From the Drumbo page (John French’s Facebook page)
"A sad commentary on the life of the Zappa kids. I saw a little of this first hand over the sort of "snapshots" I encountered when at the house on Woodrow Wilson Drive. I remember Don and I spending the night at RecordPlant as Frank recorded. Don drove Frank back to the house, and we all had breakfast that the housekeeper prepared. Standard Eggs, bacon, toast, and hash browns. We ate in the living room.
Afterwards, Frank and Don wanted to have a private meeting, so I went out on the porch and Moon was there. She was excited, as it was her birthday, and we had a little conversation in which I told her that the next day was MY birthday. She said she was going to have a party, which obviously her mom was arranging, since Frank would probably be sleeping all day. Ironically, Frank never mentioned that it was her birthday, which I found a little sad. Around the same period (1975 post Bongo Fury)
I seemed to recall infant Ahmet sitting on Gail's lap as Frank was in the studio. Don used to do a trick with his hands, and Ahmet would stare back and put his hands together trying to duplicate the trick. One time, Gail and Diva drove up to Mojave and called us to meet them on the set of a film that featured Billy Bob Thornton (Faster), who Gail said would like to meet me because he was a big Fan of Trout Mask Replica. Another time, I was invited to the house to view a Frank Scheffer videography of FZ in which I was interviewed ( along with several others). She, for some reason, was impressed with my statements about Frank, which basically consisted of me comparing the styles of writing of the two composers. At this meeting, Dweezil came in and gave a little talk about a parody of Frank that was done by Weird Al, and then played it in it's entirety ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwYAwV8MxLo) which I found to be brilliant. He then gave a little description about a meeting he'd just had with Gene Simmons. I would have liked to have met him and said "hi" but his brief appearance forbade it.
I did get to meet Diva Zappa for the first time. She seemed fairly open and cordial. I found myself remembering lines from "The Real Frank Zappa Book" in which he described being forced to sit down for a half-hour Thanksgiving Dinner with his family, which he found a bit pointless. There did seem to be a bit of an era when he actually was around for his family a bit more, but mostly he was just a workaholic and isolated from family life.
The "hoarder Gail" thing hit me a bit as I once asked Gail for a tour of the house, as I hadn't been in it in years and it was completely re-designed. She showed me her office with an amazing parquet ceiling, the dark living room with some kind of Egyptian carvings over dual doors on the east side, and we eventually wound up in the kitchen/dining area -- the dining area of which was piled full of trinkets and other strange paraphernalia ( a lot of which looked like gifts complete with cellophane), and I thought, "this is bordering on hoarding."
All in all, I found myself saddened by all of this. When I met with Ahmet at the new Zappa offices in Hollywood, he seemed very accommodating and a good host. Unfortunately, we really didn't get to have a conversation about what I was actually there for -- the back royalties on TMR.
Previously to this, I had a long phone conversation with him in which he told me about Frank calling him "his little tycoon" or words to that effect. He said he was probably the first to leave home and he made his way in the world based upon reading books FZ had given him on business. He also said, about three times, "I am not my mother," probably referring to his mother's tight grip on the estate.
I remember that when I would go to purchase copies of "Bat Chain Puller" for touring merchandise, she would charge me full retail price. -- No break at all. When I bought some from the FZ Estate after Ahmet was in charge, they knocked about 40% the price. All in all, it seemed like none of the kids really were that close to Frank, by his choice
.”John ‘Drumbo’ French
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/interactive/2024/frank-zappa-family-feud-moon-unit-dweezil/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEkR3tleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcQkoG7HH6Mh_As1H-88wershfY264J9DWeScMIxqdL46RNZOaTxOSW6Ug_aem_9OnTB5xVzhn1Ng9mdYsYqA
There’s a link to the full Washington Post article but it’s behind a paywall for me and I am not enthralled to pay for news from Washington Post unfortunately but it seemed really interesting . . . . . .not quite as fascinating as John’s enthralling observations here but still . . . . .
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