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By Peter Lindblad
There's a
fine line between genius and madness, and Frank Zappa didn't
mind occasionally crossing over into insanity. A visionary
composer, guitarist and producer, Zappa had a warped sense of
humor that manifested itself in satirical song titles such as
"Don't Eat The Yellow Snow," "Call Any Vegetable," "Pound For a
Brown" and "Tryin' To Grow A Chin." And when he died in 1993,
music seemed to lose not only a profoundly brilliant sonic
architect but also its sense of fun and adventure.
In the 15
years since Frank's death, his eldest son, Dweezil, had become
concerned that the world was beginning to forget about Frank's
complex blend of modern classical music, jazz fusion and the
heavy guitar rock of the '70s. So, he conceived of Zappa Plays
Zappa, a touring ensemble charged with the task of bringing
Frank Zappa's utterly original, boundary-breaking creations back
to the stage.
Tough
auditions yielded a group of technically proficient players who
would spent hours and hours rehearsing in preparation to take
this ambitious project out on the road. Two of the shows from
the group's 2006 tour were captured for the "Zappa Plays Zappa"
two-disc DVD set, put out in April by Razor & Tie and produced
by Pierre and Francois Lamoureaux for Strobosonic. Guest stars
Steve Vai and Terry Bozzio electrify the proceedings with their
amazing chops, as the DVDs feature more than three hours of
performances.
Two years
later, as the Zappa Plays Zappa ensemble gets ready to take to
the road again — this time with Dweezil (guitar and vocals),
Aaron Arntz (keyboards and trumpet), Scheila Gonzalez
(saxophone, flute, keyboards and vocals), Pete Griffin (bass),
Billy Hulting (marimba, mallets and percussion), Jamie Kime
(guitar), Joe Travers (drums and vocals) and special guest Ray
White (guitar and vocals) in tow — Dweezil talked to Goldmine
editor and ClassicRockRevisited.com contributor Peter Lindblad
about how the project came together and what he hopes will come
of it.
Pete:
(The DVD is) a beautifully filmed package and the musicianship
is just astounding. What are your impressions of it watching it
nowadays?
Dweezil: Well, you
know, it's been awhile since that tour — that was the '06 tour —
and I began this whole project by choosing songs that I needed
to specifically work on to see if it was possible for me to do
this at all. And that sort of led me to believe that I needed to
do a massive overhaul of my own technical ability to do what I
wanted to do on guitar, which was the things that you actually
see on the DVD ... things that were never done on guitar before.
I'm playing "St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast." I'm playing some
of the figures in "Inca Roads," the really fast septuplets. That
was never played on guitar by anyone in Frank's bands.
The
reason I wanted to do it was to show people my dedication to
this music and this project, because that is an inordinate
amount of time to spend to learn that stuff and to play it live.
And so, watching it, it's almost the same as a regular fan's
perspective. Having seen it well after the fact, it's hard to
believe that on a nightly basis that's the songs that we were
playing, and that's what it sounded like.
Pete:
In the DVD, you said it took you two years to learn to play the
songs you played on that tour. That really speaks to just how
complex this music is, I would imagine.
Dweezil: Well, for
sure. Each player in the band has extensive training and [had
been] studying all different kinds of music before they had any
involvement in this. And part of the interesting thing about the
core band is, a bunch of them hadn't really been familiar with
Frank's music. And I viewed that as a good thing, because in a
way, they're demonstrating what happens when you become inspired
or influenced by Frank's music, the change that occurs in what
you're capable of and what you sort of expect from the world of
music.
The
challenges that are there, the creativity that is there ... some
of the steps are not likely to be surpassed in any way by anyone
musically. So, it's really cool to be able to present this music
and try to give people an opportunity to hear it, in many cases,
for the first time. We want young people to be able to discover
the music, and there's really no effective way to do that other
than live on stage and playing the music in a very respectful,
unadulterated way.
We try to
really play it as close as possible to specific versions that
already exist, and the reason is, you have to think of Frank
more as a composer than as a rock musician, and [with] a lot of
his music, there are strict written parts. So, to play this
music and have people understand what Frank was trying to
accomplish, you need to do it justice. You need to do it the way
he either already previously did it on a recording or the way it
is written on the page. There's no reason for me to change it or
pretend that I know anything more about what he would have done
with it now, versus then. It's not up to me to create a new
evolution of the music. I'm trying to introduce the music that
exists to a new fan base, because ideally they'll be inspired by
this and want to hear his version.
You know,
there's that weird dichotomy where sometimes a younger fan can
be exposed to ... let's just call it a cover song of any band.
