They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin and Frank Zappa would’ve been fast friends. Larkin’s poem, “This Be the Verse” almost sounds as if it could’ve been lyrics on a Frank Zappa album.
If you’re a fan of Frank Zappa’s music, there’s a better than average chance you’re a fan of Frank Zappa the man. For a certain type of kid growing up in a certain set of circumstances, discovering Frank Zappa is like receiving a transmission from outer space indicating there is life on another, far more interesting planet.
As a social commentator, Frank was farsighted. He could see where our politics were heading, where the music industry was trending, where technology was leading us. He was rigorously logical and level-headed in a time of social upheaval. He was ethical in a dirty business. He knew how to get the best out of different types of musicians. And through it all he maintained a finely tuned bullsh*t detector whilst living in Hollywood, a town that runs on more sh*t than Mad Max’s Barter Town.
For all his talents and observational acumen, one thing Frank was not good at was being a parent or a husband. As his daughter, Moon, illustrates in her new memoir, “Earth to Moon,” Frank’s acute intelligence and perception did not mean that he or his wife, Gail, could be described as model parents. Frank was largely absent from his children’s lives, and he treated his wife less as a spouse and more as an administrator and sex partner (one of several). And Gail, utterly and unhealthily devoted to Frank, seemed to view parenting as another in a long series of responsibilities in the larger administration of service to Frank. To fans of Frank the man, these revelations will doubtless come as a huge disappointment, but probably not a complete shock.
To the outside observer, the Zappa children seemed to be ideal exemplars of positive, fully functional counter-culture values: they were talented, mildly eccentric, and nonconformist. They eschewed high school, got their GEDs, and led clean, drug-free lives that stood in stark contrast to so many other Hollywood kids. Maybe they even seemed like the family you wish you had. Some Zappa fans, myself included, almost felt like we knew the Zappas. We wanted to be part of their scene. How cool would it be to enter their storied House, to hang with the weird/cool kids and the high priest of the weirdos, Frank Zappa? Who wouldn’t want the inadvertent pop star Moon Unit (author of Frank’s sole chart hit), and Diva, champion knitter, as sisters? Or ace guitarist Dweezil and maniac Tom Jones impersonator Ahmet, for brothers? What a kick it would be to live in a house with resident artists like Cal Schenkel and Bruce Bickford, with occasional visits from musicians like Edward Van Halen or Steve Vai. Or so we imagined.
So it is with extreme sadness that Moon’s memoir arrives to dispel us of these kaleidoscopic notions. The Zappa family weren’t models of anything but dysfunction, it turns out. As a result of Frank’s absence, and Gail’s devotion to Frank, the children were effectively starved for attention, hugs, basic nutrition, an education, and emotional support. According to Moon, they were given zero instruction on how to become caring, mature human beings. It is despite their parenting that the Zappa kids became mostly decent people, not because of it.
Some of the particulars that Moon describes will be recognizable to many Gen X kids and their Boomer parents of a certain bent in the 1970s: the pervasive smoking, the infidelity, the abandoning of children to figure things out for themselves. Add to this the countercultural trends rampant in California in that time: the wholesale rejection of conventional moral sentiments and family norms in favor of the dubious alternatives of half-baked Eastern spirituality and homebrew witchcraft. Although Frank largely rolled his eyes at those newfangled belief systems, Gail was as enthusiastic a participant in them as any of the Manson girls were.
Speaking of Charles Manson, if Frank Zappa had wanted to become a cult leader, he could easily have done so. Throngs of devoted groupies and musicians were always in his orbit. If he had asked them to do terrible things, many would probably have complied. As it was, the Cult of Frank did exist to varying degrees. In her book, Moon describes Gail’s household priorities with Frank at the top of a pyramid, and everyone else further down somewhere. A variety of courtiers passed through the house, jockeying for attention from Frank the pharaoh – artists, musicians, groupies, celebrities, and assorted “people who do stuff that is not normal.” The children had to continually compete with everyone else in the house for their parents’ attention.
For all his countercultural milieu, though, Frank was a classic 1950s American male: a misogynistic, capitalistic master of the universe who did as he pleased, with who he pleased, without any consideration for the needs and feelings of others. He was not emotionally available to his wife or children, but he was always sexually available to his partners of choice. And Gail, for her part, suffered because of her devotion to a man incapable of being devoted to anything other than his work.
In the early days of The Cult of Frank, Gail secured her spot as A#1 amongst her many attractive lady competitors by becoming pregnant with Moon (Moon does not discuss whether Gail trapped Frank by becoming pregnant against his wishes, but Pauline Butcher’s 2011 book, “Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa,” left me with that impression). To his credit, Frank was self-aware enough to know that he did not want to have kids, but ultimately went along with Gail’s program. When Moon was born, Frank gave her the middle name, “Unit,” to herald the arrival of their new family unit. To the intense sadness of all parties involved, that unity never quite materialized.
Moon’s account of her childhood takes up most of the first half of the book, and she demonstrates a preternatural ability to channel the voice and thoughts of a child living through the moments in the book as they happen. Her diction and syntax become simplified, and the distance between 2024 and 1976 is erased in the process. The effect is immediate; the reader is brought right along with her. Some portions of the book are so cinematically drawn that I felt as if I were shooting footage in my head for a Cameron Crowe movie entitled, “Almost Famous.”
I wish that someone were available to provide the context behind the childhoods of Gail and Frank. To play armchair psychologist for a moment, it seems to me that Frank’s obsessive nature seems indicative of a trauma response to something that happened to him early in life, and Gail’s wholesale rejection of conventional morality and her tendency toward self-delusion and obsession points to some serious early injury to her psyche as well. With Frank so thoroughly obsessed with music to the exclusion of all else, and with Gail so thoroughly obsessed with Frank, they were united in a shared quest to avoid self-reflection.
To a general audience of non-Zappa freaks, the book serves as a valuable survival account of repeated traumas between a mother and daughter. Moon describes Gail as her “first bully,” and so the book’s contents will be familiar and cathartic for anyone who has survived a life with a narcissistic, unreliable, unbalanced, and resentful parent.
To the Zappa fans, I can’t say I recommend the book as pleasurable reading. But I would recommend it for the degree to which it provides insights into one of Frank’s favorite topics: the endless absurdity of human existence. You might not want to know this much about your heroes, but for better or worse, you will find yourself feeling much closer to the glowing center of the Zappa universe. Maybe it’s important for fans to understand Frank as the deeply flawed, all-too-earthly human he really was.
In a recent interview, Moon made an important point about living in the shadow of a legend: nothing you do is ever yours. Anything you do well is immediately ascribed to your legendary parent’s genes (we see you, Wolfgang Van Halen!). With the arrival of this book, however, Moon can at least say that she has accomplished several things that her parents never could: she has learned how to find peace, regulate and express her emotions, heal her psychological wounds, and become a caring, sensitive and supportive parent for her child – a series of feats that eluded even the legendary genius Frank Zappa.