FWD: Interview with Frank Zappa (1992), Part One

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Frank Zappa

Interview in the Los Angeles Times

1 October 1992

New music: After illness forced him to cut short a European tour, Frank Zappa 
is back in harness. Says a
friend of the composer: 'He's just not going to be bothered by something as 
stupid as cancer.' 
Los Angeles - Scotch the grim rumors, says Frank Zappa. He says he's not 
written his last note of music, and is not
breathing his last breaths, as some European media claim. 

"Just describe the stuff as melodramatic fiction," said the 51-year-old 
Zappa, who is battling prostate cancer. "What
ever it is, it's highly exaggerated." 

The reports appeared last week after Zappa canceled his part in "The Yellow 
Shark," a series of European concerts
of his orchestral music. Zappa hosted and partially conducted two of the 
initial concerts at the Frankfurt Festival
Sept. 17-19, then flew back to L.A., too ill to continue. His condition has 
since improved, and the concerts by the
highly regarded Ensemble Modern were completed in Berlin and Vienna without 
him. 

"Point one, it's not my last composition." said Zappa in an exclusive 
interview from his Laurel Canyon home. "Point
two, it's not the last concert of my music that's going to occur, and point 
three, I'm in negotiations currently with the
Vienna Festival to do an opera for the '94 season." 

For much of the last year, Zappa practically sequestered himself in his home 
studio to write new works
commissioned by the Ensemble, an international group of 25 classically 
trained musicians specializing in modern music
(which recently drew critical praise for a John Cage tribute at the Frankfurt 
Festival). 

Named after a fiberglass fish that used to rest against Zappa's 
listening-room fireplace, "The Yellow Shark" is a
90-minute program of transcriptions and new arrangements of existing Zappa 
works, such as "Be-Bop Tango,"
"Pound for a Brown," "G-Spot Tornado," "Dog Breath" and "Uncle Meat" (here 
combined as a suite, "Dog/Meat")
and new compositions: "Chunnel Mr. Boogins," "Amnerica," "Get whitey," 
"Welcome to America," "None of the
Above". 

The sell out performances, which were painstakingly rehearsed with Zappa's 
guidance over a period of months in
both L.A. and Frankfurt, were critically and popularly hailed (and broadcast 
live on German pay-per-view
television). Although Zappa's orchestral music has been recorded and 
performed by Kent Nagano and the London
Symphony as well as by Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble Inter-Contemporaine 
(Boulez, in fact, commissioned
Zappa's "The Perfect Stranger"), "The Yellow Shark" is a milestone in Zappa's 
career as a composer of "serious"
music. 

The first night in Frankfurt, which ended with Zappa conducting "G-Spot 
Tornado" as the La La La Human Steps
dance ensemble swirled about him, was hailed with a 20-minute ovation. 

"Well, by modern music standards, this would be an astonishing maybe even 
historic, success," said Zappa, whose
famous mustache and "lip-T" arrangement are mostly gray now, "because of the 
audience response to it, and the type
of audience that attended. And the audience was probably 50-50 'suits' versus 
young people. We even had a bunch
of 70-year-olds out there getting off on it. 

"You know what normally happens at a modern music concert. If you have an 
audience of 500, it's a success, and
you're talking about averaging 2,000 seats a night in these places, and 
massive, lengthy encore-demanding applause
at the end of the shows. Stunned expressions on the faces of the musicians, 
the concert organizers, the managers,
everybody sitting there with their jaws on the floor. They never expected 
anything like this." 

On the second night, Zappa was too ill to go on. The concert went ahead, yet 
"they got the same response from the
audience - it surprised the hell out of everybody." Zappa returned the third 
night, but his stamina gave out. While
Zappa was weighing the prospects of going on to Berlin, his condition 
worsened, and he returned home Sept. 22, by
ambulance. He was well enough to resume work by Friday. "It was a rough trip 
for me," he acknowledged. 

Rough, but satisfying. 

"I've never had such an accurate performance at any time for that kind of 
music that I do," the composer said, a trace
of amazement in his tone. "The dedication of the group to playing it right 
and putting the 'eyebrows' on it [Zappa-ese
for intuitive, spontaneous musical histrionics] is something that - it would 
take your breath away. You would have to
have seen how grueling the rehearsals were, and how meticulous the conductor, 
Peter Rundel, was in trying to get all
the details of this stuff worked out....It's nice that the concerts still 
went on, that the audiences seemed to like it more
and more. And that I don't have to stand there and be Mr. Carnival Barker to 
draw 'em in. They're coming anyway!"

Since learning of his illness in early 1990, the iconoclastic musician has 
missed few days' work. He's stayed awake
many a night - all night - composing at his Synclavier. 

Zappa does not discuss his illnes or treatments in any detail, saying merely, 
"I feel pretty good. I have mostly good
days. I have some bad days, but they're not too often." He looks healthy - if 
anything, he looks comfortably
middle-aged, with a well articulated paunch and professorial tortise-shell 
glasses. As one person close to him put it:
"He's just not going to be bothered by something stupid as cancer." 


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