{"id":11767,"date":"2016-11-17T05:30:33","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T10:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=11767"},"modified":"2026-08-12T11:35:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:35:33","slug":"outside-now-a-conversation-with-dweezil-zappa-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/17\/outside-now-a-conversation-with-dweezil-zappa-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Outside Now: A Conversation with Dweezil Zappa, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I interviewed Dweezil Zappa; I wrote three features based upon that interview: one each for papers in Chicago, Richmond and Pittsburgh. But even with that, a great deal of our conversation remained unpublished. Today and tomorrow I present this feature, which combines those three and adds additional content from our interview \u2013 bk.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"dweezil_zappa01\"What’s in a name? Quite a lot, if you happen to be a superb rock guitarist who \u2013 in addition to making original music of your own \u2013 performs the music of your late father, one of the 20th<\/sup> century’s most important and controversial composer-performers. Dweezil Zappa<\/b> has found himself at the center of intra-family squabbles over the rights \u2013 and obligations \u2013 associated with the music and estate of Frank Zappa<\/b>. Under these circumstances, which are playing themselves out in a very public fashion, it’s a challenge to stay focused on music. But that’s Dweezil’s objective.<\/p>\n

The controversy centers around disagreements with the Trust (run by siblings Ahmet<\/b> and Diva Zappa<\/b>) on one side, Dweezil and his sister Moon<\/b> on the other. From Dweezil’s point of view, ZFT is making unreasonable demands for a share of the profits from his touring and merchandise sales. The disagreements have been shared via \u201cpublic letters\u201d published first by Ahmet on behalf of the Trust, and then in the form of similarly public replies by Dweezil. \u201cBehind closed doors, we didn\u2019t get anywhere,\u201d says a clearly exasperated Dweezil. \u201cSo it doesn\u2019t really matter one way or the other whether it\u2019s public or behind closed doors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe behavior and the intent of the Zappa Family Trust is as it appears,\u201d Dweezil says. \u201cI offered them the deal that going forward, if I was going to tour, that they could sell ZFT merchandise, and I would split it 50\/50 with them. Which I didn\u2019t have to do. They turned it down, favoring 100% for themselves. When you have negotiations like that, you can see you are not going to get anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disagreements extend even to the way in which guitarist Dweezil brands himself and his tour. For several years he performed under the banner Zappa Plays Zappa. That didn’t sit well with Ahmet and Diva \u2013 neither of whom tours or performs themselves \u2013 and so they demanded a name change. \u201cI changed to ‘Dweezil Zappa Plays the Music of Frank Zappa,’\u201d Dweezil explains. \u201cThey sent me a cease-and-desist letter. And rather than keep playing that game I changed the name of the project just to my name.\u201d And in a move that might have brought a wry smile to his dad’s lips, he’s calling the tour \u201cDweezil Zappa Plays Whatever The F@%k He Wants: the Cease and Desist Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that aside, the current tour features Dweezil’s accomplished band playing the late Zappa’s music, with a few of Dweezil’s own tunes put into the mix. Longtime Frank Zappa associate Ike Willis<\/b> will be joining the tour; Willis played guitar and sang on some of the elder Zappa’s most popular albums, including 1979’s sprawling Joe’s Garag<\/i>e set.<\/p>\n

I interviewed Ike Willis in 2011; he told me then that he had wanted to play with what was then called Zappa Plays Zappa, but that \u201canything we wanted to do would have to be approved by Gail<\/b> [Zappa<\/b>, Frank’s widow, who died in 2015].\u201d Dweezil confirms Willis’ account. \u201cGail had what she called ‘The Shit List,’ and there were a ton of people on that list. And Ike was one of them. But now, flash forward to where we are, and to where I am personally. I\u2019m outside of the Trust at this point. So, anything is possible. Working with Ike or other people that I want. The tour is called \u201cDweezil Zappa Plays Whatever The Fuck He Wants\u201d it might as well be also \u201cWith<\/i> Whoever He Wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Willis on hand, Dweezil’s band is likely to sound even more like his dad’s groups; the impossibly intricate music demands staggering instrumental proficiency as well as a willingness to take part in a kind of controlled musical spontaneity.<\/p>\n

\"dweezil_zappa_via_zammata\"But Dweezil does more than pay tribute to the work of his dad, who died of prostate cancer in 1993. Dweezil’s latest album (his sixth under his own name) is Via Zammata’<\/i>, a stylistically varied collection that veers between the technically knotty style for which the elder Zappa is known, baroque semi-classical work, and straight-ahead pop-rock. In its own way, Via Zammata’<\/i> is every bit as much a musical assortment as the body of work Frank Zappa created during his lifetime.<\/p>\n

He explains that the album’s name comes from a street in Partinico, Italy, from which the Zappa family emigrated to the US. \u201cI had a chance to go to Sicily and visit that location,\u201d Dweezil says. \u201cIt was the experience of following your family tree and getting a little bit of the overall history of ‘where do you come from?’ And so the record itself is kind of like that.\u201d He says that while the songs are varied, they’re also linked in a way. \u201cThe elements of production and background vocals and all those things, that\u2019s all stuff I grew up with, listening to so many records: my Dad\u2019s records, and other records back in the day. Records from the 60s, 70s, 80s, whatever and they all had a lot of background vocals that helped create the overall feel and harmony within the song. I just wanted to express those things that I always enjoyed in music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dweezil is proud of his own music, and there are clear echoes of Frank’s composition style in his son’s work. Dweezil doesn’t shy away from that fact, accepting that he’s going to get some criticism either way. \u201cWhen I started playing music and making records, people would say, ‘It doesn\u2019t sound anything like Frank!’ But it would have been just the same if I tried to make records that sounded like my Dad when I was 15: ‘He\u2019s trying to do stuff like his Dad, and falling short!’ It\u2019s all that kind of b.s. that would have been part of it,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I never paid attention to any of it anyway, \u2018cause I was just making music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a> \u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I interviewed Dweezil Zappa; I wrote three features based upon that interview: one each for papers in Chicago, Richmond and Pittsburgh. But even with that, a great deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11768,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[734,861],"class_list":["post-11767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-dweezil-zappa","tag-frank-zappa","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11767"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32173,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11767\/revisions\/32173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}