KPFM-FM Radio Interview, 84/5
KPFA-FM Radio Interview
May 17, 1984
Frank Zappa interviewed by Charles Amirkhanian.
Source URL: http://www.archive.org/details/AM_1984_05_17
47:09 min.
"Charles Amirkhanian interviews Frank Zappa in anticipation of his appearance on Speaking Of Music at the Exploratorium. Zappa discusses his digital re-mastering of his album "Lumpy Gravy" and other early works. The musical selections played during this program are not included in this recording.
This audio is part of the collection: Other Minds Archive
Charles Amirkhanian: Welcome to our program with Frank Zappa, who is visiting the Bay Area for performances with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra directed by Jean-Luis Lerue on Saturday evening and also tonight, and, ah, they can be doing Dupree's Paradise along with the program of other classical music at the Herbst Theatre, then on Sunday, the main event, of course, Speaking Of Music, with Frank Zappa at the The Exploratorium's program at the Palace Of Fine Arts at 8 pm.
Frank's gonna be presenting a variety of recent music, all in digital sound on a special playback system made by John Myer's Sound Lab, and the the program begins with excerpts from Lumpy Gravy, remastered in digital sound, soon to be re-released in – as I understand – in a box set of records from the old days, and then there'll be excerpts from his classical pieces, works for Synclavier and orchestrations of music by his name-sake from the 18th century, Francesco Zappa, who flourished in the 18th century, but who is going to flourish again in San Francisco this Sunday night.
Frank, let's talk a little bit about the program at the The Exploratorium. First of all, because a lot of people are anxious to know what exactly you're planning for the evening. Ah, how did you arrive at this selection of hings? There is such a variety.
FZ: Well, that's the point, a lot of people don't know what kind of variety is available. But, ah, I think that they'll get a good whiff of that on Sunday … and also it's sequenced to – ah– give people some kind of insight into how the writing for instruments other than guitar, bass and drums has progressed since the days of Lumpy Gravy … and … ah … there's a lot of surprises in it, and … should be fun to listen to. I mean, I've listened to the tapes right through just to check it out to make sure they was ok, and so … interesting program.
CA: I walked up to the ticket office where they're selling tickets the other day in Union Square and a guy said, "Oh yeah, well, he's not playing anything, it's just a lecture."
FZ: He's so entirely too incorrect!
CA: [laughs] Yeah but, it was mind-blowing, that … ah … I, ah tried to straighten the young man out and then he bought a ticket so I … I think, he was convinced. I hope other people will be out there, because this is sort of a special opportunity to hear pieces in a … really incredible setting, because of the sound system you've been working with. Now, as I understand, you've been recording all of the orchestral things on 24-track-digital, which is sort of new …
FZ: Yeah, it's new, and … ah … we're one of the first people to … or first companies to attempt that, and I think the sound is … excellent.
CA: Now, tell me a little bit about the … ah … Lumpy Gravy remix. This album, it seems to me, is sort of seminal in a lot of ways, because it has the kind of tape slicing and collaging that … ah … Musique concrète and serious composers were doing, but it's done in a … wacky way, which later was imitated by a lot of composers in the serious music field as well as … ah …the Rock field. And now, that everybody in New Wave and Punk music is doing really ah … outstuff, this seems to me to be one of the key early pieces in this genre …
FZ: Yeah, I think it was probably the first of the outside Rock 'n' Roll albums, and has a special place in the repertoire because of that, hrm, it's one of my favorite albums, on a conceptional level. I don't think that it turned out very well musically, because there wasn't enough time to perfect the orchestral performances that were in there and all the other stuff, and it was all done with very crude equipment. It was recorded in 1966 and it was a 4-track recording …
CA: 4-track, aw …
FZ: Yeah. It was recorded at ah … the orchestra was recorded in Capitol Records Studio A, and the splicing and, … ah … location of all the little pieces of found objects that are glued together to make the stuff in between took about thirteen months. And that was all done on a … a Roberts, in … my house [laughs], and then the whole thing was put together and mastered with whatever they thought was the finest stuff of the day, which by today-standards wasn't very good.
And that's one the reasons why we've gone back and done a digital re-tweezement on it, to equalize it and … ah … clean up some of the things that can be cleaned up with digital technology, so that on all the selections in this first box set that's being released. If you have original albums, it's a drastic improvement over the originals, and a lot of people of … ah … written in ###, sayin', "where can they get another copy of Freak Out!, mine's worn out", well they, you'll be able to get a new copy of Freak Out!, Absolutely Free, Lumpy Gravy, We're Only In It For Money and Ruben And The Jets plus the Mystery Disc, that has little pieces of continuity and stuff that was left out o'those albums and other things that date from before Freak Out! included in that package. And that's set for release within the next couple o'months.
And, …
CA: Did you … did …
FZ: … and, this excerpt that we're gonna play, is part of the first that you'll be able to hear from that …
CA: Did you actually record anything in Lumpy Gravy or is it just …
FZ: No, ah … nothin' is been re-recorded, ah … there are been two things added to the orchestral stuff, ah … that is a brand new set o'drums and a brand new electric bass, playing the same parts that were originally written into the scores but not too legible on the original tapes. Basically it's the same, same piece. It's just, we've improved the echo on it, we've improved high frequency clarity and tried to suppress the tape noise were it was possible.
CA: So, people who come out Sunday night will be able to get a preview of the new, new … ah … remastering of the album. That's gonna be great. What about the other albums? Did you do significant work on them as well?
FZ: On … hrm … Freak Out! the only thing we did was take the original two-track mixes, re-equalize them and change some of the echo that was on there. Same thing on Absolutely Free. On We're Only In It For The Money it was completely remixed from the original 8-track masters, because the 2-track masters were pretty much destroyed by being stored badly. And in the case of that album, all of the drum set parts and all of the bass parts were replaced. And the same thing was true on Cruising With Ruben & The Jets, drums and bass replaced.
CA: What can you do to store a tape badly like that?
FZ: I don't know how they did it, but the condition of the tape was such that the off-side had fallen off and you could see through the tape and … ah … when you played it, you could tell that there used to be something on there but it sure didn't sound good, and there's just no way to retrieve it so we had to go back at great expense and great time … ah … delay to … ah … re-record the rhythm tracks and the complete remix on the original masters, and if you ever heard the We're Only In It For The Money album, that too is collaged together, there's lots of little bits and pieces, and they had to be located from the four corners of the world, re-spliced, re-sequenced, hrm, and it was a BIG job.
And in the case of Ruben & The Jets there was one master that was completely gone, no, we couldn't find it … a little background here: I … because of some law suits, that I was involved in, I now have the rights to all these master recordings and that's one of the reasons why I'm re-releasing 'em. But when the masters were returned to me, in the case of the Ruben & The Jets album, the song Stuff Up The Cracks was missing. I couldn't find it anywhere, so we had to … just do a … ah … re-spiffing on the two-track mix o'that. So … everything else on that album has been really cleaned though …
CA: It's hard to think of even attempting to put some of the things back together, I mean, it's unbelievable.
FZ: Well, see, the problem is, that I know what they are and I know where they are, roughly, in the … this mountain of tape, that I got stored in this vault in my house. But, ah, to find it, to go through the hours and hours of tape to find these little pieces was unbelievable work. You, just when you thought you had all the pieces to do a section, you knew there was something else missing and you had to go diving back in there, because there was little things like two seconds long, and they're not labelled on the box, it just doesn't say "Eighteenth Cut of the Two-Seconds Duration in Segment Nine from Side Two", it has some other weird name on it or it's not named at all, you just happened a note that might have been the last note of improvisation that was on some other ### reel tape, and you gotta go find it, chop it up …
CA: Working in the studio is so different from putting everything down on paper and that's one the things that happen when you're in the studio: you grab something off on a … from a reel tape, put it into a mix, and then finding it later is a real chore …
FZ: Yeah.
CA: I could never recreate some of the things I've tryin' to do that way. It's … ### even I gave it a shot. Ahm,
FZ: Well, that's because I respect the people in the audience who like this kind of music and I'm in, let's face it, I need all the friends I can get. So, if you can't do a good job for them, then who else are gonna do it for 'em.
CA: We're talking with Frank Zappa, who is appearing at the Exploratorium Sunday night at 8 pm, for tickets you can go to the Stubs Box Office in Union Square or there'll be a few tickets on sale at the door if you get there at … ah … let's say seven. …Next ### on six thirty. This is one of the few times, that I know, that, if you've talked in front of an audience at all, you do this … have you done this before?
FZ: Very seldom. The most recent event was the thing that I did at the American Society of University Composers in Columbus, Ohio, which is about five weeks ago. And I'll be making some references to that appearance. And … ah … maybe even read some excerpts from the speech that I gave there, because it has … ah … some funny lines in it that even people in San Francisco could … identify with.
CA: Ha! As I understand that you're … couple o'years you dropped touring with a band and … and now … ah … you're dropping the classical music world and going back to touring. What happened?
FZ: Well, I spent two years in the classical music world so-called, ah … last two years and I met a bunch of people that I thought were really not too pleasant, and experienced some things that I thought were … ahm … really not too classical and not too evolved either, in fact pretty much retarded compared to the way things are in the … ah … crass and ignorant world of Rock 'n' Roll. I found many things in the serious music world to be even more depressing than that. And I already fell at home in the world of so-called serious music and the denizens that inhabit that, it's not the kind of a … erm … real might feel comfortable functioning (?) so … after these events here on the Bay Area, which includes the stuff that's gonna happen in June, that's about it. I have no plans to ever write another piece of orchestral music in my life, and … ah … I have had it, that's it.
CA: The orchestra is not particularly the …ah … modern instrument anyway and I think …
FZ: Well, it could be, I mean, anything can be a modern instrument if you do whatever you want with it.
CA: I suppose when I'm thinking of the … the evolution of the form of the orchestra and why it came about that it has certain instrument in it that it excludes other ones.
FZ: Well, I don't exclude them when I write. For instance the pieces that they're playing at the Cellar Box Auditorium in June, one of the pieces that's getting world premiere has seven saxophones plus some electric instruments built into it, there's no reason why you can't have any instruments that you want in an orchestra. For my taste an orchestra is any group of instruments that you wanna stick together. But, ah … the problems of writing for an orchestra, doing business with orchestra managers, doing business with … ah … ahm … foundations, and doing business with … ah … the unions and other abstractions on the periphery of the serious music world are not … it's nothing that I find … ah … too worth while. I told some other people in Los Angeles, I think it's probably gotta be my motto, that modern music is a sick puppy, and we might as well let nature take it's course. Amercians don't want it! And to fight to … ahm … keep presenting it and sticking it their face is a waste! They're not willing to support it, the same way they're not willing to put up a little extra money to better prisons or more of them. You know, Americany has strange priorities and … ah …
[both laughing]
CA: Is your … ah … is your other music one of their priorites, or …?
FZ: Oh, no, not necessarily. But at least, if I'm doing Rock 'n' Roll music, I know, that … ah … at the end of the day I have a little chance to break even or even make a profit from spending those hours doing that kind of work. And if I'm writing music for orchestra there is no way I can … ah … even break even on it. It's impossible! The economics are … ah … Science Fiction.
CA: You haven't exactly said, what's bothered you about the classical music world. Is it in part that people are so … ah … used to doing things for almost no money with regard to composers that … ah … they want any of rehearsal money and comission money?
