For
Those Of You Who Might Not Know
In
2020, to celebrate 20 years of bringing you Zappa and related news via my Idiot Bastard website,
I wrote an essay a month providing answers to some of those questions no one
ever asks me. Yes, I gave you 12 FUQs (Frequently Unasked Questions)! Here’s
the one from April 2020.
#4: Zappa’s London
Frank
Zappa’s last concert in the UK’s capital took place 32 years ago on April 19,
1988. He wasn’t really a fan of London for a number of reasons, and he once
described audiences there as “disgusting”.
In spite of this, throughout his career he would return to the city time and
again – and even lived there for several months. His family also chose to
celebrate his 70th birthday at The Roundhouse in Camden (see programme here).
Let’s have a look at some of the
London ‘hot spots’ he visited.
The Mothers played their first ever
European date at the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington on September 23, 1967.
Frank hired Pamela Zarubica to be Suzy Creamcheese: “All she did was sit on the stage when we played the Albert Hall –
didn’t do anything!” he said. You can see Zarubica reminisce about the show
here. (She now
lives in London, incidentally.)
The
Mothers returned to the Albert Hall in 1969, but were denied a third appearance
on February 8, 1971 when the hall’s management cancelled a planned performance
of 200 Motels – describing the songs
as “filth for filth’s sake”.
FZ often stayed at The Royal Garden
Hotel, Kensington – famously having his photo taken while seated on the toilet
in Room 412 by Robert Davidson on August 16, 1967 (read an excerpt from his
forthcoming book I Shot Frank Zappa here).
This was the same day Frank met his future secretary, Pauline Butcher, who he
later took to see Cream at The Speakeasy Club and introduced her to Eric
Clapton. The first script-reading of 200
Motels also took place in the Royal Garden Hotel in January 1971.
The Mothers played two shows with the
BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on
October 25, 1968. Excerpts from the concerts were issued on the 1993 album Ahead Of Their Time. 42 years after the
Albert Hall cancelled a performance of 200
Motels, the Festival Hall played host to its UK premiere.
In June 1970, FZ “cut about eight tracks” (including Sharleena for Chunga’s Revenge[i]) at Trident Studios in
Soho with Ian Underwood, George Duke, Jeff Simmons, Aynsley Dunbar and Flo
& Eddie. While his view of London may have been coloured by events in the
intervening period, seven years later Frank would say that he didn’t care much
for the studio.
This new band line-up, the first
incarnation of the so-called ‘vaudeville’ Mothers, played two shows at The
Coliseum Theatre, Westminster on November 29, 1970. Stephen Stills appeared as
a special guest. The following month, FZ moved into 56 Ladbroke Grove, Notting
Hill with wife Gail and their children Moon and Dweezil and stayed there till
March 1971 while filming 200 Motels
at Pinewood Studios. According to Janet Ferguson, “The house had a Coronation Bench in the sitting room, which Dweezil
peed on.” After the family left, the house was purchased by the Queen’s
cousin, Lady Elizabeth Anson, who established Party Planners
there.
During the first of two planned shows on
December 10, 1971, FZ was pushed from the stage of the Rainbow Theatre,
Finsbury Park into the orchestra pit by an irate fan. He sustained fractures to
his leg, ribs and skull, a paralyzed arm and a damaged larynx.
After initially being taken to the
Royal Northern Hospital in Holloway, FZ was moved to the London Clinic in
Marylebone to recuperate from the injuries he sustained at the Rainbow.
After returning to the US, he put
together the 20-piece Grand Wazoo orchestra, which played its only UK show at
The Oval cricket ground in Kennington on September 16, 1972.
He next visited London in 1973 to
play the Empire Pool Wembley with the band that featured two Fowler brothers, a
pair of Underwoods and Jean-Luc Ponty. This would be the first of five shows he
would go on to play at this indoor venue, the last being the above-mentioned
1988 show – by which time it had been renamed the Wembley Arena.
In April 1975, Frank and then-manager
Herb Cohen attempted to sue the management of the Albert Hall at the Old Bailey
for banning the 200 Motels concert
four years earlier. They lost their claim for £8,000 damages. Two months later,
the One Size Fits All album was
released featuring part of the London Underground map on its back cover.
Between 1977 and 1984, Frank played over 20
shows at the Hammersmith Odeon. In 2010, an eponymous album was issued
utilising recordings from four 1978 shows at the venue. (The basic tracks for
many of the tunes on Sheik Yerbouti
were also culled from these tapes.)
FZ used the Electric Ballroom in
Camden to rehearse his band at the end of August 1978 for its fall tour through
Europe and North America’s East Coast. This was the first tour to feature
vocalist Ike Willis.
At the start of 1979, FZ produced L.
Shankar’s Touch Me There album at
Advision Studios in Fitzrovia – which included their co-composition Dead Girls Of London. The track was
originally sung by Van Morrison – said Frank, “I got a call from Van while I was in London making the album and I
said, ‘Hey, have I got a song for you. Come on over.’ So he came in. He was on
his way to Dingwalls, and it took him fifteen minutes to sing it and leave for
the club.” Sadly, Warner Bros and Morrison’s manager intervened, and Frank
had to re-record the lead vocal together with Ike Willis (the pair were
credited as Stucco Homes). The Van version was later issued on The Frank Zappa AAAFNRAAAAAM Birthday Bundle
21.Dec.2011.
Once the Shankar recordings were
done, Frank returned to the Rainbow Theatre to rehearse for his February–April
tour of Europe. This time, the orchestra pit was covered over.
Around this time (on February 9, to
be precise), I was standing outside The Venue in Victoria having just seen Rod
Argent & Friends (including Chester Cortez Thompson) perform there. A limo
pulled up, and one of the guys I was with said, “Look, there’s that bloke you like!” Upon which, FZ got out of the
car and darted straight past me into The Venue. So I just followed up the
steps…but at the top, a security guy asked me to leave – which I obediently
did. (I would see Frank again nine days later, ‘live onstage in London’.) It
seems he may have been in Victoria that night to meet with The Venue’s owner,
Richard Branson – who wrote in his autobiography (Losing My Virginity) that Frank was considering recording at The
Manor in Oxfordshire (where Tubular Bells
was made). He probably also wanted to hook-up with Chester too.
In January 1983 – after three days of
rehearsals at Abbey Road Studio One and a one-off concert at The Barbican
Centre – Zappa recorded the London Symphony Orchestra at Twickenham Film
Studios, St Margarets under the baton of Kent Nagano. Initially, Frank said, “the net result of working with [the
LSO] was really positive,” but later
complained – in his resultant album notes – that “during the final ‘rest period’, the entire trumpet section decided to
visit a pub across the street. They returned 15 minutes late. No recording
could be done without them. The orchestra refused to spend another 15 minutes
at the end of the session to make up for their glowing brass section
neighbours. I have done as much as possible to enhance this fine British
‘craftsmanship’, but to no avail...the ‘human element’ remains intact.”
Frank made his last visit to London
in July 1991 for a series of radio interviews – notably one on BBC Radio 4’s Midweek show, where he met and
befriended Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains (read a transcript here). Having successfully arranged an interview with Dweezil through Zappa Records’ UK distributor
Music For Nations a few months earlier, T’Mershi
Duween editor Fred and I tried to arrange our own chat with Frank. Sadly,
my second – and final – chance to meet and speak with FZ didn’t happen.
People, it is sad but true.
© April 2020 The Idiot Bastard
***
Image by ArtForDinosaurs,
taken from the Zappa’s London pocket
map. Find out more here.