ZAPPA Lives Again
“People, I hope, will be asking themselves constantly, ‘What the fuck is going on?’” says
Zappa. Twentysix years after the death of Frank Zappa, his youngest son Ahmet is bringing Frank back to the stage in The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa. Ahmet, co-trustee of the Zappa Family Trust, has joined forces with Eyellusion, the company behind the Ronnie James Dio hologram tour, to design a new stage show celebrating his father’s music.
The music for The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa was created using neverreleased footage that Zappa shot in 1974. It was drummer Joe Travers, the Vaultmeister in charge of cataloguing the extensive Zappa archives, who first made Ahmet aware of the material. “He mentioned, ‘Oh yeah, there’s this rehearsal that Frank shot right after the Roxy,’” says Ahmet. “There’s the whole Roxy film debacle where they lost sync with the sound, so Frank was frustrated and he wanted to do a video special. This was one of those options that he captured that didn’t get used.”
Using the audio from the 1974 session has allowed Ahmet to plan a concert that doesn’t rely on performances that fans are already familiar with. “I really want the show to be all about the music you love, but different versions that the fanbase hasn’t heard before,” he says. “Frank’s
vocals are great, his guitar playing is great. His performances from that show are the basis for what people will hear but not necessarily the basis for what they’ll see, because we created lots of insane visuals to go along with this extraordinary night of music.”
Unlike the aforementioned Ronnie James Dio hologram, which was all about putting Dio onstage, The
Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa aims to create a unique experience, with specific visuals designed for the different songs. Some of these
Ahmet Zappa talks to Prog about the family legacy, why he’s open to working with his brother Dweezil again, and dealing with the haters as he brings his father back to life onstage as a hologram in The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa.
“To all those people who say Frank would never want to do this, I would say you might want to go back to your Frank history and read chapter 18 of The Real Frank Zappa Book.”
“We’re premiering new pieces of music that no one has ever heard before and there’s an entire orchestra.”
will be entirely new, others will draw inspiration from existing works like Bruce Bickford’s 1987 stop-motion animation on The Amazing Mr. Bickford. “Basically, I like to think of the show as being magical surrealism,” says Ahmet. “Bruce’s work definitely makes me feel that way when I see it and he was an inspiration, along with people like Terry Gilliam. I know that Frank loved Terry Gilliam, so as much as I could I tried to infuse elements of what Frank loved and experiences I had with him and put that in the show.”
One of those experiences involves the 1962 Mexican horror film The Brainiac, which Frank would put on for Ahmet to watch while he was working. “It’s probably the movie I’ve seen most in my life and it would make him laugh and laugh,” says Ahmet. “I would sit in the studio, I would hear Frank’s music bleed through into the headphones so I had a very different soundtrack every night while watching this movie. That stayed with me. It’s one of my favourite films so we have a funny homage to that in the show. It’s a love letter to my father and a celebration for the fans. I hope they’ll enjoy the journey. Should they want to go on it, it will be a bizarre night, I can guarantee that.”
While Frank will be present in holographic form, the band for the tour will be composed of Zappa alumni, with guitarists Mike Keneally and Ray White, multi-instrumentalist Robert Martin, Joe Travers on drums and
Scott Thunes on bass. “The process is really not that difficult in terms of how they’re getting ready,” says Ahmet when asked how the band rehearse when the star of the show is no longer on this mortal coil. “We isolated Frank’s vocals and his guitar playing, and essentially they play along with those moments. We’re premiering new pieces of music that no one has ever heard before and there’s an entire orchestra, a digital, very strange orchestra that shows up and my father interacts with these very strange creatures.”
While the 1974 footage is the basis for the hologram, it doesn’t mean that the concert is limited to material recorded up to that year. “The video footage is more the inspiration for the look and feel for Frank from that time period,” says Ahmet. “We’re using a lot of those moments for Frank’s playing and his vocals. We’re not limited by that content. We have lots of content we can pull from and we
try to do a well-rounded show, a really fun night of music, and lean into the strengths of the band.”
