The Tapes Archive

Dweezil Zappa: Hello?

Marc Allan: Trying to reach Dweezil.

Dweezil Zappa: Yes?

Marc Allan: Is this Dweezil?

Dweezil Zappa: Mm-hmm.

 Marc Allan: Oh good. Hi, this is Marc Allan.

Dweezil Zappa: How you doin’, man?

Marc Allan: Good, how are you?

Dweezil Zappa: I’m doin’ okay.

Marc Allan: Kenmore Square Howard Johnson’s, huh?

Dweezil Zappa: The beauty of it all.

Marc Allan: Yeah, you’re living the high life.

Dweezil Zappa: We really, really are.

Marc Allan: Yeah . I bet you’re happy that you’re out on the road now, huh?

Dweezil Zappa: Oh yeah, nothing more exciting than a Howard Johnson’s.

Marc Allan: Yeah, and…

Dweezil Zappa: It’s the kind of thing that, generally we don’t even care, as long as the room is clean, we’ll stay there, you know?

Marc Allan: Mm-hmm. And is it clean?

Dweezil Zappa: Hmm, not particularly.

Marc Allan: No .

Dweezil Zappa: This is not our favorite one on the tour. I mean, we were staying at a very nice hotel in New York, and this is a far cry from where we just were, but we didn’t plan on really being in the rooms too much.

Marc Allan: I guess want to start off by saying condolences about your dad. He was one of my heroes, and I was very sorry to see him go.

Dweezil Zappa: Yes, but better off that way than it was the other way. But thank you.

 Marc Allan: Yeah.

Marc Allan: Was he very sick?

Dweezil Zappa: I’d say yes.

Marc Allan: Well obviously, but I mean, instead of taking direction that Z has, did you, being the sons of a famous person, did you consider doing a Wilson Phillips kinda thing?

Dweezil Zappa: Well there’s no chance of that Wilson Phillips happening, you know what I mean? They pretty much had that ground covered, you know, so maybe we’ll join Nelson as well, and then could exist.

Marc Allan: Nelson, huh?

Dweezil Zappa: Nelson could also be probably just what the world needs right now.

Marc Allan: Uh-huh, yeah, I forgot about Nelson, you could’ve done a Nelson thing too.

Dweezil Zappa: Yeah, it would be fantastic. I think we should all form a band, it would really be exciting.

Marc Allan: The children of famous people?

Dweezil Zappa: Oh, yeah. Don’t you think? I think people would just love that.

Marc Allan: That would be good. Were you were in pictures in Rolling Stone a while back with Donovan’s kid and people like that?

Dweezil Zappa: No, no, no.

Marc Allan: You weren’t in that, okay. I just remember that spread, but I don’t remember who was in it, other than Donovan’s son. Any who.

Dweezil Zappa: I try not to really get lumped into that rock stars’ children thing that they do so frequently.

Marc Allan: Yeah, so you won’t be on like Sally Jessy or anything like that?

Dweezil Zappa: No, no, I don’t believe I will, unless it’s for something else, you know, because Sally Jessy, see I don’t like Sally Jessy as much now that she’s gone to a major network, she used to be better when she was on the independent station.

Marc Allan: Why do you think that is?

Dweezil Zappa: Well, you know, I think they go for the more mainstream stuff now. They used to get the real twisted stuff on her show before. And she’s just getting too comfortable, you know what I mean?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Dweezil Zappa: Too complacent, I don’t like her as much anymore.

Marc Allan: All right, well actually the children of rock stars sounds more like a Vicki Lawrence type thing, so maybe that would work.

Dweezil Zappa: Or Bertice Berry.

Marc Allan: I haven’t seen that show, so I don’t know.

Dweezil Zappa: Well it’s

Marc Allan: Well what has been the reaction to Z so far?

Dweezil Zappa: Gee, I believe it’s been phenomenal, savory, you know, people just have been waiting for down-home country music like this, and it’s just blowing their minds.

Marc Allan: Now, well that duets thing that you did with the solo performers, that’s really lovely.

Dweezil Zappa: That was a surprise to me that I did that, I did not know I did that until just the other day.

Marc Allan: But have you been out on the road for a while?

Dweezil Zappa: Well, we just started this tour, we did Conan O’Brien in New York the other day, and now we’re doing Boston. We were trying to figure out if going to be snowed in today, but it doesn’t look like it. We’re gonna do the show, and then we’re gonna go back to New York, play New York tomorrow, New Jersey, then Washington, Baltimore, all that kind of stuff, until we make it down towards Indianapolis.

Marc Allan: And then you’ll really feel fortunate.

Dweezil Zappa: Oh, yeah, that’s when we’ll really feel like we’ve truly hit the big time.

Marc Allan: So tonight’s actually the first night of the tour?

Dweezil Zappa: Tonight would be the first gig, yeah.

Marc Allan: First gig, yeah, wow. And is this your first tour?

Dweezil Zappa: No, it’s not necessarily our first tour, I think it’s the first tour that we’ve done under the name Z playing here in America. We played over the summer in Europe. We’ve played before, we just don’t go out that often.

Marc Allan: Because you end up in Howard Johnsons that aren’t clean?

Dweezil Zappa: Well, yeah, you know, that and it’s the kinda thing that we enjoy playing and all that stuff, but there’s a lot of hassles that go along with it that we’ve been known to avoid.

Marc Allan: Do you think this will be a touring band for a while? Will you go out on the road or can you do it–

Dweezil Zappa: I would think that we’ll probably end up doing a lot more touring than we expected to do.

Marc Allan: Tell me about your take on this whole business, because it seems to me, having watched you over the years, that you seem to have a completely good-natured attitude toward things, you seem to have the same sort of contempt that your dad did, but while he always seemed like he was trying to hold back the tide, you seem to be riding the wave with a big smile.

Dweezil Zappa: Well, in my opinion, there’s not much use for being negative 24 hours a day. I mean, I can spend a few minutes of my day being negative, but ultimately I like to enjoy things more than I like to promote my disdain for things, and I think I used to be a little bit more on edge about things, and used to complain about them more than I do now. Now I can’t really be bothered. Priorities have completely changed in my life. But the thing is, in this industry there’s too many people that take themselves too fucking seriously, it’s like I don’t understand it, because music is far more for the purpose of entertainment than it is for art these days. There’s no bands out there who are making art, you know? It’s like, if they’re making money, then they should be so lucky, and they should shut up, basically, is my opinion. If you’re making money, you have no right to complain.

Marc Allan: Do you think there was a time when this was an art-related business?

Dweezil Zappa: I think there was a time when there was stuff that hadn’t been done before, and it could’ve been perceived more of a creative, perhaps, even art form, but I think those days have long since been over. Certainly with the advent of people watching music instead of listening to music.

Marc Allan: When would you say it ended? What was the last original stuff?

Dweezil Zappa: I’m not sure, hold on. Hello? This is why I love when people just… Yes? They just walk into your room for no reason.

Marc Allan: Well, everybody has a key to that hotel.

Dweezil Zappa: I know, it’s a beauty. But I don’t know, I would think that sometime in the 80s when it really became a corporate situation that everything took a big nosedive. There’s always been problems plaguing the industry, of course, but I just think that the whole spark of music has gone out.

Marc Allan: So when you look at that stuff like People Jam and Nirvana and the tortured Eddie Vedder soul, and the horrible Kurt Cobain life, do you just laugh?

Dweezil Zappa: Yeah I laugh, because they’re making millions of dollars. It’s like, so what if you want to live your life looking more like a derelict, fine, but quit your complaining when you’re doing what you want to do and you’re making a ton of money. I just think that’s retarded.

Marc Allan: Does country music have a better idea?

Dweezil Zappa: Well, country music is also something that has been completely destroyed by corporate everything. I mean country music is beer music, but there’s the sappy love tunes, too, that are horrifying, but I can appreciate certain kinds of country music, I mean there’s certain guitar players who are phenomenal. You know Ricky Skaggs is an amazing guitar player. I’m not 100% into everything that he does, but I can certainly appreciate his talent.

Marc Allan: Actually, I meant the country music mentality, that, it seems to me that country music is a little bit more fan-friendly, actually a lot more friendly to fans, and the artists do a lot less complaining.

Dweezil Zappa: Well yeah, you know what it really is, is most of those people who play can actually play. They can actually play, they can actually sing, and they’re not actually doing something that is of remarkable musicianship, for the most part, but they’re doing something that has got a tune, and they do it well. And they’re happy to be doing what they’re doing, they’re not sitting there going, “God, the world is the worst place in the world.” And they generally have a positive outlook, so I think perhaps that’s why for country music and all that, people who like it, tend to feel like everything’s pretty good. And then there’s the people who like to hear just the really noisy non-musical, just mess of what is considered cool in the 90s, and I just don’t get it.

Marc Allan: What would you like people to know about ShampooHorn? My take on it is, I was very pleasantly surprised. I thought it was a really terrific record.

Dweezil Zappa: It’s like techno country gospel, really. Is what we’re really trying to do with it. The main thing about the band is we take what we do seriously, we just don’t take ourselves seriously. We have fun, we tried to make a record that was good for repeat listening value. It had several different styles of music on it, some people would say that’s unfocused, but our take on that is for Christ’s sake, God forbid you should give somebody a choice, you know? It’s basically a rock record, with lots of guitars and some funny vocals, some funny lyrics, this is different things, I think it’s an overall package that people can enjoy.

Marc Allan: I found it very entertaining, unfortunately, I guess, of course, it’s hard to separate you from your father and from his legacy, but I kept thinking, this is the kind of record I think he’d be pretty proud of.

Dweezil Zappa: Yeah, he liked it, he liked it a lot, he heard this record several times, because it’s been done for a while. We had some trouble putting it out here in America because we changed our distributor on the record company, so we were sort of held up in some red tape kinda situation for a lengthy period of time.

Marc Allan: So Barking Pumpkin is not the, I’ve read things and heard things that Barking Pumpkin sort of took him out of having to deal with a lot of the corporate nonsense, but I guess–

Dweezil Zappa: Well, what you have to do is you still have to be distributed by a major distributor or your record won’t be in the store. The key to having people buy your record is having it be in the store, and with all the corruption that exists, there’s fewer and fewer chances for independent labels to continue to even survive, unless they have some sort of decent distribution, and you have to be able to continually be able to find alternative measures to make people aware of your product. We’re not generally played a whole lot on radio or on MTV or any of that, but in all actuality, there’s no fucking reason why we shouldn’t be, you know? It’s just MTV, and the radio, and all that is just so subjective, it’s all based on leverage, who you know, blah blah blah, all that stuff, how much money you’re willing to spend for advertising. It’s really quite ugly.

Marc Allan: So if people knew how music got into their hands these days, they’d be disgusted, wouldn’t they?

Dweezil Zappa: More than likely, yeah, but the whole thing is anything can be popular if you play it enough. It’s been proven time and time again. Nothing’s based on talent anymore, it’s not based on whether anything’s good or bad or anything, it’s more than likely people decide to push one thing or another based on what it looks like to people, not what it sounds like.

Marc Allan: So are we gonna see you on MTV, do you think?

Dweezil Zappa: One would hope, but I really don’t know. It’s not, if any of it were up to me, then I’d say yeah you’ll see me on there, but it’s not up to me, it’s up to a select group of people who get everything for free and just decide because, they got invited to this really cool party or something, it’s really quite ugly.

Marc Allan: Have you done videos? Are there video ready for this?

Dweezil Zappa: We did a few videos, we did one for “In My Mind,” “Loser,” and “Mommy.” I’ll end up making a long-form video one of these days that will be kinda like a movie in a way, just because we have lots of home video stuff where we goof off, and we make little movies, and we’ve got videos, we’ve got the making of the record, we’ve got all kinds of stuff, so when I ultimately make one of these things, it’ll be pretty funny.

Marc Allan: Tell me about being a voice on Duckman.

