We spoke with Frank about people, God, art and animals. We explored the roots of his cynicism, and found him to be a committed fatalist. Is there hope for Frank Zappa? You decide.

CHEN: So, Frank, what's your view of the current state of the Earth?

ZAPPA: Not exactly terrific.

CHEN: Why?

ZAPPA: There's a design flaw in the human organism. I can state some absolute proof about why people are not as fantastic as they think they are. I mean, did you ever see a dog become a lawyer? As far as I'm concerned, any creature other than the human species is better. (read more)

We don't have the original Ecolibrium Interviews issue. The scans below are from another Zendik publication called eARTh. Ecolibrium and eARTh had the same page layouts and the interview part in one publication was actually facsimile reprint of the other. Later this interview was once more reprinted in fanzine Mother People #29 using the same page layouts.

Interviewer Chen (commenting in June 2011):

I think the interview with Zappa was first published in the mag that was scanned, eARTh Art in about 1984, then in Ecolibrium Interviews. It's over 25 years ago so I'm not positive about that. Ecolibrium Interviews was an all interview magazine with no ads. If I recall we did about 4 or 5 Ecolibrium Interviews mags, interviewing artists, scientists and activists.

The reason the mag was maybe number #19, don't know what the number was, was that while we would change the name of the mag we would keep the numbers sequential . . .

We interviewed physicists Dr. Michio Kaku and Dr. Fritjof Capra, actor Martin Sheen, writer Edward Abbey, and many others.

How we contacted him . . .
We got a number for Frank Zappa, called it, and his rep called us back the same day. I didn't even have the questions ready because "stars" generally took months to respond, but Frank was accessible, which I think speaks well of him. I told the rep I'd call back in an hour because we had to set up the tape recording equipment. A few of us quickly generated some questions, called him back and we did the interview that day.

After the Zappa interview, one of our magazine sellers ran into Frank and he was very polite to her and thanked her for the interview. I think that he was pleased that his comments during the interview were left unedited.

I think the 1984 interview was good for its time. It would be quite a different conversation today in light the exponential increases in human knowledge, some of which both Frank and I would have picked up on, altering much of the tenor of the interview.

The scans were originally posted by Tyler.

Source: Tyler