Episode 688 - Dweezil Zappa

All right, let's do this. How are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters? What the fuck wads? I don't know if that's a good one.

I don't know if that's a positive thing. How are you? How are you how are you? How are you this is Mark Marin?

This is WTF. This is my podcast. Thank you for listening By the way, my guest is Dweasel Zappa Dweasel Zappa son of Frank and Gail brother of moon Diva and Amit Dweasel Zappa the guitar player of the bunch Dweasel Zappa the true legacy of his father's Fingers yeah, I talked to Dweasel and many of you have listened to this show for years No, I dated moon for a little while didn't really end well But that was not a topic when we so became available to do the show I thought let's talk some music with Joo easel about his his fingers and his guitar and you know the journey his been on his Relationship with his father's legacy and his father's playing because he does play a lot of Frank out there on the road There are family things I could talk about but I chose to keep it on guitar and Joo easel and Frank Frank the mythic Frank Zappa the mountain that is Frank Zappa the Empire of sound that was generated by Frank Zappa Apparently hours and hours of which we have not even heard has not even laid out laid down Frank was a big supporter of comedy as well. He was a cutting-edge motherfucker in his day carved his own way to the point where He's got so much stuff and there's so much genius to it You got to be a special type of nerd to fully wrap your brain around the Frank Zappa thing And I'm you know, I'm still taking it in like right before I started dating moon back in the day I started getting into zappa and I had a brief foray into that world I was able to see the original studio and stuff but You know where do you even start the funny thing is zappa Connects to be fart be fart connects to how and wolf how and wolf directly connects to Hubert someone his guitar player And this is a roundabout way of me saying that I did this voiceover for a documentary Sidemen long road to glory and if you're down at South by Southwest you can go see it all right I did the narration the world premiere of Sidemen long road to glory is tomorrow Friday March 11th And there are other screenings next week go to Sidemen film calm for all the details Hubert someone That's what's about three Sidemen three blues Sidemen It's about Hubert someone pine top Perkins and Willie big-eyed Smith All right, the film it basically captures the last three years in the lives of all those guys They died within eight months of each other Hubert someone played behind how and wolf pine top and Willie were muddy waters banned The guys did a nice job with this the fellas the fellas that made the movie Scott Rosenbaum and his crews a lot of the guests appearances in it Joe Perry's in it elven Bishop Joe Bonamasa the guitar player sugar blue Robin Ford guy Davis They talked to what Robbie Krieger John Landis talks Bonnie rate Susan to desky Derek trucks Brad Whitford from aro Smith as well.

These are all people talking about Pine top Perkins Hubert someone Willie Smith, you know, it's these kind of movies They're about a time that none of us Lived in certainly and if you love the music you're gonna want to see this movie. You know, these were lives man fucking Lives lived in these guys to find something if you think about how and Wolfie thing like he would tell me about muddy waters There'd be no rock and roll without these guys I know I sound just a dumb old guy, but you could go directly I guess my point was directly from how and Wolf to Captain be fart was basically a psychedelic how and wolf who then deconstructed everything and music itself and and and created something different and the relationship between zappin be fart was formative for certainly for zappa and That gets us a de weasel, but nonetheless the movie is great. It's a great doc There's a lot of good people in it. It's about some amazing musicians and it premieres tomorrow Friday March 11th It's south by south west and they'll be screenings all week I was trying to remember when I first took in the blues my relationship with blues music is weird because I play the blues at home here In the garage and I play them alone in my in my living room and I play them a lot of blues based music But I don't necessarily listen to the blues that often.

I don't know why that is I've been trying to think about that I enjoy playing blues music, but I have a hard time listening to it unless I'm really in the right frame of mind And I can really isolate why I'm why I'm listening to a particular performer I don't know what it was. It resonated with me early on It was just it was just a thing either you're wired for it or you're not and when I learned that three car that three-core blues or that Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum, I'm fucking I was one of the first things I learned on guitar and I was like this is the key to everything And I'm not saying that isn't true, but then I got I got into this weird phase where I don't know if I've talked about it But I decided that until you were able to own for yourself Muddy Waters rolling and tumbling blues until you were able to make that thing your own and find your voice in that song You weren't officially a blues man It was just this theory I had. So I spent years trying to make myself my own version of Rowan and Tumblin. Because I thought that there was some sort of depth of moral turpitude and pain in that song that has to do with broken hearts and also about just the existential thing of like, you know, just being alive and knowing it.

And I just thought that was the song, that was some sort of Rosetta Stone. But I just became sort of obsessed. And then you sort of hear this Robert Johnson business. The first time you listen to Robert Johnson, who's the guy, the crossroads guy, the guy who made a deal with devil, the great mysterious mythic presence of the heart of all modern blues, first time you listen to that record, you're like, I can't even understand it.

It's like it's too crackly. What's so great about this? And then you got to go past all the crackles and pass to potential speed differentiation and pass what was pulled off of 78 recording and try to isolate those magical notes and that magical voice into something that you can find within yourself. It's no easy task.

And I got Jweezel on today. And Jweezel's fucking a wizard on the guitar. It's his birthright in a way. But I can't ever get to a level where I can even understand what the hell he's doing.

I'll talk to him about it because those guys that understand the instrument inside and out and the electronics of it and what to make with the sound and how to do the sound, I'm very impressed with those guys. But I have not got a brain that's going to do that kind of work on anything that does not desire to have that much control of the creativity. But I'm impressed by it. You ever listen to Frank Zappa could fucking play guitar like crazy man and all his stuff and all the orchestrations.

And then Jweezel's got this new record out that is sort of a personal journey for him. It's called the Zamata. You can get that wherever you get music. He's got tour dates coming up around the country and go to dweezelzappaworld.com for tickets.

This is me and Jweezel Zappa. What kind of guitar do you come in here with? I have a guitar that's basically like a 335 but it's the Trini Lopez model. So it has a different headstock on it and just a couple of things.

