Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story of Frank Zappa

by Neil Slaven

  "He fired the manager, and I took over the business, and the first thing I did was fire everybody that worked for us. The lawyers, accountants I just said, 'That's it, I don't want any help from any of those people,' and went out and found replacement parts. I took over in 1985, and it was trial by fire. It took several years to get through the outstanding nasties." With a $12,000 bank loan, she bought two computers, fed in a mailing list and sent out a questionnaire which also offered a Barking Pumpkin T-shirt for sale. "I made the $12,000 back right away. I set up this company, which we called Barfko-Swill, which Frank named. I had my sister and this guy who worked for Frank in production and myself, and we sat on our living room floor stuffing envelopes full of T-shirts."23

  Distribution deals were agreed with MCA in America and EMI for the rest of the world. Angel Records, an EMI subsidiary, released The Perfect Stranger in America on August 23, 1984. Francesco Zappa was released in November, with a typically pedantic artist credit to the 'Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort'. These and the double album Them Or Us, released on December 21, used the paintings of 'American Artist: Donald Roller Wilson'. Each one portrayed the dog Patricia, wearing dark glasses and a red dress with a white lace collar.

  Wilson exhibited a visual wit and originality that easily equated with Frank's own. He worked in a style that combined bizarre photo-realism with the sort of reflected light that imbued the paintings of Georges De La Tour. Each painting was dated, numbered and timed, presumably on its completion, and given an enigmatic title (in capital letters) that varied in length and oddity. The title of that used for The Perfect Stranger, painted on February 1, 1983, ran to 18 lines; by contrast, Francesco Zappa sported a harshly lit portrait fashioned on August 22, titled: 'PATRICIA SAW RICHARD ACROSS THE ROOM AND WAS CERTAIN MRS JENKINS HAD TURNED HIM GREEN'.

  Them Or Us showed Patricia standing against a wall between two small wall brackets on which a Heinz Ketchup bottle and a baby's milk bottle, with teat attached, stood. These latter had stood on the cluttered table beside Patricia's high-chair on the cover of The Perfect Stranger. The rear cover of the double album had a sepia portrait of Frank, his chest-hair sprouting coyly from the cleavage of his double-breasted linen jacket. His left hand, encased in a green oven glove, was raised in a clenched-fist power salute. We know who 'us' are, but 'them' could be any one of the Reagan administration, the fundamentalist right, the major record companies, or all three and more besides.

  Any hypothetical identifications are not reflected in the song texts, however. Sandwiched between the cheesy doo-wop of the Channels' 'The Closer You Are' and the Allman Brothers' 'Whipping Post' is a collection of songs that simultaneously celebrate and denigrate their subjects. 'In France' is sung by Johnny 'Guitar' Watson in a wired, impatient parody of soul techniques, as he tackles pissoirs, standing toilets and 'mystery blow jobs'. Ahmet's 'Frogs With Dirty Little Lips' carries a distant echo of francophobia in its conclusion, 'Dirty little frogs is what you eat.'

  The relentless, chain-saw guitar riff that drives 'Ya Hozna' was used as a background element during Frank's solo in 'The Black Page #2' on the 1982 tour. Here it supports three separate backward vocal tracks taken from 'Sofa #2', 'Lonely Little Girl' and Moon's 'Valley Girl' aerobics work-out from a version of 'I Don't Wanna Get Drafted' used on the demo tape of 'Thing-Fish'. Steve Vai plays a solo that shows he never needed xenochrony to hear outlandish harmonies. The resurrection of 'Sharleena' from Chunga's Revenge contains the first of two solos by the 14-year-old Dweezil, showing commendable dexterity for someone with two years' experience of playing the guitar, albeit with teachers of the calibre of Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen.

  The latter's fibrillating, hyperactive style can be heard in Dweezil's solo in 'Stevie's Spanking', providing a contrast to Vai's fluid but lurching, hammered-on fretboard athletics. The song tells of Vai's November 1981 encounter with the generously proportioned Laurel Fishman and his efforts to gratify her taste for sex with inanimate objects, in this case a hairbrush and a banana. Such was her belief in the efficacy of this behaviour that Laurel willingly gave Frank written permission to use her real name in the lyrics and was interviewed on video. "I've had many enjoyable afternoons in the grocery store that have resulted in enjoyable evenings," she told him.

