Friendly little interview with FZ (Feb. 2, '76 in Japan)
TAN Mitsugu
For the twenty-eighth anniversary of the Japanese tour of the Mothers,
I translated another Japanese interview with Zappa, which appeared on
the April '76 issue of "Stereo" (a magazine for audiophiles). In my
humble opinion, this is one of the rarest interviews, since his
attitude toward the interviewer was exceptionally friendly. Probably
she (yes, it was done by a female reporter) was a very charming
person. Anyway, here's the interview.... (Note: The translator's
notes are shown by square brackets.)
----------
Article: "Hello Goodbye: Guest of the Month - Frank Zappa"
[Probably it's a monthly column for an interview with foreign artists
coming to Japan.]
Author: unknown [What a shame!]
Magazine title: Stereo
Publisher: Ongaku-no-tomo-sha, Tokyo
Published date: April 1976
Pages: pp. 195-199
[Headline] "I'm a genius with the ability to analyze, synthesize and
invent!"
[Biography] Born in Dec. 21, 1941. Formed an avant-garde rock band
called "the Mothers of Invention", whose debut album "Freak Out!" had
a huge impact on the rock scene. He is famous for being a man of
unusual talent - and he's a big fan of monster movies, too.
******
In order to take part in an unprecedented rock show at Asakusa Kokusai
Gekijo, Frank Zappa and the Mothers came to Japan for the first time.
As he has been keen to visit Japan for a long time, he even shared the
expenses of the touring. Although his visit coincided with other
Japanese tours by the Average White Band and the Eagles, his concerts
at various locations were reportedly very successful, gathering a lot
of enthusiastic fans.
At 4:00 p.m. on February 2nd, I timidly knocked the door of his room
in Keio Plaza Hotel, with mixed emotions. First of all, I was going
to interview one of the most bizarre men in the U.S., who was
notorious for his obscenity, abstruseness and crazy love for monster
movies (especially "Mothra"). Wearing a long black "happi"
[Japanese-style jacket] and relaxing in a sofa, however, Zappa was a
handsome man with a long, peaked, mysterious nose, and his black eyes
were very warmly twinkling. Talking in a cool and calm manner, this
gentleman looked too intellectual to be called eccentric. The
interview started with talking about the frighteningly sexy clothes he
wore on yesterday's stage, which exposed his back naked and showed the
lines of his body clearly.
Q: Your clothes looked very sexy yesterday.
Zappa: Did you like it? Wanna see me wearing it here? Did it
sexually arouse you?
(* ...And he stood up and started to take off his happi coat in a
serious face. In open-mouthed astonishment, our side shouted in a
fluster.)
Q: No, no, please don't take off! That is not necessary!
(* Zappa stopped the move regretfully.)
Q: You didn't put on underwear yesterday?
Zappa: Always. When I put on underwear, I feel like being in a
prison.
Q: What did you do right after the concert?
Zappa: I took the elevator to the upstairs, went to the dressing room
and sat on a small chair. I asked for coffee but there wasn't any.
Then a beautiful Japanese girl came up to me and threw both arms
around my neck. I lay down on the chair and she rubbed my butt. I
waited until the whole band getting ready to take a car, went
downstairs, wrote some autographs and went to a party. Then to a
disco.
Q: Was it fun?
Zappa: No. Crowded. Getting out of the disco, I came back to the
hotel, took some food, back to this room, and I can't talk about what
happened after that.
Q: Your concert lasted two hour and a half without a break. Don't you
get tired?
Zappa: Sometimes we have two shows in one night and that's exhausting.
But two hour and a half is no problem. Rather it was a short show
for me.
Q: Did you change the contents of the show for the Japanese audience?
Zappa: Not at all. It was the same as the one we do in the States.
We did the same thing in Australia, and will do in the forthcoming
European tour. The only thing I took care of was to speak slowly.
Q: You look much better than your photograph.
