A crash course in Zappa
By Will Romano
New DVD dissects the art and mind of a musical genius
Despite his seemingly apparent indifference toward his own legacy, Frank Zappa can't – and won't – be forgotten. "It's not important to even be remembered ... I don't care," Zappa said on the Today show before his death in 1993 at age 52 from prostate cancer.
Yet his feisty individualism, creative rebelliousness, cutting wit, silly sexually charged humor and idiosyncratic compositions have secured his place in the annals of visionary rock 'n' roll personalities. Often hailed as a genius, Zappa was rock music's razor-tongued Einstein. He possessed a keen mind and titanic talent for controversy, but had yet to pull back the curtain on his grand unified musical theory that would, at least, help decipher his own enigmatic and thorny work.
"[Frank] was a composer, and he was a rock 'n' roller on the side," says Zappa's widow, Gail. "If you listen to the arrangements for the band, it is just a seriously reduced version of an orchestral piece." Equal parts Stravinsky, Sumlin and Varèse. Zappa possessed a quirky, ineffable musical style that defied categorization just as it stretched the creative and physical limits of the players in his band. It was, as former Zappa keyboardist George Duke simply puts it, "music without walls."
While we may never fully know or appreciate the heights and sleazy depths of the composer's musical potential, a flurry of recent Zappa-related activity is attempting to preserve, magnify and scrutinize his finished and incomplete projects alike. Case in point: Eagle Vision's Classic Albums DVD documentary, "Frank Zappa: Apostrophe (')/Over-Nite Sensation," goes behind the scenes to demonstrate and deconstruct the complexity and absurdity of Zappa's most popular records. (The RIAA Web site, www.riaa.com, lists 1974's Apostrophe (') as Zappa's only U.S. gold record.) Featuring interviews with key members of Zappa's band circa '73-'74, family members, friends and Zappa alumni, such as Duke, über guitarist Steve Vai, saxophonist/vocalist Napoleon Murphy Brock, actor Billy Bob Thornton and rock icon Alice Cooper, the DVD is packed with insights and bonus materials.
"[T]his is where you go to find every aspect of Frank's music squeezed into two perfectly formed records," said son/guitarist Dweezil Zappa of 1973's Over-Nite Sensation and 1974's Apostrophe (').
The DVD is but one catalyst to a kind of 21st century Zappa Renaissance. The Zappa Family Trust, the going concern controlling Frank's music, with the help of vaultmeister Joe Travers, has unearthed a vast collection of tapes in Frank's audio catacombs. Recent posthumous efforts on Zappa Records, such as Joe's Domage, Trance-Fusion, Imaginary Diseases and The MOFO Project/Object releases (a 40th anniversary commemoration of Zappa and the Mothers' groundbreaking 1966 record Freak Out!) have garnered praise and condemnation alike from hard-core Zappa-zoids. But, says Gail, finding suitable material for public consumption can be a daunting task.
"We've got several different varieties of problems or situations [that arise from the original tapes]," Gail says. "In some cases you don't have a lot of material, you only have the few outtakes from the record ... The other thing is, we have to respect the intent of the composer ... This is a conversation we have on an ongoing basis: What would we do if we wanted to do the 40th anniversary of ...? [P]eople imagine that you could do that with every single record, but it is just not true ... Then you have the problem of certain types of tapes: The metal just flakes right off the first pass, so you can only play them once, if at all. It's very, very tricky "
A dizzying number of reels remain to be considered (Zappa documented everything), so the Zappa Family Trust will continue to mine the vaults into the foreseeable future. "We don't know what we are going to find ... but it is usually something that is not worth keeping locked up forever," says Gail
Also contributing to this Zappa-mama is the Dweezil-led band, Zappa Plays Zappa, which performs Zappa's most-loved, multi-layered compositions with jam-band aplomb. "Zappa Plays Zappa" is finishing its North American tour, it will hit Europe Sept 25. "[Dweezil's] goal is to find a way to make [the music] sound as close to what the composer was going for," Gail says. "I like the idea that there are players in the band who have never toured with Frank ... Dweezil has taken it in a different direction, and he has assigned parts that were never meant to be [played] on the guitar, to the guitar. So it is like the guitar Olympics, but he is up to the challenge. If you play [the music] properly, ii lives forever."
