Frank Zappa
I first saw Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention when a friend and I hitch-hiked from Calgary to Vancouver especially to see the concert held at the Kerrisdale Arena in August of 1968.
I was already a devout fan because of a musical life changing experience in the fall of ’67. I was at an all-weekend party at another friend’s house in Edmonton and all the records they had were Freak-out and Absolutely Free. These three disks were put on a stacking turntable and played over and over, occasionally shuffled. The party was the sort where people spent a lot of time laying on the floor with their head between the speakers.
When I moved to Vancouver in 1970 I shared a house with Hank Zevallos and Len MacMillan who were Vancouver’s premier concert promoters. They booked Frank quite a number of times into Vancouver and also did a cross Canada tour that ended in Montreal were the lines “Watch where those huskies go. Don’t eat the yellow snow.” were written.
On one tour just after Flo and Eddie joined the Mothers we were at the sound check at the Vancouver Coliseum and both the guys wanted to have a smoke. They had thought the rehearsal was finished and we went up to the nose-bleed section to partake. No sooner did we get up there and light-up Frank came back on stage and started to call out to them. “Flo! Eddie! I want to see you. I want to see you now. You better not be doing what I think your doing.” The two hit the floor dragging me down with them. Both were shit scared. Frank had a strict no drug policy for all band members and crew. (Albeit hard to enforce in those days) If you were caught red-handed you were fired immediately. I saw it happen once with a roadie at a UBC concert. He left the guy in Vancouver with no money and no way home.
What was left of the smoke was eaten and out came the gum. We crawled on our bellies to the nearest exit and snuck back down to the stage level. I stayed in the shadows while Flo and Eddie made their way to the stage like nothing was amiss. Frank gave them both a long silent and dirty look but didn’t say anything about their disappearance and then said that there was one more song he wanted to go over and they got on with the rehearsal much to the relief of the two singers.
This shot was taken in Vancouver; the year escapes me, when I was given a rare stage access.
As an interesting aside, I included this photo in a recent exhibition in France and I sold three copies. They still love you Frank.
