The Real Frank Zappa Book
Occhiogrosso, Frank Zappa with Peter
attributes of his favorite movie stars, notably Marilyn Monroe and Gina Lollobrigida. After his return home he sent back an invitation for Jacqueline Kennedy to visit Indonesia—without her...
...q D ack in the sixties, no hipster's .1...
...It was always other people who called me weird," one feels prompted to ask, "Gee, Frank, what other word would you like them to have used...
...Indeed, Zappa is a perfect example of how rock stars destroy their careers by learning how to play their instruments...
...The book says much more than these few anecdotes can suggest, of course...
...President Charles de Gaulle in 1967 pulled France out of military participation in NATO and told Rusk to his face that he wanted "every American soldier out of France...
...Simply put, America does not clutch to its bosom a guy who writes songs about the joys of dental floss or the Illinois enema bandit, much less a composer whose songs include the chorus, "Provocative Squats...
...In Laos international affairs were on the back burner, so to speak...
...At a National Press Club luncheon Rusk, upon being introduced, received a standing ovation—from everyone except Schlesinger who, conspicuously in front of the head table, did not rise...
...As he explained, "Man, all you've got to do is touch that thing and it's going to go off...
...Certainly not Debussy...
...q THE REAL FRANK ZAPPA BOOK Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso/Poseidon Press/352 pp...
...Indeed, there is something pathetic about a book written by a man whose highest subcultural honor is winning the Dutch Grammy, particularly since the author spends half the time pleading to be taken seriously as an artist, and the other half discussing fellatio and women who like to make plaster molds of rock stars' penises...
...Zappa, founder of the legendary gross-out band The Mothers of Invention, would go on to fame with such albums as "Freak Out," "Weasels Ripped My Flesh," "Hot Rats," and "The Adventures of Greggery Peckery," and would ultimately sire progeny with such colorful names as Moon Unit and Dweezil...
...Alas, for the most part, The Real Frank Zappa Book is a pathetic plea by a third-tier rock star to be accorded a respect he's done nothing to earn...
...Provocative Squats...
...He has been aided and abetted in this by conductors such as Zubin Mehta and Pierre Boulez, both of whom know a thing or two about unspeakable boredom...
...Joe Queenan is a senior editor at Forbes...
...Rusk told Kennedy he was not going to have Mrs...
...Zappa, who now writes letters to Presidents, appears on talk shows discussing pivotal cultural matters, and even testifies before congressional committees, is literally begging America to overlook the indiscretions of his youth and embrace him as a legitimate cultural avatar, a sort of tie-dyed Aaron Copland...
...Provocative Squats...
...In fact, what's truly terrifying is the thought that people actually bought them from him...
...The Real Frank Zappa Book is a lot like Zappa's music: sometimes funny, generally stupid, most engrossing when he is talking about sex, least engrossing when he is talking about anything else...
...We have other things to clutch to our bosom...
...19.95 Joe Queenan THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 45...
...It is truly terrifying to think that Frank Zappa could have ever supported himself by selling encyclopedias...
...When State Department press secretary Robert McCloskey footloosely displayed too much candor about the war, President Johnson was furious and told an amused Rusk, "He'll be giving his future briefings somewhere in Africa...
...During the Vietnam war the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., sharply criticized Rusk in his book, A Thousand Days, describing him as resembling a buddha...
...After his return home he sent back an invitation for Jacqueline Kennedy to visit Indonesia—without her husband...
...Finally, Zappa supplies a rare insight into door-to-door marketing techniques when he discusses his early days as an encyclopedia salesman...
...Unlike his zippy pop compositions, which have a beguilingly inane quality, Zappa's classical works are a dull, predictable amalgam of Stravinsky, Varese, and Webern, interesting only in the sense that no other twentieth-century composer ever posed for a photographer while defecating...
...appa, which was badly dictated by L./ the rock star and then badly co-written by journalist Peter Occhiogrosso, is not without its appealing moments, such as Frank's description of John Wayne's surprise appearance at one of his early gigs...
...All in all, Dean Rusk comes into his own in this biography, as an extraordinarily talented figure in the public life of only a generation ago...
...The book was so sharp about Rusk that Washington reporters began to sympathize with the secretary...
...What's the matter, Arthur," he asked, "is something wrong with your legs...
...It is no coincidence that Sammy and Frank both live in Southern California, where people spend 90 percent of their lives reinventing them...
...The gunner blanched and grabbed it away, crying, "No, no, no...
...In this sense, his quixotic quest for respect parallels the current exploits of Sammy Davis, Jr., who at this very moment is wandering around the United States apologizing for the first sixty years of his life and assuring the public that it won't happen again...
...For the past twenty years Zappa, a perfectly fine satirist who penned such bona fide classics as "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" (which, I still believe to this day, they do not), has been trying to gain wider acceptance by drawing attention to his unspeakably boring "serious" compositions...
...King Savang called off the war with the Pathet Lao to cremate the body of his father, who had died eighteen months before and had been preserved in formaldehyde...
...Rusk's anger boiled over...
...Rusk cabled the King, warning of the need to take precautions against attack, and the King replied, "There won't be an attack, because I am cremating my father...
...Thus, when he starts his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, with the remark "I never set out to be weird...
...There is also some delightful and potentially useful technical data about the guitarfingering techniques that are most likely to impress nubile young women, though among TAS readers perhaps only Lee Atwater has the manual dexterity to put this material to good use...
...crash pad was complete without a black-and-white poster of Frank Zappa sitting, trousers wrapped around his ankles, and staring out from a bathroom in which he was taking a putative crap...
...Provocative Squats...
...And its careful organization, straightforward writing, and thoughtful analysis testify not merely to a worthy subject but a worthy biographer...
...President Johnson, also present, went around to Schlesinger...
...During the Vietnam war, on a trip aboard a helicopter gunship up to Da Nang, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., feeling playful, took the chopper's machine gun and wheeled the barrel across everyone's face, Rusk included...
...the secretary asked...
...Kennedy visit that "international lecher...
...This is true of everyone from Talking Heads to Sting to Paul Simon, all of whom started out as affable tunesmiths, writing harmless, appealing ditties but who then went out and ruined everything by taking piano lessons...
...A man who has spent much of his adult life denying charges that he once consumed fecal matter on stage is going to have a hard time becoming the next Arthur Fiedler...
...Does that include the dead Americans in the military cemeteries as well...
Vol. 22 • August 1989 • No. 8
