A Conversation with Dweezil Zappa – HuffPost 7.13.10
Mike Ragogna: You have a new live record out titled Return of the Son of…Now, this isn’t exactly a Frank Zappa greatest hits album, so what were you going for with the selections on this project?
Dweezil Zappa: Well, first of all, people should know that it is a record that’s listed under my name, Dweezil Zappa, but the music is taken from the Zappa Plays Zappa touring band, the project I’ve been doing since 2006. It’s a combination of performances that I thought were really stand out performances in terms of the way the band played and also the way the band interacted with the audience. There seems to be a spark that you can sense that we’re all having a fun time and a good performance. It’s a double CD set, so there’s a lot of music to listen to. There are a lot of improvisational musical experiments that take place within the songs, but there’s also a lot of the structure that exists in Frank’s music that’s so challenging to reproduce. One of the things on the record that I’m particularly fond of is the version of, “The Torture Never Stops” that we played on Halloween night in New York from 2008. Really, the tone was set for it, and I think it’s a really good version of that song.
MR: Can you tell me a little about the musicians that make up Zappa Plays Zappa?
DZ: Well, the core band is the same that we’ve had since the beginning, but in recent times, we’ve had a few personnel changes. What’s good about this record is that it gives the audience a chance to catch up to where the band actually is today, it reflects a couple of years worth of performances. So, you can hear Ray White, who is a former member of Frank’s band, he sings on a few of the songs; then we have a new singer named Ben Thomas who sings on a few of the songs. Other than that, there was a keyboard player who was in the band from the beginning named Aaron Arntz who’s now not in the band, and we have a new guy named Chris Norton on this current tour. But the rest of the core band is all the same; Sheila Gonzalez plays some keyboards and plays all the horns and does some background vocals; Jamie Kime plays rhythm guitar; Pete Griffin plays bass. And these are all names that people would say, “I don’t know who these people are.” But when you hear the music, you’ll find out that they’re all very accomplished players. Joe Travers is the drummer, but he’s also the guy we call, “The Vault Meister,” because he works with our family to help archive everything in the vault, all of Frank’s master tapes.
MR: He must love that gig. How many tapes do you imagine are in the vault?
DZ: There are thousands of them, and it’s his job to know not only what’s on all the tapes, but also to preserve them. Sometimes an analog tape, over a period of time will start to disintegrate, and you’ll have to bake it so the information will stick to the tape again, then convert it to another format. Certain tape configurations only last a number of years–could be twenty years, could be forty years, could be fifty years. So, it’s a constant process to go through the vault and make sure we’re not losing anything. Everybody is invested in this in terms of a love for the music, and the project itself has been ongoing and people have been really enjoying it.
MR: What’s really cool about this project is that it’s very loving to the material. And who’s more appropriate to do that then, well, you and your family.
DZ: Well, I appreciate that. You know, it’s hard to describe to people what this really is because it’s too easy for people to become skeptical and just think of it as a tribute band or a cover band, but there are so many things operating on so many different levels with this group. Obviously, we have a great respect for the music, and our goal is to present the music in a way that is as close to what you would hear on one of Frank’s records as possible. At the same time, everybody brings their own personality to this, and the music itself allows for things to take place. For those that are unfamiliar with Frank’s music, a lot of is designed such that there is a structured element with written themes that are all notated. Frank wrote everything out because he was a composer, not just a musician, but really a composer using a rock band as his orchestra. The genius of his arrangements was that he allowed for improvisational elements to take place in many of the songs, so all of the players in the band have to be really well versed in a number of different styles, and have to play authentically in those different styles.
With Frank’s music, you’re just given this amazing freedom to play in the improvisational sections, which creates something for the audience that is unique for them in that moment. That’s what’s great about seeing his music in a live situation…you really don’t know what you’re going to see, anything could happen at a given time because the music allows for these different avenues to be explored. And the band is used to having some hand signals from me. I’ll conduct the band to make drastic changes at any point in the show if I feel like it, so there’s a lot of excitement in the live situation, and we’ve captured that in this record. You’ll hear things on the record and you’ll think, “Well how did the band all know when to play that particular thing, because they all just took a huge left turn.” And it’s probably because there was a hand signal. But still, when you listen to it, it’s an amazing sort of journey.
MR: Here’s a nerdy question. How did he indicate improvisational sections in the score? And how did he notate in general??
