Being Frank (28 page)

The next day I wrote him a letter in which I told him I was sorry our friendship, or whatever it was, had to end this way, but he had made me feel worse than anyone had ever made me feel in my life before, and since I wouldn't be able to trust him after that, it was pointless to keep up the pretense. I said I guess he didn't care anymore, but he had been the most inspiring person I'd ever known, and that was why it hurt so much to see him diminish himself as well as me.

I sent the letter by registered mail. Somewhere deep down inside I hoped we would reconcile, but deeper yet, I knew things had changed too much for that to be possible. I also knew he wasn't likely to forgive me for what he would probably perceive as my treachery. I didn't expect him to write me back an answer. I wondered vagtely if he might call, but I wasn't surprised that he didn't.

In a week I got the return receipt back, signed. It was ironic
but somehow absurdly appropriate that our relationship, which had begun with a letter from him to me, was now ending with a letter from me to him.

My time with Frank Zappa was clearly over. He was wrong; rime wasn't a constant, it was a
one-shot deal
: horribly compressed and foreshortened. Ironically, the more time that went by without my seeing him, the more I realized how true that was.

Several months later I received a promotional copy of Frank's new album, “One Size Fits All. “The cover featured a painting of the maroon sofa from the basement, floating in the heavens. On the back cover was an elaborate star map, full of in-jokes and private references to people Frank knew. I noticed that I was included, and I assumed that the artwork for the album had probably been done back before Frank and I went our separate ways, and he just hadn't bothered to change it.

I put the record on the turntable and gave it a spin. It was all familiar material, with the exception of a song called “Andy” on side two. That cut gave me a peculiar feeling the first time I played it -- its relentless rhythms made me a bit antsy. I went back and played it again while reading the lyrics, and I suddenly realized that the song was about me. The lyrics -- full of references to our relationship, sexual and emotional -- were Frank's answer to my letter. Well, I reasoned, if he could use his composition “RDNZL” to titillate me, then why couldn't he utilize
this
tune to castigate me? As fed up as I was with Frank, I couldn't help noticing that there was a bitter sadness in the song, a sense of loss and anger. It was truly ironic: neither of us had ever been able to communicate our true feelings to one another, but this was probably the closest Frank ever got to telling me what he actually felt. Unfortunately, the old unanswered question “Something... anything?”, which had haunted our relationship right to the end, was likely to be the last word for us both.

A
fter our final rift, I had to teach myself not to think about Frank. It was a discipline, and for what seemed like an eternity, it required a superhuman effort; I hadn't realized just how much he had permeated my life and thinking until I had to make a clean break. I tried to be ruthlessly thorough — I threw away letters, tour itineraries, photos, anything with any sentimental value that might trigger a relapse. I even went so far as to unload my collection of albums, including the German copy of “Absolutely Free” Frank had brought back from a European tour for me, and refs and acetates for “The Grand Wazoo” and “Over-Nite Sensation.”

Eventually, I kicked the habit. I no longer looked at situations the way he would have, or made little asides in his tone of voice (for a long while after my time with him I actually
sounded
like him — our voices and speech patterns were strangely similar to begin with, and when I was around him on a daily basis it didn't take me long to lose my vocal identity entirely. I wasn't the only one — practically everybody who worked for him sooner or later started imitating him). In short, I grew up, moved on, and left that whole phase of my life where it belonged — in the past. In the immortal words of Guitar Slim — “well, I done got over it".

It never occurred to me that all there had to be an outlet for all the intense emotions that had built up during my time with Frank. He had been such a powerful, all-pervasive influence on me that there wasn't a
single area of my life he hadn't affected. You don't amputate a vast part of your soul without having an emotional hemorrhage. For me, the fallout wouldn't occur until Frank's death some l5 years later, but that unfinished business would nearly finish me emotionally.