But it's for the new record, the V as a model record and the shows that we're going to do, I needed a guitar that would have a different kind of full bodied rhythm guitar sound. I mostly play an SG but I just needed something that would have a different kind of chime to it. I just wanted to play it on a classic guitar. There's one cut on that record that sounds like a Spanish guitar almost.

Well there is some Spanish guitar on one part of a song called Truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're playing that? Do you do much acoustic guitar?

You know I play acoustic guitar. I don't have many acoustic guitars. I think I have maybe two acoustic guitars. I love the sound of them but the real problem for me with acoustic guitars is they always typically have heavier strings and my fingers don't callus.

So the heavy strings just tear me up. What do you mean they don't callus? I play like ours every day. Come on.

I just felt his fingers. Yeah. And that's as callus as they get. So if I take a shower like too soon before a show, my fingers will just, the skin will rip right off of that.

That's bizarre man. Isn't it? Is that your cross to bear as a guitar player? It is.

It's like why can I get the hard letter tips? It doesn't even matter. I mean I could play 12 hours a day and it doesn't do anything. That's fucking weird man.

You still practice how many times a day? Well I play a lot. I mean lately for the new tour that we're practicing. Yeah, you're practicing.

I'm playing probably eight hours a day. Well like when I dated your sister briefly, it was funny because she said that when she was growing up all she heard from your room was beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep over and over and over. Yeah. Well I mean the thing was when I started playing guitar, I mean I always appreciated my father's playing in music but I knew even from knowing very little about music at the age of 12 that that stuff was something that was really hard and I would have to know stuff.

So I had to start somewhere else but I started with I got really inspired by Edward Van Halen and Randy Rhodes. So I mean we're talking about 1981, 1982 and at that time the most popular music in the world was Hard Rock. Yeah, yeah. With those big guitar players.

Yeah so I was really inspired by the sound and the stuff that they were doing and so I started to try to learn all that stuff and of course to most people it just sounds like beep beep beep beep beep because there's a lot of notes involved in practicing. But did you do scales and shit? I did. I mean I learned when I first started taking guitar seriously it was interesting because Steve Vi was in Frank's band and around.

Yeah he was around the house and he was only about 19 or 20. So Frank asked him to show me a couple things so I learned a couple scales from him and a couple of little things. So you were just the kid sitting around with a guitar? Like kind of hungry looking?

Yeah. So I got to show that kid a few things. Yeah exactly. And then nine months later I recorded the very first thing that I ever put out which was called My Mother is a Space Cadet and it was produced by Eddie Van Halen.

So it was this crazy thing where I had only been playing guitar for such a short period of time and out of the blue Eddie Van Halen called the house and ended up coming over like 20 minutes later. You didn't have a relationship with you or your dad before that. You called the house. So you got to imagine.

Nowadays it's ubiquitous to know about any celebrity through any tweet you know what they had for breakfast or whatever. But in that time frame in the early 80s there was magazines like Cream or Dark Matter or even like Hip Parade and stuff like that. That was the only place you saw pictures of musicians outside of what they were doing in the studio or on stage. So you had to just imagine what these people must be like.

And so I didn't even know what he sounded like. Although you grew up in a recording studio kind of. Right but the thing is to know anything about it from every like you know Eddie Van Halen. There was nothing.

There was no MTV cribs. And you would buy a record and you would listen and you would imagine all these things about how do these people make this. But so then some guy calls and says he's Eddie Van Halen. So we have no way to verify.

But then he shows up. And it's him sure enough. It's him. It's him.

It's him. And so the thing that was so cool was. How do you know to reach out to you because you had said publicly somewhere. He wasn't reaching out to me.

He reached out to Frank. He wanted to meet Frank and I guess talk about some music. But what happened was he shows up and it was for me the 12 year old me is looking at this like I mean he was wearing the women and children first jumpsuit. Right.

So he shows up and he's walking up the stairs to the studio and he might as well have been backlit with a smoke machine. He was like a bonafide superhero walking in the house. So for me it was the coolest thing. He shows up he's got this guitar.

It was a purple Stratocaster shaped guitar but it had a tape over the headstock. Sure. Because he was just at that time starting to work with Kramer. Uh huh.

So he wasn't plugging any name. So anyway he plugs this guitar in and I immediately want to know how do you play Mean Street. How do you play? And so I got to see like you know from two feet away how he played those things and that made a huge difference in how I could learn to play guitar because I could see the technique and how it was done how he did it.

Right. Up close because there's a lot of trial and error when you learn things from a record you have to try to figure out okay well I can hear the notes work here but they can also work at this point. Right where's he playing and how is the easiest way to get there. Right.

And so it sort of made perfect sense when I saw how he did it because you know when I was trying to learn that stuff I wasn't doing it the way he was. Right. And you were spending like nine hours. Yeah.

Anyway really like ah fuck. Not like it was ever easy. Right. You know to play eruption or play any of his songs and play them with the level of skill commensurate with his ability is you know that's a lifetime's worth of work.

Yeah. Do you still have a relationship with him? Yeah I see him you know every now and again we were rehearsing in the room right next to them when they were getting ready for their last tour and stuff. With David.

Oh yeah. What do you hear yelling or playing? I mean they actually they were running the set that they were they were getting ready for that Kimmel show in Hollywood. So they were running that set and they were they sounded good.

You know I'm hailing. Yeah. Right. So what when did you actually start playing like I get sort of fascinated with not like I came to your father's music much later like a little before I remit your sister I started a massing vinyl.

So I because there was part of me that was always like you know like I got to wrap my brain around the shit. Like I mean I have to reckon with with Zappa at some point. Yeah. I mean you grew up in it but obviously as you got older I assume that you that the drive to get inside your father's music was was you know personal and not just professional.