DZ: When it comes to improv stuff, he would just leave an open space of the appropriate length of bars. The thing to know about Frank too, is that he definitely was an auteur. He had a total vision for everything, so even drum fills were written out by him in many cases. In some of these classic intros to songs like, “Montana” or the drum fill in “Trouble Every Day,” there are specific drum fills that he would write out. Stating that in another way, a song called, “The Black Page” started off with a drum solo that he wrote out as a challenge for Terry Bozzio to have to play, then after Terry proved he could play it, he wrote out the melody that went with the drum solo, so that’s a very backwards way of composing something, by most people’s standards, to have all the rhythm first and then add the notes.
MR: Which are some of your favorite tracks to play that ended up on the double disc?
DZ: One of the things that I wanted to put on the record was the version of “Zombie Wolf” that’s on there. When we played it, it’s from a show we did in Manchester, England, a couple of summers ago, and the night that we played it I was glad to know that we had a multi-track recording of it because I had gone on stage with a little bit of a strategy for that particular solo, which is unusual; I don’t normally have a preconceived notion of what I want to do. But in that case, I thought, “Well I want to try something tonight as an experiment.” The solo section is in the key of A, so I wanted to try to ignore that entirely and see if I could work myself around that, and interweave all these ideas from completely non-related keys, and see if I could get away with playing a melodic solo that was almost never in the key of A (laughs). So, the challenge was, “Let me see if I can play in the wrong key most of the time but still make it work.”
MR: (laughs) Eddie Van Halen popularized that a little.
DZ: Well, I think he mostly stayed in the same key, but he would occasionally have a couple of interesting, diminished patterns that he would add in there, it was kind of Allan Holdsworth’s influence on him. And this is not too dissimilar from that, but the interesting thing was that the experiment was successful. I thought it was an interesting, adventurous sort of solo, and that’s why it’s on the record. But, like I said, there’s a really good feeling of high energy in all the performances, and the thing I like about it, overall, is our ability to present this music to people and make sure that it’s not viewed as nostalgia music. This music is as current today as it was even when it came out because Frank’s music has always been ahead of its time. So, I feel like the way we have to present this is to make sure that it’s not reviewed or regarded as novelty music or nostalgia music. It’s relevant music that has a unique sound.
MR: Certainly, there are a lot of bands that have been influenced by Frank Zappa.
DZ: Well, I hope that his music inspired some change in people’s approaches because there’s been a certain stagnant period of music for a while, at least in what’s considered popular music. So, subversively, I’d like to see it enter the world of pop music a little bit more. I’d like to see what would happen if you had some of the big name pop acts actually have exposure to this and take ideas from it and see where it could go. I think that would be hilarious. Can you imagine what would happen if Justin Timberlake was suddenly a huge Frank Zappa fan? What would that sound like (laughs)?
MR: You had another great project that you’ve been working on, and forgive me if I don’t know anymore about it than this, but it’s your “What The Hell Was I Thinking?” project, right?
DZ: Yeah, it’s a record that I started a while ago, and I just haven’t had a chance to really put it all together. I know I’m probably going to add some changes based on my own technical improvements to my playing. I guess the best way to describe the project is it’s an audio movie. I recorded a bunch of different music that all segues together, so it’s constantly morphing and turning. Each little segment has its own little audio environment, and then you have these cameo appearances by all these different guitar players who sort of start falling out of the speakers. So, it’s got about thirty different people on there so far, I’ll give you a list of some of the ones people would know: There’s Eddie Van Halen, Brian May, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Angus and Malcolm Young–who never played on anything other than an AC/DC record before–Yngwie Malmsteen, Warren DeMartini from RATT, Albert Lee, Brian Setzer, there are a ton of people like Jimmy Vaughn, Robin Ford, Joe Walsh. And the thing is, all these different people, they all have a very recognizable sound, and in the world of guitar playing, that’s a real challenge–to create your own sound to where when you hear just a couple of notes you actually know who it is.
The fun of it is that you’re actually hearing a lot of these people out of context, they’re playing on things they wouldn’t normally be playing over, and that was part of the fun of making this project happen. So, either people are playing on exactly what you would expect them to play over, or something you would never expect them to play over. The Van Halen thing is pretty funny because I put this section together where I asked Edward to play sort of a “greatest hits” from all his different guitar licks. We just took different licks from different solos from different records and made him play them all and string them together in one guitar solo. That was pretty fun because it was like having your own toy Eddie Van Halen–like, “I’ll make my Eddie Van Halen play this.”
MR: (laughs) Oh, to own a toy Eddie Van Halen. Is there a plan to release the project anytime soon?
