Flesh Guitar

BEING FRAN

The year is 1954, the setting a hi-fi store in La Mesa, Southern California. There’s no air-conditioning in the store, just a floor-standing fan that distractedly stirs up the thick hot air; and just as distractedly, a fourteen-year-old Frank Zappa comes in from the street to look at the cheap R & B singles in the bargain bin.

As he enters the store he passes a great-looking woman who’s leaving. Frank’s hormones are as unstable as a unicycle and he stops in his tracks to stare. She doesn’t look as though she comes from these parts; it’s something to do with the way she dresses, really modern, almost futuristic, like maybe she’s an air hostess or something else glamorous — well, glamorous for La Mesa. Frank turns his stare into an attempt at a suave, winning smile, like Tony Curtis, or at the very least like Tony Franciosa. Frank’s been practising and he thinks he must be getting it nearly right since the woman almost stops, almost makes eye-contact and almost smiles back.

Frank mooches into the centre of the store, flips through the sale records and decides he’ll take a couple of Joe Houston platters. He feels in his pocket and counts his change to make sure he has enough money for the purchase. The cashier eyes him suspiciously. Frank doesn’t look like a big spender.

‘Who was that woman?’ Frank asks as he arrives at the counter.

‘I dunno,’ the cashier says. ‘Some weird foreign dame. English or something. She wanted me to demonstrate one of the record players. She brought in a special record she wanted to hear played. Then after the demo she told me to keep the record.’

‘What was the record?’ Frank asks.

‘I dunno. Some piece a shit.’

‘What?’

‘It’s crazy stuff. Drumming. Stuff like that.’

‘I like drum music. I play drums. Put it on again. Lemme hear it.’

The cashier finds Frank strangely persuasive. ‘Nah. Well, maybe. Well, OK.’ He takes the record and puts it on a turntable, and the needle clicks down on Edgar Varese’s Ionisation.

Frank listens and hears what sounds like the start of World War Three. It’s jarring and tense, all sharp edges and metallic collisions, but simultaneously there’s space and light. It’s wild and scary and funny, holy and pagan, all at the same time. It’s the stuff of his dreams, the stuff that fills his head, that he lives with every day. Al looks at him and thinks the kid’s going to have a seizure or something.

‘Actually,’ the cashier says, ‘the stereo effect ain’t bad. Maybe I’ll keep it to use as a demonstration record.’

‘No,’ says Frank. ‘I have to have this record. I need it. This is the sound I’ve been waiting for all my life.’

The cashier thinks of arguing, but why bother? It’s too hot, and he suspects the kid’s going to get his own way in the end. And what the hell, it’s only a record.

‘That’s all I’m here for, kid,’ he says. ‘To help complete your education.’

‘Yep, that’s how I see it,’ Frank agrees.

He takes the record and knows he’s taken possession of something that’s going to be with him for the rest of his life, that’s going to be important in defining just what that life is like. He gets home, puts it on the stereo, and from the way his mother and father hate it he knows it’s good.

Two days later he’s walking home from band practice. His head is full of the marching rhythms he’s been practising, but mixed in with them are greasy rock and roll, doo wop and, of course, Varese. He takes the long way home, goes right to the far edge of town, this town which is all edge and no centre, and just as he’s deciding he can’t delay his return any longer he sees a car stopped up ahead with the hood raised and someone peering into the engine. He doesn’t recognize the car, not even the model, it must be some sort of European job; and then he sees, no, it can’t be, he’s never been that lucky, there’s a woman peering helplessly under the hood. Then he sees she’s the one he smiled at in the hi-fi store. This is fantastic. This is fate.

‘Car trouble?’ he asks.

‘Looks like it,’ she says.

‘I don’t know much about cars,’ Frank says, ‘but I’d be happy to take a look.’

And now she does smile at him, the full-strength version, as though someone’s turned on a spotlight and shone it right into Frank’s eyes. ‘Thanks.’ Frank looks under the hood and sees that one of the sparkplug leads is loose. It all seems too easy, too good to be true, but he connects the lead and feels very proud of himself.

‘You’re brilliant,’ she says. ‘My name’s Jenny Slade, by the way. You’re Frank, aren’t you?’

‘Well yes, but …’

‘I was just driving around,’ says Jenny. ‘Need a ride?’

Oh boy. Frank gets in beside her and she sets the car in motion, finds some so-so jazz on the car radio and drives with one hand, looking so good, so sexy, so cool. Frank tries hard to imitate her.

‘That was a great record you left behind,’ he says.

‘I’m glad you liked it. I knew you would.’

‘Yeah?’

‘What are you planning to do when you grow up, Frank?’

He doesn’t like the tone of that question at all. It suggests that she doesn’t think he’s an equal, that she’s the adult and he’s just a kid.

