Charles Robert Zappa - Frankie and Bobby: Growing Up Zappa

FRANKIE & BOBBY

GROWING UP ZAPPA

CHARLES ROBERT ZAPPA

With Bob Stannard

CRZ Publishing, LLC

Ridgewood, NJ

Copyright 2015 by Charles Robert Zappa

Unpublished Work Copyright 1994 by Charles Robert Zappa.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Charles Robert Zappa / CRZ Publishing, LLC

www.bobzappa.com

Book Layout 2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the email address above.

Frankie and Bobby: Growing Up Zappa / Charles Robert Zappa ~ 1st ed.

ISBN 13: 978-0-9964779-1-8 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to the person who has made my life far richer for being in it, my wife, Diane Ellen Papalia.

Acknowledgments:

This book is a memoir. It contains thoughts and images that describe the events that took place during a specific period in the lives of my brother Frank and me. Some names have been changed to protect the identities of individuals who played a role in those events. Dialogue that appears in the text is my best recollection of what was said. It is a work intended to help readers understand how my brother became who he was.

I also want to acknowledge the following people:

My late wife Marcia for the time we had together.

My son Jason for enjoying as much of his uncle as circumstances allowed.

Dick Barber for staying with Frank as long as he did.

Bill Harris for making the journey and finding his place.

Bob Stannard for his wise counsel and editorial guidance.

Robert Lanni for his brilliant marketing mind, incredible optimism and infectious sense of humor.

Dorri Olds for her expert editing, design and social media marketing skills.

About Bob Stannard

Bob Stannard is an eighth generational Vermonter. He has served in the Vermont legislature, worked as a logger, sold commercial real estate and was a lobbyist in the Vermont legislature for over twenty years.

He has written two Vermont humor books: How to Survive the Recession A Vermont Perspective and How to Survive the Recovery A Vermont Perspective. Jeff Danziger, a nationally syndicated cartoonist, did the artwork for both books. Stannard has been a bi-monthly political columnist for the Bennington Banner and VT Digger since 1995. An accomplished harmonica player/Blues singer/song writer, he has performed with BB King, Mark Hummel, David Maxwell, John Hammond, Louisiana Red and many others (see www.bobstannard.com).

He is a practicing martial artist and loves to fish. Fishing was how Stannard and Bobby Zappa came together. Stannards fishing partner, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. The Most Interesting Man in the World and lifetime friend of Bobby Zappa, was responsible for uniting Stannard and Zappa.

Bob Stannard lives in Manchester, Vermont, with his wife, Alison. They have two grown children, Meredith Hairston and Wesley Stannard and four grandkids.

Email:

Frankie and Bobby: Growing Up Zappa

Table of Contents:

F OREWORD

The Child is Father of the Man

~ William Wordsworth, 1802

T he development of all human beings is influenced by many factorsthe genes from their parents, the family they grew up in, the culture that surrounds them, the time in which they were born and raised. Yet each person is an individual, unique in his or her own way.

This is the story of how one unique individual, Frank Zappa, grew up. It is told by a person who has insights into Frank that no other person could have, for he grew up right alongside of his older brother. Bob Zappa was more, though, than Franks younger sibling. He was his best friend.

In this moving memoir, we are told stories about Franks early years that have never been told before. And we ask what we can learn from these stories that shed light on how Frank developed into the cultural icon he became.

We see a family beset by constant moves across country, as his father pursued vague hopes of bringing a better life to his wife and their children. We can only speculate how this affected Franks - and Bobs - development. But one thing is certain: it underlay the bond between the two boys that was made stronger because of it. We also see young Franks constant battle of wills with his father. And we must ask how those interactions were mirrored in the outspoken man Frank became.

It is impossible to understand with total accuracy how a child becomes an adulthow exactly the child is father of the man. Still, this book fills in many of the gaps in the Frank Zappa story and goes a long way in helping the reader understand who he was and where he came from.

Diane E. Papalia, Ph.D.

Author of:

A CHILDS WORLD 13th Ed. ~ McGraw-Hill, Inc.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 13th Ed. ~ McGraw-Hill, Inc.

PSYCHOLOGY ~ McGraw-Hill, Inc.

I NTRODUCTION

F rank Zappa was my big brother. Three years apart, we were best friends growing up. Growing up Zappa covers the times and events that Frank and I shared from the late 1940s until 1967, when I worked for him and the Mothers of Invention when they played the Garrick Theater on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.

We were children of the post-depression era, the cold war, and the psychedelic 1960s. We lived through the birth of the military industrial complex, racial and immigrant bigotry, and the foreshadowing of the computer age.

Over the course of those years Frank developed a uniquely charismatic personality laced with cynicism, moral authority, a wicked sense of humor, and oratory skills unmatched by his contemporaries.

I wrote this book to help clarify perceptions about Frank and to describe his childhood and early adult years.

As those who knew him personally and professionally would agree, Frank was a complex person.

My brother and I lived separate yet parallel lives. We shared unique experiences that will disappear with me unless I make these stories public. The person you know as Frank Zappa was my brother, my best friend, and my closest confidante.

But my life should not and cannot be equated with Franks. And no one, however far removed from the original Zappa family, can claim exclusive rights to his legacy or presume that any other biography is the definitive reference to his formative years or amazing career.

It is impossible to pinpoint one single thing that may have been responsible for who he and I became as adults. Our familys frequent moves were a factor in Franks psychological development.

Living in so many different places over such a short period of time brought many challenges. Constant upheaval was one significant factor in Franks development.

His attitude toward life was shaped by the Cold War, the beatnik era, the age of psychedelic drugs, the summer of free love, the Vietnam War, political assassinations, Nixon, Watergate, landing on the moon, and disco. Life was great, life was catastrophic, and life was frequently absurd.

During that time, there was a mind-numbing conformity in our society. But, Frank never went the way of the crowd. As a youngster he was smart enough to recognize what was happening in the world around him and respond to those events.