Oh yeah absolutely. I mean I've been doing Zappa plays Zappa for 10 years right now you know this is a it's been a huge part of my life. My musical I mean it was a training ground for a lot of things but what started it was after Frank Pass there was this sort of relegation of his music to this novelty file in you know. In American culture.

Yeah. Because of the five or six hits that were funny songs. Yeah. And in a way I can understand that if the only thing you've ever heard on the radio from him is is.

Right. Sheak your booty or don't eat your own. Yeah. No or valley girl or whatever then you think oh yeah he's the guy with the silly Joe songs right.

Right. But he made over 80 albums in his lifetime. 80 records. Did your parents ever talk?

Yeah. I think she's like I'm going downstairs. Well you know what's so crazy is he worked so fast that was he would get people that were excellent at what he needed them to do and he would just make it so that stuff was always on a first or second or third take and you just keep going. Right.

So and he obviously loved to play. Yeah. But I mean the level of quality that went into the details of the recording the writing the arranging all that stuff you know it's it's astonishing when you really try to to pay attention to how he did what he did. Yeah.

I mean it's unrivaled anywhere in the world of music. What was the first stuff like like well let's go back a little bit. So how old are you? You're my age.

I'm 46. You're all you're 46. Yep. So you're younger than me.

Goddamn it. So I'm 52. But like what do you like remember about what was going on at that house when you were like your earliest memories of the musicians and stuff coming in and what was happening. Well there wasn't a lot of stuff happening like what people imagined it wasn't like there were people in and out of the house constantly all these different musicians and things.

Most of the records that were made at the house once the studio was built. I mean you know there was there was a punch card you had to like clock in you know this was like a business. There's a time clock. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean so so the thing is you know growing up there weren't a lot of people like I tell the story that Eddie Van Halen showed up and you know just out of the blue but we didn't have much of that. Right.

There wasn't like a lot of just you know different musicians stopping by. But what about by that time like was B part in your dad's still friends or yeah but he wasn't really around the house much he would call occasionally and you'd have experiences as a kid answering the phone and there'd be like some guy that would sound like we're all and I said yeah. I've got a platypus in my briefcase. And then basically as a kid you already just go hold on you know you're like dad.

You've got to be part on the phone. Yeah. But that so wasn't like this is like grand central of musicians coming out. There were sections.

Yeah. I mean Frank was he wasn't really social. I mean he was he was pretty anti-soci didn't have a lot of friends he wasn't about like hanging out or anything when he was working it was we're on the clock let's make this happen and you know and keep moving. Just everything was moving forward all the time.

So he never sat still really. I mean he was sitting still in his chair while he was composing. But like as a family thing you guys. It was it was not traditional in the Aussie and Harriet you know.

Obviously. He was he basically worked the opposite end of the clock. So when he was waking up you know everybody was basically going to sleep you know so it was because he could get more done when everybody was asleep and it was quiet now. Right.

And I guess most of you just sort of revolved around his schedule on some level. It just became normal. Or you guys and eventually you guys just sort of had your own lives. Well you know we would we would have dinner his would be breakfast and I would be dinner you know and it was you know it was just right kind of stuff.

But any records. Yeah well I mean it's really wild when you think about there were about three or four times in the 70s where he made five albums in one year and one time it was specifically on purpose because he did it to get out of a record deal. Right. Which had never been done before you know it's the most audacious thing ever you know he wasn't enjoying how the record deal was working so he turned in five albums all at once.

It said I'm done. Yeah. And they said you can't do that. It turned into a lawsuit which he won.

But were they good records? Yeah they were all good records you know. But the thing about it is the industry changed because of that then contracts were written so that that could never happen again. So they had to tear them out over a year.

Yeah. Yeah you know if you had a five record deal you could only record when the record company said you could record and it was spread out over time. And they owned you. Yeah right.

But you know Frank for people that don't know he owned all of his master recordings. Right. Which is also on. He went out of his way to do that.

And he also like and he produced early on he found you know some bands like he really like what was it was it through fantasy I can't remember. Well he did a couple of things with some people but he wasn't doing a lot of that. Right. He helped to Alice Cooper he produced a record from Grandfong Railroad you know he did a couple of little things.

Yeah. He helped out George Duke. So what in terms of your sort of grown up as a guitar player because you put out your first whole record what year was that? I think it was 1986 and I was 15 when I made the record when I came out when I was 16.

And was he was the dream because I know that you and your brother did a show and you kind of acted here and there and I don't know I think you and Moon had some shit going on. But like what was the goal when did it become like all about musicians. I mean I was always mostly focused on music and playing guitar and stuff like that but there was a period in the 90s where guitar playing and actually being a skilled musician was frowned upon. Like you actually had difficulty getting work if you played well.

Were you doing studio work? I was doing stuff I mean I've played on a lot of people's records of the years but what I was starting to get into at that time was getting into film score. Oh yeah. But there was the one time really in the sort of early to middle 90s where I just got sort of disillusioned by what music would be or could be because I had learned to be a rock guitar player that now that was the last thing anybody ever needed on a record.

What was going on then was that? Well it was after Nirvana and all that stuff. So it got loose. It got to the point where it was really just more about people seem to think that oh the more simplistic or uneducated you're playing sounded then that was what was more honest.

Yeah but to me it's one of those things that it makes it so that people go oh I could do that. It's lowering the bar so much that it just seems like oh well you know but then you have people that just because of their ignorance of music and other stuff think that they're doing something so amazingly unique and original because they have their limited scope and they didn't learn how to do it other than teach themselves and it's noisy and it's messy. So to a certain degree they have their own personality in that. Well that's always been the way it's been.

The reason why people played rock and roll was it was three fucking chords and it was like I can do that and that was the whole industry. Was everybody playing the same goddamn song right? So I think what happened when you were talking about was like people actually turned on hair metal. It was like this movement against metal.

