Zappa’s Zoot Allures: Linear with Lotsa Guitar
By Richard Meltzer
WAITING the waiting room at Bennett Glotzer’s real classy well-upholstered office with carpeting up to your nostrils and BG himself’s in the other room yellin sometin about NO POLYGRAPHS FOR US into a phone (yellin is the word cause he was yellin). He's Zappa's lawyer among other things and this studio where some of Frank’s equipment got ripped off don't wanna take nobody's word for it without a lie detector. Several articles of the Bill of Rights are at stake and Glotz will have none of it (hats off to mr. civil liberty!).
Meanwhile Frankie's off the back spinnin a test pressing of some of the cuts from his new and latest forthcoming record and before he's done I get to catch the tail end of it. Lotta jamming and playing solos and guitar stuff and decent bass levels and things like that and lots of it's just plain linear, y'know not too many of them famous patented Zappa changes of musical direction, stoppin on a dime and 180 degrees and all of that (some but less'n you'd expect: just a lotta playin). The man himself is nattily attired in a dark blue v-neck shirt with one of those wing type collars and a narrow chain (silver) around his neck. Prefaded lightblue jeans with a slight flare and cut off at the ankle. No belt. Shirt's stickin out of his trousers. Brown shoes (still don't make it) with heely heels and lotsa fancy stitching. Sox with a brown & beige diamond pattern like your mom useta buy you in the 3rd grade and biznessmen wore in the '40s (real snappy!). The usual facial hair that everybody's familiar with (rest of the face is fresh shaved) and the strands on top’re tied in back without too much hangin past the knot (been a hot summer).
MUSIC stops a-playin and Zeppo gets to talkin. The one thing that's set is the title: “Zoot-Z-O-O-T–Allures–A-L-L-U-R-E-S,” he hasta spell it out exact cause us writers are known to sometimes get the whole thing wrong like once this pal of mine in Montreal got the number of musicians in Mr. Z's troupe incorrect in a review and Franco called up the paper to complain. “I figure that anybody who can't count who's standing on the stage probably wasn't there to review the concert anyway, and since I know how you guys work that's probably what happened. The Los Angeles Times did that to us twice when we were first starting out. They sent somebody down to a couple of our shows at the Shrine. The guy wrote that we had played this horrible version of ‘A Hard Day's Night’ when in fact it was the first warmup band – a group called Rain I think – that played that and the guy left before we went on. We called the newspaper and mentioned it to em, they said well yes the guy had left and didn't know what he was doin. So I said send another guy down next time we're gonna play and they did it again, y'know, same fuckup. So we got very annoyed and after the second phone call the guy came and reviewed us at the Whiskey when it was absolutely an abysmal show, everything was breaking, wrong from the top to the bottom, and we got a great review. So that's the way that industry works.” Uh huh ...
Okay, right, so what's the, uh, personnel on this new one gonna be? “I’m playin guitar, keyboard, bass on some of the cuts, uh, drums is Terry Bozzio, there's a couple other bass players that're used, there’s Dave Parlato and, uh, Patrick O’Hearn. There's other people doing some background vocals.” A departure for you in any noticeable way? “It's a departure from Bongo Fury in that it's a studio album that definitely has more guitar playing on it than some other albums had. I happen to like it very much, it's a well-produced studio album, I think it shows the work.” Took around three months to put together and it's his own personal fave since Lumpy Gravy.
SUBJECT matter on it? “Well, I can tell you the vocals that'll be in there, there's one called ‘Disco Boy’ and there's another called ‘Wonderful Wino,’ there's one called ‘The Torture Never Stops’ and another one called ‘Find Her Finer.’” The disco thing done in a disco vein? “Actually it's sort of an anti-disco hit, it's done sort of bumpkinized rather than disco.” Aware of disco's existence then? “Oh yeah, I like disco.” I axe hint about that biz of a few years back when he was supposed to be listenin to all sorts of current popstuff just to check it all out. “Yeah that was so when people ask you who’s your favorite group and what records you listen to I could have something to say besides ‘I don't listen to the radio’ – which I still don't.” Likes Queen these days tho and Gentle Giant.
Uh, ever think of directing yourself at a different audience? “There isn't any other audience, the only audience that matters is the one that's out there for the mainstream of, uh, pop music. Y’know, suppose I sit down and write a fantastic symphony, who’s there to listen to it? Only the kids. I'm perfectly satisfied with the people who're listening now, I don’t need to acquire an entourage of blue-haired ladies. That's all that's left over once you get into the classical branch. There’s no reason why a kid who likes to bang his head on the edge of the stage cause he's so downed out he can't tell what he's doing shouldn't be able to enjoy things other than that, just sidelight.”
But was all that doggy wee-wee stuff of not too long ago an attempt to reach younger crowd maybe? “No, I think that people of all ages can be appreciative of dog wee-wee and other forms of wee-wee and all sorts of physical byproducts. I think that it helps people to come to grips with the real world when they start thinking of those kind of byproducts. It's typical of these publications that they should be more interested in subjects like that than the rest of what's going on on my albums but if you wanna talk about wee-wee…”
Uh, um, sorry sir, I was just... “The audiences at the concerts started to get younger not because of doggy wee-wee but because of, uh, we were getting radio exposure, on the AM.” So you ain't actually aiming at the 11- and 12-year olds? “Gee I wish I could, they're pretty smart that age.” Okay that ought to do it – thank you, thank you, thank you Mr. Wazoo, I will not trouble Your Highness any longer, it’s been swell!