Being Frank (4 page)

Around the time I thought Zappa would probably be back from Europe, I called Bizarre Records at the phone number on the letter. Trying to sound mature and somewhat supercilious, I asked the woman who answered if I could speak to Mr. Zappa. She had a cultured British accent and was admirably evasive, so I tried reading her the letter. It was obvious that she thought I was making it all up, but I did manage to get her to take my name and number; Mr. Zappa was due to stop by the office at the end of next week, she said distantly.

The next afternoon the phone was ringing as I came through the door after school. I got to it around the eleventh ring, and much to my amazement there was the cultured British accent. She said that Mr. Zappa had received my message and wanted to know if next Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. would be acceptable. Here was an immediate obstacle: my last period at school didn't end until 2:30, and the address on the letter said that Bizarre Records was located on Wilshire Boulevard. To get from Manhattan Beach to the Miracle Mile in an hour was possible, but not on the bus. I hadn't yet obtained my driver's license. In those innocent days suburban teenagers didn't routinely cut class or drive without a license, and neither could I.

I quickly said that 3:30 p.m. would be fine, and asked for the cross street, since I had only been on the Miracle Mile a few times in my life (one of those times being the trip to the La Brea Tar Pits). Then I
ambushed my father when he came home from work and proceeded to bludgeon him with histrionics. If he didn't give me a ride next Wednesday afternoon, I assured him, I'd never have a music career and I'd be a total stumblebum and disgrace him in his old age. (At least I've made one or two accurate predictions in my time.) He grumbled considerably, but it was worth rt. At 2:33 p.m. the following Wednesday, my boyfriend and I jumped into my dad's
I'm-over-40-to-hell-with-it-I'm-getting-a muscle-car
Buick Riviera in the Our Lady of Guacamole parking lot, and at 3:21 we were in the elevator of the nondescript skyscraper where Bizarre Records had its offices.

The woman with the British accent turned out to have flaming red hair and was wearing a plum-colored paisley velvet mini-dress. I thought she gave me an arch look as she indicated an overstuffed, tapestry-covered sofa in the reception area, but I was too busy being terrified to care. I had dressed in my hippest clothes — cowboy boots, tight jeans, a gold silk shirt with flowing sleeves, and a paisley scarf tied elaborately around the neck of the shirt. While we waited for Zappa, I tried to calm myself by studying the framed concert posters on the wallpapered walls, but it was no use. I could barely stay on the sofa. I lit a cigarette, but when I nearly set my sleeve on fire I hastily snuffed it out and stuffed it, minus two puffs, into an ashtray.

Fortunately I didn't have to suffer long: it probably wasn't a minute past 3:30 when Frank Zappa strode through the door, greeted Miss Accent, told her to hold his calls, and raised an eyebrow at us. “Hiya” he said. He had my tape box under his arm. I don't think I ever felt so important in my life — or so fraudulent.

We traipsed behind him down a short hall into an office, and he shut the door behind us. He brushed against me lightly as I awkwardly turned to sit down, and l looked up at him. He was 29, fourteen years my senior, and he had a stylized face, like an actor playing a medieval Venetian nobleman in a European silent film: square jaw, sharp nose, black mustache and Imperial goatee, thick, squiggly ink-black curls pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes were the most startling thing about him — Large, deep-set burnt-sienna pools, dark-circled, externally and internally reflective. The usual social boundaries didn't seem to exist for him; when he
looked straight into me with those laser eyes, there was no doubt that he was attempting to make a direct connection.

His manner towards us was reassuring, though — jovial and kindly in a droll sort of way. He seemed to relish playing the comic role of a somewhat demented philosopher-king attempting to explain the facts of life and art to a couple of raw young disciples. The monarch even had a crown — I couldn't help but notice that he was wearing a green — feathered lady's hat. (“Junk store item,” he explained, when I remarked on it.) On any other six-foot male with his appearance, that hat would have seemed aberrant, but it lent Zappa a cartoonishly jaunty at that fit him perfectly.

Looking at him sitting there regarding us solemnly, but with a strange humor, I had an ill-defined, unsettling feeling about him, the sense that although he was quite approachable, he was also rather distant. No matter how long someone might know him, there was no way they could really get into his mind.

Meanwhile, there he was, patiently waiting for me to speak up and say something coherent, and I couldn't squeeze out a single word. I was too mesmerized by his proboscis.
What a honker!
It was narrow at the bridge, but its downslope was so precipitous that it really seemed to defy gravity. Coupled with those glowing, laser-beam eyes, it gave him the look of a hawk that had gone without dinner one night too often.

Frank couldn't help noticing that I was gaping like an idiot. He inquired elaborately, “Something the matter?” I managed to stammer out a few incoherent syllables to the effect that I found his nose fascinating.