Yeah but I wasn't really about trying to just do only metal music. Right. But that type of rock. Well something that still had some basically I guess.

Virtuosity. Yeah that element of where that is allowed to flourish within the music. But see the thing is I grew up listening to only what Frank was working on or whatever he was listening to. Did he really pipe it through the house?

I mean that was just ubiquitous in the house because downstairs you hear some noise. But the thing is it's whatever he was working on or whatever he was listening to in his record collection. So it could have been rhythm and blues records or it could have been other classical composers like Veraz or Stravinsky or it could have been the Bulgarian woman's choir or it could have been anything but we didn't listen to the radio. Yeah big appetite for any kind of music.

So I never knew what was on the radio till I was about 12. And then when I heard the radio I said wait a minute what's wrong here? There's a bunch of stuff missing. Where's all the rest of it?

Where's the Stravinsky on this rock station? Yeah I was totally confused because there was so much simplicity in this stuff and I had been used to all this instrumentation and tricky rhythms and things because that was just what I heard growing up. So that really was a little bit of a thing that throughout my life when I listened to music I'm always sort of hoping to be surprised coming around the corner with some other thing that's coming. Well that's what happens to me if I'll sit down and listen to your record it seems to me that this new record how do you pronounce it via Zamada?

It's sort of like you know it's you taking everything that you've learned all your life but also sort of somehow honoring the memory of the way your father orchestrates stuff too a little bit right? Yeah I mean that's a pretty good way of putting it because part of what the idea when I got into the studio to make the record was I had this experience where I went to Sicily and we traced our family roots to this little place called Parson Ecos Sicily and there was a street called Via Zamada which is where Frank's family emigrated from. There was this one little place. How far back is it parents or his grandparent?

Well his parents I believe actually were there and came as children to the US but the thing was you know we got to go you see on the back cover here this number 13 it's just this tiny little place I mean the room we're in right now is maybe a little bigger than this place that was in Parson Ecos Sicily and it had a little post where you could tie up your donkey outside you know but it's this mountain village and so anyway what I wanted to do was sort of do a musical interpretation of that kind of experience of seeing where everything comes from. Where Zappa comes from? Yeah and well here's the other thing is the name Via Zamada from what I've been told by the people there in Parson Ecos it's not a common word but it's the word is supposed to mean the sound of children's footsteps playing in the rain. Really?

Yeah I love when language does that English is not that good at that? Yeah no it's not and so but then that street got renamed Via Frank Zappa the whole town sort of banded together to create this thing to honor Frank and so that little street which only had a dozen buildings on it maybe. Yeah. You know small little homes and stuff is now Via Frank Zappa.

I bet your dad would have appreciated the old name. Well yeah I see what's cool is like it was a street that had a specialized or something that had a specialized sound and now it also has you know Frank's own specialized sound but they had their own little like military marching band playing some of Frank's music walking through the streets and it was this really really cool thing you know. Was that the first time you'd heard Frank's music played by a marching band? I had actually seen some marching bands do some pretty wild stuff on the internet but this was cool just because it was local people that are proud to be like in some way you know part of this family history thing and they were playing some kind of challenging stuff but it's like a local military marching band and it would just sound so cool walking through the streets and you see all these you know there's beautiful mountains and all this kind of stuff around and then these old buildings and we moved for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. You were like this is it. It was just a really cool experience it's kind of a once in a lifetime you know kind of thing.

Yeah. Well what it did was it in a lot of ways I just tried to take all the elements it's kind of like what you described before. I tried to take everything that ever made me interested or inspired by music and kind of put them into some little location on the record and so it's about layers of details so it could be part of the song or it could be part of the production. So for example I grew up enjoying a lot of Beatles records like a lot of people but I had the chance to work with Jeff Emmerich who recorded a lot of the Beatles records so he came in and did the record the strings and the brass stuff on the song funky 15 and the song truth.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That also has the string quartet.

Yeah. Everything. And did you. Oh go ahead I'm sorry.

Yeah. Well basically I was just saying that you know all those kind of layers of details are things that are the fabric of my youth and listening to that kind of stuff that just happens on records and thinking you know I love the sound of you know the strings on Eleanor Rigby wouldn't it be cool to work with the guy that reported that you know. Yeah. And so that's what I got a chance to do on that.

And what was he like he was great. He was great. He had so many cool stories about you know how he learned to do what he did because for people that don't know I mean he started when he was 19 working with the Beatles. And you know maybe even earlier actually but he was doing full you know sessions and producing and all that kind of stuff and I mean he just he revolutionized recording in all of the ways.

How does he now? I mean I'm going to guess that he's in his 70s. Oh yeah. But he's all there and totally great and to it you know.

So anyway the. There's a lot of humor on the record. I mean you did get some of your sense of humor I think from Frank. There's a couple of the Malkovich song and the dragon what is it?

Dragon Master Dragon Master is actually the only co-writer I ever did with Frank. Oh really? Yeah he wrote the lyrics to that song and then he asked me to write the music to it. So he wrote the lyrics in 1988 or somewhere thereabouts.

And what's so funny is I mean it's a completely preposterous song about a Dragon Master. So what I wanted to do in putting it on the record was find a way to actually create some music that was legitimate for the ridiculous. Oh yeah. Well that's what he did right?

Yeah well in a lot of ways yeah but you know sometimes I just wanted the joke of it to work on a few levels because if you're somebody that doesn't listen to heavy metal music then and which this album is not a heavy metal album but this song is a heavy metal song. But the thing is if you don't listen to metal music you'll hear what the jokes are straight away. It's pretty obvious. But if you're really into metal it's going to hit you in a different way.

There may not be a joke in there. Yeah. Yeah it's very earnest. Yeah.

This is honest metal. Exactly. Because the thing about it is there's just little details that make me laugh like there's a lyric that says hate the day hate the light. Yeah.

