Presenter (Libby Purvis): Let us tear ourselves away to the full sized Frank Zappa; singer, composer, businessman, politician and icon…I mean, if Caroline (reference to previous guest) was creating a student bed-sitter of the early seventies, she would have to get teeny-weeny LP’s of Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Hot Rats and a miniature of the famous poster of you, wouldn’t she. She could do a student bed-sit scene.
FZ: Yeh…I think that would be… pretty accurate.
Presenter: You did have a tremendous cult following in Britain, but it hasn’t been an entirely happy relationship, has it? I mean, one of your British concerts was disastrous for you, you actually got attacked, didn’t you?FZ: Yeah, I spent a year in a wheelchair.
Presenter: It was a fan, or the husband of a fan... wasn't it, who just sort of...
FZ: I don’t know who this guy was, you know I woke up with, um… they thought my neck was broken, my head was lying over on the side of my shoulder. I actually have to thank the guy because my voice box was crushed at that point and it lowered the pitch of my voice a minor third, so I became more of a baritone after the accident. And my leg was broken and it refused to heal so I stayed in a wheelchair… broke a rib, put a hole in the back of my head…broke my nose. Actually, gave me a whole new career.
Presenter: Did it put you off, either, Britain or off live performing?
FZ: Ah…well, prior to that time I’d been on the road for about five or six years and never carried a bodyguard. I now carry one all the time. Wheelchairs are nice, but living in them is not really that terrific.
Presenter: Then you also had a row with the Albert Hall, at one stage, didn’t you…’cus they cancelled the performance of 200 Motels on the grounds of obscenity.
FZ: Um, actually, I don’t know why they cancelled the performance, but we sued them for breach of contract. We had a completely sold out concert with my group and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and when we got there for the day of the show, the doors were locked and they wouldn’t let us in, so, uh…
Presenter: I seem to remember a rather loopy court case involving um….the judge trying to understand the lyrics?
FZ: Ah, well, his name was Justice Mocatta, I think he was about eighty years old. At one point in the proceedings one of the guys with the wigs on walked in who was presenting evidence and it was an LP, and the judge looked at it and said, “What is that”? And the other guy said, “Why it’s a phonograph record…”
Presenter: Your Honour!
(laughter)
FZ: It was very strange being in the Old Bailey. I’d been in court in the United States before and things move rather rapidly, but I guess here you have to write everything in longhand on very long pieces of paper and all the testimony is very carefully written down so you’re obliged to speak slowly. It was a surreal situation anyway. It ended up that the Albert Hall had decided to defend their position in this contract dispute by saying that my work was obscene. At the end of the court case the judge said “no it’s not obscene BUT because they’re royal and they’re British, and so forth, you lose the case because you’re from America”. So, I haven’t been that wildly enthusiastic about coming back to this…
Presenter: Well you’re welcome. We’ll try to make up for it.
FZ: Well this show is certainly interesting; I didn’t know anything like this existed!
Presenter: We’re not royal, you see…that’s the big advantage!
FZ: That helps – a lot!
Presenter: You’ve become a businessman on a considerable scale now, in different companies - your Barking Pumpkin Records, Barfko Swill - rather unlikely but lucrative names. You were referred to once as a born-again capitalist, is that misleading or correct?
FZ: I’ve never, never used that expression.
Presenter: Not by yourself, but by somebody writing about you.
FZ: Well there’s a long list of names people have called me through the years… I’m surprised you picked that one… No, I’ve always said I’m a businessman even at a time when it was unfashionable to do so… ‘cus I think business is good. And if governments will observe the first law of business – which is never kill your customers – the world would be a better place to live in.
Presenter: Hm…and this gradually took you into a fascinating connection with Eastern Europe and Czechoslovakia in particular. When did you first come in contact with Czechoslovakia.
FZ: I was visited in my home in Los Angeles by a man who at that time was a famous Czech rock musician, his name was Michael Kotsarp (?) and he invited me to Prague to have some of my orchestra music played. The a few months later there was a revolution and he was not only a rock musician but a member of parliament. And so, I was on my way to Moscow to videotape some interviews for Financial News Network and I wanted to route my trip back from Moscow through Prague, on the way back to Los Angeles, and contacted him and asked him whether he could arrange for me to meet President Havel and see some of what was going on in Prague and he did. I spent four days there, and had very interesting results.
Presenter: But before that, your music had actually become, quite seriously, a symbol of freedom in the repression years, hasn’t it?
FZ: Not just in Czechoslovakia, the same is true in East Germany and in Hungary too. When I was in Prague, in January of 1990, we taped some interviews with some of the kids who were fans there and one of the stories they told was that during the Communist years the secret police liked to catch people who had my records and they would say they were going to “beat the Zappa music out of them”. There were two guys that said they had had that particular experience with the Starzi.
Presenter: A little bit like the nuns at my school; they didn’t actually beat us, but they certainly wanted to get the music. Why do you think it was…why do you think it became that kind of symbol?
