Name: Frank Zappa Wants To Be A Talk Show Host | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-06-06T22:10:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Frank Zappa Wants To Be A Talk Show Host | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Frank Zappa Wants To Be A Talk Show Host | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-06. Transcript available.

In the 1960s, my first guest founded a band called the Mothers of Invention,
and through live performances and such albums as Weasels Ripped My Flesh
and Burnt Weenie Sandwich, he established a reputation as a brilliant musician
and an exciting performer.
This is an album of his latest work, ladies and gentlemen, Zappa Volume 1.
We're delighted to have him back with us tonight. Please welcome Frank Zappa.
Nice to see you again. I want to thank you for coming by last night and helping
us out.
And when you were here last night, you said that when you came back tonight,
there was something you wanted to talk about.
Do you remember what you said that was?
Yeah, I thought that one of the important topics that we could discuss in a
show such as you've been conducting tonight,
if this really fits in, is brown lipstick in the corporate suite.
Brown lipstick in the corporate suite.
Yeah.
All right, you go first.
Okay.
Well, I think that nobody really looks good with brown lipstick on it.
So why do these guys in the corporate suite keep wearing it?
And how does it get there?
This is one of the problems facing us today.
Now, what do you think?
Have you run into this a lot, Frank?
Yeah.
I was at CBS yesterday.
CBS.
And men and women alike were wearing the brown lipstick.
They do.
Boy, I don't know.
See, you're lucky.
You have the little blue cards to go like that.
That's right.
I can keep that from happening.
We have folks who have come specifically to the show tonight to hear about your
latest album, the London Symphony Orchestra performing heretofore unrecorded
Frank Zappa works.
How do you get the London Symphony Orchestra to do your stuff?
You pay them.
Yeah.
But isn't this a really prestigious organization?
Of course.
So you pay them a lot of money.
Yeah.
And did you flew to London to do this?
Mm-hmm.
Do you mind if I read something from the liner note here?
Go ahead.
Musical information.
This is the first recorded performance of these works.
It goes on.
As with every performance of new music, errors will occur.
Every effort has been made to remove these, but without a much larger budget
for rehearsal and recording time, the possibility of perfection in a premiere
situation such as this is somewhat remote.
Now, what does that mean exactly?
That means that any time somebody writes a piece of music that nobody's ever
seen before and you hand that music to a musician, unless they have sufficient
time to rehearse it and get all the details worked out, the chances of an
absolutely perfect performance are not good.
And given the amount of money that I had to spend to produce an album of
orchestral music and the fact that I had a fixed amount of time because of
their schedule to do this, that it would be humanly impossible to play works of
this complexity absolutely perfect.
Yes.
But we tried.
Now, how close did you get?
I would say that considering the amount of editing that was done to remove bad
notes played by various people, that we're up to about 75% on this record.
Well, that's a pretty good deal, isn't it?
It's not too bad.
Now, did you feel driven by integrity to put this on here, or is this common
procedure?
No, that was just, I have a personal relationship with my fans where I don't
mess around.
Yeah.
And I wanted to let them know that if they listened to this and expected that
that was exactly the way it was supposed to be, it's not.
It can be played better, but only in a situation where somebody spends more
time to rehearse it.
Is it possible that at some point you would go back with bigger budget and more
rehearsal time and do it again, or is this it?
Well, you have to understand how I get my budgets.
How do you get them?
I get them from fans spending money for buying records.
Yeah.
If a certain amount of money comes in, then I'll turn that money around and I'll
do another project.
I spent everything that I could spend to do that, so it's doubtful that I will
be making another record of those works.
Another orchestra may record it, but I can't afford to do it.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's very refreshing that you have that approach.
I mean, just pretty much explaining to the folks what's going on.
I think it should be fair, especially people who come here wearing shorts and
stuff.
Okay.
We've got to go away for a commercial.
We'll be right back, though, to continue talking with Frank Zappa.
Frank Zappa is here.
We mentioned the album digital, by the way.
Is there any way you can quickly explain to me what this means as opposed to
the old steam-powered recordings we played as kids?
It means that the original tapes for this recording were made on a digital
medium with no tape hiss and more refined sound.
This is state-of-the-art stuff, right?