And so I got this guy to sing it that has a real metal voice. This guy Sean Albro. Yeah I was explaining to him I said okay on the word light you have to add an extra syllable to it and he says what do you mean? I said you know like hate the day hate the light.

You know it's like it has to have that you know he says oh yeah you mean make it cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know but it's like Ronnie James Dio. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's like finding the way to make all of that kind of stuff happen. It's like when you just have to over enunciate things like the word what is what. You know. Yeah.

It's just stuff like that that makes it for me. You know I mean it's like there's all these other things happening but it's those little details. Yeah. Yeah.

No it's great. And the with the Malkovich song what did you what did that come from? Well it's actually John Malkovich. And so what's funny about it is he's got this project that he's doing that's this remarkable photo exhibit that he did with this photographer Sandro Miller.

And so he wanted to have a musical component that could go with this thing that they're touring around all these pictures that they've done where they did portraits of John as different famous people in history or they recreated famous photographs but not with the digital things they actually like staged the photo. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a famous photo of yeah of like two twin six year old girls in these weird dress I think it's a Diana.

Yeah. Yeah. So he's both of the what is that's hilarious I don't heard of this show. Yeah.

No it's it's a really cool thing. So anyway what he did was he decided he wanted a musical component to it and he recorded himself reciting Plato's allegory of the cave. And then he decided well let's see if there's some people that could put this to music. And so a random selection of people got asked to make a soundtrack to to his performance.

So so the album that he has because he's got his own album that has my song is on that but it's also on my record. But the thing is what he did which is interesting was he gave everybody the same performance of his and then everybody had to make their own music to it. So it's Yoko Ono, Rick O'Kasick. And you?

Well yeah Andy Summers I did one and then Dolores O'Riordan from the Cranberries and a bunch of other people. It's a strange collection of people. But my version because I have heard I think most of the other stuff my version seems to be the only one that is more of like a straightforward song type of arrangement. The other stuff seems to be more like a soundtrack that allows John's voice to come in and do.

But I just thought it would be funny to since it seems that most people won't be familiar with the text that he's reciting that it would just be funny to ask the question what the fuck is he talking about. And so that's what the chorus became you know. It's like in the verses we just let John say his stuff. But actually one of the interesting things about the production of it too is that the very first thing that happens in the song is this kind of strange little melody and weird rhythm.

And what we did was we took John's voice and we used this software that's called Melodine and you can have it interpret what is happening and you can actually it will take from that performance it will extract pitch and rhythm. So then you can take that and use MIDI notes and you can like actually have something that goes along with the performance. What we did was we extracted the rhythm element and so what his speech pattern that happens is actually creates the fill that starts the song and then it goes naturally into hearing his voice in the cadence that he's speaking. Who thought of that?

That was my idea. That's like pretty specific. Yeah. It was a pretty cool thing to be able to do.

Was he happy with it? Yeah. I heard a quote from him saying that the chorus of the song asked the question that would be appropriate for his tombstone. What the fuck is he talking about?

Did you deal with him at all? That's the funniest part of it. I still have never actually met him or spoken with him. But he's okay.

He's okay with everything. Apparently. Apparently he likes the tune. But it's a fun song that it's one of the tunes that as far as the record goes it was probably one of the fastest things that got done for the record.

I received the audio from John Malkovich and the song was written and recorded and finished 13 hours later. Really? Yeah. You just locked in?

Yeah. Straight through? Yep. Why so pressing on that one?

Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do that. Oh, we're done.

Yeah. So like on this record, I mean you've got a couple kids. You do? Yeah.

Did they go with you to Sicily? Actually my kids have not been. But my niece, Moon's daughter, Matilda, she got to go. Oh yeah.

She got to check it out. And so on the record on the song on Fire. Yeah. My kids, my stepdaughter as well.

And also my niece are all singing background vocals on the song on Fire. Yeah. So that's pretty fun. It's cool to hear the kids just to be part of that.

I think it's great that they all have a relationship with all the cousins. It's nice. You all live near each other. Because a lot of people don't.

You know what I mean? I've got cousins where you're like, oh yeah. I met you when I was three. What are you doing?

What's up? They're all involved in everyone's lives. It's great. So let's talk about this, the evolution of the, like I sort of, because when I listen to this record, like it felt to me that, you know, whatever you learn from Frank in terms of composition sort of comes through on this one a lot.

Well, yeah. I mean, and that's not a bad thing. My specific question is that it seems like when you look at the catalog or whatever point that you entered into your dad's work, there was when I listen to it, you know, as it gets cleaner and the production gets more specific, then the orchestration becomes more layered and there's so much going on that your brain sort of has a hard time handling it. It seemed to me that he started with a pretty strong satirical disposition to say, you know, fuck you, do popular music on some level.

I would say that that's always been there. Because his, his, him always just, I like making music and if other people like it, that's great. Right. But that's not, I'm not making music for the masses.

Basically, he just was, he, he's a kind of person that could literally have a blank piece of music paper. He could sit on an airplane and go from LA to New York and have, you know, 12, 15 pages of music that he could write and hear all of the arrangement for every instrument and all that stuff and hand it to somebody and they would play it and it would be like a completely finished piece of music, you know. That's amazing, right? It's totally nuts.

But I like the way early on that he actually satirized other music. There's one out in the other one where, you know, he just, you know, very subtly but very pointedly attacks Jim Morrison in a way. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that stuff, that stuff happened throughout his whole musical career.

But the thing too that's so fascinating is that he had a vision of his music as one complete piece of music. So he, all the records that he ever made to him, it was part of one larger project that he called Project Object. And he considered it all to be like basically one big note. And there's this interesting element of surprise where characters are introduced on records and then they come back and they're having this dialogue from record to record.