‘I’d like to be a musician, but I know it’s a tough business. ‘You want some advice?’ she asks.

Frank is not normally given to listening to advice, especially not from the likes of his dad or his teachers, but this woman isn’t quite like them.

‘Well, I don’t mind hearing it, just so long as I don’t have to take it.’

She grins. That’s fine. That’s her boy.

‘First thing,’ she says, ‘keep the name. Zappa.’

‘Yeah? I was wondering about that. You don’t think maybe it’s too ethnic?’

‘No. It’s fantastic. It could have been thought up by a committee of marketing men. It’s perfect for what you’re going to do. You’re going to zap things. Second, pretend you’re smart.’

‘I am smart.’

‘I know you think you’re smart, and maybe you are pretty smart for this town. Given the greater shores of smartness, however, you’re no rocket scientist.’

‘Oh, OK.’ Frank sounds confused as though he doesn’t know what to do with this bit of advice.

‘So stay away from rocket scientists, and away from artists and intellectuals, and away from serious social commentators. Try to spend your life dealing with musicians and rock journalists. By their standards you’re a genius.’

He’s still not sure whether he’s being flattered or insulted.

‘And if some idiot college boy comes along and wants to write his Ph.D. about you, pour scorn on the very idea, but don’t actually stop him.’

‘Doesn’t sound so hard.’

‘In other words,’ Jenny says, ‘be cynical.’

‘That I can do.’

‘Yes, but make sure you’re cynical about everything. Not just about parents and police and politicians — everyone’s cynical about them. You should be cynical about hippies and rock musicians and the drug culture too.’

‘What’s a hippie? What’s drug culture?’

‘It’ll become obvious, believe me.’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘What I mean is, be cynical about record companies, but be cynical about record buyers too, even the ones who buy your records. And above all pretend that your music isn’t commercial.’

‘Yeah? You sure? I mean I’d like to make a lot of money. I’d like the house and the studio up in the Hollywood hills, the cars, the pool, the girls.’

‘It’s OK, Frank, there are a whole lot of people out there who like music they think is uncommercial. They’re your audience. Tell them that by acquiring your records they’re being radical and subversive and individualistic and they’ll buy your stuff in bulk. Millions of uncommercial units. You can make a fortune by being uncommercial.’

Frank shakes his head. This all sort of makes sense but it’ll take some time to sink in.

‘But once in a while you may have to stop being totally negative. That’s where the guitar playing comes in.’

‘Guitar playing?’ Frank says.‘But I’m a drummer.’

‘You are now, but that’s going to have to change.’

‘My dad has an old guitar in his closet. I fool around with it sometimes. I guess I could try to play it more seriously if there was going to be some future in it.’

‘The future is the electric guitar, Frank.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do. And that’s about it for advice, really.’

‘Yeah? It all sounds pretty easy.’

‘It may not be as easy as it sounds, but you’ll get by. Oh and one more thing, whatever happens, pretend that nobody ever gave you any advice. Pretend you made it all up on your own, pretend that you’re entirely your own creation.’

Frank looks rueful. He lights another cigarette, tries to inhale as though he knows what he’s doing and says, ‘You’ve been pretty good to me, told me some great stuff. You’re smart and attractive, and we seem to get on, so why don’t you, you know, complete my education and ball me?’

Jenny looks at him dismissively; suddenly she’s light years ahead of him, so genuinely cool, so authentically adult and superior.

‘That’s another thing you should bear in mind in your music, Frank. Couldn’t you try to be a little bit nicer to women?’

Frank raises a thick black eyebrow and says, ‘I’m as nice to women as they are to me.’

‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t press you on this one, since I realize that being vaguely unpleasant about women and sex will probably be a vital part of your career. Sensitive songwriter really isn’t going to be your style.’

This much he had worked out for himself but the guitar playing, that’s news. He can already see the advantages of being a guitarist rather than a drummer; more chance to show off to the girls, more opportunities to make truly grotesque noise. He sits there for a moment looking out through the windscreen, watching the landscape bend and ripple in the heat.

‘Are you for real?’ he asks. ‘Or are you just a figment of my twisted imagination?’

‘You think the two things are mutually exclusive?’

‘Well, I don’t …’

He’s confused as all hell. Is it the heat? Is it something in the cigarettes?

‘I’ve been doing far too much talking,’ Jenny says. ‘After all, you’re the guitar genius. I was wondering, is there a piece of advice you’d give to the aspiring guitarist?’

Frank laughs. Until this second he wasn’t a guitar genius, not even an aspiring guitarist. Who is he to give advice? Then he thinks, why not? He’s regularly confronted by ignorant assholes giving advice on stuff they know nothing about.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘I guess my advice to the aspiring guitar player would be shut up and play your guitar.’

‘I like that,’ says Jenny. ‘I wish I’d said that.’