“Window or aisle, how would you like to return home?”: How Frank Zappa dealt with band members who didn’t “stay in their lane”
Frank Zappa’s children haven’t shied away from discussing their late father in recent months, and Dweezil Zappa has been talking about how his dad dealt with unruly band members in a new interview.
Speaking to The Arizona Republic before his show in the state’s capital, Phoenix, he says, “You might find people who could potentially have the technical skills, but they don’t have the right personality to even be on the tour bus. You have to look for the person that enjoys the music but also enjoys staying in their lane. If you’re working with an orchestra, each section has a role and they stay in that role. The cello guy is not to play the flute part.
“That’s what my dad was always dealing with – people that would want to draw attention to themselves by changing what their role was, playing things they’re not supposed to play, changing the harmony, changing a chord or doing something that is not a written part. And once they started thinking they can do that, they didn’t last. My dad’s famous quote was, ‘Window or aisle, how would you like to return home?’”
READ MORE: “I just thought, ‘I’m done’”: Steve Vai reflects on how “brutal” experience with Frank Zappa nearly made him give up on touring
The tour Dweezil is promoting is called Rox-Postrophy, as there’s a focus on his father’s albums Roxy and Apostrophy. However, he won’t be playing either album in its entirety, and he’ll be playing some lesser-known versions of the songs, too.
‘St. Alfonzo has a lot of different harmonies and other parts in it,” he explains, as an example, “Because we’re taking it from a very early version performed in, I think, 1973, before the record came out.
He continues, “There’s a lot of mixing and matching of different arrangements. And I’m adjusting things to work for the instrumentation in this particular band, which is different because there’s probably 12 or 13 songs where there’ll be two drummers, which is the same kind of thing that was happening on the Roxy tour when my dad was performing.”
Meanwhile, Dweezil’s older sister, Moon Unit, discussed the sacrifices that the family had to make for Frank in an interview earlier this month. She said, “In my opinion, we were all given the short end of the stick, [mother] Gail included. Sacrifices were made by everyone so that the genius could be out in the world.”
The post “Window or aisle, how would you like to return home?”: How Frank Zappa dealt with band members who didn’t “stay in their lane” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