FZ: I have no idea. But I’m glad that it cheered them up because I can imagine how horrible it must have been to live in that way, for all that time, I’m glad they have some freedom now.
Presenter: Would it be the lawlessness? Your music was always, what people usually called anarchic… it was clever and witty, and so on, but you did have the shocking titles, the shocking treatments…?
FZ: Let’s analyse that…we have clever anarchy with shocking titles and clever treatments…
Presenter: I’m just trying to think what would have appealed to young Czechs.
FZ: One of the things that I found for the audience generally in Europe is a lot of people learned to speak English from my records because we would include the lyrics in the package and we would often use words they wouldn’t have in their English language textbooks, so I helped to mould the second language in a lot of countries.
Presenter: It’s a fascinating thing about the new administration in that it’s full of artists: a playwright in charge, there are jazz musicians, there are pop stars and there are writers. Do you find that a hopeful thing?
FZ: It’s only going to be hopeful if they succeed in handling the economic problems of the country. And the thing that troubles me is they have an election coming up next June and if their economy doesn’t improve in the hands of these artists, I believe that the public might vote them out. And I shudder to think what might replace them.
Presenter: What was the job you were doing with them?
FZ: That’s a very long story and you have a lot of guests, but I will just say that I had no official title with the Czech government and, er, leave it at that.
Presenter: But it was as a businessman rather than an artist?
FZ: Yes, when I originally made the deal with them I was supposed to represent them for Trade, Tourism and Culture…and I actually filed as an agent for a foreign government, with the U.S. government, in order to do this. You’re obliged by law to do that. But there was some interference by the U.S. government in this situation.
Presenter: How far is the music still completely central to your life? How much time do you still spend on it?
FZ: Well, if I’m not travelling around, I work on it everyday. The big project for next year is a new composition for the Frankfurt Festival. It gets its premiere in the week of September 14th 1992. I’m writing this piece for a group called the Ensemble Modern, which is a 25-piece chamber orchestra. And on July 10th, in just a few days, they come to Los Angeles for two weeks and I start working with them, directly, to create the composition.
Presenter: Do you still like to perform in front of people or do you prefer the mixing and the blending in your own studio?
FZ: Well, it depends... I just got finished playing a couple of concert appearances, one in Prague and another one in Budapest, just to sit in with the local bands who were playing there, to play one song, as part of the celebration to say goodbye to the Russian soldiers. I hadn’t touched the guitar since the end of the tour in 1988. I didn’t have any reason to play it. And when you have a good reason to play, it’s always fun to do it. But other than that, I like to work in the studio.
Presenter: You don’t mind not touching the guitar, not having that feedback from an audience?
FZ: Nah.
Presenter: I can’t imagine The Chieftains here ever doing without audiences…I mean, could you, Paddy?
Paddy: Eh, well we thrive on that. The live thing is one of our biggest, you know, excitement. You know, all the work is over when we get on stage, and you feel this come back from the audience, it’s very essential. But we do enjoy other things. We had a ballet there recently that we played at. We were on stage, not dressed up in leotards you’ll be glad to hear.
(laughter)
Paddy: We were on stage with the dancers popping about and that was great fun, but there was no sort of feedback until the end of the show, unlike a regular Chieftains’ concert. But then, we often get into music with orchestras as well, like Frank mentioning.
Presenter: But it’s still performance, it still has that warmth of the audience, which Frank says he can now do without – he’s happy enough in the studio…
Paddy: Yeah – I think we would feel a bit let down. I think studio work is great, we do quite a lot of it, but I think the essential thing at the end of the day is to get up and perform live. I think that’s what the music is built to, and the instruments and that, they sort of re-create a kind of Irish party or “hooley” on stage, and our audience feel that and warm to the humour. I think the music is there, but there’s a lot of humour on stage as well.
Presenter: Did that used to mean a lot to you, Frank, the creating of a party, a sense of concert, of people coming together…and preferably not hitting you!?
(laughter)
FZ: Ahhh…well I think what we created on stage didn’t resemble a party so much as an adventure, because a lot of times we would go on and not know exactly what we were going to do. We’d just start the show and keep going for an hour, hour-and-a-half, and find out what happened at the end of the show.
Presenter: Mothers of invention! Just quickly what are you going to stand for in American politics, if you continue this American political initiative of yours, what do you stand for, what’s your philosophy?
FZ: Well, first of all, I’m anti-partisan because I believe that neither of the major parties there have done a good job in domestic or foreign policy. And all of the specifics of what my platform would be, would be made available in a position on the day on when I actually announce…but the two things that I’m most concerned about is: getting rid of the U.S. income tax…
Presenter: Put the tax on objects would you…sales?
FZ: And services…because I think the income tax penalises people. It dissuades them from being productive, ‘cus the more you earn the more they take out of your pocket…it’s, you know, psychologically it’s bad. If you do it the other way you have a better chance to recapture some of the underground economy.
Presenter: We shall watch the legalities of whether you can stand with great interest, Frank Zappa.
FZ: Thank you.