Minitudes, his left hand stabbing descending triads while his right scrabbled across the treble keys with surprising energy. His solo was brief but dramatic and was greeted with cheers from the audience. "To my surprise," he noted in his autobiography, Perfect Pitch, "I sensed a growing consanguinity with my youthful audience as I played. My fortissimo ending brought out screams and whistles the like of which I had never imagined possible."2 As he left the stage, Tommy Mars sketched the melody line of 'Young At Heart'. "The concert was a great success," Slonimsky told Don Menn. "Usually I have just a hundred or two hundred people, but this was a huge audience, and they shouted and everything!"3 The bemused musical lexicographer later wrote, "Dancing Zappa, wild audience, and befuddled me I felt like an intruder in a mad scene from Alice In Wonderland. I had entered my Age of Absurdity."4

  There were guest vocalists at each of the day's two shows. At the first, young Ahmet made his debut, singing his own composition, 'Frogs With Dirty Little Lips'. Lisa Popeil illuminated several songs at the second show, her voice equal parts operatic and athletic. "We were having an open call for drummers," Frank told Den Simms. While her drummer boyfriend was auditioning for him, Tommy Mars discovered that Lisa could sing, sight read and play the piano. Frank was duly impressed when she sight-sang 'Be-Bop Tango'. "And so she attended a few of the rehearsals, I guess for about a week, and there were some things that she could do, and do very well, and other things that she couldn't, and it just turned out that there were more of the things that she couldn't do, that we needed, for a second keyboard position in the band."5 Lisa showed her vocal expertise on her semi-improvised 'Life Story' (included on YCDTOSA 6), 'Teenage Prostitute' and 'The Dangerous Kitchen'.

  'Teen-age Prostitute' became part of the next album, Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch. The title came from Droodles, a book of minimalist cartoons by Roger Price, first published in 1953. The one that Frank chose consisted of just five lines, one of which denoted the horizon. The prow of a ship juts in from the left, while a steeply pitched triangle represented a witch's conical hat. The congruence of the slanting lines suggests a large 'Z'. To assist the motif, the letters of 'Zappa' are represented where appropriate as circles, straight lines and triangles. "I always liked the picture," Frank said, "and recently I tried to find the guy who did it, and found out that he lived about 10 miles away from me, and I bought permission to use the picture on the cover of the album."6

  Once again, the marriage of live and studio recordings was for the most part unnoticeable, except at the end of 'Teenage Prostitute', where audience applause denoted the end of the album. Drowning Witch itself betrayed none of the time-consuming editing that had gone into its production. "Do you know how many edits there are in Drowning Witch?", Frank asked Tom Mulhern. "Fifteen! That song is a basic track from 15 different cities. And some of the edits are like two bars long. And they're written parts all that fast stuff. It was very difficult for all the guys to play that correctly . . . So there was no one perfect performance from any city. What I did was go through a whole tour's worth of tape and listen to every version of it and grab every section that was reasonably correct, put together a basic track, and then added the rest of the orchestration to it in the studio."7

  Such microscopic attention to detail was only possible now that Frank took adequate recording facilities with him on the road. In 1980, he'd upgraded from four-track to an eight-track machine. For the 1981 tour, he travelled with a 24-track recorder. During 1982, he bought the Beach Boys' mobile truck and stocked it with three Ampex 24-tracks, with one as a standby in case either of the others broke down. The only drawback to this system was the time it took to locate and construct a backing track.

  VALLEY GIRL

  An indication of the average gestation period of a Zappa tune could be gleaned from the creation of 'Valley Girl'. "It was a riff that started off at a sound check about a year before," Frank said, "and I had been piddling with it for a long time."8 Then, at the end of a drum tracking session with Chad Wackerman, Frank got an idea for a background riff and decided to get it on tape before he forgot it. "So I went out to the studio with him, and in about half an hour, we had put down this backing track, which didn't have any words or any idea of where it was gonna go, and it was maybe a couple of months later that I got the idea for what the words might be for this thing, and at the end of one of the vocal sessions for Thing-Fish, I had Ike, Ray and Bob Harris sing the chorus. A few weeks later I got the idea to have my daughter go out and do this monologue on top of it. The last thing that was added was the bass part, and then it was mixed. We went off on a tour in 1982. We're in Europe, touring around, and I find out that I've got a hit record... by accident!"9

  Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch was released as the band set off for Europe at the beginning of May. As well as revisiting the northern strongholds of Zappa fervour, this time there were to be 11 Italian gigs. Throughout its two and a half months, the tour was dogged by natural disasters, technical problems and belligerent audiences. The May 23 Kiel concert lasted just ten minutes because the band were being pelted with various objects. Heavy rain stopped the gig at Mannheim on June 6, and the June 17 show in Lille was cancelled after the sound check.

  The tour concluded at Palermo in Sicily on July 14; here a full-scale riot, with police firing tear gas into a volatile crowd, erupted after 30 minutes. Frank commemorated the event with two tracks on YCDTOSA 3; the band were playing 'Cocaine Decisions' when the first tear gas grenade was fired. Frank wrote, "The Army and the local Police (who didn't like each other, and who were completely unco-ordinated) began a random process of blasting these Little presents into the crowd. We could see fires in the distant bleachers. Tear gas seeped onto the stage." The band segued into 'Nigger Business' and John Smothers had to wipe the tears from Ray White's eyes while he was playing. It was the last show that the 1982 band would perform.

  "That was our last European tour," Frank said the following month. "It's too expensive to play, too expensive to travel around, a
nd with the anti-American sentiment around, it is hard to go on-stage and do what you do with the emotional freight that is attendant to European attitudes toward American foreign policy."10

  That foreign policy, dictated by the CIA and Defense Department vultures perched on Ronald Reagan's shoulders, included trying to keep leftist guerrillas from seizing control of El Salvador, while bankrolling the Contras in their bid to overthrow the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. In his attempts not to be the 'wimp' he'd accused his predecessor Jimmy Carter of being, Reagan was convinced the following year to send troops into the Lebanon, where Israel and the PLO were religiously killing each other. His action resulted in a car bomb that destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut and 241 Marines inside.

  Material from the tour made up the second disc of YCDTOSA 5; the ill-fated Geneva show provided a number of its 13 tracks, with the balance from Munich, Balzano and Frankfurt. Frank was generous in his notes: "The '82 band could play beautifully when it wanted to. It is unfortunate that the audiences of the time didn't understand that we had no intention of posing as targets for their assorted 'love offerings' cast onto the stage [in Milan they threw used hypodermic syringes]." Frank himself was in good form, as his solos on 'Easy Meat', 'RDNZL', 'A Pound For A Brown On The Bus', and a reggae version of 'The Black Page #2' with the guitar riff of 'Ya Hozna' running behind it showed. Even though the CD exceeded 70 minutes, an air of disappointment was evoked by 'Geneva Farewell', as Frank first warns the audience to stop throwing objects on-stage, and when they continue, announces, "House lights. The concert's over."