Though he died over three decades ago, the music of Frank Zappa remains some of the most complex and knotty ever recorded in rock n’ roll’s seven-decade history. Put it like this: you don’t often hear buskers attempting any of his ‘hits’ (partly because aside from his 1982 single Valley Girl, he didn’t have any).
So it’s safe to say that being in his band was challenging. Now his eldest son, Dweezil Zappa, has given a bit of an insight into how his dad worked, in a rare interview he’s given to the American Music Supply podcast. There were, it seems, some strict rules.
"Well, obviously, if they were not pulling their weight and then also doing things that could get them in trouble, if they were doing extracurricular things, that was… His phrase was, 'Window or aisle, how would you like to return home?'"
(By ‘extracurricular things’ Dweezil is surely referring to drugs. Zappa was just about the only high-profile musician of the late '60s to abstain from them, and he expected his band to do the same.)
But it wasn’t just that. Improvising, it seems, was frowned upon: "The thing about the musical side of things that would drive him nuts is if you're basically a team player and you have a role, and you're supposed to stay in this lane, and the music works when everybody's in their lane, if you start jumping into somebody else's lane and you're doing your own thing to say, 'Hey, look at me, everybody! Look what I can do!' My dad's not into that."
Overplaying was also a no-no. "There were a lot of times when people would try to overstep their bounds and do too much while comping or start changing voicings on parts. And he'd be like, 'No, no. You have to do this.' And if they would continue to do that, because that was their 'I'm expressing myself.' It's like, 'Well, the window or aisle?'"
"But consider it in the context of an orchestra," Zappa added. "If an orchestra has people that are supposed to be in their lane, playing their part, and then suddenly they start changing their stuff, that's not what the composer intended... My dad wrote his music as if the rock band was the orchestra, and this is all notated, and it's really arranged. He knows how he wants it to be. So if somebody else thinks they know better, they don't. That's not what he's asking for. And so, that's why they got fired."