Zappa: John Lennon said the same thing. By the way, do you think my
teeth are beautiful?
(* And all of a sudden, he grinned.)
Q: Why do you show a funny face deliberately in a photo session?
Zappa: Everybody takes my photographs, which will go up to the editor
of a magazine. Then he chooses the funny ones. If my face looks
funny in the photos, it's because editors want me to look funny, not
because I'm funny. Every photo of the bands from England looks
beautiful. But from the U.S., you have photos of the Mothers of
Invention - that gives you wider variety, don't you think?
Q: I think you're far from being funny - rather very cool and
intelligent and serious.
Zappa: Right. I'm as serious as being funny.
Q: People often call you a genius, or a man of unusual talent, or even
crazy. What do you think of yourself?
Zappa: Do you want to hear the truth? Then please listen carefully.
Yes, I'm a genius. Not crazy.
Q: Please tell us what kind of talent makes you a genius.
Zappa: My natural talent is the ability to analyze, synthesize and
invent various types of materials.
Q: Although everybody says you're a man of unusual talent, very few
seem to place a high value on you as a musician. What do you think
about that? What kind of title do you prefer to be called?
Zappa: (Laughs) There's almost no difference whatever they call me.
When I write in an entry card, I always write "composer" as my
occupation. But in other occasions, I'm a musician.
Q: Do you think you're a kind of total artist?
Zappa: I don't think so, because there're some areas I haven't touched
yet. I'm a partial artist, so to speak. I'm a specialist in several
areas, but a total artist should be someone like Leonard da Vinci. He
couldn't have touched movie and video, though.
Q: I heard you're a fan of Edgard Varese. When did you first notice
him?
Zappa: It was when I was fifteen. Do you like Edgard Varese?
(* He left the sofa and came back with a copy of Varese's biography
published in England. Although he'd just heard my name once, he gave
me the copy with writing my name correctly on it.)
Q: Thank you very much. Could I really have this? (* I asked half in
a doubt.)
Zappa: Sure. I have two copies, and will present one for my wife and
the other for you. Varese is a great composer.
Q: Do you have any idea on Japanese composers of contemporary classic,
like Takemitsu...
Zappa: Oh Takemitsu! I love "November Steps". If you see him in the
future, you must send him this message: when I was in a hospital, I
was just crazy about "November Steps", listening to it everyday[*1].
It's really excellent. Another good one is "Dorian Horizon".
Q: What made you start listening to contemporary classic? It sounds
precocious to listen to Varese at the age of fifteen.
Zappa: It's quite a complicated story, but do you want to hear it all?
OK. When I was twelve, I started to play drums. At the age of
fourteen or fifteen, I read a magazine article about Sam Goody's
record shop in New York, which got famous for selling any kind of
records very well. One of the examples of hard-to-sell records was
"Ionization". But this article was wrong. The real title of that
album was "The Complete Works of Edgard Varese, Volume I", and
"Ionization" was just the name of one of the compositions on the
album. I read the explanation of the record and thought, "it is the
one I really want to hear". Since then, I'd go to various record
shops to look for the record. But I couldn't find it. Nobody had
ever heard of it, since the title I knew was wrong. But one day, I
went to a record shop and found a weird looking album. The front
jacket was gray and had a photo of Varese. That was the one I'd been
looking for. I emptied what little money I had and came home with it.
I immediately found it different from any other music, even though I
hadn't heard any of contemporary music - any of classical music, of
course. The next record I bought was "Brighter Spring" [sic] [*2]. I
would keep listening to these two records for the next three years or
so. The next composer I noticed was Anton Webern. Oh, have you seen
the score I wrote? Let me show you.
(* Zappa showed us the score for his new album, written in his own
writing [*3].)
Q: It's marvelous! Have you studied musical theory?