So if you ever listen to the entire catalog, you'll, you may find certain characters coming in and out that are, they're answering things that happen on previous records and I've done it. Could you like 10 records to go? Yeah. Yeah.

And then you can go to the audience for everything and there was this grand idea that nobody really knew about it. But when you really put it all together and you listen in chronological order, you know, it's just mind blowing. And it's because he was sort of a conceptual artist. Yeah.

Like he comes from right, like he comes from noise music in a way. Like he stumped his heroes early on. Yeah. We're real conceptual out there dudes, right?

What's the name of that one guy? Verraz. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Who had the air raid siren in his, one of his first big symphonies. And that's what Blue Year year old man's mind, not in R&B music. Yeah.

It's just funny because I mean, as a kid, he just went to the library and taught himself everything about how to become a composer. He learned it all on his own terms, completely auto-di didactic, you know, learning process. Really? Yeah.

And so that's why there's no boundaries in his music. He'll mix any styles and all kinds of different instrumentation and stuff that other people might have said, well, why would you do that? Yeah. You didn't have to answer anybody.

Yeah. It was, well, why not? Why wouldn't I do that? And when did you have, like when your transition as a player from, you know, listening to the technique of Van Halen or even Steve Vier or somebody, when did you begin to sort of intellectually integrate, you know, what your dad was doing when he started playing his shit?

Well, the thing about it is a lot of it was always something that I intrinsically had some sort of connection to. But when I started to learn the music, I studied the music for two years before I put the band together. Really? Yeah.

Like what do you mean studied it? Well, because the thing is I don't have the same background as my dad where he could notate anything, you know, I learned everything by ear. So he wrote everything. Yeah.

And so what I needed to be able to do was I needed to be able to go over the fundamentals of a lot of stuff that I skipped over in my process of learning guitar. And I needed to know the names of things. I needed to basically go through and understand music theory and harmony so that when I put the band together, I'd actually be able to speak the language that was required to get the point across. Right.

Because my idea in putting Zappa plays Zappa together was to emphasize the things that I thought were the most misunderstood or underappreciated things about my dad's music. And that's the focus or the emphasis that I wanted to put on the performances. And one of those things? Well, first in the first few years, I basically was staying away from any of the stuff that was humor related.

I wanted to focus on Frank's compositional skills with his classical music and some of the other big band arrangements of other things that would really, like I said, showcase his abilities as a composer and then also as a guitarist. Because that was sort of an afterthought for people. People were like, oh yeah, I guess he plays guitar. But he's a monster guitar player.

Yeah. And so the biggest challenge in trying to do all of that stuff was obviously it's difficult to learn to play the music and play it the way that it was intended to be played. Meaning the page says, here's how the notes go, here's the rhythms, here's the notes. We didn't change it or alter it to try to make it more for lack of a better description, commercial or updated and modern.

Because I use the analogy, like an orchestra basically is playing the music of people from hundreds of years ago. And they're carrying that music forward for an audience to be able to appreciate, here's what it is on the page. We're playing it as the composer wrote this thing. So they don't get, you know, they don't say, oh, you know, this music needs an update.

We need to bring in a rapper and be like, yeah, yeah, beat you over and yeah. One time, you know, they don't, they don't. That's a different thing. Yeah, they don't.

But see, that's the common perception is when you want to make something modern, you've got to make it hip hop or you've got to make it. But he was beyond modern already. I mean, he was in his own time zone. Exactly.

So my point is we do it unadulterated and that way it is an apples to apples comparison when you try to listen to the original and compare it to, you know, how we're playing it live. We're playing it the way it is. Yeah, you know, right. And when you were doing that, when you spent those two years, were there moments of discovery for you or you were like, holy fuck.

Well, I basically had to completely change everything I knew about how to play guitar. It was like getting a lobotomy and then training for the Olympics. Yeah, because what I took over probably 30 years of guitar playing. Yeah.

And I said forget that, you know, and you train yourself to play a certain way, you know, like a picking style where it's alternate picking, right. And it becomes natural. It's the same as like walking or breathing or something. I had to say, nope, I'm not doing it that way anymore because what I want to do on the guitar to play these melodies that Frank wrote for Marimba or keyboards and things that can't be played with just simple alternate picking.

Really? You know, you have hybrid picking, you have to have sweet picking, you have to have all these things all at once just to get to these things. So I had to remap everything about how I visualized the guitar and the physical motion to actually play the guitar. Wow.

But then on top of that, the hardest part was that Frank didn't play like a standard guitar player in the sense that he had a bag of guitar legs and he's like, okay, here's my lick number one. He almost made fun of that. Yeah. And the thing is he was completely extemporaneous when he played and what he had was this massive vocabulary of rhythmic figures that he could just go ahead and start to use anyway that he wanted and then attach notes to those through this whole other vocabulary of knowledge of harmonic content and all this stuff.

So what I had to do was say, well, how am I going to play in context to the music and play in a way that is like what Frank would have approached but still be able to do it in real time through my own voice. Right. So I had to find a way to create guide posts where I'd play what Frank played and then, you know, fill in the blank still the next guide post. But in the fill in the blank moment, I didn't want it to just take a left turn.

I wanted to be able to play in a way that like I said was evocative or in context to the music in the same way that he would play. So but your own? Yeah. So I had to develop a way to sort of interpolate these ideas with, I would take rhythmic figures that were part of his music, things from the black page or things from a kid in his arf.

And I would study those and I would say, okay, he's using some of these rhythms consistently in his music. Now, if I take these and I look at them and I say how many of these rhythms can I put on one string or two strings or three strings and then how can I then just attach any note I want to those same rhythms so that it's these rhythms can still be used in context to the music. And so it became this like a rabbit hole man. Oh, it is.

