Being Frank

by Nigey Lennon

  After the interview, he got up, looked around for the errant band members, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled shrilly. They all appeared from various nooks and crannies where they’d been stealing a hit or a snort, no doubt, and he herded them onto the stage like a football coach mustering the offense. Before I could ask him if I should join them, he had given the downbeat and kicked off a song. I sat down in the front row, feeling slightly crushed. They ran through the number, then Frank cut them off with a perfunctory but emphatic gesture. Evidently the sound was satisfactory. “See you back at the motel later,” he told them, and jumped down off the stage.

  He came over to where I was sitting. “Let’s go,” he said. At the exit we picked up a pleasant-faced fellow in his early 30s, I guessed (anyone over 30 seemed chronologically challenged to me — even, I’m sorry to say, Frank), who was standing around there as if he had nothing else to do. This was Dick Barber, the band’s road manager, a down-to-earth sort of guy whose tonsorial style — balding on top, little ponytail in back — pre-dated by more than two decades the future Male Hollywood Showbiz Exec Look (minus the ‘90s regulation single earring).

  The three of us walked out of the auditorium to a station wagon parked near the loading area. Dick climbed behind the wheel, I squeezed in next to him, and Frank rode on the outside; luckily the front seat was fairly wide, because two of us had wider ones.

  We pulled out into the tree-lined Berkeley streets, dappled with light and shadow. In the distance the Oakland Bridge’s massive gray exoskeleton, and the delicate rust-red spans of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, fluttered in the air like mirages. Farther off yet, the scrubbed white buildings on the San Francisco hills seemed to defy gravity, exploding into space from all directions, more light than matter. The breeze was cool, but I felt a thousand tiny flames licking my cheek.

  I got up my nerve and asked Frank if I’d be playing with the band at the concert that night. He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “Most of it’s going to be material you don’t know,” he answered. “I think it would be a good idea for you to listen to the show tonight and get an idea of the unfamrliar songs.” That sounded reasonable enough. It was true — I didn’t know a lot of the material, I hadn’t had a chance to attend a full band rehearsal in L.A. before the tour started.

  After a short drive down Shattuck Avenue during which I found myself staring intently at the billboards we were passing, the station wagon turned into the parking lot of the Berkeley House motel, I glanced sideways at Frank, who caught me looking at him. His eyes still had that mischief in them, although the playfulness had deepened into something a little more serious. Dick pulled up at the motel entrance, and fast as lightning Frank popped the door open and climbed out, I followed, with a sweaty feeling of anticipation.

  We walked through glass doors into the lobby. There it was — that unmistakable motel smell of Lysol and naugahyde. The Muzak was pumping out a bassless, drumless, rhythmless rendition of “Light My Fire.” We joined a gaggle of tourists waiting for the elevator. There were some sideways glances at Frank, a pronounced nervous drifting away from us as Mr. and Mrs. America sensed the menace lurking inside that brown tweed disguise.

  Just then a couple of lads who looked like they were playing hooky from Cal came strolling down the hall on their way to the swimming pool. They spied Frank and immediately began gaping. The elevator, meanwhile, seemed to be hung up in the attic somewhere. Finally one of the boys summoned his courage: “Are — are you Frank Zappa?”

  Frank nodded.

  “Is it really true that you ate shit on stage?” asked the other guy with a nervous smirk. (This was a persistent canard that had been plaguing Frank at least since the late 1960s, but at the time I had never heard it before.)

  Frank stared him down. “That’s a vicious rumor,” he answered in his sardonic drawl. “The closest thing to shit I ever ate was the Beef Wellington from the buffet at a Holiday Inn in Newark, New Jersey.”

