Dweezil Zappa is keeping the legacy of Frank Zappa alive on Choice Cuts Tour

Dweezil Zappa figures he was 12 the first time he heard music on the radio.

Until then, his exposure to music had been limited to whatever his father, Frank Zappa, was either working on or listening to for enjoyment.

So what did he think of the radio?

“It was a very strange situation,” he says. “I was listening, thinking, ‘Where’s the rest of it? Where are all the other instruments and all the different rhythms?’”

“It wasn’t stimulating enough,” he says. “Eventually, I grew to like certain things that were sort of ubiquitous because they’re good, like the Beatles. But I did have that experience of “Uhh, what’s going on here? How come there are no marimbas?'”

'80s music, Van Halen changed it all

He came around soon enough, drawn to ‘80s guitar heroes Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads.

“This was 1982,” he recalls. “Van Halen was at the top of the charts, doing stadium tours. Randy Rhoads was with Ozzy Osbourne. And the thing about their playing is that the sound was unique. It was aggressive, But there was a lot of technical precision in it. Which coming from my dad’s music, that appealed to me – the sound of this stuff being played with precision.”

By then, he’d decided he wanted to be a guitarist, like his father. And Van Halen seemed as good a place to start as any.

“Not to say it was easy to learn,” he recalls, with a laugh. “But it was definitely easier than my dad’s music. I figured, ‘I’ve gotta start somewhere.’ And I really was into the way the songs were put together around the guitar. For years, that’s how my thought process was when it came to writing my own music.”

That same year, the young Zappa recorded a single called “My Mother is a Space Cadet” with Van Halen producing and guesting. At 16, he released a first album called “Havin’ a Bad Day,” followed two years later by “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.”

In 2015, he released his first album in nearly a decade, having spent much of his time since 2006 on the road celebrating the musical legacy his father left behind when he died in 1993 of prostate cancer.

Zappa Plays Zappa hits a roadblock

IN 2016, he was forced to stop touring as Zappa Plays Zappa as a result of a cease-and-desist order filed by the Zappa Family Trust after control of the trust was taken over by two of his siblings, Ahmet and Diva, following his mother’s result death.

But that hasn't stopped him from honoring their father’s memory. He's launching a new tour called Choice Cuts at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts on March 30.

Here’s Dweezil Zappa on the Choice Cuts Tour, his father’s life and legacy and more.

Question: You’re calling this tour Choice Cuts. Why?

Answer: It’s always an interesting balance of trying to put something together with things that are expected versus things that are a little deeper in the catalog.

With the current musicians that are in the band, there’s more of a range of possibilities of things that we could do, particularly vocally. So we decided to do some hardcore digging and there are a couple of really cool things that we’re able to do.

"Florentine Pogen" and "The Black Page"

Like, my dad did a hilarious jingle for Remington electric razors in the ‘60s. Very twisted. And we’re gonna play the very first version of “Florentine Pogen” that was ever put together but never released. This particular version of the song is so cool. Both versions are great. But for anybody who knows that song, to hear it done in this way, I think is gonna be a real fun surprise.

Plus, there are some hard songs that are just very challenging musically. Like, we’re playing “The Black Page” at a tempo that it’s never been played at, very, very fast.

Q: Are you also doing things that are expected?

A: Well, less so. You can’t really qualify any of the stuff as hits. There are things that the fans are familiar with. And we certainly reach into that area but we’re not particularly focused on trying to present the music in that way.

There’s always going to be somebody who wants to hear a particular song and it may not be in the show. And then there are times when somebody might yell out for something and if we know it, we’ll just play it.

Having said that, this set list is very intense. It’s close to 40 songs.

Q: I would think most Zappa fans are hardcore fans. Have you found that to be the case?

A: For the most part. But with what we do, we also experience people coming to the show for the first time who have never heard any of the music. They’re just taking a chance on it. And really, music can appeal to anyone, especially in a live situation.

If you’re seeing the diversity and depth of composition, there’s really no way that you can’t appreciate the genius that is there. It really is amazing to see the diversity in the compositions and think, “Oh my God, one person wrote all this?”

Sometimes there will be a song that’s so great, you’ll think “Wow, this song has everything.” That somebody could achieve that level of compositional greatness once in their career would be quite an achievement.

Q: Did you ever talk to your dad about his compositional approach?

A: I did. Having studied the music for the last 15 years, I have more questions now than I did then. But really, my hat’s off to him for being able to take the same 12 notes used in Western music and rearrange them so masterfully with such diversity.

He doesn’t repeat himself and there’s just an amazing amount of creativity there.

Q: The LA Times wrote that you take your job as your father’s musical ambassador seriously. Is that how you see your role?

A: Well, I wouldn’t say that I decided to make business cards with that (laughs).

But obviously, I do what I do to present the music for people and give them a chance to be exposed to a greater amount of the music. We don’t repeat what we do from tour to tour. We learn new stuff every time.

So we keep it fresh and inspiring for us as musicians to play the music. And in doing so, it makes it exciting for people to see the show every time just because it changes.

Q: Were you always a fan of your father’s music? I would think much of his music is pretty complex for a child to enjoy.

A: Well a young child will enjoy whatever is put in front of them. They don’t have any preconceived notions. They’re just gonna take it for what it is.

For example, a very complex song like "St. Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast," the music is very, very hard to play and clever and creative, but you know, it’s a song about pancakes.