So for years, you know, the past 10 years I've been developing this system of applying these different rhythms because basically he was a drummer first before he was ever guitar player. So you know, a simple example of something like this is if he was going to play a five note group, you know, he would break it into a two or three. So you have one two one two three one two three one two three or one two three one two three one two three one two three one two. So you have these subdivisions that are in there and so then you have the choice when you're playing how to how to use those.

So for example, if you're contouring a rhythm of a line and you don't have any notes but you just have the rhythm, you have dada, dada, dada, dada, dada, dada, dada, dada, dada. If you're just thinking that you can put any notes that you want and then land on a downbeat and you can create wild sounding phrases when you play because it's the contour of the rhythm that you pick up on. The notes are superfluous. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. And so a lot of his music has these these angular lines and stuff that are built around just the rhythm itself. And I sort of arrived at this because of the song, the black page which was written as a drum solo and then he wrote an amazing melody to it months later. Right.

You know, so it's like, wait, he wrote all the rhythms first and then he put notes to it. So that was your key. That was your portal in? Yeah.

That was how I said, well, let me see if I can just find a way to create a vocabulary of rhythms that I can facilitate on the guitar with some sort of relative ease and then just choose notes at random to these rhythms. And so when you hear a song like Funky 15 on my record, it has these angular lines but they're based out of these concepts that I'm telling you about where it's a certain kind of rhythm but the line just kind of moves through. It's the rhythm that keeps it. But the line actually isn't related to any one particular scale.

It's like a poly tonal idea because it's going through a lot of things. So this is it's interesting to me and I don't know how you feel about it that, you know, this relationship you've built with your father posthumously is incredible and deep and interesting. I mean, well, to me, it's a way to continue having a relationship with him. I got to spend a lot of time with him musically doing stuff in the studio or on stage or other things where I was probably the one person in the family that had a continuous solid interest in music and was able to develop that kind of relationship with him.

But if he was around today, I would have a lot of questions for him. Like what? Oh, I mean, now that I've uncovered so many things about how he wrote some of the stuff, I would just really be curious to know how he consistently took the same, I mean, in Western music, there's 12 pitches, right? That's all you have.

That's 12. And you can rearrange them any way that you want. But it seemed like he had a whole other bag of pitches that nobody else had because he did not repeat the way that he would do things. There was no there's no consistent pattern that you could say, oh, this is basically a knock off of this.

Like he never did that in his music. So I just would wonder how he was able to consistently just reinterpret those 12 pitches and with all different rhythms and never do the same thing. I mean, that's the thing that just blows my mind over 80 albums that he invented. A new way to rearrange those same 12 pitches and rhythms, you know, I mean, you have countless rhythms, but the same 12 pitches over and over and over and over.

Do you think he was, you know, an explorer or a searcher? Do you know what I mean? Was he looking, you know, was he outside of the work? Because it seems like he had an amazing work ethic and he had a vision for what he was doing.

Like you said, the object that it was one continuous piece. And you know, I, because it doesn't, it doesn't, he doesn't feel like a guy that was looking for something. He felt like a guy that wanted to create different things all the time. I think that it was, I don't even know that it was a choice.

I think it was just that it just was coming out of him regardless. You know, he just had to do it. He was, it's one of those, I mean, possessed by music for sure. You know, and how old do you when he passed?

You know, I never even think about it, but it was early 20s. So probably like 21 or 22 or something like that. I mean, I just block that shit out. You shut it down.

Yeah. I never remember when it, I know like sometime in early December, you know, there's always some sort of anniversary, you know, and I think it's on the fourth, but I never, I'm never looking for the calendar. Do you think that this, this life, you know, sort of a process of you decoding him is some way of dealing with the grief of it all? Well, I mean, it is.

It's been cathartic in a lot of ways. But you know, like I said, it's still like a continuation for me. But do you ever miss him when you're? Absolutely.

I mean, I've played shows on countless occasions and just broken down, you know, while I'm playing. Oh, really? Yeah, because it's, it's rough, you know, it really is. And people go, oh well, you know, you should be past that at this point.

It's like, well, fuck you, you know, like, you know, it's my dad. Yeah. Yeah. And then you do one of the Roxy shows.

Yeah. Yeah. And that like, you know, being in that stuff, you're playing with some of his guys too. It's just like, I can't imagine the emotions of it.

Well, you know, we had this one thing that we were doing, and we've done it a few times where we have some footage, some film footage of him that we were able to synchronize so that it's just footage of him playing guitar and singing. And then we have him on a screen and he is playing, but we're playing in time. He's joining the band. Yeah.

Yeah. And so that was, that was a real trip because he was in his prime, you know, he was like middle 30s in this stuff. And you know, here he is playing live. And I get to interact with him a little bit, play something.

I saw that once at it. I don't want to diminish anything. But I saw them do that at a beach boys concert. And I was just sort of like, this is, it's like, you know, it's like summoning, you know, a ghost in a way.

Yeah. You know, and did you feel like you were like trading? Well, there's, there's some really, really cool stuff that happens, you know, for me personally, but also for the audience that, you know, didn't get a chance to see him. Yeah.

That's part of the zappa place zappa thing is, is getting it out there. Yeah. Well, but to give it, give people a chance to see the music in a live situation where they, you know, it's very different to sit and listen to something versus see somebody play it and realize, wait a minute, how much work goes into doing that? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's kind of, yeah, it's a real like, even when you watch, you watch, you watch, you with the rocks, you do it. And then like, I've watched some stuff online to him.

And it's like, it's massive undertaking. For sure. I mean, it's like, oh my God, how many people were involved and then everyone knows where they're supposed to be. And then when you see Frank, you're like, oh, I'm thinking when I'm watching him, it's like, I hope none of those guys fuck up because I feel like that could be a bad thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Frank was, was real serious about stuff when it came into the music. I think this is, I think it was really a sense of humor too, but if you were in the band, you were required to know what you were doing or you were gone.

Yeah. Yeah. His phrase was window or aisle. How would you like to return home?