DZ: Now I’m thinking about it in a lot of different forms. When I was first thinking about making it, I didn’t ever consider that it could be performed live. But now with the band that I have, I’m almost thinking, “Maybe, if I put this thing together in the right way, it actually could be performed live.” I don’t know if I could get all the guests to play all at once, but the piece of music, in the end, is a continuous piece of music that’s seventy-five minutes long with no break. So, it might make for an interesting presentation if it could be put together in a live situation. But, you know, I have to finish the record first (laughs).
MR: I have an odd question for you; One of my favorite things that you’ve ever done was non-musical, although it could be considered “lyrical” because of the way you did it. I was a huge fan of Duckman. And you voiced a Duckman character–Ajax, right?
DZ: Yeah. Even last night, at a show we did in Atlantic City, there was a kid that came with his dad, and they had transcribed from a certain episode where I was reading some type of beat-poetry as the character Ajax. They had transcribed it all and then they asked me to perform some of it, so I read some of it. I hadn’t had to do anything with the character’s voice in almost fifteen years or so, but it was really based almost on, for lack of a better term, a stupid sounding surfer kid. So, it was kind of Sean Penn inspired from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
MR: That was a perfect cartoon–bizarre noir mixed with Jason Alexander. You guys must have had a blast working on that.
DZ: Yeah we did. One of my favorite times working on it, there was a scene that was taking place with Tim Curry, who I think is hilarious. Most people know him from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but he’s a great actor who has been in a lot of different stuff.
MR: And I think he’s a good singer. He had three great A&M albums, especially Fearlessthat featured “Paradise Garage,” “S.O.S.,” and a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire.”
DZ: I actually haven’t heard it. But he’s really talented and really funny, and there was a great lesson learned in this one scene because he had a very particular way that he was pronouncing certain words and the producers were trying to get him to change the way that he was pronouncing them. Politely, he would agree to change it, yet he never changed it, and the reason for that was he knew he wanted to stick to his instinct. The word of issue was “NASA,” you know the space agency? But because he’s British, he was doing an Americanized character in this particular scene, he wasn’t saying NASA, he was saying NAH-SA. And they kept saying, “No, we need you to say NASA.” And he’d say, “Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll do it.” But he never gave them the option, which I thought was brilliant and much funnier. The thing was, he was very polite and kept saying, “Oh sure, sure.” But he always did it the way he wanted because he knew that if he gave them the “NASA” take, they’d use that one.
MR: Sweet. You also were an MTV VJ for awhile. Can you just give me the two-second version of the Howard Stern story?
DZ: Well, I don’t really remember it to a great extent. But ultimately, when I was on MTV, I wasn’t looking at that as, “This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.” I only did twelve weeks over a period of about two years, and people think I was on there for a lot more. At the time, MTV was playing a lot of videos, and a lot of the same ones over and over, and I was kind of making fun of some of the videos that I was just sick of seeing, like Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” or “Hello”–that video where the blind girl makes that horribly unattractive, Planet Of The Apes sculpture of his face after touching his face, you know? So I was making comments about videos, and it was almost like Beavis and Butt-Head before Beavis and Butt-Head. I would back-announce a video, and then I would have some sort of snarky comment about it.
At a certain point, though, I started saying stuff about the ad campaigns, too. I was only seventeen, so there was an ad campaign for 7-Up that said, “Feels so good coming down.” And I started saying things like, “I don’t even know what that means, what are you trying to say to the kids? Coming down from what? What is it?” So, the powers that be didn’t like that too much, and then I was on the Howard Stern show saying, “There’s a lot of crappy videos that are being played on there.” I was just telling the truth, but you can’t really tell the truth and then expect the management to want you to continue to do that. The management at MTV wasn’t too pleased. But my background was that, my dad would tell the truth about whatever he was talking about. He didn’t lie, you know?
MR: Yeah, plus in those days, conservative politics and Madison Avenue had so sanitized the culture. On MTV, everything looked like an Izod ad with the exception of you and a couple of other VJs. And man, you’re right, it was awful being subjected to the same thirty to forty videos 24/7.
DZ: It was basically pop radio but with video. What people didn’t realize is at that moment, when MTV was becoming so popular, prior to that, people just listened to music. Now, people just watch music. Music tends to be something that’s on in the background while you’re multitasking, so the experience of music changed drastically. People used to really revere the opportunity to relax and listen to music, so at the time that MTV had all those music videos and they were playing them over and over ad infinitum, you had some stuff that really was changing the way people were perceiving music. So if there was a song that maybe you wouldn’t have liked just listening to it, if you liked the girl in the video, now maybe you liked the song or your liked the band because you’re influenced by what you’re seeing and it has less to do with what you’re hearing. A lot of big bands became popular, but the validity of their skill is still questionable.