Apostrophe (') and Over-Nite Sensation, recorded in the same time frame, are timeless masterpieces hatched from Zappa's unbridled psyche songs such as "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," "I'm The Slime," "Nanook Rubs It," "Montana" (about a dental floss farmer/ tycoon), and "St Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" introduce listeners to confused, manipulative, conniving, violent, incorrigible and downright degenerate characters and entities. In the case of Apostrophe ('), the "storyline" seemed to come full circle in the closing track, "Stink-Foot", which contains the same "poodle" refrain found in Over-Nite Sensation's "Dirty Love." One has to wonder if Zappa had orchestrated some kind of existential inside joke, coaxing listeners into desperate searches for meaning among the minutia of his fantastical lyrical content.
"It was all just one big, giant experiment," says Duke. "The quirkier the better."
Many critics can't reconcile Zappa's double entendres, regardless of how clever, with his seeming brillance as a guitar player and composer. Some believe that wordy trysts (which some believed to be misogynistic), as in the sex-for-money scheme of "Dinah-Moe Humm," or the homoerotic "oratorio" "Punky Whips'' (dedicated to Terry Bozzio's lusty obsession with Punk Meadows) detract from the seamless fusion of disparate musical elements. Fans disagree. "Every one who thinks of [his work] as toilet humor," Gail muses, "[should] investigate their own fascination with the toilet."
Even the staunchest critic can't deny the music's complexity. The "Classic Albums" DVD offers a rare glimpse at Zappa's painstakingly layered recording process. In one pertinent segment, Dweezil sits at a mixing console isolating tracks, revealing components of the music that might have remained hidden to the naked ear (even upon repeat listens). For Zappa, the devil was in the details.
'People don't make music like [Frank did] anymore," says Gail. "... This was about the art of being in the studio"
"There were many times ... that it was just [Frank] and me and the engineer Kerry McNabb [in the studio]," says Duke, who credits Zappa with introducing him to the synthesizer. "There was no polyphonic synthesizers at the time where you could play more than one note at a time. Everything, in terms of synthesis, had to be done one note at a time. We spent hours upon hours [in the studio]. We might go in at ten in the morning and not come out until five or six the next morning. This went on day after day, week after week.
Even when not recording with a band, Zappa would spend untold hours in his private studio (UMRK), envisioning and creating music with state-of-the-art equipment he had on hand. "Frank's music was all-consuming," says George Duke. "It seemed like to me that he thought about music 24 hours a day, even when he slept."
Who was Frank Zappa? In the DVD, daughter Moon Unit described him as a "very quiet person who really put everything into his work. So, in that way, it was almost like having a monk for a father ..." Zappa may also been seen as an intelligent mass of exquisite contradictions. He smoked cigarettes but was vehemently anti-drugs. His father was a Department of Defense employee, but Frank held a cutting brand of derision for the government. He loved the studio but couldn't wait to get on the road and tour. Was this "monk" in serious need of self-exorcism?
Perhaps, given artist Dave McMacken's water-based oil and acrylic painting for the cover of Over-Nite Sensation. The dark foreground, the not-so-still life of a defiled grapefruit, and the intestinal, corn-comb organisms devouring the very frame they themselves create, was a psychological, scatological and truly honest rendering of Zappa's road life and sexual fantasies, mocking the masterworks of the great 17th century Dutch painters.
"Frank wanted the painting to be this kind of sexual metaphor," says McMacken. "Everything in the painting had meaning, so we playfully put stuff around the picture that was telling the story of this sexual fantasy of this two-headed roadie ... of Frank. He wanted me to pile layers upon layers. It was a lot like his music."
The nature of the real Frank Zappa might remain a bit murky, but the man hasn't faded from our collective memories (perhaps despite his wishes?) Zappa left his indelible stain on popular culture and world-class alumni from Chester Thompson to Jean-Luc Ponty. His musical curiosity, lyrical foreplay, biting irony and irreverent humor that has oozed far and wide, infecting such pivotal contemporary figures as System Of A Down and "Simpsons" cartoon creator Matt Groening.
"He just kept pushing the envelope, not only with his music but with his band personnel," says Duke. "This was an adventure; it was like joining the army, and Frank was the general. It was a marvelous experience that helped shape who I am today. I could have [performed with Zappa] and not been paid at all. The experience has been worth that much.