European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 26, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Tuesday september 26, 1978 the stars and stripes Page 19 Zappa s franc Zappa whose first splash in the puddle of Rock & Roll is now More than 15 years in the past is still writing and playing what he Calls sociological music. In a dim lit hotel room in Saa Brucken during his recent european tour the quiet spoken musician bandleader filmmaker talked to stars and stripes entertainment editor Dan Warfield. Excerpts from the interview follow q i used to have a Roommate who played your music continuously. A it must have been really nerve wracking. But i never understood exactly what the Appeal was until i saw your performance last year. It was one of the most exciting Rock shows of the season. Suddenly after years of actively disliking most of your music i found myself becoming a Zappa fan. A yours is a very common Case. The thing that most people know about what we do is what they read in the papers. It s Only the hard Core fanatics who actually go out there and see it. And like your Friend who was playing the tapes All the time she saw it she liked it and she wanted to keep enjoying it but the regular people the ones that go for the regular music they won t even con Sider me and the band As a possibility for entertainment because they can t even imagine it everything that gets written about the band puts it in auant bizarro. Some weird realm and they automatically presume there s nothing in there for their dancing feet. We play All different kinds of stuff and we do it really Good. In fact we do it better than most of the other groups that Are around. We spend a lot of time rehearsing. Before we Start a tour i be got an immense investment in rehearsal Sala Ries. Those Guys Are paid to go through Boot Camp that s almost As bad As what you Guys get. This band rehearsed for eight to 10 hours a Day five Days a week. At the end it was like six and seven Days a week for eight weeks. Q do you work with written music a of yes. You Wanna see some hauls out his suit Case and produces a full orchestral score for a song to be recorded next summer. I carry this suitcase around with me on the Road and i write this stuff in hotel rooms i write it at Home i write it in airports and i give it to a copyist and he does it in Ink and it comes out real suave. Q examine the score you modify this As you re Hearse it a usually. I mean a lot of the things Start off very specific. The first thing they have to do is learn it exactly As written and then As we hear the thing coming Back As i get an idea for something funny to do we just stick it in. We were rehearsing in London last week and just got this idea to Start trying everything i Ever wrote As a reggae number. I started calling off song titles and saying of play this  we got some hilarious  still examining the score what sort of piece would you Call this a it leans More in the concerto Grosso direction. It s got a lot of featured instrumental solos for the different players and you have various Solo specialists in each Sec Tion battling it out with the rest of the orchestra. There s a really hard and elaborate clarinet part in Here. Q Are you pulling elements from jazz from classical music from Rock for something like this or do you Divide these categories up when you re working a the Way it works is the thing that really sets those musical styles apart is not what kind of notes Are in it but what kind of timbre is expressing it. I la give you an example. You know the Jimi Hendrix song purple Haze picture it being played by an accordian. Is it still acid Rock you get the idea. The timbre of the instruments playing the line is what makes it sound like jazz. If you take the Bach two part inventions and have it played by a fender Rhodes piano and a rhythm Section it could sound rather Jazzy. Q it would still sound like  yeah but you d say to yourself hey that s a jazz  you could probably release it As a jazz album be cause it s being said in the timbre language of that particular style. Q you d have to change the steady regular rhythm on a Bach  not much. Have you listened to much recent jazz they re playing All that disco crap in the background. That s the Basic underlying thing. It s not swing any More it s All straight up and Down. So you take a disco beat and put that behind the two part inventions and you might come up with something pretty  the other hand people who like that kind of rhythm would t be too inclined to go out and buy a harpsichord record because the sound of a harpsichord does t get them off. But suppose i wanted to reach the people who enjoy the sound of a harpsichord. Suppose you take a song like Penguin in  take the words off and just write out All the notes for a harpsichord and it be comes a different realm. It s not always the notes and it s not always the rhythm that determines what the style is. The style is More determined by the sound of the instruments that Are playing it. Q there Are various scenes or circles in music. There s a modern classical group in new York for example. Some of them Are pretty strange. Is there a particular group like that. That i hang out with no. I hate All of pm. I Don t have time for that stuff. Q Well some of them Are pretty strange. A they re All strange. I Don t like things that Are done by committee. I think that the committee is going to be one of the great retarding factors in the advancement of civilization. The Bottom line the final reckoning of How much it s slowing the creative process Down in the world today they won t know