The Boy Who Cried Freebird (16 page)

“Grandpa, tell us another story about the old days, will you? Shannon and me were watching another
Behind the Music
on VH1. The episode was about a band called Grand Funk Railroad. They kept talking about how these Railroad dudes were always setting attendance records wherever they performed. We never even heard of them. What's the deal?”

“Grand Funk? You want to know about Grand Funk? Now that's a blast from my Detroit past.” The old man smiled as he struggled to sit up in his easy chair.

“I was just a few years older than you when I first heard Grand Funk Railroad in the late '60s,” he began. “Your uncle Carl was into Cream and Jimi Hendrix and he wouldn't let me hang around with him when I was a kid. Our other brother Alex liked the MC5 and the Stooges, and Alex was too cool for me as well. I needed my own group to idolize and that's where Grand Funk came in. They weren't as hip as those other bands, but they were what we called a ‘power trio' and were really, really loud. They played long, endless songs that sounded great when we were smoking…uh…our Marlboros.”

Grandpa's voice raced with enthusiasm as he continued with his story, “For some reason everyone hated Grand Funk, which made me love the group even more. Eventually, I found some other weirdos like me and we worshipped the band. We went to see them perform at least a dozen times and even called out to them by name—Mark, Don, and Mel. I must have worn out the grooves of their live record from listening to it so much. Hey! Would you believe that in 1970 a double album cost $5.98 and a concert ticket was only four bucks?

“In a lot of ways, I grew up with Grand Funk. They were the first band I knew of that spoke out against the war in Vietnam and Mark Farner was always warning us about hard drugs. Farner had the longest hair I'd ever seen, but as the years wore on he kept cutting it shorter and shorter, just like me.”

At this point, Grandpa was trembling as he spoke, “By the mid-'70s, the band had gotten popular and it didn't feel very hip to dig Grand Funk any more. FM radio had become a big deal and hard rock was getting through to all sorts of people. Besides, the band started having hit singles with old R&B tunes like “The Loco-Motion,” and “Some Kind of Wonderful,” and all these little kids began listening to Grand Funk. The days of plodding, adolescent rock tunes like “Time Machine” and “Mean Mistreater” were over, and I stopped buying the band's records.”

The old man paused in midsentence and got an odd, faraway look in his eyes. He muttered something about Mel Schacher's bass playing being “really, really heavy” and began singing the first verse of “I'm Your Captain.”

Shannon turned to his older brother and said, “Great, you got Grandpa to have another one of his flashbacks. Are you happy now? It'll take him all day to get it back together and Mom is definitely
going to restrict us from our video games for the rest of the week. We better go out and buy some drugs so we don't die of boredom tonight.”

“Grand Funk Railroad—now what kind of name is that for a band?”

I tried calling my good pal Harlan the other day. I needed some help with my computer and if anyone knows about computers, it's Harlan. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, my friend was nowhere to be found. Instead, Harlan's voice-mail greeting confronted me.

“Hi, I'm not home right now,” his voice explained. “This is Paul Gonsalves's saxophone solo from ‘Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.' If you have heard this before, you may press pound now and leave me a message.”

I smiled to myself as Paul Gonsalves's tenor blew through the wire into my ear. Harlan had come up with some wild phone greetings in the past, but this one was really too much. Now, you may be asking yourself what makes this bit of music so notable in the first place and I must say, I'm glad you asked.

You see, Paul Gonsalves played this particular saxophone solo with Duke Ellington's orchestra at the American Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, on July 7, 1956. Ellington, of course, was the undisputed giant of jazz who'd become enormously popular since first performing at Harlem's Cotton Club in the Roaring Twenties.

While immortal compositions like “Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated
Lady” and “Take the ‘A' Train” sustained Ellington throughout the '30s and '40s, things had tapered off for Duke's big band, and their appearance at Newport was intended to be a comeback of sorts. Ellington had even written the “Newport Jazz Festival Suite” expressly for the occasion.

Paul Gonsalves was a journeyman musician who had played with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie before joining Ellington's caravan. His extroverted saxophone style was solid, coming out of the Coleman Hawkins's school of tenor players. While not nearly as famous as other tenor stars who had worked with the Duke (like the great Ben Webster), Gonsalves was still a well-seasoned jazzman.

