ROBERT
MARTIN
Robert ‘Bobby’ Martin sang and played keyboards, sax and French
horn for Zappa between September 1981 and June 1988.
Before then, Martin was
a big part of the ‘Philly sound’: his French horn can be heard on a number of
major hits from the 1970s, including Didn’t
I (Blow Your Mind This Time) by The Delfonics, Betcha By Golly, Wow and I’m Stone In Love With You by The Stylistics, Me And Mrs. Jones by Billy Paul, Back Stabbers and Love Train
by The O’Jays and If
You Don’t Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes.
Martin says of this
period, “It was an amazing experience, cutting my studio teeth at the level
of one gold record after another, back in the day when we had 30 people all
moving air in the same room at the same time. Great players,
great songs and great arrangements by Gamble, Huff and Bell.”
In the 1990s, Martin
enjoyed a five-year relationship with the actress Cybill
Shepherd and became the musical director of her successful CBS sitcom, Cybill.
In 2000, he made a guest
appearance on The Persuasions Sing Zappa
– Frankly A Cappella, along with Bruce Fowler and
Mike Keneally.
In 2013, Martin became
the musical director of the reformed Banned From
Utopia, whose line-up over the next few years would include Ray White, Ed Mann,
Tom Fowler, Ralph Humphrey, Arthur Barrow, Chad Wackerman
and Albert Wing.
In 2019, Martin joined
‘The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa’ hologram tour band,
where he remains, alongside fellow alums Mike Keneally, Scott Thunes and Ray
White – but no longer the Hologram.
I first made contact
with him in 2008 when a friend brought his Look
Great Naked At Any Age website to my attention. He
readily agreed to answer my questions – and also to be put in touch with the Arf Society regarding appearing at a future Zappanale,
which he first did the following year.
It took several months
to get this interview together, but it was worth the wait.
Tell me
about your earliest musical experiences.
The first piece of music I remember identifying and asking for was
Stravinsky’s Firebird. I was 2½ years
old. It’s such visual music and I had vivid images in
my imagination about what the sounds suggested.
My parents were both
opera singers and growing up in the 1950s in Philadelphia,
I was exposed to an amazing variety of music. My parents were into all kinds of
music and there was always something playing on the old RCA Victrola.
My grandmother worked at
RCA in Trenton, New Jersey and I still have quite a collection of 78 RPM
records. I was watching American
Bandstand before Dick Clark was on. The original host was Bob Horn. Rock
and roll grew up in Philadelphia as the nation tuned into the phenomenon and I
grew up right along with it.
There was an active jazz
scene and John Coltrane spent quite a bit of time there to study with a teacher
named Dennis Sandoli.
The Philadelphia
Orchestra has always been one of the best in the world and I remember outdoor
summer concerts at the Robin Hood Dell Theater. Years later, when I went to the
Curtis Institute, I would study with many of the first chair players that I
admired so much as a boy.
Music always made
perfect sense to me. We had an old Lester spinet piano when I was growing up
and I taught myself to play all the music I was hearing as soon as I was big
enough to reach up and touch the keys.
From a very early age, I
recognised both chord progressions and melodies and
was able to play them back after one hearing.
You say
you’re self-taught, but didn’t you have some formal musical training: you can
read music, right?
As I mentioned, I began playing piano as soon as I could reach up
and touch the keys, even before I could see them. By the time I began to take
lessons at age eight, I already knew how to play blues and compose strictly by
ear. I took lessons for a short time and learned to read music, but preferred
what I was able to learn on my own and quit the lessons.
I had no formal lessons
on French horn until I’d already been playing for ten years, then plunged into
intensive classical studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.[i]
I’m entirely self-taught
on saxophone and vocals.
Okay. How
did you get to work with Frank?
There are so many horror stories about top-notch musicians
crumbling at a Zappa audition, but my audition was a blast!
Zappa’s guitar tech for
the 1981 tour, Dave Robb, used to work for Orleans when I was in that band in
the late 1970s. Dave called me and said Frank needed one more musician for the
tour and told me to come down the next day.
I realised
there was no way to prepare for a Zappa audition in less than twenty-four
hours, so I decided not to try to prepare at all and just go down and do what I
do.
He had me sight-read
various keyboard parts and whenever something was technically beyond me, I
would just play the right hand.
So he could tell I was
able to follow the crazy polyrhythms and metric
modulations.
Then he had me transpose
keyboard parts on tenor sax and French horn. Being a classically trained horn
player, transposition is a way of life, so it was no big deal, but certainly
not easy to transpose Zappa melodies on sight!
He had me sight-read The Black Page on tenor sax from a
keyboard part. The beginning of the melody moves fairly slowly, so that was no
problem, but when it got to the fast sixteenth notes, I would just play the
first note of each group through that section in order to stay on top of it.
Then he said, “Well,
you can obviously read and play. I understand you sing really high and strong.
Let me hear you sing something. What do you know?” I hadn’t prepared anything, so I just said, “I don’t know – Auld Lang Syne?” So Frank turned to the band and said, “Auld Lang Syne, key of A.”