  The elevator door swung open just then, and as we piled in, we were confronted head on by the major disgust of Mr. and Mrs. America. Our middle-aged lady actually pressed herself flat against the side of the elevator as she entered, trying to avoid any possibility of contamination by this vile coprophage; her husband looked daggers at us from the other side of the elevator. Frank and I were suffused with smothered laughter and by the time we were out of the elevator and into the upstairs hall, neither of us could hold it back. In front of the door to room 303, we both collapsed, falling all over each other I thought he was going to die laughing, right there in the hall of the third floor at the Berkeley House motel. Somebody get me a Steadi-Cam! FRANK ZAPPA DIES LAUGHING! Film at 11!

  Finally Frank caught his breath and, snaking the room key on its plastic paddle out of his jacket pocket, he ceremoniously opened the door and gestured regally inside.

  There were two queen size beds, both made up. A suitcase lay, open, across one of them. Frank flipped on the overhead light, then shuddered and flipped it back off. “A little moody lighting,” he said, sitting down on the empty bed and switching the bedside lamp on low. Still in the doorway, I glanced around the room. The heavy curtains were drawn, letting in only the narrowest crack of light. Two dubious oil paintings of ships and lighthouses hung over the beds. A TV set stared out at us with its glass eye. There was music paper stacked neatly on top of the bureau beside the big black briefcase, a portable reel-to- reel tape recorder, and a pile of shrink-wrapped albums. A little leather shaving kit stood unzipped on the corner washstand, bulging with what I presumed was shampoo, razors, and whatnot. (I would soon have a more accurate idea of the nature of the paraphernalia in there.) On top of the neatly-folded things in the suitcase was a most unusual cap, a Martian extrapolation of yarmulke, porkpie hat, and jester’s motley, with a star and a crescent moon suspended on top from a long fuzzy shank. The green-feathered monstrosity from our first meeting flashed ludicrously across my mind, and I found myself picturing Frank’s nice Italian Aunt Mary, who must have gone in for surreal headgear during innocent little Frankie’s most impressionable years, thereby turning him into a millinery pervert forever, before he even had a chance to know what was going on...

  I turned my eyes around to Frank, still sitting on the bed, his shoes off but his socks on, calmly peeling off his orange “Jolly Gents” T-shirt, I wondered if he ever got tired out from his grueling schedule. Maybe he wanted to take a nap.

  “Shut the door,” he instructed me in a quiet voice.

  I came in, closing the door behind me.

  “You wanna come over here?” he asked nonchalantly, leaning back against the headboard. He was now attired in just his skintight Levi’s and, evidently, no underwear.

  I looked at him, almost too overcome to do it but still compelled to. I had never felt so vulnerable, embarrassed, and confused before. The ironic, detached, yet somehow lubricious timbre of his voice, the way he looked up at me, seeming to understand everything and to be thoroughly amused about it, made me quiver all over. How could he know my feelings so much better than I did myself? I wished I knew what he was feeling, so I could figure out how to respond.

  But as I stood there struggling with myself, I knew I had to own up to the real source of my discomfort. For me, Frank Zappa had gone from being a voice on the record player, a face on an album cover, an inspiring influence — to a very real, entirely corporeal 30-year-old guy who seemed to be about to casually seduce me in this crushingly ordinary motel room in Berkeley. I couldn’t just put the disc into its jacket and stick it safely back on the shelf; I was being directly confronted by my hero, much larger than life and exuding a matter-of-fact sexuality that I found strangely embarrassing. Moreover, I could sense that it was this conflict of mine that was causing his own flame to flare up. If I’d simply been madly in love with him, he would probably have been bored to death. He needed to draw out and then conquer something in me; he must have relished the clash, or he wouldn’t have created it in the first p
lace.

  I slowly walked over to the bed. I looked down at him, the crumpled pillows stuck behind his head, one arm tucked back under the pillows, all six feet of him radiating an attitude of sensual arrogance undercut by a marked awareness. He looked back at me coolly and levelly, both daring me and shrugging it off. Was he a human male, or an idée fixe? I wanted to know him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life, but I was terrified of what I might learn.