Dweezil Zappa: Well, I haven’t seen how it turned out yet, but I had a good time doing it, I think it’s gonna be really funny. The little bits of the artwork that I’ve seen, they pay careful attention to detail, and it’s sort of a skewed perspective kind of thing, so it looks different, and I think that for people who wrote it and the people who did the voices are all talented, so it has every chance or it should, at least, have every chance of being a very well-liked show.

Marc Allan: And what happened to the Normal Life sitcom?

Dweezil Zappa: Well, that’s an entirely different situation altogether, there was another form of just a complete nightmare. Do the words thespian penitentiary mean anything to you?

Marc Allan: I’ve never heard them used together, but–

Dweezil Zappa: Let me put it to you this way, we were meant to do a show that was something along the lines of the Adams Family, but the network decided at the last minute to make us do something along the lines of Charles in Charge. We were not very fond of that notion, but yet we were bound to this contract, and we just rode it out like a really bad fucking ride in an amusement park. And when it was time to promote the thing, we pretty much told people that, because we had such a miserable time doing it, we hated the writers, we hated the producers, we didn’t like the network, and it was like these people were just torturing us, basically. We asked them, why did we have to be part of this? Why didn’t they just recast people? But they just forced us to participate in this thing, and we said, “Okay, when you want us to promote it…”

Marc Allan: That would be something if it was the worst show ever made.

Dweezil Zappa: Well, unfortunately, it really wasn’t the worst show ever made. So we didn’t even have that to aspire to at that point, it was just like somewhere in between, and that’s like about the worst thing you can deal with. It’s like it’s not good, but it’s not the worst, it’s just devoid of anything, but it’s just shocking, you see things like fucking “Saved By the Bell: The College Years,” and you’re wondering how people watch that and think it’s really good, and yet it’s one of the most popular shows in the world. And Baywatch, for Christ’s sakes. My favorite plausible episode was the one where the fine David Hasselhoff character, who I believe his name is Mitch, let’s just call him Mitch. Mitch is trying to save two of his lifeguards from a serial killer who has them in a tower, and he’s threatening to kill them, and of course the FBI and SWAT teams are on the beach, but Mitch refuses to let them take control. He says, “This is my beach.” As if a lifeguard is going to have jurisdiction over the FBI. So that’s the first thing that you’re having trouble believing, but then it all becomes possible when he does this, he decides to get a grid map of the sewage system underneath the beach, and he knows somehow where all the lifeguard stations are above ground. So he is under the sand, and decides to cut through a big pipe, and swim through the sand, like a gopher would, under the ground, over to this fucking lifeguard station. They actually had him burrowing underground, they made this trail, it looked like a gopher trail. And he had a little can of air, just a little can, not like a scuba gear, just a little can of air, some fins and this like periscope thing.

Marc Allan: You make it sound so silly.

Dweezil Zappa: I know, because it was really well done on the show. But I’m just shocked and amazed that no one balked at that, they’re like, “Yeah, okay, that could happen.”

Marc Allan: Now somebody would ask, and I will ask you, why did you watch it?

Dweezil Zappa: Because I was fascinated. I mean, I’m more excited by bad television and bad entertainment than I am by what’s meant to be good. I would race out to see several bad movies before I would race to see anything that was highly acclaimed or was meant to win an Academy Award.

Marc Allan: So give me some other must-see bad entertainment of any kind, not just movies.

Dweezil Zappa: Did you see “Cool as Ice?”

Dweezil Zappa: No I never–. –Vanilla Ice’s movie? I actually own a copy. That’s how good this movie is. Now picture a place that you’re meant to believe exists where you have the mountains, the beach, and the desert within about a five-minute ride on a motorcycle. Geographically, I’m not sure where that is. I think it’s meant to be in America, but I’m just not sure. Then with dialog where, here’s a situation that got so out of control, here’s a guy who became a superstar for no apparent reason, and they said yeah, let’s really cash in on this, and we’ll even let him improv a couple of lines in the movie. And the best being, “Lose the zero, get with the hero.” And that’s pretty much the way I live my life now.

Marc Allan: That’s good.