FZ: Well, comission money may be there, but I mean, if somebody comissions you to write a piece, how … how can I possible compensate you for what it really costs to write a piece of music? It takes weeks, months, sometimes years to write a piece of music, how can somebody pay you enough in a world where they don't care, where they wanted to spend enough money to have a good rehearsal of the piece, to pay the composer?
You know, when people go out to raise money for modern music events, they're worried about having enough money to rent the hall, pay the stage hands and pay the musicians and the last guy on the list is the composer. And so, y'know, if you don't want composers to …ah … be alive or … to be alive to write music, then don't, you know!
I'm not gonna subject myself to that kind of stupidity and I think that, honestly, this is one of the things that I told the people at the American University Composers … ah … thing, just stop doing it! Stop! It's useless, it's over! This is the Dark Ages! Forget it! Why bother to write music?! Americans do not want it, they won't pay to support it, and why should you suffer?! Go get a real esttate license and get serious.
CA: I think it's good advice for all of us in the Arts of … [laughs]
FZ: Yeah, the only people who make out in the Arts are the stage hands, because Unions guarantees they're gonna get paid. Their Union is so much stronger than the musician Union, they can get residuals from foreign broadcasts of video tapes of music recorded in the US, where sometimes the musicians don't.
CA: Composers don't even have a Union in the US.
FZ: That's, that's right! And the other thing that pointed out in my speech was, that even though composers are musicians and often belong to the Musicians Union, the only value that the Musicians Union see, is to having a composer being alive on the planet is, it makes worth for the copiers, who are members of the Union. There's no special effort put out on the part the Union to do anything to help composers. They're … they're pretty much the scum of the earth.
And, in the speech that I gave in Ohio, I said, 'You don't believe you're the scum of the earth? Go to a bank and try to get a loan!', y'know? I mean, there's only one thing worse to tell a banker when you get a loan, and that is tellin' you're a painter. You're just not gonna get it! [both laughing]
CA: Well, on the other hand, ah … most composers don't plan to make a living being a composer.
FZ: Well, why should they have to do that? I think that if you do something which I believe is valuable to the society which is to provide them with musical entertainment of one form or another, why should you have to have a part time job to support that habit? Why should that be inflicted on you?
CA: Well, if you wanna do it badly enough, I guess that's your choice, even … unless you write something that millions of Americans want to pay for, ah?
FZ: Well, then there's always the Jingle business
CA: [laughs]
FZ: or STAR WARS!
CA: [laughs] We're talking with Frank Zappa, and, ah, it's time for some music. I don't know what we … have here, we have lots of stuff.
FZ: Play 'em The Jazz Discharge Party Hats. No, no, by the way, come up too fast …
CA: That's ok, it's about that … that time in the morning when it's good to recharge, so let's discharge. This is from which album?
FZ: Now, if you'll … you wanna to … just … wake them up really hard first?
CA: Yeah, as hard as possible.
FZ: Oh, ok, play something loud and obnoxious like We Are Not Alone. That's from the Man From Utopia album.
Interlude.
CA: You just heard We Are Not Alone from the Man From Utopia album, Frank Zappa's music, and Frank's with us here, KPFA, to introduce some of his recordings and also talk about recent activities and upcoming events as such as tonight's concert at the Herbst Theatre, Jean Louis LeRoux conducting his Dupree's Paradise and other works and then … ah … that's repeated on Saturday night.
Sunday night he's at the Speaking Of Music series at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre at 8 pm, and … it's gonna be interesting. Lots of recordings of recent pieces, some for Synclavier, others from the old albums and some from the London Symphony sessions. And also we're gonna hear something which Pierre Boulez recently conducted in Paris, hn?
FZ: That's right, you'nna hear Naval Aviation In Art, this is from an album, that's gonna be released on Angel in the United States.