  Frank's own guitar has its say in 'Sinister Footwear 11', 'Marque Son's Chicken' and 'Them Or Us', all recorded live with the 1982 band, the latter taken from a performance of 'The Black Page' in Bolzano, Italy on July 3. With the exception of 'Baby, Take Your Teeth Out' (also issued as a single), 'The Planet Of My Dreams' and 'Be In My Video', all the tracks were recorded, in whole or in part, during the 1981/82 tours. Some, like 'Frogs With Dirty Little Lips', performed at the Santa Monica Civic Center on December 11, 1981, and Frank's guitar solo in 'Truck Driver Divorce', taken from Zoot Allures at The Ritz, New York exactly a month earlier and mixed xenochronously with other backing tracks, can be accurately dated.

  In the case of 'The Planet Of My Dreams', it consisted of a 1974 backing track of George Duke and Patrick O'Hearn on which Chad Wackerman's drums were later overdubbed. This was yet another song from Hunchentoot, its offhand brevity masking a serious message. Despite disillusionment with a world of ineffective education and military proliferation, Bob Harris' vocal states that he won't despair and 'CHEAT like ALL THE REST'. Then the composer declares himself with the words, 'I'D just keep on with what I do the best!'

  For many of Frank's fans, that was playing the guitar — even though his opinion of his own work was typically scathing. "During the 1984 tour," Frank noted in his autobiography, "I would usually play eight solos per night (five nights a week, times six months), and out of that there might have been 20 solos that were musically worthwhile enough to put on a record. The rest of it was garbage. It's not that I wasn't trying to play something; most of it just didn't come off."24

  That's borne out by the fact that of the 65 tracks taken from the 1984 tour that found their way onto various volumes of You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Does Humor Belong In Music? and Guitar, roughly 20 are instrumentals. The latter was the 1988 double-CD follow-up to Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, which contained 32 solos taken from the 1979,1981/82 and 1984 tours. Even though Frank plainly set himself the highest standards, it's interesting to note that no less than 14 solos on Guitar come from the 1984 tour.

  Unlike the video of 14 songs shot at the Pier in New York City, the CD version of Does Humor Belong In Music?, released in England in 1986, is made up of ten tracks from nine locations. Some are whole performances, but most are composites of up to four separate recordings. As usual, it's not easy to notice the edits, although Frank appeared to have a cavalier attitude to the sanctity of a performance. 'Let's Move To Cleveland' consists of a piano solo from St Petersburg, Florida, a drum solo from Vancouver and Frank's solo from Amherst College in Lowell, Massachusetts, with the introduction and coda from Los Angeles. However, YCDTOSA 4 contains another portion of the Amherst performance, featuring solos by Archie Shepp and Alan Zavod.

  The CD also contains a version of 'Whipping Post', with a guitar solo by Dweezil, taken from the Los Angeles gig on December 23, "the last song of the last show of the last tour". Whatever his intentions may have been, Frank could not have realised that when he laid down his guitar at the end of the show, he wouldn't pick it up again for almost four years.

  19:

  THING-FISH

  "The simple thought behind Thing-Fish," Frank told me in 1991, "is that somebody manufactured a disease called AIDS and they tested it. They were developing it as a weapon and they tested it on convicts, the same way as they used to do experiments on black inmates, using syphilis. That's documented. They used to do these experiments with syphilis on black inmates in US prisons. That's fact. So we take it one step further and they're concocting the special disease which is genetically specific to get rid of 'all highly rhythmic individuals and sissy boys'. So I postulate that they do this test in a prison and part of the test backfires and
these mutants are created."

  Just another conspiracy theory? In his autobiography, Frank cites passages from A Higher Form Of Killing, a book by Jeremy Paxman and Robert Harris in which an Army manual is quoted on the feasibility of manufacturing 'ethnic chemical weapons', and a 1969 Senate appropriations hearing that was addressed by an unidentified speaker looking for funds to develop a virus that would be 'refractory' (i.e. resist treatment) to the human immunological system. None of the names of those involved is mentioned or whether money was allocated. Could such ghoulish research be possible in the jewel of Western civilisation?