That night, Ellington's introduction of “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” was respectfully received by the Newport crowd but not identified as particularly noteworthy. Indeed, the song had been written nineteen years earlier and there was no indication that this performance would contain anything out of the ordinary.

The piece starts out with a few minutes of classic Ellingtonia, that is, Duke setting the stage with four jumping choruses on piano before the ensemble rolls in to fortify the main theme. After two more choruses by the Duke, and with a rollicking beat laid down by bassist Jimmy Woode and drummer Sam Woodyard, Paul Gonsalves stepped forward to perform his most memorable solo.

Gonsalves's segment begins conventionally enough and any number of tenor players could have played his first few choruses. Traditionally, three or four choruses by a notable soloist would be plenty for an Ellington composition, but this was not the case at Newport.

It was somewhere around Gonsalves's sixth steaming chorus that the crowd began to sense something special was occurring: during his seventh go-round a sophisticated lady (a platinum blonde in a black evening dress) jumped up from her box seat and began dancing wildly
to the rocking rhythm. Bear in mind that the festival was a somewhat elegant event and the commotion caused by Gonsalves's tour de force had the Newport security police more than a little concerned.

By this time, most of the crowd (seven thousand strong) was on their feet and cheering. Eight, twelve, fifteen muscular choruses and Gonsalves showed no signs of slowing down. At the very foot of the stage, Jo Jones (former Basie drummer appearing at Newport with Teddy Wilson) was pounding out his unbridled enthusiasm with a rolled-up copy of the
Christian Science Monitor
.

Backed by just bass, drums, and an occasional piano fill by the Duke, Gonsalves reared back even harder and played on. Veteran Ellington bandmates like Johnny Hodges, Cat Anderson, and Harry Carney were shouting their own special encouragement as Gonsalves boldly blew through a grand total of twenty-seven straight, groovin' choruses.

After almost seven minutes worth of a saxophone solo that shook the world (would you believe Rhode Island?), the beep indicating it was time to leave Harlan a message brought me back from a most nostalgic reverie. I had forgotten what I was calling about, and although I tried valiantly to think of something clever to say, I was stumped.

So instead, I sat right down and wrote myself this letter. Yes, Harlan wasn't around to fix my computer, but Paul Gonsalves sure did help out Duke Ellington on that fine day in Newport.

—For George Avakian

I once interviewed musician Daevid Allen at a recording studio in San Francisco. He was an odd sort, with plenty of old stories to tell. Way back in the 1960s, Daevid was (briefly) a member of the wonderfully creative British band Soft Machine. But Daevid didn't stay with the Soft Machine and he ended up forming another psychedelic rock group, called Gong.

In his life, Daevid Allen has hung out with everybody from William Burroughs and Jimi Hendrix to Bud Powell, Paul McCartney, Syd Barrett, Keith Richards, Richard Branson, and a whole bunch of other famous people that he can't remember.

One famous person Daevid does recall spending time with is Sherman Hemsley aka George Jefferson of the '70s sitcom
The Jeffersons
. Sherman had been a jazz keyboardist before portraying George Jefferson on television, and his progressive sensibilities led him to appreciate the offbeat sounds of Daevid Allen and (Planet) Gong. Apparently, cosmic Gong compositions like “Flying Teapot” and “Pot Head Pixies” resonated with the TV star's psyche.

Years after David's encounter with Sherman Hemsley, the actor would go on to collaborate with Jon Anderson—lead singer of the
famous prog-rock group Yes. The Hemsley/Anderson production was called “Festival of Dreams,” and supposedly described the spiritual qualities of the number 7.

Anyway, here is Daevid Allen's verbatim account of his sole meeting with certified Gong fanatic Sherman Hemsley:

After completing this essay, I ran the finished text through a computerized spell check. Upon encountering Daevid Allen's first name, the “(Word Services) Apple Events Spellswell7” instructed me to replace
Daevid
with the word
teapot.

Somewhere in Silicone Valley, a very clever Gong fan is laughing.