Once the tour was announced, the reaction amongst fans (using the term loosely in some cases) was split right down the middle. There were those excited by the line-up of the band and the prospect of experiencing a new Zappa show, and then there were those apparently outraged by the very idea of a hologram of their hero. “To all those people who say Frank would never want to do this, I would say you might want to go back to your Frank history and read chapter 18 of The Real Frank Zappa Book,” says Ahmet, referring to Frank’s writings on the possibilities of creating a hologram of himself. “I wish those people could be a fly on the wall when Frank talked to me about the hologram work he wanted to do, was planning on doing, and ultimately couldn’t get the funding for. He was very, very interested in creating hologram tours. One of the benefits for him would have been the ability for his hologram to be out on the road and for him to be able to stay home and work on new music. When you’re a kid and your dad is trying to explain to you how that would all work, it leaves a very lasting impression.”
For Ahmet, The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa feels like coming full circle, giving him the chance to fulfil one of his father’s dreams. “I feel really proud of being able to accomplish this task,” he says. “It’s a lot harder to do when the person isn’t here to create a very lifelike image. A lot of the stuff that he wanted to do is only really affordable and technically possible now. How do I deal with the naysayers? I want to believe that the people who do go will have a great time and maybe they’ll meet some of those folks that said it was a terrible idea and they’ll say, actually, it was great. Maybe the people who said it’s a terrible idea can change their minds.”
One person who has been reticent about the hologram tour is Ahmet’s older brother, Dweezil. After Frank’s death, his wife Gail managed the Zappa Family Trust, but when she died in
2015 she passed control of the family business to Ahmet and his sister Diva, to the considerable frustration and surprise of the other children, Dweezil and Moon. Dweezil had been touring playing his father’s music under the banner Zappa Plays Zappa, but when the two sets of siblings fell out,
he changed the name of his show to 50 Years of Frank: Dweezil Zappa Plays Whatever the F@%k He Wants – The Cease and Desist Tour. Dweezil released a statement in May 2018 stating that he had reached an amicable agreement with Ahmet and the Zappa Family Trust. Although no details have been released of what was agreed, Dweezil’s current tour is simply titled Choice Cuts. Ahmet, at least, seems very open to the idea of Dweezil being part of The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa. “He’s been invited. I’d still love for something like that to happen,” says Ahmet. On the Zappa Plays Zappa tour, Dweezil used to play a guitar duel with a video of his father on a screen, something that Ahmet would like to take to the next level if given the chance. “The way that the technology works, we’re in a place now where they really can be shoulder to shoulder playing guitar. That’s really up to him,” says Ahmet. “I’ve extended the invitation to the entire family. Just because I’m a cotrustee of the ZFT, ultimately I work for the entire family. Everyone directly benefits from the show and the experience. It’s been a really weird two or three years, but I’m glad that things have gotten easier between us. It’ll be cool if he wants to come out, but I think he’s into doing what he’s doing.”
With his new role in the trust, Ahmet is directly involved in both preserving the vault of unreleased material and planning reissues, box sets and all the other material that continues to flow forth featuring Frank. It’s remarkable to think that there have been some 50-plus albums released since Zappa passed away, but the famed Zappa vaults contain thousands and thousands of hours of material. Alex Winter, the actor and director working on a documentary about Frank titled Who The F*@% Is Frank Zappa, used Kickstarter to help raise money to preserve the unreleased material before the media degrades beyond repair.
“We were always approached by many people about doing a film,” says Ahmet about Winter’s forthcoming film. “I got to know Alex a little bit and through this journey I’ve gotten to know him a lot better. We met on another project and he was like, ‘I’d be really interested in doing a documentary about Frank’, so I said, ‘Well, the first person you’ve got to meet is Gail.’ We all went up to my mother’s house, I left the room, they had a conversation, and they really got along. Gail was not someone who would just immediately put all her trust and faith into someone. Alex really had this special relationship with her and thus the journey began to do this film. Once the process began then you start to realise the added benefit of his film is really having a better understanding of the vault. The tapes are meaningless unless you know what’s on them.”
As more and more of the vault is digitised, the Zappa catalogue continues to grow, like the five-disc 40th-anniversary edition of Zappa In New York. Ahmet says there are 40 further releases already planned in
conjunction with Universal, but that he hopes the hologram tour will introduce his father’s music to fresh audiences. “I think the most impactful way to create new fans is by having shared experiences,” he says. “That’s why the Bizarre World… show is important.
I’m of the frame of mind, and I might be totally insane, that this is an experience where you don’t have to be a Zappa fan, you don’t have to know anything about Frank at all, but if you want to have an extraordinary night of music but then really have your brain melt in your skull, then you should check this show out.”
The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa tours the UK this month – see www.zappa.com.