Billy James
Briefly a copyist for Zappa.
I first met Frank in 1977 after a gig at Atlanta. It was as brief as could be. I shook his hand and said hello, and that was about it. It wasn't really until about 1980 that Zappa was looking for a copy of this ten record boot that someone had released, and I had quite an extravagant collection of recordings. Steve would borrow some of my tapes and he told Frank that I could probably get him the record. I did track it down for him. I went backstage at Rhode Island and 1980 and gave him the set, and also handed him some of my chart work. Steve was doing a lot of the transcriptions of the jams from the live shows, the spontaneous improvisations. Steve is probably the most amazing transcriber in the world. There are rhythms in this stuff that I cannot believe he could transcribe because they are so difficult and foreign to ninety-nine per cent of the musicians in the world. So he was feeding me some of these transcriptions. A lot of these polyrhythmic figures were so difficult that I developed a mathematical formula that demonstrated how these figures worked.
So I'd handed some of these charts to Frank, never expecting to hear from him. Then a few months later, I got a letter from him telling me how much he appreciated the charts. This lead to me doing some more charts for him which I guess he used to teach the band members how to play certain rhythms. He will often use some of the rhythmic figures to write things. A lot of the band members, even though they are excellent players and readers, could not understand how these rhythms worked. I remember doing some things like 'Stucco Homes' and 'Joe's Garage' and a few live things. So it wasn't really an awful lot.
The big story I remember was that Steve was up at the house one time. Frank had a bunch of file cabinets with charts in, some very early stuff, like the drum piece 'Mice' that Frank wrote as a kid, and he saw a couple of my charts in there which made me feel pretty neat at that time. I was happy about that. Frank is a genius; there can be no doubt about that. There is no other musician that can technically write like him. In my own opinion, I like the Mothers' material better than his later stuff, though all of it is excellent and performed with the highest of excellence. Conceptually, the early stuff is a lot more freaky and interesting, and what I'm in to.
There's a few things I remember. Going over to Frank's house one time, I went up with Vai at about three thirty in the morning. I think we'd been auditioning people all day long and recording with Dweezil. I have tapes of me and Steve and Dweezil jamming. Pretty awful, but I do have them. Frank had just finished the LSO tapes, and I'd brought up some new charts that he wanted to see. We listened to some of this stuff. Zappa hadn't shaved in a couple of days and had a full face beard, smoking ciggies and chucking down the Java. Gail had come up, and she's quite sizeable, if you know what I mean. When I was moving from the control room to the main studio, there's a very narrow passageway between the two. Unfortunately, Gail was standing there, and a stack of twenty-four track masters in cases, one of which was 'Uncle Meat'. I tried to get by her and it was such a small space, that I ended up kicking over some of the master cases. It was a very embarrassing moment. Steve and I lay on the floor listening to this LSO stuff, and Steve fell asleep, snoring. Frank came out, sat next to me and asked what I thought. I said I thought I had to go back and rehearse some more which cracked him up.
The last time I saw Frank I was invited to the 1988 rehearsals. It was pretty amazing. I sat and talked to him about possibly doing something with my book which he has endorsed, along with Chad and Don Preston, Chester Thompson, Steve Vai...[1]
Author of Necessity Is... The Early Years Of Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention
