In 1995 I was introduced to David via e-mail and we began an epistolary correspondence via e-mail in our spare time. We continued writing back and forth, on and off, for a number of years and will probably resume writing again in the future. David gave these e-mail letters the whimsical title "The Lost Episodes". I think they're well worth reprinting, so that's what I'll be doing here for awhile. I hope you enjoy them.
THE LOST EPISODES: An Email Correspondence
by David Walley and Nigey Lennon
Original Introduction
In December 1995 I received an email message from Dr. John Scialli of Phoenix, Arizona, introducing me to David Walley, the author of "No Commercial Potential," the first biography of Frank Zappa, originally published in 1972. In a couple of days I began receiving email from Walley, whom Scialli (that incorrigible yenta) had similarly fixed up with my email address. Scialli, it should be mentioned, is the fellow responsible for the naming of Asteroid Zappafrank following the death of Frank Zappa in 1993. He closely monitors anything and everything having to do with the late Zappa, or Zappa's Universe, and he evidently felt that myself and Walley, as authors of books on that subject, would have things to discuss. As it turned out, he was more than correct. The following are some excerpts from the early phases of that correspondence-in-progress.
--N.L. #1Dear Nigey:
It's just like our dear Dr. John Scialli to introduce us online in his self-appointed role as moderator for the altfanpsychotherapy.FrankZappa newsgroup, a cyber version of Alcoholics Anonymous. He's a really decent fellow, though, but being an inveterate gossip he's in an enviable position since most of the time he's privy to gossip he has no interest in, so this must be a tasty morsel, a real treat. [Right, John? I know you're lurking out there.]
So I'll start this session of ZA (Zappa Anonymous). Picture me jacked up on coffee trying to be tentatively sociable, hesitant at first as everyone else in the room is waiting breathless for that first affirmation. It's just too good to pass up, I haven't thought about Frank even tangentially for more than a decade, but then he dies and I'm back thinking about him, pressganged into this group by a mad shrink. Well, what the fuck, as the master used to say, here goes. My name is David, I'm the author of Frank's only American biography, published 25 years ago, which will be resurrected this fall (1995). I know of your work, a memoir about the time you spent with him in his band, in his bed, underfoot in his house (for a time) and his mind in some special way thereafter. I apologize that as a "specialist" [yes, John, that's the word], I should already have been familiar with your work, sorry. Consequently since I'm not sure you've received the most recent edition of my book, the 1980 one, I'll send it to you by snail mail so that eventually we'll be on the same page in this, OK? It's a more polite way of implying "you show me yours, I'll show you mine" -- just kidding; I don't even know you...yet, much less can't visualize who you are. Your book like mine has been also reviled by the FIF (Friends of Frank) in the alt.fan world our words and thought seem to inhabit in cyberspace, at least for the time I'm writing this. Well, they don't know him like we do, I'm assuming. Am I right to assume anything at all about you?
Doubtless you're familiar with the story: according to Zappa, not only was "No Commercial Potential" inaccurate and misleading, but also based on pure speculation, a project which he had nothing to do with and did not authorize. He told the fans and whoever else would listen that I was just full of shit, but what he really said was, "If you want to make a book about me and put all your theories and talk balloons and stuff like that, should I stop you if there's a market?" I did just that and showed him the galleys and he went ballistic about what he and I called the "facts". When I unpacked that metaphor I found that "facts" for Frank included everything he had done in public as well as what his associates had to say about him. Patiently I tried to explain that the only facts I would amend concerned concerts and public doings while the "facts" of what his associates thought about him were theirs...and mine to use since in the book he always had the last word. (Didn't he always?)
What could he do at this point since it was at the galley stage? I already had written authorization to use his lyrics and had sent the slip with the invoice on to the publisher's accountant, which was supposed to be paid a long time before, though conscientious “hocking” on my part had done little to speed on the process. The form was sitting on his desk and in the payment out box rotation. But "time and those waves" interfered and the publisher's accountant on whose desk the form was sitting in the in box, died. Frank starting blowing smoke, threatening to sue the publisher, who was adrift because the accountant's affairs were a mess and the slip was "lost", so they held off publication until they could determine who was in the right. The slip was finally found six months later, so the book appeared in the fall instead of the spring.
At the time Frank and I last spoke -- forever, it turned out. Frank claimed that I "defamed" him and abused "our" friendship, and that hurt him. It hurt me even more when I'd pick up the papers or various magazines and there'd he be, giving me what for about what a lousy, creepy, no-account sleazeball biographer I was. But with him turnabout was never fair play. I also never expected this from him considering our previous amicable history.
So maybe you know why Frank was so paranoid about the book. I always thought it was because I was one of the few people who knew what he was doing and that he couldn't control. He also couldn't control what other people said about him, things which were, to my mind, accurate and fairly reasoned.
Looking forward to your book,
David
Howdy David --
Pleased to meetcha. That Scialli, what a yenta he is. I'm familiar with your book about Frank, "No Commercial Potential". I used to have a copy of it. It came out during the time I knew Frank, and everybody around him was busy running it down, so *of course* I had to get hold of it. My recollection was that it was a pretty evenhanded piece of work, although I have to admit I didn't have the guts to carry it around with me, not in that company. When you worked for Frank, your opinions definitely weren't your own, if you know what I mean. I haven't seen your book in more than 20 years, but I'll hazard a guess that what bothered him about it was the fact that you were the guy in the driver's seat, and he couldn't edit that slice o' 'reality' to suit himself. He had a tremendous sense of klutziness, which went back to his childhood as this clumsy, ugly, alien kid in a jungle of whitebread WASPs who played football and drank beer. He didn't want people to look at him objectively; he had to have total control of everything and everyone around him, all the time. Pretty endearing quality, huh?