Where upon he leaned across the desk toward me and
stuck the organ in question right in my face.
“Wanna feel it?”
I reached out a rather unsteady hand and gave it a feeble tweak. “You OK now?” he asked afterward. I giggled and nodded.

With this weighty matter duly resolved, Zappa reached into the pocket of his brown tweed blazer and pulled out a piece of paper on which there were copious notes in fine, crabbed script — the deviant linguine again. Then he launched into the first couple of lines of “The Bones Go Down”! I was totally disarmed; between the nose-fondling ritual and now actually hearing him sing
my
lyrics, he could have knocked
me over with his hat.

He regarded me gravely for a moment, waiting until I regained some semblance of composure, When I didn't, he cleared his throat and began, “My father said that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.” He gave me a knowing look and continued, “I like some of these songs...”

“Do you want to produce them?.” I blurted out. Zappa shook his head. “They're not ready to record yet” he replied. “You're still just farting around; you need to get
serious
about what you're doing.” He spoke precisely and and a little dryly, with ironic emphasis on certain words that made his comments seem extremely humorous or else somewhat threatening, if you happened not to have a sense of humor.

I felt very confused. I was having trouble concentrating — there was something about his voice that seemed to be tickling me in embarrassing places. I glanced up. He was looking right at me, and his eyes were gentle, droll, and more than a little affectionate. How did he know?

He wanted to know who had played the guitar on the tape. I told him I had. “In a few more years you might be a good guitarist,” he said, “but you need to practice your scales and arpeggios. You're trying to play too fast; what you need to do is slow down and think about what you're playing. It's better to play a few notes that express something honest than a whole cloud of gnat-notes that don't say anything.” He was right again — I did tend to play way too fast, hoping nobody would notice anything but my apparent virtuosity.

Zappa had listened carefully to the tape, and he made comments on all the songs. His perceptions were uncannily accurate; in fact, it struck me that his sizing-up of my entire state of mind bordered on the psychic, maybe even the psychotic. Of course I was only fifteen, and transparent, and he had, after all, made it his business to keep in touch with the mental aberrations of his adolescent fans, but his avuncular commentary hit so close to home that it was frightening me. I argued with him a little about his assessment of the material, and he responded, “I think you're confusing your need to express yourself with your need to be accepted.” Then he gave a sideways
glance at my boyfriend and opined, “You're basically just horny — you need someone to love you.”

I was speechless. I fancied myself complex and inscrutable, and he'd only just met me — so how could he be so sure I was sexually frustrated? But despite my internal splutterings, I knew he was right
again
(jeez, didn't he get tired of being right all the fucking time??.). I hadn't really thought about it consciously before, but I
was
attracted to him. May be it wasn't quite the same thing as falling for the school football hero or some bleached-blonde ho-dad, but I'd been listening to his voice on those Mothers of Invention albums, and staring at his mug on the album covers, since pre-adolescence.
Programming
... He was used to that, I figured. In fact, around the time I discovered “Freak Out!” I'd stumbled onto a tongue-in-cheek interview he'd done for a teenage fanzine in which he described his Dream Girl as “...an attractive pariah, with an IQ well over 228...no interest whatsoever in any way in sports, sunshine, deodorant, lipstick, chewing gum, carbon tetra-chloride, television, ice cream…none of that stuff! In short — a wholesome young underground morsel open to suggestion!... Ps. I might even like her better if she can play Stockhausen on the piano...
Klavierstücke XII
... .” With his peculiar brand of self- confidence, he probably attracted lots of
suggestible morsels
. No doubt he stood back with that slightly predatory, ironic expression and let them fall all over him.

Frank put his feet up on the desk and moved on to other subjects. He asked us where we lived, what did we do every day, what kind of music did we listen to. I didn't want to come out and admit that I was in high school, so I beat around the bush and said I was “between situations.” I doubt whether I fooled him, but he didn't let on that I hadn't.

We talked about our respective record collections, and he said quite humbly that he had “a fair-sized R&B collection” dating back to his high school days, which he still took great pleasure in listening to. I asked him what it included, and he rattled off a list of names: Guitar Slim, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, T-Bone Walker, Elmore James, Johnny “Guitar”' Watson. The way he pronounced them just
radiated ecstasy
. He also regaled us with stories about his recent European tour. He'd gone there with Captain Beefheart, acting in the capacity of road manager. The low point of the tour, he explained, had come at a three-day festival in Amougies, Belgium, where both the gig and the sleeping accommodations were in a huge circus tent in a turnip field. Temperatures dropped down around freezing at night, and since Amougies was far from civilization, the only sustenance was in the form of frozen Belgian
waffles and moldy wieners. “They kept those weenies in this big tank full of water and you could see that the tips of 'em sticking out of the water were
green
.”