MR: Let’s talk about that for a second. I have gone on rants here on The Huffington Post about how we have so “Disney-fied” and so “American Idol-ized” our pop music due to both corporations proliferating mostly mediocre artists that record one type of song and sound. And unlike any other period I can remember, this assembly line approach doesn’t seem like it’s slowing down anytime soon. What’s going on with that?
DZ: I don’t really know. The thing is, there’s always been, throughout history, a period of completely manufactured music.
MR: This seems to be the longest.
DZ: Well, it feels that way. The record industry has just completely imploded, so they’re just trying to hold on to whatever they can. Everything is really marketed towards, not even twelve-year-olds, but almost like eight-year-olds. They’re trying to make sure that they can hold on to whatever it is that’s selling. So you’ve got Justin Bieber as the “worlds greatest artist,” you know? That’s kind of interesting that the stuff that seems to be really moving off the shelves is for the youngest consumers, and I don’t know if there’s an answer or anything that can cure the record industry. Radio is really going to be what it’s always been, they’re only going to play a handful of the biggest, most popular songs, and how they get there, I don’t really know.
MR: What are you thinking as far as the future? You talked a little bit about the, “What the Hell Was I Thinking” project earlier, what other kinds of projects are you thinking of?
DZ: Well, my time has been pretty locked up in the continuing evolution of Zappa Plays Zappa, and now we’re hearing from a lot of people that they’re interested in hearing this band evolve into something that plays music other than Frank Zappa music. It’s not that they’re tired of that, but they like the band as a band, and they’re curious to hear if I write some of my own music for this band, what that might sound like. So, that’s something that I’m thinking about, I just haven’t had time to do it. The cycle of touring and what takes place, just maintaining what we already know and trying to learn new stuff and all that, through an annual schedule of this, it’s hard to find time to do anything else besides what we’ve already been doing. I have some DVD projects and things that I’ve been putting in time at home with, so we do have another DVD that’s coming out this year. And we filmed another show the other day while on tour, so there’s no shortage of all that stuff. I do, I guess, need to find some time to work on some of my own stuff though.
MR: You know, the thought came to me–and I’m going to play devil’s advocate and be one of those who would pigeon-hole you for a moment–but did you ever think about reinterpreting of your dad’s entire albums?
DZ: You know, people ask about that because there are a lot of so called nostalgia acts out there that do that. They play a whole album. We’ve been approached, and a lot of people have been asking us about doing that, but I just don’t know if that’s what the people that come to see our shows really want. So, we’ve been starting to talk about it a little bit on my website, www.dweezilzappaworld.com, having people weigh in on whether or not they actually want to see that, and if they do, what album. Because, for me, generally speaking, we try to make it a different show every night and mix it up as much as we can. So, if people think that we’re going to do a whole tour of playing the same songs, I don’t know if that holds as much appeal for some people.
But we might have the ability to, through the website, choose on a nightly basis by polling the audience that’s coming to the show. Let’s say we’re going to play two or three different sides from a record, which ones are they going to be? We don’t really have the ability to learn whole records by the dozens, you know? We would only have the time to learn maybe a couple of things like that out of all the stuff we already know. So, it’s a process, and it’s something we’re thinking about, but I don’t know that we could completely recreate, We’re Only in it for the Money. You know, that’s a great record.
MR: What’s great is that everybody in your family has always been about experimentation and pushing the envelope. It seems that without some sort of experimentation and innovation in the mix, you end up with nothing but pop pap.
DZ: The thing is, I can appreciate the production elements for a lot of that kind of stuff, and I know that there’s space for any kind of music for entertainment of people. But the problem is you don’t see any balance. It wouldn’t be so bad if all that stuff existed and you had space for other things that were more creative and experimental. When you’re only inundated with the one thing that seems to be so homogenized and hackneyed, that’s why it feels so uncomfortable if you’re the type of person that’s seeking something else. There’s really no balance.
MR: And that’s exactly my point, that’s what’s fueling my rants on this stuff. Personally? I wouldn’t care if there was a fair balance.
DZ: Well, the authentic version of rock ‘n’ roll rebellion doesn’t really exist anymore. Now it’s just a pretend act, everyone’s dressing the part but no one wants to speak the truth because they’re going to lose their job.
