Frank Zappa by Barry Miles

Author:Barry Miles
Language: hrv
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

He appeared to use DiscReet simply as a vehicle to release records and to produce an income stream; all other aspects of the company were in the hands of Cohen and his partners. It is hard to imagine Zappa signing any of the acts that Herb now loaded the label with: Christopher Bond; Brenda Patterson, formerly with Black Oak Arkansas; Growl; the Whiz Kids; Denis Bryant; Kathy Dalton, who had some success with ‘Boogie Bands and One Night Stands’; and Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, who did two albums with DiscReet before going on to make a fortune for Epic.

After the success of Over-Nite Sensation, Frank moved quickly to release a follow up – taken from the same series of recording sessions – called Apostrophe (’). He wanted a January release, but was persuaded to wait until a proper advertising campaign could be mounted. Over-Nite Sensation was a chart hit, but a vinyl shortage prevented it selling as well as it might have done. Warners put extra effort into promoting Apostrophe (’) and when it was released in April it entered the Cashbox Top 20 at Number 18.

Apostrophe (’) was promoted in 30-second TV adverts designed by Zappa and Cal Schenkel, featuring a frenzied DJ shouting over an animated video skit. Zappa: ‘We tried to place them in conjunction with monster movies, because with our material that’s our audience.’ The comedy track ‘Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow’ was edited down and remixed for a single which reached Number 86 and helped push the album into the Top 10, Zappa’s second gold album. The combination of dumbed-down humour with extremely sophisticated playing meant that the music was often overlooked.

Jean-Luc Ponty left before the winter 1973 tour, citing musical differences. Ponty: ‘It was a very interesting experience at the beginning, because Zappa took out all the very complex instrumental music that he had stashed in his desk for a long time, since it was too sophisticated for the previous members of the Mothers. He had written music that was very influenced by Stravinsky, so he wanted to put together a group of excellent instrumentalists. But the public lost interest quickly, and he had to go back to satire and more commercial rock. That wasn’t what I wanted to do, so I left after only seven months. He didn’t take it well at all and we parted on very bad terms.’ Ponty, who regarded himself as a jazz violinist, was not interested in playing songs like ‘Montana’ and said so. Frank took it as an insult to his music, which he refused to admit had become more commercial even if it was still hard to play.

He went on the road with a ‘Tenth Anniversary of the Mothers’ tour for which the band had to learn all the old songs. But numbers like ‘Wowie Zowie’ and ‘Let’s Make The Water Turn Black’ just didn’t sound right played by anyone other than the original Mothers line-up, and Don Preston was the only member of the old group to rejoin for the tour.

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