Zappa: No, I went to libraries. If you read books and listen to
records, you can learn everything you need. Actually, there're not so
many books necessary for composing. All you have to do is just master
three kinds of basic texts: one for the mechanics of writing a score;
another one for orchestration; and the last one is something like an
encyclopedia, which, for example, easily shows where Bartok uses harp
in his compositions. That sort of book compiles various techniques of
orchestration of all kinds.
(* Then we talked a lot about classical music. Zappa doesn't like
minimalists like Terry Riley, and his favorite French composer is
Ravel. He brought up the name of pianist Alicia de Larrocha, who he
thinks is very good at playing Ravel. His knowledge on classics,
especially on contemporary ones, almost outshines a professional.)
Q: By the way, what is the most important thing when you select
musicians for your band? In other words, which do you choose between
a technically superb musician and a heavy drinker?
Zappa: (Laughs) You got a good sense of humor! Well, I choose my
musicians just like using various flowers for flower arrangement,
because each band has its own style. If the group's general direction
of music is very technical, I need someone who can read and memorize
the parts fast. But the type of music we're currently playing is not
technical, so it's appropriate to choose someone who dynamically moves
on the stage, preferably with a good sense of humor and a cheerful
personality to go on tour together. I once had a group with
technically superb musicians only, but it was the most boring tour I
ever had. Although they were pretty good musicians, I had no fun
hanging around with them. The only thing they wanted to do was to
play chess (laugh).
Q: When you choose a new member, do you have any inspiration,
something like "he's the one"?
Zappa: Wherever I went, musicians would come up and ask me to hire
them. In some cases, they'd send me a cassttetape. In other cases,
I'd go to a club to see them play and take a note of their names. I
have a notebook with the names of those fellows, and have a look in
the list when some of my band members have to be replaced. If I find
some candidates, I'd call them.
Q: What was the funniest encounter with a new member?
Zappa: The case of Ian Underwood. One day he suddenly came up to me
and said, "Hello, my name is Ian Underwood. I play piano and alto
sax. Very competent. I'd like to join your group". I said, "All
right, whip it out". Then he whipped it out, and I said "OK, you're
hired". And we cut a record on the very same day.
Q: What is he doing now?
Zappa: He's learning tennis in Florida.
Q: When your album "Over-nite Sensation" was released, Warner secretly
gave us a translation of lyrics, which almost made me lose my senses,
since they were so extreme. But when I listened to the record with my
eyes on the translation, I really, really enjoyed it.
Zappa: What? Who translated "Dinah-moe Humm"? (* That is the most
obscene lyrics in the album.) I have a very interesting story on that
song. Just before releasing the album, we gave a concert in Brisbane,
Australia. I was touring with a cassettetape of the album, and after
the show, I came back to the hotel with two girls and made them listen
to the tape. One of them was a beatnik type, and the other one was a
Women's-Lib type. And then, they started laughing and really liked
it. Later that night, the Women's-Lib type suggested that we should
do exactly the same things that happens in the song, but this time, do
them extremely fast. She was buns-up kneelin' and wanted to do it as
soon as possible (* Everybody in the room laughed out loud). You
should try it. It's difficult but would be a good exercise.
Q: Does anybody have an influence on your lyrics?
Zappa: Nobody.
Q: Everything comes from your experience?
Zappa: Some from my experience, and some from my imagination.
"Montana" is not from my experience.
Q: How about "Dinah-moe Humm"?
Zappa: Until going to Brisbane, I hadn't thought it's good enough to
make it on to the record. But now, it became legendary in the U.S.:
it's banned from the radio, although the lyrics don't have any of
those four letter words or illegal words. I didn't use any word
infringing any law! But still this song offends everybody. Oh, I
just remembered. Yesterday I was with another Japanese girl. I asked
her what kind of letters in this country describe the word "I'm
coming!", but her face turned red and told me she couldn't answer.
What a funny country!! Everybody in this country gets nervous when
they see hair[*4], and they can't even tell the letters for "I'm
coming".