  Consider the Tuskegee experiment, briefly mentioned in an episode of the television series on the paranormal, The X Files; this was a projected six-month study of syphilitics in the communities around the small agricultural town in Macon County, Georgia in 1932. Its aim was to monitor the course of the disease, without the benefit of medicine, in 400 black males. Two Public Health Service doctors, Raymond Vonderlehr and Taliaferro Clark, were supposedly seeking a cure and offered 'special free treatment' to the men, who in reality got everything but their syphilis treated. Clark retired a year later, leaving Vonderlehr clear to extend the study for the duration of the subjects' lives.

  Because of the isolation and backwardness of these communities, no one bothered to inform the victims of their involvement in an experiment nor was their consent sought. "Informed consent was not the vogue in those days," Dr Sidney Olansky, who worked on the project in the Fifties, said by way of belated justification. "We have no compunction about sending our youth to war in the national interest," Dr John Cuder claimed. "And it was in the national interest to know as much about syphilis as quickly as possible."1

  The study was not officially terminated until 1972, by which time more than 100 had died as a direct result of the disease. The survivors were paid compensation of up to $32,500 each, but none of the doctors involved was prosecuted or even reprimanded. Nor did any of them consider the programme racist or immoral or even criminal, even though the Nuremberg trials had exposed the Nazis' genetic experiments. In the Fifties, the PHS launched a nationwide anti-syphilis campaign except in Tuskegee. "Well," said Olansky with logic worthy of Josef Mengele, "if we'd given them penicillin, there'd have been no Tuskegee study."2

  "We have a batch of religious fanatics now in the United States," Frank told Today, "who believe that Armageddon is a Biblical necessity." One such was the Jubilee Tabernacle in Amarillo, Texas, where all America's nuclear weapons were made. Its leader, Reverend Royce Elms preached that nuclear war would destroy the world. But, in an event called the Rapture, God would scoop his chosen people into the clouds just before the first bomb went off.

  Back on earth, Frank continued, "A few years ago, genetic engineering became a huge stock market issue. It was suddenly possible to mutate bacteria and produce super-specific germs which would affect only certain ethnic groups. You then have a really cheap cost-effective way of putting your enemies' lights out without damaging real estate. Now, put this power in the hands of a very wealthy religious fundamentalist and it presents him with some mind-blowing possibilities, like producing a disease to stop people having sex. After all, fundamentalists believe that sex is a sin, especially the way that gay guys do it. Weird? Well, I don't think so. Especially after the rhetoric flying around when AIDS was first 'discovered'. Religious leaders like Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell were gleefully claiming that it was divine retribution from God it gets rid of gays, prostitutes and intravenous drug users."3

  Little wonder that when Thing-Fish was conceived as a satire on Broadway musicals, the wind that came 'rushin' down the plains' bore something weightier than Rodgers & Hammerstein's chocolate-box platitudes. The 'Original Cast Recording' three-LP box-set, with libretto, was released on December 21, 1984. It had been at least two years in the making, even though a third of its tracks were reworked versions of material from Zoot Allures, Tinsel Town Rebellion, Drowning Witch and You Are What You Is. Three songs from the latter album made the final cut, but a demo tape exists with a further six selections suitably altered.

  The central role of Thing-Fish was taken by Ike Willis. The name was adapted from Kingfish, a character from the Fifties US television series, Amos & Andy, played by ex-prize fighter Tim Moore. Frank referred to Thing-Fish's grotesque language as a 'pseudo-negrocious dialect'. Willis himself helped shape the dialogue: "In my family, we sort of joke around with dialects, and what it sounded like to me was Paul Laurence Dunbar. He was a black poet from the late 19th century who used to write poems in dialect like that ... I asked Frank if he had ever heard of this guy, and he said, 'No,' so I started giving him examples of Dunbar's work, and eventually, that ended up being a big influence on the Thing-Fish dialect."