Let's take "Kashmir" done by P. Diddy. Now, if that's the only
time you've ever heard "Kashmir," and you thought that was the
best song you ever heard, and then you hear the original version
and you think, "Man, that song sucks. It doesn't have a rap on
it" (laughs). That is what happens when people's introduction to
something is diluted by some sort of adulterated content, and
that's what I want to avoid for the future. For people to
experience Frank's music, I want them to experience it with a
clean slate, because I know the effect of hearing a certain
version of a song ... I'll give you another example: when I was
12 and I heard the Van Halen version of "You Really Got Me," you
know, I thought, "Man, that's a great song." And then I heard
The Kinks, and I thought, "Man, that guy can't play at all. He
can't even remotely play like Eddie Van Halen." And I didn't
know when I was 12 that they wrote the song. It's only
afterwards that you can discover this, and sometimes it takes
awhile.
Pete:
What did you find most challenging relearning it all, or I guess
maybe learning it for the first time, huh?
Dweezil: Well, yeah,
I mean it was learning it for the first time. I had obviously
heard it my whole life, but I didn't sit there and scrutinize
every note and try to play it all on guitar. Like I said, a lot
of the things I was doing on guitar were not done on guitar, so
it was a very big undertaking. It's one thing to learn the
stuff; it's another thing to memorize it, and it's another thing
to be able to execute it live in front of people, so it's a very
superhuman task to keep a lot of material in your head,
especially the hard stuff. But yeah, the challenge is always
first the technical ability of learning the song and being able
to play it, but then, while you're on the road, memorizing it
and making sure you remember it, because we change songs a lot,
you know, change show set lists a lot, and if you're not playing
something all the time, it's kind of easy for you to blank out
on stuff. And that happens from time to time, but you know, it's
the nature of the stuff; it happened with Frank's band too, you
know.
Pete:
This is really an amazing group of musicians you've assembled.
Talk about the recruitment process. What were you looking for
from them?
Dweezil: Well, I
made it difficult for the auditions, just so I wouldn't have to
waste any time. On keyboards, for example, Aaron Arntz. I hired
Aaron because the requirement for the audition was to get
whoever the keyboardist auditioning was, they had to transcribe
"Black Page" and "Inca Roads" without us giving them any music
on paper. I wanted to be able to see their ability to
transcribe, to see how well they could hear and interpret the
rhythms, and then come in and play it. But they were only given
two days to do it, and I know that to learn that and be able to
play that in a two-day period, those two songs, is next to
impossible. And I knew that it would be like 18-hour days.
So,
somebody wanting the job had to be committed and really wanted a
challenge, and that would pretty much weed out anybody who just
thought they could cruise on in and say, "Yeah, I can play
keyboards." And, you know, to be honest, Aaron was the only one
that transcribed both songs and made it through both
arrangements. One other guy came close, but Aaron was the only
one that could do it, and if you look at the amount of people
who came in to audition for keyboards, we're talking about nine
or 10 people. And the word went out to music schools all over
the place, and there was not a big list of people that were
prepared for that kind of a challenge. And it also speaks to the
fact that there's a lot of people ... there's thousands of
musicians auditioning for different kinds of musical jobs all
over the place, but not that many that have the skill required
to do this gig, so they all pretty much stayed away.
And it
was kind of the same for other musicians, you know. They had
really difficult challenges that they had to come in and
execute; otherwise they'd be wasting time, and there were other
people who came in and it was pretty much of a joke, but that's
always the way, you know? I think Frank has talked about it in
interviews with people who were auditioning for him. A lot of
people would just try to take it as the opportunity to have it
on their resume, you know. If you say you auditioned, people
think you already are a certain caliber of musician, whether
they even came close to anything [or not], I mean, that's not
the point. To the people who thought they could fool Frank, he'd
give them a piece of music paper with stuff on it to read and
say, "All right, play this." And then they'd play something that
had nothing to do with what was on the page, as if Frank
wouldn't know. It's like, "Ah, you can't read, can you?" "Oh,
no, no. I just played it." "No, no you didn't."
Pete:
How was it getting some of the guests like Steve Vai and Terry
Bozzio and Napoleon Murphy Brock to get that chemistry going
between the core band and the guests?
Dweezil: Well, there
was really no challenge to make that work. The band had been
rehearsing for a while, and then, we'd brought in special
guests, and it was an instant fit, because the material had
already gotten in shape, and they all knew their roles, and it
just worked like a well-oiled machine.
Pete:
Yeah, you really get that from the DVD. It's just a very
seamless kind of arrangement when you see all facets of the band
playing together.
Dweezil: Yeah, and
when you consider, on average, we were playing three-hour
concerts — we're still pretty much are in that ballpark, between
2:45 and three hours — and there's a lot of difficult music
being played, on that tour and on subsequent tours. You know,
we're going out again starting in June and playing festivals and
things, you know, between Bonnaroo (the four-day music festival
in Tennessee that begins June 14) and some other big festivals
in America and Europe, and the thing about it is, the band
itself is really good at what they do, and it is really fun to
have those times on stage when you can improvise and you can see
some of that on the DVD — you know, "A Pound For a Brown," and
other elements where there are improvisational things happening.