MR: It’s just like that old joke, “How many A&R guys does it take to change a light bulb?” “I don’t know, what do you think?” So, let me ask something personal. What was it like growing up in the house of Frank Zappa?
DZ: I think a lot of people expected our family to have all these crazy things happening all the time. The casual exposure that people have to Frank’s music and the fact that people know, “Oh yeah, he’s the guy that named his kids the crazy names.” That gives people this instant notion of, “Oh, I feel bad for them, nothing but trouble ahead for them.” But nothing ever happened that was crazy, really. At our house, everything was pretty normal. Every family has their own sense of what’s normal, we didn’t have the standard routines that some people have, like we didn’t necessarily have family dinners all the time. Let’s say Thanksgiving was rolling around, Frank would be in the studio working. He’d come upstairs to eat for a minute, and then he’d go back to work. He was always working.
Now, some people say, “Well that sounds very selfish of him.” We still had plenty of time to hang out with him and do different things. I happened to be interested in music, so I was spending time with him in the studio, learning about the things he was doing, how he did it, what he was listening to, and what he was writing and all that stuff. So, I got a chance to have a great relationship and spend time with him and do stuff that was very valuable to me. Everybody in the family found their way to find something that they connected with Frank on. The reality is, when he wasn’t touring, he was at home all the time, he didn’t drive, so he was just kind of always there when he wasn’t on the road, and my mom worked from home too. So our parents were home most of the time, and we were really a tight knit family. We didn’t have wacky people coming over, we weren’t exposed to craziness like people would imagine.
Consequently, none of us ever got involved in any of the things you hear about for Hollywood families and what not. None of us got involved in drugs, you know I’ve never taken a drug in my life, I’ve never been drunk, I’ve never smoked a cigarette. So, people expect that we’ve been in rehab and all that stuff and people have said to me, “Hey, how long have you been sober?” I say, “Forty years.” That’s the thing, in L.A. It’s just so stupid that somebody would even think that that’s just a normal question to ask, as if they just expect that if you say you don’t drink they should ask, “How long have you been sober?” “Well, my whole life.” I’ve never been interested in any of that stuff, just because they’ve been to rehab twenty-seven times doesn’t mean the rest of us have.
MR: Well, maybe that’s not so normal now. (laughs)
DZ: I’m definitely outside the normal when it comes to never having done any drugs or any of that sort of stuff. When you look at Hollywood or rock ‘n’ roll or whatever, I’m definitely in the minority there.
MR: You’re right, it’s just not the answer you’re expecting when talking to a celebrity’s kid.
DZ: No. The reality is, for me, I saw a lot of people at Frank’s shows that were just acting like weirdos, and when you’re eight or nine and you’re looking at these people that are tripping out and acting like they’re from outer space, or what seems to be that way to an eight or nine-year-old, I talked to my dad and said, “What’s wrong with those people?” And he said, “Well, those people are on drugs” and I’ll change the quote a little for our purposes, he said, “they think it gives them an excuse to be a jerk.”
MR: (laughs) I’ll bet the word he used began with “a.”
DZ: And so, having respect for my dad I was like, “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a good thing to do.” And he said, “Well, it’s not.” Even now, you still have irresponsible magazines.Rolling Stone printed an illustration where Frank’s holding a joint, and I think that kind of stuff is so stupid. They’re trying to perpetuate something that doesn’t exist, and mainstream media has tried to do that with Frank for a long time to give people the wrong impression. It’s just unfortunate that people don’t know the truth.
MR: It’s even more unfortunate that everything has to be salacious. As Paul Simon said, “They’re just out to capture my dime.” I don’t think anybody knows what the truth is anymore. It really does come down to the art, if your art is speaking for itself I guess that’s the truth, that’s the only reality you’re going to be able to fathom in entertainment these days.
DZ: Yes, it’s a challenge to survive, man.
MR: You also did the theme to The Ben Stiller Show.
DZ: Yeah, I did some other TV theme songs like, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, and one of Roseanne‘s TV shows that she had, I did some music for Pee Wee’s Playhouse when that was on the air. So, I’ve always done a lot of different, little musical projects. I’d like to get into film scoring one of these days, I think that would be an interesting challenge.
MR: And one last Frank question. Are there any plans on yet another roll out of the catalog in any special way?
DZ: Well, I don’t really know. We’re hoping that we can revitalize it in a way that makes sense to the modern consumer, but there are a few legal things that have to be resolved first. Ultimately, yeah, the goal is to make it accessible to people.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney