“There was too much nakedness and noise!”: Frank Zappa’s daughter on her unconventional childhood
Moon Unit Zappa has opened up about her childhood “emotional trauma” growing up with Frank Zappa as her father.
In her new memoir, Earth to Moon, Moon shares details of her chaotic family life as the daughter of Frank and Gail Zappa.
READ MORE: “Window or aisle, how would you like to return home?”: How Frank Zappa dealt with band members who didn’t “stay in their lane”
In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, she reveals how the famous Zappa 1982 hit Valley Girl, which she features on, came to be, and details the dysfunctional relationship she shared with her father.
Moon lived with her parents and three younger siblings, Ahmet, Dweezil and Diva in Los Angeles, where Zappa would hide away in his home studio making music.
She recalls, aged 13, being woken by her father on a school night and taken to their home studio where she was excitedly told: “We’re gonna record a song.” Sure enough, that fleeting studio moment would produce Valley Girl, Zappa’s Top 40 triumph.
However, the rush of creating chart-topping music with her father didn’t outweigh the difficulties of her eccentric family life, she shares.
“In some ways, I never felt it was my story to tell, and I encouraged Gail to write it,” she says. “But when she died, I had to excavate just who the fuck were these people.” She continues, “What do you do when your mother is your first bully? When you come from that kind of emotional trauma, the only thing you can think about is escaping.”
Moon’s frank memoir is a self-portrait of a young girl contending with her father’s legacy and finding her own identity.
“It was not unlike the feeling of being a kid who’s allowed to ride in the car while it travels through a car wash,” says Zappa.
“Safe in the bubble, I watched all the mechanics of my surroundings with wonder. But there was too much nakedness and noise!” she adds.
In an earlier statement about her book, Moon said: “Some of the surprises for me in writing the book were empathy for the villains in my life and for myself, along with the mortifying exposure and dismantling of faulty understandings and outdated beliefs. This memoir is a rock ‘n’ roll odyssey, examining much of what broke me and broke me open growing up an inimitable icon’s daughter.”
Moon Unit Zappa isn’t the only family member speaking out about their late father. Speaking to The Arizona Republic earlier last month, Dweezil Zappa shared how Frank Zappa dealt with band members who didn’t stay in their lane.
“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,” he says.
He adds, “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?’”
Earth to Moon is set for release on August 20. Pre-order it now via White Rabbit Books.
The post “There was too much nakedness and noise!”: Frank Zappa’s daughter on her unconventional childhood appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