CA: Is that your first album then for another label in long time …
FZ: Yes, it wouldn't have been an album for another label if … problems hadn't arisen with CBS, who'd originally planned to record the stuff and I would 've released it on Barking Pumpkin through CBS, but what happened was, at the last minute EMI saved the day and they and they came in, paid for the recording sessions and so they have the rights to release it and on EMI outside the US and on Angel inside the US.
CA: So Barking Pumpkin's not … ah … the records are no longer distributed throgh CBS?
FZ: No. Only this Boulez album is going to be on … on Angel and all the rest of the Barking Pumpkin product which is about to be released will go out through MCA.
CA: How, how is it seen at now, is it all mail order from your own business or …
FZ: 's right! It's mail order now.
CA: Yeah. Ahm, weren't you, ah …
FZ: We need some more music.
CA: All right, let's see, what do we have?
FZ: Now play 'em The Jazz Discharge Party Hats
Interlude.
CA: Those were The Jazz Discharge Party Hats, Frank Zappa's music, on Barking Pumpkin, The Man From Utopia album. And, ah … I didn't hear it, did you? [both laughing]
FZ: One by ###
CA: How y'doing this, 'coz you can't discuss the music [laughs] unless you had to memorize …, I guess you do
FZ: Well, I … yeah I do, … I know exactly how it goes.
CA: Who did the cover for this album? This is really bizarre …
FZ: He's a great guy, he's an Italian, and, ahm …
CA: [laughs]
FZ: This is based on a character, that he has had in an Italian magazine and has also appeared in Heavy Metal here in the United States, the guy's name is RanXerox, he's a robot, and … ah … I had him … ah … changed the face around a little bit and put me on there, ordinarily RanXerox's skin is green, he did me a favor and made a ### teint on this …
CA: [laughs] So this is an extra character?
FZ: Yeah, it's … yeah …
CA: The ### is other … I didn't know that. Well, a lot o' great people on this album. Who is … who is playing in this last cut?
FZ: On Jazz Discharge Party Hats, that's been Colaiuta on drums and Arthur Barrow on bass, Tommy Mars on keyboards , Steve Vai on guitar doubling the vocal line.
CA: Are any of the gentlemen gonna be touring with you when you start up again in July? … Only your crew …
FZ: No. The band in … ah … that we're taking out for the rest of this year is Chad Wackerman on drums, Scott Thunes on bass, Ray White on guitar and vocals, Ike Willis on vocals, Napoleon Murphy Brock on sax and vocals, Bobby Martin on keyboards and vocals. And we're still auditioning for another keyboard vocalist. The rehearsals start on monday.
CA: Really, right after …
FZ: Yeah, so if, y'know, you got somebody out there who can … ah … play … ah … very proficient … ah … synthesizer and keyboards, and also happens to be able to sing like Frankie Valli …
CA: High? [laughs]
FZ: Yeah, right, we need … 'coz everybody else is singing in low, we need some more in the high vocal department. Tell 'em t' call your … ah … station and I'll arrange for an audition if he's really competent.
CA: All right, we'll do that. The number is area 415–848 67 67, and ask to speak to the general manager David Selneker (?). Ah, [laughing] I believe I'm so excited, I don't wanna have a lot of …
FZ: Yeah, that's good, wake up, David.
CA: [laughing] Ah, we gone listen next to … ah … some things from the Drowning Witch album, the London Symphony recorded Envelopes, a piece of yours. It took 'em 4 minutes and 11 seconds, but your band plays it in 2'44. What happened here?
FZ: Well, y'know, the orchestra aside from being kind of this … ah … arche-dinosaur of an invention also tends to ponder along on things that Rock 'n' Roll bands can play a lot crisper and faster. And that was … about as fast as we could get the LSO to play this particular piece. So, here's the LSO version of it and when that's over we just say we'd right into the Rock 'n' Roll version from the Drowning Witch" album.
Interlude.