Frank Zappa died on December 4, 1993. He was a relentless composer, guitarist, and bandleader and fashioned one of the most prolific musical careers of the twentieth century. Since his untimely passing, recognition of Zappa's cultural contributions has increased exponentially. Besides numerous books, CDs, DVDs, and websites, there have been tribute bands, repertory groups, and entire festivals dedicated to Frank. Even his classical compositions are now performed the world over.

In addition to music, Frank made political inroads, developing a rapport with the government of Czechoslovakia and reaching out to businesses in the Soviet Union. At home, his civic-minded commentaries on the First Amendment reached their apex during his notorious censorship battles with the Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC) and the “Washington Wives” (organized by Tipper Gore). He also promoted voter registration and considered a bid for the presidency in 1991.

Until his final concert tour in 1988, which was cut short due to personnel problems, Frank was a certified road dog traveling the globe with different groups and sidemen. While Zappa created solo works
using the Synclavier and even employed entire orchestras upon occasion, the bulk of his music was developed with and for his rock groups—in rehearsals, in the studio, and on the road.

Zappa's accomplishments as a composer and guitarist can't be overemphasized, but his role as a bandleader distinguishes him from other pop artists and invites comparisons to veteran jazz conductors. Much like Miles Davis, Frank oversaw a constant changing of sidemen. Similar to Duke Ellington, he frequently composed ambitious works that showcased the individual strengths of his musicians.

“Frank would pick guys that wouldn't ever naturally work together,” recalled bassist Tom Fowler. “You might have a guitarist who's a Hendrix freak and a keyboard player that loves Art Tatum; Frank figured out who should play when and orchestrated the band. He had the ability to figure out what they were good at and would utilize that in the shows. Even in the auditions, the question was ‘What can you do that's fantastic?' That meant anything, musically or otherwise.”

Zappa was unyielding in his efforts to retain absolute creative freedom. He developed his own production company early in his career, which helped him remain autonomous. He was usually strapped for cash and because of his many legal battles within the recording industry, he was compelled to pour his earnings back into the creative process. Touring was Frank's main source of income—a huge incentive to keep his band together.

Each stage of Frank's career was unique, but there was a bedrock consistency to his approach. Ranging from the satiric-rock-improvisations of the original Mothers of Invention to the passion-meets-precision of his later groups, Zappa composed, conducted, and performed music like no one else on the planet.

In the late 1950s, Frank was a teenaged outsider with a brilliant, profane mind. When he first began making recordings in his hometown
of Lancaster, California, he was already a rabid blues and R&B aficionado who loved doo-wop as well as serious composers, like Igor Stravinsky and Edgard Varèse.

Frank started out playing drums, but switched to guitar and joined a Pomona bar band called the Soul Giants. By that time he'd already owned and operated a recording studio, written and conducted low-budget film scores, and appeared on the
Steve Allen Show
playing the spokes of a bicycle. It wouldn't be long before Zappa remade the Soul Giants in his own image, that is, the outrageous image of the Mothers of Invention.

Frank convinced the Soul Giants to abandon their Top 40 cover tunes in favor of his original material and rechristened the group “The Mothers” on Mother's Day, 1964. “We began introducing the songs that we had learned from Frank,” said bassist Roy Estrada. “We were getting mixed reactions but we kept on playing them. Frank became more of a bandleader later on because only he knew how he wanted his music played.”

Those early songs were satiric commentaries on the precarious social and political climate of the '60s—breaking sexual taboos and sporting provocative humor akin to Lenny Bruce—but performed by coarse-looking long-haired men dressed in full hippie garb.

In an effort to maximize the Mothers' crude talents, Zappa instituted a schedule of rehearsals that became a template of discipline for all his future groups. Original drummer Jimmy Carl Black remembered the endless drill of the band's formative days. “We sounded tight because we practiced all of the time,” Black said. “Frank was a hard bandleader and he demanded perfection whether he got it or not and he was never totally satisfied.”

One early incarnation of the Mothers of Invention consisted of Zappa, singer Ray Collins, guitarist Elliot Ingber, and the Black/Estrada
rhythm section. This is the band that recorded the Mothers' debut,
Freak Out!
In the studio, Zappa augmented his quintet with two dozen session musicians including Les McCann, Mac Rebennack (Dr. John), and session pro Carol Kaye on 12-string guitar. Inside the double album's surreal gatefold cover, the liner notes included a credit that read,
ALL SELECTIONS ARRANGED, ORCHESTRATED AND CONDUCTED BY FRANK ZAPPA
.

Rock would never be the same. Devising radical tracks like “Who Are the Brain Police?” and the lengthy avant-garde performance of “The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet,” Zappa combined social commentary and psychedelic improvisation in the studio. “How many people do something that's new and different?” Elliot Ingber remarked. “As a bandleader Frank was able to utilize our individual skills toward his vision.”

Los Angeles rock denizen Kim Fowley was on hand for
Freak Out!
, reciting the composition “Help I'm a Rock.” He remembered Zappa as an enterprising musician who directed the sessions down to the smallest theatrical detail. “Frank was all over the studio,” Fowley said. “He was singing, playing, arranging; everybody was multitasking and Frank was conducting. There wasn't one bystander and if there was, they were on the recording, too. Everybody got utilized somehow.”

As the '60s progressed, Frank and the Mothers became peripatetic. Looking for work, they moved from Los Angeles to Manhattan and back to L.A. again. In the course of their travels, Zappa pushed the group through a series of expansions and transformations, lending greater sophistication and more outrageous personalities into the mix. The band's theatrical stage show at the Garrick Theater in New York City made them the talk of the hippie/boho underground, resulting in an extended run at the theater before returning to California.

In concert, the band used makeshift props, destroyed household
vegetables, and molested female fans onstage. They fused Frank's biting social commentary with visceral humor, dynamic rock noise, neo-jazz squall, and spontaneous interactions with the audience. While subsequent albums like
Absolutely Free
were poorly marketed and misunderstood by the record-buying public, the group's reputation grew thanks to their provocative live shows.

The Mothers of Invention were one of the first rock groups to use two drummers, a move driven by Zappa's long-standing enthusiasm for percussion and odd time signatures. The additions of keyboardist Don Preston and saxophonist Bunk Gardner gave Zappa incentive to stretch his compositional approach. The new members were more familiar with progressive music: Preston had worked with jazzmen Charlie Haden and Elvin Jones while Gardner had performed with the Cleveland Philharmonic.

Unleashed, Zappa began composing more complex material to suit his expanded group. “At first, Frank couldn't do the far-out stuff because those guys [Roy and Jimmy] didn't have a clue of what he wanted,” Don Preston remembered. “By 1967 we were playing things like ‘Little House I Used to Live In,' which is a combination of 12/8 against 13/8. Nobody was doing that kind of stuff, especially in that kind of a context.”

Putting a greater emphasis on Frank's written scores, the Mothers of Invention entered another rigorous stage of development. “We enabled Frank to open up a lot, being able to read music,” Bunk Gardner said. “Everything was by rote for the rhythm section; that's one reason why some of the rehearsals were ten, twelve hours long. But I hadn't encountered that kind of musical challenge in my life and had to spend an awful lot of time practicing and memorizing—like twenty-four hours a day.”

Zappa's intrepid experimentalism and countercultural satire led to
the band's landmark recording,
We're Only in It for the Money
. After that, Frank put out the ambitious double LP
Uncle Meat
, which featured his classical-rock-jazz opus, “King Kong.” Both collections were unique concept albums that helped redefine the boundaries of underground rock and instrumental music in the 1960s.

Adding more band members, like classically trained percussionist Art Tripp, reed/keyboard whiz Ian Underwood, and untrained sax maniac Jim “Motorhead” Sherwood, the Mothers of Invention reached full flower blending greasy ethnic bar band machismo with progressive jazz chops, classical structures, rhythmic workouts, and free-form freak-outs.

The Mothers even jammed with the blind jazz saxophonist Roland Kirk. Albums like
Weasels Ripped My Flesh
showed a wide-ranging sense of adventure—with scorching pachuco blues and snarling rock guitar set alongside more atonal sound experiments.

In spite of Zappa's references to jazzman Eric Dolphy and classical composers like Debussy and Stravinsky, the Mothers were rarely perceived as a serious group. Guitarist Mike Keneally played with Zappa's band in 1988. He commented on the chronic underassessment of Frank's progressive side.

“Frank never got as many props for that stuff because he would turn around and do a moronic pop song or three minutes of noise,” Keneally said. “He didn't see anything wrong with moving from area to area very rapidly. A lot of people got the idea that he was a dilettante but that wasn't it. Frank just wanted to hear all this music.”

Besides their creative struggles, the Mothers of Invention suffered through typical group dilemmas, mostly centering on money. Faced with the incompatible chores of recording, touring, and composing new material, Frank made a tough decision to close up shop, and abruptly dismissed the entire group. The original Mothers were very unhappy
with Zappa at the time, but many of them ended up playing with Frank again as the years went on.

After disbanding the original Mothers of Invention, Frank released a solo album,
Hot Rats
, which showcased his guitar playing and Ian Underwood's many musical talents. Mostly an instrumental album, the one vocal track on
Hot Rats
was “Willie the Pimp,” an avant-blues tune sung by Frank's infamous high school buddy, Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet).

An iconoclast in his own right, Beefheart collaborated with Zappa on several different occasions. For a time, they were empathic musical comrades, but Don and Frank had a stormy personal relationship and the longtime friends were often estranged.

In 1970, Frank assembled a band of interim Mothers to appear with conductor Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Symphony. The concert was his first live orchestral performance, and it was expensive to produce and somewhat rushed. These types of problems would inevitably occur with Zappa's symphonic efforts. Lacking adequate rehearsal time and faced with disinterested, bureaucratic orchestras, Frank's perfectionist tendencies were perpetually frustrated. Later recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Ensemble Modern (performing “The Yellow Shark”) chart his steady progress in the classical realm.

Frank's rock bands were more easily modified to suit his performance needs. Conducting the ribald stage theatrics of yet another version of the Mothers—with singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan and drummer Aynsley Dunbar—Zappa showcased his newest group in the surrealistic road-tour documentary,
200 Motels
. This humorous edition of the Mothers met a premature end when a crazed concertgoer pushed Zappa offstage in London where he fell fifteen feet, breaking several bones and crushing his larynx.

During his convalescence, Zappa returned to the safety of the studio and organized a big band, recording two horn-heavy/quirk-jazz albums,
Waka Jawaka
and
The Grand Wazoo
. A large touring ensemble emerged, one that included trombonist Bruce Fowler. A veteran of several Zappa groups, Fowler recalled Frank's more personal side. “Part of the reason Frank hired different guys or kept someone in the band was because of their sense of humor and their ability to mesh with his concepts on a personality basis.”

Zappa soon learned that instrumental big bands didn't have much appeal to the concertgoing masses. A smaller group coalesced around the recording of
Over-Nite Sensation
, however, and signaled yet another shift in his touring organization. Emphasizing more precision playing and music reading ability—as well as a sense of the absurd—players like keyboardist-singer George Duke, percussionist Ruth Underwood, and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty formed the nucleus of a killer road group.

The strength of his band's chops worked to Zappa's advantage when enlisting new members. Singer/saxophonist Napoleon Murphy Brock was performing in a Hawaiian nightclub when Frank asked him to join up—using the reputation of his other musicians as bait. “I came to the audition because Frank told me that George Duke and Jean-Luc Ponty were in his band; that set the standard right there,” Brock said. “Those were the only two people whose names I recognized because when I first met Frank I hadn't even heard of him.”

The Mothers had evolved from outrageous rock philistines to technique-oriented virtuosos. Showcasing riotous onstage camaraderie, stellar musicianship, and complex-yet-comical compositions, Zappa's proto-rock-jazz-theater resulted in a musical flashpoint, as exhibited on the 1973 live album,
Roxy & Elsewhere
. “It was jazz-fusion,” George Duke said. “But Frank would never admit it. He was always
focused on presenting challenging, entertaining music that was funny and diverse. The technical aspect was important because he wanted to amaze people.”