Q: You're absolutely right. OK, this is the last question: what is
your personal point of view on women?
Zappa: "Woman" is really rare. There are a lot of "Girls" and
"Ladies". "Ladies" don't want to get their hair rumpled. "Girls" are
the reserves for "Ladies". But "Woman" is really rare.
******
Around the time the interview finished, I found myself hitting it off
with him very well. The fear I had at the door had already
disappeared. When I stood up to say goodbye, all of a sudden, he took
my body in his arms without effort and hugged me strongly enough to
make my spine squeak. Everybody in the room had their mouth wide
open. It seemed to be his way of showing affection.
The generous musician had enthusiasm for giving a present: he later
invited us to have a dinner together, and on the day of his departure
he gave me the hand-written score for his new album. Perhaps we had
been too biased against him, thinking "he's an abstruse eccentric".
As he said, he is not crazy: a very talented musician, now aged
thirty-five, with outstanding intelligence and warm personality. If
you find out the truth, please relax and listen to his past albums
again. From now on, Frank Zappa's music will never sound abstruse
anymore.
[End of the text]
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*** Translator's notes:
[*1] Probably in 1972, after the accident at the Rainbow Theater in
London.
[*2] Of course, it was "The Rite Of Spring" by Stravinsky.
[*3] The first page of this interview features a photo of Zappa posing
with a full score for orchestra. During his visit in Japan, he gave a
copy of the score of "Bogus Pomp" to composer Ichiyanagi Toshi (the
first husband of Ono Yoko), thus this "score for his new album" might
be the same as the one given to Ichiyanagi.
[*4] In 1976, pubic hair was still banned from publications and films
in Japan. Things would finally change in the early '90s when the
powers that be began to overlook "hair-nude".
--
TAN, Mitsugu
studiot[at]anet.ne.jp
oledork
Gary
her what kind of letters in this country describe the word "I'm
coming!", but her face turned red and told me she couldn't answer.
What a funny country!! Everybody in this country gets nervous when
they see hair[*4], and they can't even tell the letters for "I'm
coming".
About ten years ago I was in Japan on business and since I was going
to be there a few weeks decided I'd try to learn some words/phrases.
I was driving along with a Japanese guy and was asking "how do you say
this, that, etc." then when he told me I'd repeat it a few times.
Then I asked "How do you say 'to go'"? And he said "iku" (ee-koo).
So I said "iku, iku, iku", at which point he started laughing and said
"don't say that!" I asked why not and his response was, "that is what
a woman says when she is having ecstacy". So, at least from that
story, "I'm coming" would translate as "go, go, go"!
Tan, what do you think?
Dave Wilcher
>
> I was driving along with a Japanese guy and was asking "how do you say
> this, that, etc." then when he told me I'd repeat it a few times.
>
> Then I asked "How do you say 'to go'"? And he said "iku" (ee-koo).
> So I said "iku, iku, iku", at which point he started laughing and said
> "don't say that!" I asked why not and his response was, "that is what
> a woman says when she is having ecstacy". So, at least from that
> story, "I'm coming" would translate as "go, go, go"!
I think I read the same thing - ie: Japanese female cries of passion
are interpreted as "going" - as in going to a place in the clouds.
It was either Shogun or Hustler, I forget which. ;-)
dave
--
I support Gov. Howard Dean M.D. for President:
www.deanforamerica.com
TAN Mitsugu
> Then I asked "How do you say 'to go'"? And he said "iku" (ee-koo).
> So I said "iku, iku, iku", at which point he started laughing and said
> "don't say that!" I asked why not and his response was, "that is what
> a woman says when she is having ecstacy". So, at least from that
> story, "I'm coming" would translate as "go, go, go"!
>
> Tan, what do you think?
You're right. "I'm coming" in the sexual context would translate as
"iku", which basically means "going" in Japanese. And since you
repeated it a few times in a row, it sounded much more like the
situation on the bed, like "I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming!"