  Willis confirms the malleable nature of the original script. "We put everything together in song form first, and things were structured like that, but the thing was, it changed every day, because the script grew every day. Frank would come in with a revised script. A lot of the things we'd leave, but there might be certain things he wasn't quite satisfied with, or I wasn't quite satisfied with. Mostly him, of course, since he is the boss. Through that kind of tweezage, it got much better. It got tighter."4

  In fact, the AIDS premise is swiftly dispatched in the 'Prologue', in which Thing-Fish lectures the tiny 'Sister Ob'Dewlla "X"' on the 'potium' that the 'Evil Prince' has fed to the 'San Quentin' inmates in their mashed potato. When nothing happens, the rest of the 'potium' is added to a shipment of 'Galoot Co-Log-Nuh' and within a month 'fagnits be droppin' off like flies'. But the hardier prison inmates have mutated into 'Mammy Nuns', with 'head like a potato . . . lips like a duck', wearing voluminous gingham skirts and an apron referred to as a 'nakkin'.

  The majority of the ensuing action concerns Harry and Rhonda, two members of the audience convinced that any show with coloured folk in it guarantees 'GOOD, SOLID, MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT'. They are co-opted into the action, which quickly degenerates into fetishism and bizarre sexual athletics. Each is confronted by an alter ego, Harry-As-A-Boy and Artificial Rhonda, the latter marking the return of 'Ms. Pinky'. 'Briefcase Boogie' finds Harry in S&M gear, a chain hanging from his pierced nipples, craving 'homo-sectional' knowledge of Sister Ob'Dewlla 'X'. Meanwhile, an outraged Rhonda in a rubber body suit screws her briefcase and uses her fountain pen as an anal dildo. By the penultimate song, 'Drop Dead', she has become a caricature feminist, berating her husband as an 'all-American cocksucker' and indulging in the self-referential triumphalism that all zealots chant as a mantra.

  It's hard to know what to make of Thing-Fish. The idea that inspires it, that government-funded genetic research is killing specific sections of the community — or that such research might be happening at all — has far more potential for controversy than the tawdry little drama that follows. By its familiarity, the reworking of so much recent material undermines whatever strengths the plot possesses. The potentially promising clash of ideas could have engendered satire of a higher order, but the action narrows down to some rather desperately perverse behaviour by cardboard characters mouthing platitudes.

  Because of its mix-and-match construction, Thing-Fish ultimately disappoints. It's impossible not to feel short-changed by the percentage of recycled songs. Nor is much to be gained from the new material. Most consists of dirge-like vamps over which Thing-Fish narrates the convoluted plot while Harry and Rhonda and their miniature clones act out the consequences. Some songs, like 'The Evil Prince', 'Brown Moses' and 'He's So Gay' were already in the touring repertoire.

  It did have the distinction of containing Frank's first use of the Synclavier. "Listen to 'The Crab-Grass Baby', which opens Act Two," he pointed out. "The background vocals are a repeated vocal chant with this computer singing over it. The computer voice is done with a little card that fits into an IBM computer, and the stereo background vocals were our first attempt at stereo sampling using the mono system."5 More Synclavier introduces the following track, 'The White Boy
Troubles'.

  Frank had trouble of his own with Barking Pumpkin's distributor, MCA Records. A woman in the Quality Control department had heard the test pressings of Thing-Fish and complained. Consequendy, MCA had withdrawn from the deal and a hasty agreement was made with EMI for Them Or Us and Thing-Fish to be distributed in America by Capitol. All this prompted Frank to include a warning sticker on the inner sleeve:

  "WARNING/GUARANTEE: This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress.

  In some socially retarded areas, religious fanatics and ultraconservative political organisations violate your First Amendment Rights by attempting to censor rock & roll albums. We feel that this is un-Constitutional and un-American.

  As an alternative to these government-supported programs (designed to keep you docile and ignorant) Barking Pumpkin is pleased to provide stimulating digital audio entertainment for those of you who have outgrown the ordinary.

  The language and concepts contained herein are GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICK CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS. This guarantee is as real as the threats of the video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us."

  It was his first salvo in a war of words that would occupy a lot of his time during 1985.

  PORN WARS

  In 1984, the diminutive symbol then known as Prince starred in Purple Rain, a film that gaudily recorded one small person's escape from impoverished origins onto the broad uplands of world recognition through music. The soundtrack album yielded three hit singles, the title track, 'Let's Go Crazy' and 'When Doves Cry'. But it was 'Darling Nikki' which inspired the right-wing backlash that perennially lies in wait for errant rock'n'rollers.