Back then, I had a
pretty bizarre range and could sing a high “G” an octave and a half above
middle “C” with no problem in natural voice, no falsetto. So I sang the tune an
octave higher than anyone expected, in natural voice. Frank literally sat there
with his mouth open and I knew I was in.
I did every tour from
then on. I didn’t have to audition for anything after that, since most people
in the business know that if you can handle Frank’s music, you can handle
anything.
I was asked to join
Bette Midler’s band strictly on reputation and things just went on from there.
I spent most of the 1980s touring the world with major stars.[ii]
What do you
remember of the MTV performance in 1981?
That was my first Zappa tour – I still had a moustache! I just
watched some footage from that show and the energy was amazing. It’s great to
see Frank when he was young and healthy.
As I recall, at one
point, the audience was passing a rubber raft around over their heads. It was a
wild night, Halloween in New York City: killer band, amazing music – great to
have been a part of it with Frank, Tommy Mars, Steve Vai
and all the rest.
Which was
your favourite tour with Frank?
1988, hands down.
The band was flat out amazing and I was the primary keyboard player for the
first time. We had a superb five-piece horn section, so I didn’t get to play
sax and very little French horn. But it was such a blast to hear those guys
play! We did some really elaborate re-arrangements of old material and a lot of
free-form blowing as well.
And
your memories of the 1988 band’s demise?
Not a happy subject and not an easy one to talk about, since it
turned out to be not just the demise of the 1988 band, but the demise of Zappa
tours as such.
Essentially, the feeling
of camaraderie within the band disintegrated due to what I would describe as
poor social skills on the part of one band member in particular. He was a
colleague, a friend and an intelligent and gifted musician, so I don’t choose
to name names here. I had a better relationship with him than most of the rest
of the band, partially because he respected my heavy classical background.
When personal
differences within the band began to affect what was happening with the music
onstage, we all knew something had to change. A rift developed in the band and
there was a move to try to convince Frank to make a personnel change.
I was actually surprised
that Frank seemed more intent on maintaining control of the individual band
members than he was with fixing what had become an obvious musical problem. He
wasn’t going to let the band force his hand on making a change, even though the
music was suffering and he cancelled the remainder of the tour.
Needless to say, we were
all disappointed, since the band was just so ridiculously good.[iii]
You referred
to when Frank was ‘young and healthy’. Were there any signs of his ill health
in 1988?
None that I was aware of, or anyone else
to the best of my knowledge.
When did you
last speak to Frank?
Frank became much more social towards the end and had many
eclectic gatherings of very diverse people at his house on Friday evenings. The
last one was only a few weeks before he died.
You’ve made
one solo album – what does it sound like?
I landed a deal with MCA in 1982 and had in mind to do a record
that would be kind of like Ray Charles meets Steely Dan, because that’s the way
I write, or one of the ways. But my producer and manager and the label had a
very different idea of what they wanted. The result was a compromise that
didn’t really please either me or them.
It didn’t matter,
though, because a few weeks after it was released, MCA was bought by a large
conglomerate and virtually everyone at the label was replaced.
Me
and the new regime didn’t really connect and we just said goodbye to each other
and that was it.
When and why
did you decide you preferred being called ‘Robert’ over ‘Bobby’?
I honestly never liked ‘Bobby’, it sounded like a baseball player.
Not that that’s bad and I thought about being one professionally. But I turned
40 in 1988 and decided it was time to go by the ‘grown-up’ name my parents gave
me and I asked Frank to start introducing me as ‘Robert’.
He was totally cool
about it.
Are you
happy to talk about your time with Cybill Shepherd –
as her musical director?
Cybill
is more talented as a singer than most people give her credit for. She was
understandably nervous about covering an Aretha Franklin tune for an episode of
her TV show, but we worked together on it quite a bit and she pulled it off
really well.
She’s incredibly focused
and has a remarkable work ethic. We played cabarets in NYC, London and LA,
sometimes with a quartet and sometimes as a duo with bass and drum tracks that
I pre-recorded.
She was great with an
audience and always gave an engaging, entertaining performance.
We were together for
nearly five years and there was a lot more good than bad.
What are
your recollections of The Persuasions’ Frankly
A Capella sessions?
It was fun, it was quick, they liked me, I
liked them, not much else to report.
Aside from
the Banned From Utopia, have you worked with any other
Zappa alumni since?
No, just Banned From Utopia. I did a performance with the Belgian
Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1994 called The
Purple Cucumber, featuring music by a number of European composers in the
style of Zappa. But I was the only Zappa alumni involved.[iv]
I’ll be performing at
the 20th Zappanale in Germany this August with some other alumni.
How did you
become involved in The Purple Cucumber[v] project?
They called me, I said yes. It had a bit of an academic overtone,
but it was fun. I think the orchestra members truly enjoyed it.
What are the
chances of you being a Zappa Plays Zappa special guest at some point?
I have no idea, but I’d be happy to do it.
Interview conducted on Friday
22nd May 2009. The complete interview
with Robert can be found in Andrew’s book Frank Talk: The Inside
Stories Of Zappa’s Other People (Wymer UK, 2017).
***
Photo of Robert with the Idiot Bastard (and Uncle Ian)
taken in Bad Doberan on 14 August 2009 by J-Roc.