Friday, June 16, 2006
By JOAN ANDERMAN
THE BOSTON GLOBE
NEW YORK -- Most people remember Frank Zappa as a weirdo: the hairy guy from the '70s who sang "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and named his kid Dweezil. And most people know Dweezil Zappa (and his sister Moon Unit) as the original oddly named celebrity offspring.
When Frank died of prostate cancer in 1993, he left a legacy of maverick musicianship and widespread misconceptions. Dweezil, now 36, has set out to preserve the former and skewer the latter with Zappa Plays Zappa, a.k.a. the Tour de Frank.
Introducing Frank Zappa's music to a new generation is no easy task, mainly because it involves actually playing Zappa's music. In addition to an absurdist wit and a subversive pundit, Zappa was an accomplished composer and iconoclastic arranger. With his group The Mothers of Invention and a series of subsequent touring ensembles, Zappa fused rock, funk, jazz and classical music in often wildly theatrical and technically intricate works.
It's no wonder Dweezil, a disciple of Eddie Van Halen, gave himself a two-year "guitar makeover" in preparation for Zappa Plays Zappa.
"I had to learn some new techniques and music theory elements," says Dweezil. "Frank's music is hard to play."
That's an understatement, and this is no casual tribute band. Frank's son readily concedes that he's on a mission.
"The important thing," Dweezil says, "is that people need to recognize he's not Weird Al Yankovic. That's not to slam Weird Al. He's good at what he does. But the perception is if you use humor in your music, then you don't take yourself seriously and, therefore, what you do isn't really valid. Frank took what he did very seriously."
While there's no doubting Dweezil's efforts to hip the world to his father's estimable gifts, it's clear during an interview at Madison Square Garden before the 2006 Jammy Awards that the motive isn't merely musical altruism. Labor of love seems to be an especially apt description of Zappa Plays Zappa. Talking about it brings Dweezil to tears.
"I don't want his music to disappear in my lifetime," he says, wiping his eyes. "It's tough. It means a lot to me."
Zappa has put together an ensemble that includes seasoned veterans of his father's road shows -- among them vocalist Napoleon Murphy Brock, drummer Terry Bozzio, and guitarist Steve Vai -- as well as a core ensemble of young talent. In order to find musicians with the right blend of virtuosity and spirit, Zappa orchestrated a challenging audition process. Prospective keyboardists, for example, were given three days to learn "The Black Page" and "Inca Roads" -- without sheet music. Zappa wanted them to transcribe the songs by ear and play each the way they heard it on the original recordings.
"The only way for people to discover Frank's music at this point is for us to re-create it live on stage," says Zappa, "because it's never going to be on the radio. My goal was to have a younger band so that we could attract a younger audience, make it feel more contemporary. I don't want it to seem like a circus act or a nostalgia act. I also wanted to train them from the ground up. Frank's music needs to be played in the correct manner."
Like everything else about this project, the set list is personal. Dweezil chose the material that meant the most to him growing up: the tunes he heard around the house as a child. Much of the 30-song set is culled from a handful of albums (out of 70 Zappa released in his lifetime): "Apostrophe (')," "Over-Nite Sensation," "Roxy & Elsewhere" and "Sheik Yerbouti."
"When you're 10 years old and you hear 'St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast,'" Dweezil says, "it's pretty cool."
Zappa Plays Zappa staged its first public show in April at the Jammys, where Frank was honored posthumously with a lifetime achievement award. The irony of the setting wasn't lost on Dweezil, who is well aware of his father's attitude toward the peace-and-love scene.
"He was known for sort of poking fun at certain traditional kinds of communities that would get together for this kind of behavior," Dweezil says, and that's putting it diplomatically. Zappa and The Mothers of Invention devoted an entire album, 1968's "We're Only in It for the Money," to painting hippies as phonies. "He would be magnanimous about saying there's a place for everybody. It's all valid. But it's not what Frank was about."
It's not what Dweezil is about either. Zappa the younger released his debut album, "Havin' a Bad Day," in 1986, and over the next 12 years put out three more largely ignored guitar-rock records. Best known for his marriage to singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb, which ended in 2004, Zappa worked briefly as an MTV VJ and on a sitcom, "The Normal Life," with his sister Moon Unit. He and his brother Ahmet released a pair of albums in the '90s as the band Z.
In classic rock-spawn fashion, Dweezil is destined to keep tripping along the crooked line that separates his own identity from his very famous, very talented parent.
"I think it's mutually beneficial," Zappa says. "We're both misunderstood. People know me because they heard my goofy name when I was born. They might know I play guitar but have never heard me because I've never been on any popular records. So they'll see me playing Frank's music and go, 'OK, I get it, he's actually a good guitar player,' and maybe they'll be interested in what I do besides play Frank's music.
"But we're not playing any of my music on the tour," Dweezil hastens to add. "It's all Frank."
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