In 1985 Lionel and I were working for the B'nai B'rith Messenger, Los Angeles's oldest Jewish newspaper (
hey, a job's a job, right?
), and one day a very intense young lady showed up at the office. She turned out to be a writer for a heavy metal magazine, and she also claimed to be a good pal of Frank's. Frank had just testified before Congress about Tipper Gore and the Parents' Music Resource Committee's attempt to censor rock ‘n' roll records with obligatory warning stickers, and this girl was apparently doing ‘deep background' research work to help him fight the PMRC. She had dug up some rather incriminating xeroxes of position papers from a PMRC auxiliary group, stating that the Star of David was a Satanic symbol, and she figured the Messenger might be interested in an article showing that the PMRC's policies weren't just dangerous to headbangers and Joe Six-Pack, but to Jews as well.

Lionel has always been resoundingly indifferent to rock ‘n' roll (in fact, Frank had liked Lionel better than Lionel liked him, which I found both amusing and a little sad), but he decided to publish the PMRC/
Menace to Judaism
article anyway. He also spoke to Frank by phone to get a few quotes for a sidebar. Frank was quite friendly, and he extended an informal invitation that could have been construed to mean, “stop by and say hi sometime if you're in the neighborhood.” I was glad that he didn't seem to have held a grudge, but at that point, the last time I'd been in the vicinity of Laurel Canyon and Mulholland had been more than ten years ago...

Around this time I saw Frank on CNN, testifying before Congress about the PMRC. He looked older, more crotchety and perverse than ever, and was dressed like an upscale
cucina nuovo
restauranteur: slick Armani suit and silk tie, sideburns starting to go gray, the old mad mane replaced by a short haircut, and his formerly dark, square goatee now speckled with silver and neatly manicured. However, when he started fulminating against the “Washington Wives,” I stood solemnly in front of the tube and gave him the Sicilian fist-up
Va'Fanculo
salute. The world was such an absurd place, and America the capital of all absurdity; in a
cosmos based on poetic irrationality, he would have been President for Life, and the lyrics to our National Anthem would have been unprintable. He wouldn't have had to wear that monkey suit anymore, either — although, knowing how contrary Citizen Honker could be, he probably
liked
it.

In 1990 I was having dinner with a couple of friends, and they happened to mention that they'd heard Frank bad been diagnosed with prostate cancer. This news came as a shock to me, but it felt bit remote, like I was hearing about a distant acquaintance or a relative I hadn't seen in years. Very few of my friends, even the closest ones, knew much about my relationship with Frank; it was so far back in my past that it wasn't something I thought about anymore.

During the next three years, I kept hearing reports about Frank's health. Sometime in 1992, my friend Phil Stern, a photographer I've known for a long time, was called to do a photo shoot at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. A commercial was being filmed for an ecologically-minded utility company, and the spokesman they had selected was none other than Frank Zappa, that staunch friend of the environment. Phil's a tough
cookie; sometimes he gives the impression he never left Anzio beachhead (he was a member of the Darby's Rangers unit during World War Il, and was famous for the countless photos he sent to Life magazine from the European front), and he's been around Hollywood long enough not to be impressed by anyone or anything. A lifelong jazz fan, — he's known for his trademark shots of Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, Joe Turner, and Ella Fitzgerald, among numerous others — Phil didn't know anything about Frank Zappa, and was entirely prepared to leave it that way, but during a break in the shooting, Frank walked right up to him, put his hand out, and observed: “You're the only guy on this set who knows what the fuck he's doing.” Then he proceeded to compliment Phil on some of his photographs, with which he seemed to be familiar, Phil, needless to say, was charmed.

When I looked at the photos of Frank which Phil took that day, they spoke eloquently of how his illness had taken its toll; his shoulder-length, formerly jet-black hair was more than half silver, and his face was crossed by delicate lines. His old earthiness was still apparent, but now it seemed tempered with a depth and complexity reminiscent of a portrait of a Renaissance philosopher: Dr. Zurkon had merged into Fulcanelli.