  When I got down on the bed next to him, he put his arms around me, gravely, non-threateningly. Shaking all over, I plunged my face into the black hole that was his hair. It was so soft and thick I practically got lost in it. Before I could, Frank gently disengaged me, held me at arm’s length, and gave me a searching look, not entirely without empathy or even sadness. “You sure you want to do this? I don’t want to coerce you against your will,” he said, with exaggerated irony. I should have known he’d give me an argument. A peculiar combination of libertine and moralist, he wanted me to be aware of the consequences of this act; his tone of voice left no doubt that his intention was to be as thorough about this as he was about everything he did, so I’d better be sure that was really what I wanted.

  Still shaking, I nodded and tried to smile.

  He reached across me and clicked off the light with a firm, decisive gesture. In the darkness of the room, the central air conditioning rattled the register in manic polyrhythms.

  Ride My Face to Seattle

  Although I didn’t get to perform that night, I was on the stage for the entire show — sitting on a folding chair just a few feet from Frank but hidden from the audience by the tops of the amp cabinets. He was in an extremely jovial mood, ripping off brilliant solos and dancing around the stage like a maniac, conducting the band with such velocity I half expected his right arm to pop out of its socket. From time to time he’d shoot me a wicked look and throw a one-liner into the ongoing dialogue, a little in-joke that probably didn’t carry any farther than my corner of the stage, but I was satisfied: I was a key proton in tonight’s atom of the Big Note.

  Needless to say, I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to the material I should have been memorizing for the next show. I was vaguely aware of the structure of the songs and how they segued into one another, but usually about the time I’d force myself to focus enough to make a mental note, Frank would raise the devilish old eyebrow at me. “Where can I go to get some Beef Wellington? Where can I go to get my sock washed ?” That one made me blush mightily, and Frank broke into a wicked grin. I noticed a couple of the guys in the band smirking at this byplay, and it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks that there is no such thing as private life when you’re on tour with a band. A valuable if somewhat disturbing realization.

  When the show was over, the band piled into two station wagons for the trip back to the motel. Frank and I rode with Dick Barber again, this time letting him chauffeur while we sprawled out in the back seat; the rest of the band went in the other car, which had an additional seat in the cargo space and could accommodate everyone comfortably.

  The good feeling from the concert hung over us in a pleasant haze, like decent brandy. Frank was leaning back against the seat with his shirt unbuttoned nearly all the way down, making little jokes and asides. The Northern California night had turned nippy, so I’d borrowed his old tweed blazer, which fit me surprisingly well. It was a men’s jacket, with a nearly empty pack of cigarettes in one of the pockets and a (probably empty) lighter in the other; it exuded an elusive, musky scent of tobacco and leather, As I wondered idly why guys my own age didn’t have interesting jackets like Frank’s, he reached over, pulled me close to him, and put his arm around me.

  I snuggled next to him, enjoying the feeling of quiet, steady warmth flowing out of him into me. I was little surprised that being there with him was so relaxed and easy, and I found myself wishing the moment would go on forever.

  Suddenly I heard Dick up front swearing, “Shit...” He had apparently made a wrong turn; we were headed away from University Avenue, toward the waterfront.

  “Hey, Foon — think Simmons is hanging out there someplace?” said Frank, peering at the grim vista of ancient brick buildings and bleary streetlights. (Jeff Simmons, a former bass player in the band, had written a song called “Wino Man", alias “Wonderful Wino,” about Skid Road in his hometown of Seattle. This tune had become part of the band mythology.)

  Dick chuckled. Right then I felt the zipper on my jeans slide slowly and silently down, and an exploring hand steadily began to navigate its way around Cape Horn. “I think that’s your right turn coming up,” said Frank; from his tone of voice, he could have been reading the Christian Science Monitor. Nothing seemed to embarrass him.

  By the time we finally got back to the motel I was limp, but Frank wasn’t. We emerged from the car and passed through the lobby like a whirlwind. Fortunately the elevator was open and waiting. We emerged into the hall to find quite a little crowd gathered before the door of No. 303: assorted band members and other folks, including a highly miscellaneous collection of women. Everyone was in a rowdy mood’ laughing and carrying on so loudly that I wondered why the motel management hadn’t called the cops on us. It was already after one in the morning, but no one seemed to care. No wonder they called Berkeley “Berserkeley” in those days.

