The Grandmothers
The Grandmothers were a cover band in which former bandmembers of Frank Zappa played his music together. Apart from his music, they also covered other songs from notable 1960s and 1970s acts. Among the notable participants in the often-changing line-up were John Balkin, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Jimmy Carl Black, Tony Duran, Roy Estrada, Tom Fowler, Walt Fowler, Chris Garcia, Bunk Gardner, Bob Harris, Elliot Ingber, Don Preston and Ike Willis. They also performed under the name Grande Mothers Re:Invented.
Zappa and his wife Gail weren't pleased with The Grandmothers and often criticized them in interviews and tried to sue them, often complicating The Grandmothers' ability to release records and, for three years, to even tour. Ike Willis recalled in Thing-Fish Rap. (Interview in T'Mershi Duween, issue #54, October 1996) that he couldn't even be seen in the presence of Black and Preston without Gail getting angry about it.
Records With Zappa Covers
- Looking Up Granny's Dress (cover by Cal Schenkel and photographs by Norbert Obermanns)
- Who Could Imagine
Zappa about The Grandmothers
In the performance I saw by the Grandmothers, they weren't particularly kind to their former leader in the few comments they made about you.
Frank Zappa: "Well, I think they feel that's probably the coolest thing to do. If they want to appeal to the writing public at large, it's easier to get more coverage if you call me an asshole than it is if you say I'm a nice guy. But the fact of the matter is, what they're doing isn't particularly defensible from an artistic standpoint, because it's a ripoff. They're not paying me for the use of my compositions that they're performing onstage, they're using my name and the work that I've done in order to earn income for themselves, and then they present me with the total ingratitude of treating me like an asshole in their performance. If you had been around when they were in the band and you had seen them and seen the kind of performances they gave and the persona they exhibited onstage when they were official members of the Mothers of Invention, then compared that to what they are today, you would say, "This is a fraud." Because when a guy is in the band he's got a little something going for him. He's got the security of the band paying his salary, he's got a license to be as weird as he can be onstage because he knows that his ass is covered – because I take the rap for what's going on there, right? That gives them the chance to be something other than what they would be in everyday life. And when a guy leaves the band, he loses that license. He has to take the rap for his own behavior, okay? And a lot of the image that was conveyed by those guys at that time – of the funny, weird, whatever – was purely that: just an image. They weren't really that funny, they weren't really that weird. But they were placed in a setting where they were allowed to be those kinds of characters. And now, they have to take responsibility for who they actually are. And who and what they actually are is not what they were. So for a person who goes to a performance of that group and expects to relive the golden days of yesteryear, you're not going to get it – because I'm not waving the stick over it."
What do you think of people who do want to relive that era?
Frank Zappa: "First of all, they can't do it. The era itself is gone. The reason the Mothers were what they were was a combination of these ingredients: the time in which they appeared, and the personalities of the individual members in that particular year of their growth as people. People change. Motorhead of 1967 is not Motorhead of today, nor is the Don Preston of 1967 the Don Preston of today. The Don Preston of today has been on the road with – what's that guy's name? – Leo Sayer, right? He was with Leo Sayer for a number of years. It changes a guy, you know? Those guys in '67 were different people, and the year '67 was a different year, and where they were working was a different world. They were at the Garrick Theater in this little test tube environment for six months or whatever, two shows a night, six nights a week, perfecting a certain type of weirdness that will never happen again. I've got it on film, I've got it on tape – but it ain't on the stage with those guys. So kiss it off, it's gone. If you didn't see it in '67, then you ain't gonna get it. No matter what they play or how weird they pretend to be, it's not going to be recreated – it's a fake." - Frank Zappa, Zappa, 82/4, interviewed by Dan Forte, Musician, issue #42, April 1982.
Matt Groening: What was your reaction to the Grandmothers, the old Mothers Of Invention?
Frank Zappa: "I thought it was pathetic." - The Mother Of All Interviews (Part 2), 1992.
Interviews
- Don Preston Interview, 92-08-26
- Interview With Bunk Gardner, 92-11
- Jimmy Carl Black Interview, 91-5
- Mother People, 91-5
- Texan Grandmother In Interview Shock Horror