As a musician, it's a really, really fun project to be a part of
because you get challenged on so many levels with the technical
side, but you also have a chance to improvise a lot more than
you would in other musical situations.
Pete:
What were rehearsals like? You mentioned how the stringent
audition procedure kind of weeded out the stiffs, as it were.
Did everybody pick it up just like that?
Dweezil: Well, you
know, you get involved. I made a song list ... okay, here's what
we're going to go for, and then you start tackling the ones that
are probably the hardest to begin with, because they're going to
take the most time. And in the beginning, it was definitely
overwhelming [and that's] putting it mildly, because you just
have this feeling of it being such a Sisyphean task of pushing
that rock up the hill thinking, "I'm never going to get this
thing up there." And then one day, you're at the top of the
hill, and you're like, "Oh, we're playing this stuff. This is
working out. Let's move on to a few more things." And you get a
little collection of stuff.
So, I
would say what happens is, in a two-week period, with hard
stuff, we might get three or four things up and running, and the
easier ones, we might get six or eight up and running alongside
the hard ones, and you start just running stuff as much as you
can. And we usually rehearse about five or six hours a day, five
days a week, sometimes six days a week, but everybody was always
doing homework as well, because you need to. You need to keep
practicing at home, and that's pretty much how it works out. We
figured out the best way to work [was] on the hardest things and
get that stuff together first, and anything that was not tight
enough we put on hold or kept practicing it, but Frank would
rehearse bands for three months on average before going out on a
single tour. We try our best to get what we need done in a
two-month period of time, because it's so cost-prohibitive. I
mean, hard costs for rehearsals and all that stuff for a large
ensemble, doing that many hours, it adds up.
Pete:
How difficult was it to bring these songs alive in a concert
setting?
Dweezil: Well, just
learning them is the biggest challenge. Playing them is fun.
Once you know them, it's fun. But you need a technical team that
can help bring it to the audience in a pleasing way — you know,
try to have a nice front-of-house mix — and I think we have a
good crew that's able to help us present it in a nice way as
well as what the band brings to it.
Pete:
Over the years, growing up, how did your appreciation of your
father's music evolve and has this experience kind of changed
that in any way?
Dweezil: Well, I
think Frank's music is one of these layered things in the world
where the more you know about it, the more you want to know
about it. And I've always appreciated it, and I've always
enjoyed listening to it, but when you forensically uncover what
it's made out of, and scrutinize every element, it's that much
more fascinating and requires that much more respect, because
you just think, "How did one person come up with all of this?
And how is it possible that no one else thought that way or
sounds that way, even to this day. He really has his own style
and sound and followed that in a maverick sense, never at all
trying to fit into the norm. He just did his own thing. And so,
you have to respect somebody that just had a vision and followed
it. He was told, "No, that's not possible" his whole life, for
every single thing, but he still persevered.
Pete:
Describe how you felt that first show on the Zappa Plays Zappa
tour. Were there any points during that show that were tough to
get through?
Dweezil: Well,
there's emotional times even now. It doesn't have to be the
first show. It could be the hundredth show. The music itself can
just get under your skin. And for me, it's just a very personal
experience to do this. So you know, you can see on the DVD that
it's an emotional rollercoaster for me. Yeah, there's also a
sense of once you've worked so hard for something and you're
actually presenting it to people, that's also an emotional
thing. You see athletes when they win an event, they're crying
because they're exhausted. This is the goal they've worked for,
and they've reached it, and here it is. So, there's a bit of
that, as well as the personal side.
Pete:
Playing with Steve Vai on songs like "Black Page #2" has to be
such an electrifying experience. There really seems to be a
great chemistry between you two.
Dweezil: Well, I
enjoy what Steve does and always have. I've been fortunate to
know him for a long time and be able to learn some stuff from
him in the very beginning when I started playing guitar. He had
just been working in Frank's band and was given the task of
giving me some guitar lessons. Frank said, "Hey, why don't you
teach him some stuff," and so, he showed me some stuff in the
early days — really rudimentary things (how to hold a pick), all
this kind of stuff — but it's fun to have it come full circle in
that department, as well as just the whole full circle element
of my connection to Frank's music.
Pete:
Frank had such a wonderful, irreverent sense of humor, and that
seemed to transfer to his compositions. And yet, there's no
doubting that this is really serious, intellectually profound
music. How did he balance that in songs like "Call Any
Vegetable" and "Punky's Whips" and "Don't Eat That Yellow Snow"?
Dweezil: That's a
good question. There's ... one of the things I did in preparing
for all this is I listened to every single record he made in
chronological order, just to get a sense of the total evolution
of his music and how he put it all together. And all of those
elements were there from the very beginning, so it was sort of
this unwavering thing that it was all a part of some master plan
for him, and the music got harder as he had better musicians in
the bands. But his sense of humor got involved, because the
concentration required to play really challenging stuff, if
that's all you do, it's exhausting. So, his sense of humor is an
energy boost and a welcome relief to some of the technically
challenging parts, but for somebody to think of how to do that,
you know, it's rare and Frank is ... his music really stands the
test of time and it's unique, so it's really fun to play and fun
to do.
Pete:
And I guess in that way it'll never be copied.
Dweezil: Well, some
people say, you know, I hear lots of influences of Frank's music
on other bands, and I really don't. I mean, people think certain
things might sound somewhat similar here or there, but the
overall attitude in Frank's music is not pervasive in music, and
I think, actually, the world of music could benefit from a
little bit of that attitude.
Pete:
That really does seem to be missing, that kind of wit and
imagination.
Dweezil: Yeah, well
... here's an example, I grew up hearing really only what Frank
was playing or working on in the house or listening to in the
house, and I didn't really hear the radio or any other outside
popular music until I was 11 or 12. And I started hearing the
popular bands of the time, and 10 years before the time, so it
was bands like Led Zeppelin, and Van Halen and AC/DC and all
these rock bands and ... rock was king, and everybody wanted to
actually be a pretty good musician. Flash forward 10, 15 years
from that, and everybody wants to just have the right tattoos
and the right haircut and not be able to play very well. And
then now, it's all about everybody has to have their own dance
squad and tape their own music, and it doesn't matter if you can
play or not.
You know,
the evolution music, some people might say, "Man, it keeps
getting better," (laughs) and there might be a lot of people
that would disagree with that. So, it's amazing to me that some
of these are cycles that happen and have happened throughout the
history of music, but it's more stagnant now creatively in a lot
of ways in terms of what gets out there on the airwaves than I
think it's ever been. And back in the days when Frank first came
out and other bands like in the late '60s/early '70s, record
companies were not corporatized in the way that they are now and
used to have, as Frank described, these cigar-chomping
impressario guys who would say, "I don't know if it works. Let's
just try it." And so, you don't have that. Everything is a very
calculated concept, and it's quite rare that something unique
finds its way out there to the masses anymore.
Pete:
It's always struck me about Frank's music is, especially when
you hear it live and see it played, maybe how, for lack of a
better word, how democratic it is, or maybe diverse is a better
word. And I guess we touched on this before, but this is a man
who operated in so many genres, it's hard to imagine him being
able to focus to make these compositions when there is so much
going on in his own head.
Dweezil: That's the
thing, it's all very focused. Everything is strategically
organized. And you know, it's not some sort of oceanic chaos.
You have a specific role when you're in the ensemble, and if
you're given the opportunity, you have the chance to also
improvise, but one of the things that is great about this DVD is
that for the first time on a lot of songs, you can actually see
some of these songs performed. And what I mean by that is, you
can see what it takes to perform these songs in terms of what
you're hearing is what you're seeing in terms of the editing.
You're able to see what the arrangement is actually made of,
who's playing what at what times. There's split-screen elements,
and it's really I think important for people to recognize how
orchestrated it is, because a lot of times people don't really
pay attention to the details, and it's, "Oh, yeah, I realize
there's people up there, but I don't really know what they're
doing."
Pete:
What would you like people to come away with after seeing this
DVD?
Dweezil: At the very
least they should feel like they got to see something that was
made specifically for the art of music. I mean, Frank really
felt strongly about music as an art form and treated music with
a lot of respect, you know, so music itself has really sort of I
think been degraded by so many digital elements in terms of how
people consume it and all that these days so that the actual
value of music has been degraded. People expect that it's
supposed to be free. And in this case, this is a very honorable
life's work, Frank's music, and to present it to people and let
them see people who really are invested in it in terms of a
personal relationship to the music, it does make it a different
kind of experience. People should really enjoy seeing good
musicians get a chance to do something rarely done in music
these days ... play their instruments and have a good time doing
it well.
Pete:
You said you are going to be touring this summer. Any plans
beyond that, any plans to record with this group?
Dweezil: We're going
to put out a live album from the '07 tour this year, probably
coinciding with the tour. I'm working on that now. And then
there's going to be another DVD from the '07 tour, but it won't
be in the same vein as the first one, which was quite an
expensive presentation. There was a large crew, at least 40
extra people, a recording truck, cameras, you know, with the big
jib operators. The other one is more of a guerilla hand-held
shoot, an indie sort of day-in-the-life experience concept with
interviews and performances.
Check out Zappa Plays Zappa Here!
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