It's the good stuff, yeah.
Also, I was reading some things about you this afternoon.
In one newspaper interview, you mentioned that you'd like to have your own talk
show.
Around 1968, I tried to do that.
I set out to convince people in television that I should talk to people on TV.
And I gave a list of the kinds of people that, you know, when I made my
proposal to the TV people, I would say I would have these kind of people on.
What kind were they?
Oh, I don't remember who it was, but they didn't like the list, that was for
sure.
Who did you make this proposal to?
I think it was NBC.
That's kind of surprising they wouldn't go along with you.
There's no accounting for taste.
Now, but just take a second here and think again, maybe this is putting you on
the spot, but who would you, if you had a show, really, would you be interested
in letting America take a better look at?
Well, what I would have done at that time would be to take people who were in
politics and put them next to each other on a couple of chairs with people from
rock and roll or from the arts or, you know, just people that you wouldn't
normally expect to confront each other and let them hack it out.
It was always kind of a, not necessarily a dream, but an interest of mine that
if you had a talk show, and as it turns out, I have one.
You're a lucky guy.
But to get somebody, not unlike the gentleman we pantsed earlier tonight, bring
him down and maybe once a month, once a week, whatever, just let him, you know,
talk 15, 20 minutes and find out what the guy does for a living, how are things
going, and what is affecting this person that we see on the front page of the
newspaper.
I think that's a perfect format, and I think that somebody should do it,
because people who watch talk shows would probably like to be on them, you know,
and I think that people who come to a live audience like this would probably
like to just jump up here and start talking about whatever was on their mind.
And probably, because they have been watching talk shows for years, be very
good at it.
Yeah, and also because they saw things on talk shows that made them so bored
that they knew they could do better.
Yeah.
So they should get a chance to do it.
That's, yeah, maybe we'll do that one night.
Let me ask you about your relationship with another one of our guests, Captain
Beefheart.
I went to high school with him, and I haven't seen him in quite some time.
I think the last time I saw him was about two years ago when he stopped by one
of our rehearsals.
And you guys had worked together early?
Yeah, we did.
Well, when we were still in high school, we used to, he had to quit because his
father got sick.
And I was a senior, and he was already out of school and helping the family out
because his father was sick.
And I used to spend a lot of time over at his house listening to rhythm and
blues records.
And that was all there was to do in Lancaster.
Lancaster?
And that's one of those kind of places where if you say the name of that town,
nobody will ever clap.
You say Brooklyn, you know, somebody makes some noise.
Lancaster, California is different.
And it's really bleak out there.
So we used to listen to rhythm and blues records all night, and then he would
go into his father and drove a Helms bakery truck.
And he would crawl out there and get pineapple buns out of the truck.
And we'd eat those in the middle of the neck.
And later on, after he had formed a band, I had formed a band.
And his band broke up, and he wasn't doing any work.
I asked him to work in my band for a while.
He did one tour with us and made one album with us.
But since that time, he's put another group back together and has been
recording for Warners.
He's a very interesting man to talk to, isn't he?
He's a strange person.
Yeah.
Did you give him his name?
Actually, the name came from a comment made by his, I believe it was his uncle.
And it's connected with a somewhat obscene situation where the uncle was
exposing himself to his girlfriend who was living in the house at that time.
And then the character of Captain Beefheart was derived from this particular
comment.
And then a screenplay was written called Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People.
That's where the character came from.
And then, and he adopted the name for his band.
Knows a good name when he hears it.
Sure does.
Yeah.
You mentioned earlier, this, this album, by the way, potential collector's item,
6,000 copies were pressed.
Yeah, we only pressed 6,000 on this, because this is not a rock and roll record.
And there's no way that it's, you know, going to be on the radio or be on the
charts.
So there was not a, a large pressing order for this.
So if you like that kind of stuff, better get it.
There ain't going to be too many of them sitting around.
Oh, and then from the money that you get out of this, what, do you have any
plans for the next project?
There won't be any profit out of this.
Now, Frank, come on.
You can't.
It's impossible.
Well, good luck to you nonetheless.
And anytime, anytime you want to come by and say hello, it's a pleasure to talk
with you.
Frank Zappa, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be right back to take a look at flags from around the world.
Thank you.