How much damage is being done by committees for a number of years. It s not just the idea that a lot of people decide what s going to be performed and what s going to be stamped with the word this is Artis  it s not just that it s being done by committees. It s the Type of people who Are on those committees. It s Hor  be got corporations that make the difference in terms of distribution and financing for new artistic events where these decisions Are being made by commit tees of accountants. Q some people Are saying the Way it s going in the record business that in five years Well have lbs arid Warner Elektra Atlantic and Emi and everyone else will go by the  it s pretty much that Way now. A person who is an accountant and has an aptitude for dealing with numbers and Boring pieces of paper and still wants to get you know the Jimi Hendrix song purple Haze ? picture it being played by an accordian reamed just like everybody else he wants to have this dramatic image of himself As a Man of the world and have an exciting life and so Forth he s doomed because he s got that Little tiny ballpoint pen and those papers. He s looking for a Way to express himself. So he goes for the Glamor Industry. He goes into the film business or into the record business or he gets some where next to show business right so he starts off and he s in the accounting department. He s keeping track of the numbers right he figures that if he can make his balances look better than the next Guy s balances then maybe he s Gonna move on up into a More important position eventually president of the company. Soon you have a Guy who does t know anything about music who knows a vast amount about retail and believes that that s All that matters he s in the position to determine what gets signed what gets distributed what actually becomes a hit and actually what the people of the world get to hear in terms of music. What they re Selling might As Well be shoes or Ball bearings. And it s so depressing in the movie business. It used to be where if you had an idea for a film there was one Guy who ran the company. He was what you Call your Mogul. For better or worse he was the final say so on what got spent. If he wanted to do something he d push the Button and it got done and you could move fast. Today you have committees of this committees of that and you have reams of lawyers each one trying to Jack up his hourly rate and the process of getting a project through one of these Large companies is so complicated and so slow moving. In a world designed around fast Media you know get the news that s on to. Bing Bing it happens you forget it everything s Chang ing really fast. If you want to do something with a con temporary theme by the time you get it through one of those companies your contemporary theme is already ancient history. Q have you been trying to do a movie lately a see those boxes in my suitcase that s two thirds of the film that i be been working on i be been having screenings of it Here in Europe trying to raise Money to finish  what s it about a it s a concert film. Q just a straight concert film a there is nothing straight about it laughs. Actually what this is is kind of a really incredible document it s a concert in new York at halloween at the palladium. The concert itself was fantastic. The camera coverage of it was fantastic. And the stuff that the people were doing it s just outside the realm of your Normal idea of what a concert is about. It s a Good picture. Q what do you still need to do with it a i have to do some More editing and i have All the final lab costs and the final dub. I need about another half million dollars to finish it off. I be got nine reels Cut and there s six reels in the suitcase. I be already put $400,000 of Rny own Money in it. I just can t afford to stick any More in. Q what happens if you Don t get some backing soon do you just keep it and watch it at Home a yeah. I be had a lot of projects like that because it s so hard to get somebody to put up the Money to Start the project Blind. Nobody is Gonna say hey Frank you re great go do this Here s the  i always wind up starting these things with my own Money. Then in the Middle of the project i be got to go around looking for enough Money to finish it. I be got three or four big projects that Cost a lot of Money to Start that nobody la Ever see because i could t get enough funds for comple Tion or any Way to distribute the thing. The Only reason i m doing this interview i know that whatever i say is going to be tweeze you May not believe this but i have a great fondness for service  say something for the troops. A Well usually what i say is hello  really i have respect for the Guys in service. They re doing something that is important that s got to be done. If you happen to be a person who likes being in the serv ice and you find yourself doing what you want to do then that s a kind of happiness. Q i remember a Drill sergeant in army Boot Camp who told us his ultimate High in life is to be out in the Woods somewhere with a Rifle and there s another Guy out there with a Rifle. One of them will die. That s his idea of heaven on  Well in every army there Are people like that and unless we be got ours then those other Guys Over there Are Gonna get their heaven. And also it s better that a Guy who has that idea of heaven is doing it within the framework of the armed forces rather than on top of a building in new York  s face it. People have aptitude for stuff like that there Are people who Are born to do that. Now what s he Gonna do if there was t an army he s not Gonna drive a milk truck