Dweezil Zappa: You gotta see that, let’s see. Probably one of the best terrible movies that was ever made was made a long time ago, and they always play it around Oscar time, I’m sure you’ve probably seen it, it’s called “The Oscar.”

Marc Allan: No, I can’t say I have.

Dweezil Zappa: Tony Bennett, in his finest performance, his acting debut. He’s basically the best friend of this guy who his character’s name is Franky Fame, and he is so over the top, this guy, not Tony, well Tony’s over the top too, but this one guy, I’ve forgotten his name for the moment, but he should be recognized as the finest Hollywood actor of all time. This guy is so scary in this movie. But basically he wants an Oscar so bad that he’s willing to kill for one. But in this movie, Tony Bennett, he gets kicked out of his best friend’s house or something, and he spends the night in an alley, and the next time you see him, he’s going, “And I was lying there Franky, twitching. Twitching just like a spastic, Franky.” Okay, Tony. When that as your debut, you’re pretty darn excited.

Marc Allan: I gotta find that, that’s on video?

Dweezil Zappa: Yeah, you’ll easily be able to find that on video, it’s called The Oscar, you’ll want to see that, and especially the part in the movie where Jill St. John does the cat dance.

Marc Allan: Okay.

Dweezil Zappa: That’s probably the finest family entertainment you can get. The movie is all around just spectacular. And they run it on Turner Broadcasting like, Oscar night, usually. Come Oscar night, you’ll probably be able to find it on TV, once or twice, just check your local listings, I’m sure it’ll be there.

Marc Allan: Let me see what else I wanted to ask you. A question or two about your dad, if you don’t mind. I’ve read a lot of things about what you’ve said about him and all, but I’m wondering, I’m sure creatively it must’ve been wonderful to grow up around somebody like that, but it is also a little intimidating because he was just so amazing?

Dweezil Zappa: It was intimidating sometimes to speak with him, because you felt like if you were talking about something that had some sort of importance in some fashion that you were wasting his time. Because he was one of those people who had such a remarkable ability to store information, that he was just a walking encyclopedia. And you really had to be on your toes to talk to him. You didn’t want to just talk to him, unless it was something goofy and was guaranteed for a laugh, then you wanted to basically learn something every time you talked to him. And he was great for that.

Marc Allan: I interviewed him once, and he said that basically all the guitar stuff that he did just was stuff that came out of his head, he couldn’t really recreate it so much as, he just heard the sounds and he could play it, then teach himself to play it on the guitar. Could you learn from him? I’ve read that you said that Eddie Van Halen inspire you, but did you learn guitar from him?

Dweezil Zappa: I’ve played with him on several occasions, on stage, and just sitting around, and certainly you could learn from him, but the thing is he had such a unique style that was so completely awkward in terms of the style of guitar played that sort of evolved in the last 15 years, with a lot of people achieving a certain amount of technique, his was a technique that only he could really do, and that’s what made him so peculiar, and he had a very strange picking style, and he had weird fingerings for stuff, so you really had to watch and listen, as opposed to some people you can hear what they’re doing and you can play it, pick it out pretty easily, him you would have to see how he did it to make it make any sense, because it’s just unique to him, and that’s what’s so cool about all of his music, was it was unique to him. And there’s few people who have that ability with their music, to make their music unique to them. A lot of people can write a song, and then anybody can play it and cover it and can sound good. But if you try to do some of my dad’s music, unless you play it the way he intended, it does not sound right.

Marc Allan: And as far as the songs that he wrote, “Black Napkins” was always my favorite.

Dweezil Zappa: Yeah, I liked that one too.

Marc Allan: Yeah, was there anything else that you always really admired?

Dweezil Zappa: My favorite song when I was little was “Peaches En Regalia,” whenever they played that, I always think that, one of the greatest melodies, it’s just really an excellent piece of music, and we play that when we play live.

Marc Allan: Oh really? Okay, so you’ll do that here? Well, you play it live, yeah.

Dweezil Zappa: We play several other songs, we play “Dirty Love,” and “Eat That Question,” and we play a few little things.

Marc Allan: I appreciate all your time, I’m looking forward to seeing the show.

Marc Allan: Yes.