So a kid is gonna be like “That’s a great song. I like the song about pancakes. Because I like pancakes.”

I think the real challenge is to be able to give people a little bit of context so they can appreciate some of the stuff that is above and beyond what normal people have done when it comes to creating music.

But I think just being exposed to a handpicked selection on this Choice Cuts Tour, if you never have heard Frank’s music and you come and see this tour, you’re gonna be just shocked at the variety.

Q: Do you find that having studied your father’s music for these shows has had an impact on how you approach your own music?

Yeah, a pretty drastic impact because in totality all the time that I’ve spent has given me a whole new skill set. It’s like going to university for 15 years. And now the guitar is just one piece of the puzzle. It’s not the main focus for me.

What I’ve learned from playing so many of my dad’s songs and the way the different instruments are put together like a puzzle for each composition, that became much more interesting and appealing to me than just focusing on one instrument.

15 years immersed in Frank Zappa's music

Last November, I did a couple concerts in Holland where I got to write music for a 100-piece orchestra. And I wouldn’t have been able to do that had I not spent the last 15 years immersed in my dad’s music.

So I have much more of an interest in doing more projects like that as I go on and maybe getting into film scoring and other things that kind of bring all these different elements together.

Q: Once you decided that you wanted to do music, did your dad encourage you?

A: Well, he did. But he made sure to let me know that the industry itself is a terrible business and that if you’re interested in quality, you’re gonna be disappointed because there’s too much in the industry that’s not about quality. There’s too many compromises.

Artistically speaking, if you’re willing to do what you do because you like it, there’s a very good chance that you will be the only one. And that was how he operated. He said, “I make music that I like and if other people like it too, that’s a bonus.”

Q: Is there an album or an era of his music that you're more drawn to?

A: With this tour, I’ve been able to explore all of that and initially it was the years that I grew up watching him make the music. So it was all throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

The first maybe seven or eight years of the tour were really focusing heavily on that particular era. And we played, I don’t know, 300, 400 songs from that era.

Mother of Invention

These days, it’s even more expansive because we’re doing a lot of stuff from the early Mothers of Invention days. And that stuff is less difficult to play but it’s a little more complicated to make it have the sound that is evocative of that era.

We work harder to get the sound design together for that because they were doing a lot of stuff at that time that you really can’t recreate very specifically live. They have a lot of effects created by tape-speed manipulation – vocals and instruments that change pitch.

It’s a challenge to make it evocative of the era, which is something that we like to do because part of the way that the music is presented is to give it that sort of time-machine feel.

If we’re playing something from the ‘60s or the ‘70s or ‘80s, the instrumentation is reflective of that. We don’t just gloss over it and play it with one modern sound all the way across the board because it wouldn’t be right for the music.

That’s one of the things that takes up a lot more time than people might realize, the whole sound design element of it.

Q: What inspired you to launch the first of these tours?

A: After he had passed away, I noticed that there were a lot of people that really weren’t focusing on his music.

He had been known as a sort of political figure for some time before passing away, so it was kind of one of those situations where history was kind of rewriting itself and he was being regarded as this novelty act in a way.

And I thought, Well, people don’t know the real depth of the music and there needs to be a way for people to be exposed to that as opposed to just hearing 'Yellow Snow' or 'Valley Girl' or something that accidentally got on the radio.

That’s one explanation for why people regarded him the way they did, because the stuff that did get on the radio wasn’t reflective of the totality of his music.

If you've only heard a handful of his songs – “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” “Cosmic Debris,” “Dancing Fool” or maybe even “Peaches en Regalia,” that doesn’t even scratch the surface.

That was the impetus. So the first several tours were really about de-emphasizing the novelty stuff.

Q: Do you feel like he ever regretted the novelty stuff (which I love) because it became his calling card in the mainstream?

A: I don’t think so. Because he played whatever he wanted. He wrote whatever he wanted. When he went on tour, he would change the songs and rearrange them. He always took care to make the process as creative and fun as he could for himself.

And in doing so, it was of benefit to the audience.

But I don’t think he ever looked back at any of the stuff in any sort of retrospective kind of way. He was just always writing. He made over 60 albums in his lifetime, which is ridiculous considering the kind of music that is on them.

Orchestral music and very difficult stuff that someone would be lucky to achieve just once in his lifetime. Sometimes he made five records a year. It’s really crazy.

Q: Would you care to get into your brothers attempts at making you cease and desist?

A: Well, I mean, the only thing to really say about it is that there’s a chance that there will be a resolution at some point and there’s been a lot of stuff that has been totally unnecessary.

Ultimately for the family itself to move forward, I’ve always said that it would be best if everybody was working together as opposed to against each other.

Q: What do you think your father’s most enduring legacy or most enduring impact on the culture was?

A: I don’t really know. I don’t think he set out to make an impact, like "You know what? I’m the guy who does this." He just did what he did. So it means different things to different people.

But I suppose what he consistently did was he proved that he was not afraid to tell the truth. He told it like it was all the time. And that made him a dangerous figure in the ‘60s.

He was literally blacklisted from the radio because people thought, “Hmm, I don’t know if we want this guy on the airwaves.”

Dweezil Zappa Plays Frank Zappa

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 30.

Where: Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. Second St.

Admission: $38-$79.

Details: scottsdaleperformingarts.org.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Twitter.com/EdMasley.

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