  I glanced at Frank. He grinned. “Feel like doing some entertaining?” he asked. I didn’t, but it wasn’t my room, The party roared inside and piled onto the beds and chairs. There was considerable discussion of that night’s show among the band members. The girls, exotic creatures dressed in fanciful costumes, laughed constantly, but said very little.

  In the midst of the circus Frank, resting against the headboard of the unmade, windswept bed, maintained a genial but distant attitude. He should have been wearing a lab coat and making clinical notes on the proceedings. As a matter of fact, I would discover during the tour that he almost always had his portable tape recorder running, capturing conversations, situations, rehearsals, and scenes in motel rooms alike. He felt that anything that transpired on tire road was part of the larger composition, so to speak, and just as valid as any other part of the composition. Some of the band members were inclined to regard this as snooping, stealing, or worse, especially when they subsequently found their own words handed back to them in the form of song lyrics or stage routines, but it didn’t seem to bother Frank.

  Frank seemed immersed in his observations, so I strolled down the hall to check out the scene in the room of one of the other guys in the band. The door was open and I found him sitting on the shag-carpeted floor sharing a sociable reefer with a dark-skinned, handsome girl wearing a patchwork velvet skirt and not much on top. They offered me a hit, but I smiled and politely explained that I didn’t smoke dope. “You’re kidding!” the girl exclaimed. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t smoke. That’s, like, the weirdest!” I was about to mention that Frank didn’t, either, but the two of them had gone off into peals of hysterical laughter.

  Just then the room phone rang. It was Frank, inquiring if I happened to be on the premises. I got on the phone and he made it plain that he thought I should be back in 303. When I hung up, the girl was looking at me with awe. “Are you with Zappa?” she asked incredulously. I nodded. “Wow,” she breathed reverently. On my way down the hall to Frank’s room I mulled over the curious notoriety that seemed to be attached to being “with” a rock star. It didn’t particularly bother me, but I did feel it was kind of cheap. After all, I was a musician in my own right — maybe not famous like Frank, but at least original. Wasn’t that more impressive than being “with” Zappa?

  In 303, the party had evaporated. Frank was still propped up against the headboard of the bed; a statuesque brunette was perched on the edge of the mattress. I glanced warily at her — what sort of scene was this?

  “This is Ramona,” Frank said blandly. “She’s a stripper, and she just mentioned that she’s always had a fantasy about watching me, uh, receive or
al gratification.”

  For This I Learned to Play Stravinsky??!

  Before I was really aware of what was happening, it was too late: I had become inextricably involved with my guitar-wranging boss. It wasn’t as though he was on a campaign to convince me that he was Mr. Wonderful, but although I tried to keep a semblance of objectivity about the situation, there was just something addictive about being around him. Frank not only couldn’t leave ‘reality’ alone, he was constantly inspecting and customizing it. In the afternoon of my third day on the road, as we were pulling into the parking lot of the motel prior to checking in, he was looking out of the car window at the landscape in his characteristic fashion, half intent, half relaxed, the ever-present cigarette in his hand. Suddenly he turned around and made a comment about how the place looked. I don’t remember exactly the way he put it, but it was so succinct and at the same time so surreal and humorous that he sounded like the test tube offspring of Salvador Dali and some B-movie mad scientist. I had never before known anyone whose offhanded observations leaped right out of the confines of ordinary perception and into the fifth dimension like that. I had assumed that his anarchistic posturings and droll pronouncements were strictly theatrical, but now I realized that Frank’s imagination didn’t get packed away in a suitcase when he wasn’t onstage or in the recording studio; he thought that way all the time. He was truly eccentric, much stranger and more interesting than I would have thought. I found myself wanting to inhabit his universe the way I needed to play his music.