Frank Zappa's Low-Rent Rendezvous
By ?
LOS ANGELES – Frank Zappa was so pissed off he called ROLLING STONE to complain. It seems he had been storing his road equipment at Studio Instrument Rentals (S.I.R.), a multiservice firm providing recording facilities, rehearsal and storage space and equipment rentals to the music industry. When Paul Hof, Zappa's roadie, went to S.I.R. to get some equipment for Zappa to begin rehearsals at nearby Pirate Sound Studios, he discovered half the gear missing from the storage locker.
What had happened was that Pro-Audio, S.I.R.'s rental division, had been leasing the equipment without Zappa's knowledge. A verbal agreement did exist between Zappa and Craig Bollyard, Pro-Audio manager, that should any equipment be rented, Zappa would be notified and receive 50% of the fee. Hof phoned Bollyard to check if any rentals had been made – and the calls were never returned.
Zappa's anger deepened when, at Pirate Sound, an ex-S.I.R. truck driver told him it was common practice to rent equipment from the storage lockers. S.I.R-'s general manager, Steve Bauer, denied this. "We rented a group's equipment on only one occasion, but only with their permission," he said. "Craig is a very sloppy businessman. He should have contacted Hof."
Bollyard is now officially on a two-week leave of absence. The firm has assured Zappa that the equiprnent would be back (it was in Denver and San Francisco) and that he'll be given 100% of the fees.
S.I.R. was started by Ken Berry, brother of Jan & Dean's Jan Berry, in 1966 when he discovered he could rent his brother's unused amps. Today, the firm has over 100 employees at four offices (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago).
The Zappa affair is not the only trouble to beset S.I.R. recently. In June, close to $10,000 worth of equipment, mostly belonging to Dave Mason and the Eagles, was burgled from S.I.R. The L.A. County district attorney's office issued a felony warrant for one Howard Rodson, at whose home a Takamine guitar belonging to the Eagles was found. "All the rest had been fenced," said Dan Lambert of Internal Affairs Limited, a private detective firm hired by S.I.R. to recover the missing gear.
Read by OCR software. If you spot errors, let me know afka (at) afka.net