Interview: Dweezil Zappa

When it comes to musical iconoclasts, the late Frank Zappa left behind quite the creative legacy despite only living to the age of 52 before succumbing to prostate cancer in 1993. 

Three-plus decades later, his eldest son Dweezil is honoring his pop via the Rox(Postroph)Y Tour Return of the Son of…, a string of dates that will find the younger Zappa focusing his outfit’s energies on revisiting a pair of his father’s albums, “Apostrophe (‘)” and “Roxy & Elsewhere,” both of which were released in 1974 and have marked their half-century anniversaries. Hitting the concert stage after a four-year layoff partially caused by the pandemic, Zappa is eager to tackle this part of his father’s canon.

“The material that we’re playing from ‘Apostrophe (‘)’ and ‘Roxy’ is very well known to the fans, but the versions we’re doing are probably not as well-known because some of them pre-date the albums,” Zappa explained in a recent interview. “There are arrangements that came from live performances that were from 1973, but the album was recorded in 1974, so there are differences in some of the harmonies and some of the rhythms. These are very popular records and it’s just one of those things where the music stands in stark relief if you listen to what is happening in that music and you compare it to anything that’s happening in modern music -- and you realize that it was done 50 years ago. It really shows people that there is so much that is undiscovered and so much more that can be done with music, and that’s something dad’s music showcases all the time.”

Zappa was barely four going on five years old when the two records came out. This was also around the time of a couple of vivid memories -- the whirring of tape machines as his father was doing edits (“You would just hear the tape rocking back and forth going ‘wherp, wherp, wherp,’” the son said) and the recording of a song called “St. Alphonso’s Pancake Breakfast.”

“I was four or five years old when he was making that and I just remember thinking, ‘Oh great -- a song about pancakes -- that’s pretty sweet,’” he recalled before adding, “That happens to be one of my favorite songs still and we’re playing that on this tour, but with a slightly different arrangement.”

And while Zappa was given a guitar when he was six, it wasn’t until the California native was 12 that he started getting serious about playing. At that point, it was a golden age of guitar players in the Golden State, where storied names like Edward Van Halen and Randy Rhoads proved to be huge influences on the budding guitarist -- so much so that the former oversaw Zappa’s recording debut despite the young musician having been playing for nine months.

“The first song I ever recorded was ‘My Mother’s a Space Cadet’ in my dad’s studio, but Edward Van Halen produced it along with Donn Landee, who was the engineer that did the first six Van Halen albums,” Zappa said. “There are no words to describe how inspirational it was for me to be able to work with Edward on that recording.”

Zappa’s fascination with the guitar and his increasing proficiency on the instrument has served him well. Not only has he recorded seven solo albums, but he’s cut a pair of records with brother Ahmet and made cameo appearances ranging from projects by artists who appeared on his father’s recordings, to “Weird Al” Yankovic, Winger, Todd Rundgren, and the Dixie Dregs. 

Zappa’s willingness to think outside of the box led to arguably his most unorthodox project, the still-unreleased “What the Hell Was I Thinking” It’s a 75-minute piece he started back in 1990 and features contributions from 40-plus guitarists. Technology changes that found Zappa going from analog to digital to computer formats have delayed releasing this ambitious project, and it’s currently on hold while Zappa devotes his time to the current tour. 

“The idea was to have a piece of music that morphed as it went along, so it’s almost like if you were turning the dial on a radio and different music would start playing at different times,” Zappa said. “The goal was to use the guitar in different ways and then have some guest guitarists also play on it. In that way, if you imagined you were watching a scene in a movie and every major actor that you knew of had a small cameo role, that was kind of the musical joke in this. Suddenly, the world’s most famous guitar players are falling out of the speakers because you’re hearing Edward Van Halen, Brian May, Yngwie Malmsteen, Angus and Malcolm Young, all kinds of different people.”

This sense of irreverence and quirky sense of humor is something that clearly trickled down from Frank to Dweezil. That sensibility led to Dweezil and Ahmet concocting a classic late-night television stunt that found the brothers jamming with new-age musician John Tesh on a raucous reading of Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard” on a 1995 appearance on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” The clip is truly worth seeking out on YouTube.

“That was my idea to do that song and have him (Tesh) come out with that keytar from behind the curtain and say, ‘Do you guys know any Sabbath?,’” Zappa recalled. “Whenever there are things that shouldn’t go together but do go together, that’s one of the fun things in life, when you capture that moment of the first time of that kind of collision.”

For now, Zappa is gearing up for the current tour and while much of his recent time was spent podcasting on his website. (“Most of it is music related, but it can go off to other areas that are just lifestyle related, Zappa said. “It’s fun to be able to get together with your friends and talk about stuff, whether its nostalgic or current.”) 

He’s also been shooting footage for a possible concert film focusing on the behind-the-scenes preparation for the current tour. As is the Zappa way, Dweezil is going down his own creative path, a lesson he observed having a front-row seat to his father’s day-to-day.

“A lot of people will ask you what it’s like to either be in the shadow or follow in the footsteps of my father and what the struggles might be,” he said. “I didn’t ever think about it like that because I was just happy to have access to my dad, who I admired. When it came to me doing my own thing, all I was concerned with was if I am doing work that I am happy with or proud of. That’s really all that matters.

 “I’ve always looked at things as the work will have to speak for itself,” Zappa said. “When I started playing my dad’s music, I wasn’t concerned about what people would think because I wanted it to be an apples-to-apples comparison so the music would be able to do all the talking. And that’s what I’ve always focused on.”