You know, because, you know, if you weren't cutting it, that's what happened. Yeah. Well, I think this new record dude is a real sort of like amazing melding of what you do and what you did and what you took from him. It seemed to really come together.

Is that how you feel about it? Yeah. I think it is, you know, because a lot of people before me the record were saying, what's your music even going to be like? And I said, I have no idea.

You know, I went into the studio and this is just what happened. I mean, I recorded a record 10 years ago. No shit. Yeah.

And so my experience of playing Zappa plays Zappa music all over the world definitely informed what I was going to do on the record. But what I wanted to do was, in a lot of ways, this is a more simplified record than anything that I've done before. And so that might be unexpected for people because I think the song structure is really, the guitar actually sort of takes a back seat in a lot of the record. Yeah.

I mean, there's still plenty of guitar on the record. When I made a record, if you looked at a picture of a house that's supposed to have music in it, my guitar was sitting on top of the house. Now it's just all integrated into that one picture because I've learned to play in an ensemble and have it be where everybody has a specific thing to make the music move forward. You know, it's a very different thing to be able to play as a musician versus a guitar player.

Right. It's a maturing thing, I think. You know what I mean? You're willing to sort of let it breathe a little bit.

It's me. I'm doing it. Yeah. Well, because, you know, there was so much emphasis on guitar when I grew up that was everything that was, you know, I mean, that's what you're supposed to do, you know?

And so over time it's like, well, you know, there's lots of ways you can do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you play Zappa, play Zappa, I got to assume that, you know, Frank's fans are loyal and they're old, a lot of them and they're very specific and usually they're very intelligent, you know, sort of socially awkward people. But I mean, I have to assume that you get a lot of the old timers coming out and sort of, you know, almost see you as family in some weird way.

Well, you know, I mean, a lot of what you said is true. I mean, the thing that's interesting is that we started this, like I said, 10 years ago. So if you look at it as the fan base that was always there and supporting Frank's music, the first wave of supporters for all that when we started was that age range. They would have been in their middle 50s up into their late 60s, right?

You know, these are the people that would have been, you know, relatively close to Frank's age, maybe a few years older, maybe a few years younger. But so carry that forward 10 years. We don't have, you know, 80 year olds in the audience, you know, it's actually going the other way. We have a lot more young people and we still have a good amount of people that are in their 50s and 60s that come to this stuff.

We're seeing a lot of younger people, you know, because it's, you can't sustain this music going into the future by only the original, you know, yeah, of course. Yeah. I hope that that catches on in some people get interested. Well, I think that because of the abundance of the work, you know, people, it's one of those things that people can find at any time and be like, if it locks in, they're like, holy shit.

Well, that's always the funniest thing though, too, is to find out like what record got somebody started like, for example, what record of Frank's got you to where you said, I got to listen to more of this. Well, I mean, like when I was in high school, you know, Joe's garage came out. So I, you know, and I had that and I played it all and I thought it was funny, but I liked the story and I, and I knew that there was a lot of levels working, but it didn't send me back. And then like recently, you know, after sort of like doing some research about, you know, where he was coming from and knowing that there was such an abundance of work, I mean, I went and just started at the fucking beginning.

It also became sort of fascinated with beef heart and their relationship. So I just, you know, I just started at the beginning and I'm like, I'll just build out. And then as you know, you listen to more records, I don't have, you know, I don't have 80 records, you know, maybe I have 12, but you're sort of like, you hear the evolution of it and then you start to realize like, oh my God, this is never going to stop expanding. Yeah.

But it was much later. The funny thing is that that's usually what happens is most people don't start right at the beginning, you know, they start at some point on the timeline and then have to go back to the beginning and say, wait a minute, he started here and ended up here. And there's this amazing, like every record is so different from next, but it's always fascinating to me to find out what is the record that gets somebody hooked. So there's people that I know where their favorite record is this record called Burnt Weenie Sandwich.

I have that one. Now that record is, if that's the first record that you ever hear, I personally, you know, I listen to that and I mean, there's stuff that I totally appreciate and love on that record. But if that was the one record that started me, I'm not sure where I would go with that. But so the people that go, this is for me.

This is finally a record for me. And there's those people that like, they get into it and they love that record and that's their dream to hear that, its entirety, play live, you know. And so it's like, it's crazy. I know that like Billy Bob Thornton, that's his favorite record, you know.

But so my point is, there are some records out there and I meet people sometimes and they say, you know, the first record I ever heard was Thingfish. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. If that's the first record and you heard that and you went back for more, you know, it's like, you're hardcore. Yeah, yeah, because I mean, Thingfish is probably one of the most hated records of Frank's, you know, but it's hilarious.

There's crazy things on it. I think most people like in the broader sense, they seem to go with apostrophe. Right? Well, I mean, when I say, you know, if people say, hey, where should I start?

I always say, you know, apostrophe, overnight sensations, good places start, but then go back to freak out over and then, you know, the next couple, like absolutely free and we're only in it for the money. So you can see that in a 10 year period, he went from that to apostrophe and you go, what, you know, how did that happen? Yeah. That's a good record.

Yeah, for sure. Which one do you go back to the most? You know, I listen to a ton of stuff. I mean, growing up, watching him make records like apostrophe and overnight sensation and all the stuff in the middle 70s into the early 80s, that's the stuff that is sort of the fabric of my youth.

Right. I love all that stuff and we've played so much of it over the years. But one of my favorite records is the yellow shark, which is a classical record of Frank's and the pieces on there are incredible, but not only is the music incredible, but the way it's recorded is incredible. It's different than standard orchestral recording techniques.

Right. I got to check that out. It's really, really good. Now, what about like, what was that tour you did with the, on the Hendrix bus?

That's a tour that's called the Experience Hendrix Tour and it's run by the Hendrix family. Is that fun? Is that a money gig or you like doing it? It's really fun.