CA: You just heard three works by Frank Zappa, the last Teen-age Prostitute from the Drowning Witch album, before that Envelopes and then we began with Kent Nagano conducting the London Symphony Orchestra at top speed playing Envelopes …
FZ: Ripping along in 4 minutes and 11 seconds …
[both laughing]
CA: Ah, really amazing music. It was Envelopes, composed some times ago? Or is it …
FZ: Envelopes was written in 1968 or '69 and it was originally … we tried to record it with that band with Mark and Howard and George Duke and there … there are still tapes from that recording session that had never been released, because they couldn't play it right. – So finally we have at least some version of it on tape.
There is another difference between the LSO-version and the … ah … Rock 'n' Roll-version. The LSO-version has completely different harmony for the melody line, which is something that you can do when you got a hundred and eleven guys sitting around: You can do strange harmony. A little bit different when you have an 8-piece band.
CA: The … ah … I recently heard a performance here in San Francsco of Amériques of Varese, who is one of the people you referred to in some of your writings as an influence and … it was amazing to hear all those massed instruments, although – with all the to-do about it – it was hard to pick out the unusual wind instruments and so forth …
FZ: That's a matter of the mix though … ordinary thing loss (?)
CA: Well, probably the hall … I was sitting in the orchestera section in Davy's hall, and just … everything were right over my head whereas people on the balcony could really differentiate the sound a lot better, but in comparing that piece to Arcana, which is written years later, it seemed Arcana was so much more developed and so much more exciting to me … ahm … but Varese really had a wonderful idea with these sound clusters sort of placed against one another … and … ah …
FZ: Mhm …
CA: … I wonder if that's something that you work with, you get a sort of conglomerate of … of ah … timbre and … melodic line going and then you place it against another one. Your's seems to be more modular in approach so that you have one discrete thing happen and then another thing follows and then you may repeat different items, but you don't seem to overlap them.
FZ: Well, most of what I write is … ah … for small ensembles of electric instuments and too much overlapping causes … amplified instruments tend to become very muddy when they're playing things that are not either unison or some kind of harmony that's related to the rest of the … rest of the thing. And I try to avoid that for the stuff I write for the band. As far as the orchestral goes … just about anything can happen, and the thing that … kind o' holds me back is, the experiences I 've had working with orchestras, is that … they can't count. They really can't. They have … orchestras 're having uncredibly lousy rhythm, just about any … ah … beginner's accordion band, like at the Milton Man Accordion Studio, probably has better rhythm than the London Symphony Orchestra. And it's kind of depressing, so I like to write things that have interesting rhythm, but people in orchestras are usually so tired and they can't really just be spending their time counting these things out, they're used to playin' those eighth-notes and quarter-notes and stuff or maybe they're whizzing along with the Flight of the Bumblebee every once in a while but they … they don't like sevenths and thirteenths and things like that, especially when you say the entire second violin section will now play thirteen over seven, in harmony, it … that doesn't work!
CA: [laughs]
FZ: It looks good on paper, but they … they don't do it right. And so, but you can get a Rock 'n' Roll band to do it so long as they're all rehearsed properly and they'll take their time to figure it out 'n make it work right. And we 've been doin' stuff like that on the road for years, that's why it's such a shock to come in contact with so-called incredibly professional musicians who have world-wide reputations who can do it. Y'know, that's depressing.
CA: No, it's probably because the demands haven't been made on them because the conductors don't play the music, because the boards won't let them have concerts which half the hall is filled for three performances, I don't now what it is …
FZ: Well …
CA: … but it seems to me that if … ah …
FZ: … it's humanly possible to do …
CA: … surely …
FZ: … it's just a matter of being lazy about it and it's a great … ah … credit to Kent Nagano that he will take the time and try and play something this difficult. And … ah …
CA: And make it clear and give it a profile, yeah, that's hard, that's not so easy. Ahm, but once again, if you hadn't made the demands on your musicians they wouldn't have done it. It has to be … to come from the top somewhere.
to be continued …