If you'll give me your snail mail address I'll send you a copy of my book "Being Frank." As you've no doubt heard, it's been getting the stuffing kicked out of it on the net, especially on alt.fan.fz, mostly by pale 19-year-olds with hairy palms who can't bring themselves to believe that their beloved FZ -- hold on to your hat -- wasn't some sort of psychedelic Pat Boone. Since they don't believe that he and I had an affair, they also don't believe that I ever worked in the band, or any of the rest of it. I'm afraid our education system has a lot to answer for. By the way, I think I should explain that the photo of me on the back cover, sitting on the crapper, was chosen specifically for its lack of commercial potential. I'm not that bad looking. I hope you enjoy the book, and I'm looking forward to reading yours again. (That's the other thing about these geeks on alt.fan -- most of 'em weren't even born back then. I wonder what it is about an old dead guy like FZ that blows their skirts up, anyway.)
Best,
Nigey
(After re-reading "No Commercial Potential," I sent David the next letter, which contained an intro I had written for "Being Frank" but had decided -- perhaps wisely -- not to include.)
Dear David --
Sounds like Frank gave you a run for your money, that's for sure. Yeah, he had an incredible circus around him. I'm surprised he was willing to "give you access" in the first place he was so paranoid about writers in general. I was 15 when I met him the first time, and for me, even when I was writing Being Frank all those years later, he was still standing thereover my shoulder, glowering and daring me to say *anything* about him. He had a hell of a lot of energy for a dead man, wouldn't you say? Here I'll show you what I mean. I'll attach the original introduction to "Being Frank" at the end of this email. Check it out. You sound like you've been through the emotional meat grinder with the new version of your book. But hey, you deserve a pat on the back for doing it. Talk about a thankless task... Let's change the subject, shall we? I'm getting lumbago just thinking about it. What's your life like now? I presume, from Dr. S's droll little description of you, that you, like me, are a struggling freelancer well, I reckon it beats working for a living, anyway. Me, I sort of straddle the line between precariousness and uncertainty a gig here, an article there, and a whole lot of nothin' in between. I did quite a bit of music journalism (isn't that an oxymoron?) when I was in my late teens and early 20s, but I had a real problem: I didn't like rock 'n' roll, and that's all there was back then. I'd be sitting there reviewing some album by Phil & the Blanks when what I really wanted to be listening to was Erik Satie, or Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies. It was kind of fun goring the sacred ox of those guitar strangling knucklewalkers, though when they could read my articles, that is. :) I used to wonder about Frank why a guy with his intellect played the electric guitar. Never did get a straight answer out of him, either.
...So I'm sitting at the Macintosh at about 3 in the morning, and I've got the Walkman cranked up full blast playing "Catch 'Em Young, Treat 'Em Rough, Never Tell 'Em Nothin'" by Hank Penny & His Radio Cowboys while trying to distill the essence of Frank Zappa and his music into a couple of delicately balanced, aesthetically ass-kicking sentences, when I feel The Shadow fall across me. I look up, and there he is. Again.
"Christ, FZ, you look like you could use a good millennium's sleep. What happened the 7:04 to Sirius get postponed due to meteor showers? Oh well nice to see you again, I guess. Congrats on your new asteroid, by the way. Guess you can always sell it back to Scialli if you run short of cash...So how are the rehearsals going up there with the brass section? How's old Fulcanelli doing? You get a chance to check out the buffet at the Elysian Fields Holiday Inn?"
He shakes his head and rolls his sunken eyes. Funny, he really doesn't look any different than he used to. "Man, you never drank such vile coffee in your life. That shit's positively *blasphemious*.
"Now listen" he looks as though he's about to take hold of my shoulder with his gnarly hand, but then he doesn't "I've only got a 24hour pass I'm all fucked up with your time, been off it a while now, or at least it seems like it and I've still got to punch in a stop at the federal pen and give Jimmy Swaggart *hark from the tomb* so here's the deal. I don't hang around down here anymore, and *I* don't care one way or the other about what you write, but I'll say it again: since I'm not here to correct the record, I think it's *extremely irresponsible*; there
are a lot of people who might be *seriously misled* about me and what I did when they read your hot little teenage opus here." I notice he still talks in italics half the time, too. I make a mental note to watch out in trying to capture his speech patterns, that's a bad habit I seem to have picked up from him.
He fumbles in his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of 'coffin nails' -- guess there's no need to worry about getting lung cancer, anyway. Neat trick. "So" -- he takes a puff, and spectral smoke swirls through the air -- "*may I strongly suggest that you eliminate those, ahem, minute little anatomically detailed descriptions of my, ahem, private parts they'll never believe you anyway.*"
So pity me, O suffering fellow biographer. At the moment the idea of writing about him occurred to me, FZ's tireless, Torquemadalike ghost appointed himself my unpaid, unsummoned, and consistently outspoken editor make that the Supreme Chairman of the DCLRC (Dead Composers' Literary Resource Committee), Sgt. Zappa of the Cosmodemonic Brain Police. As you no doubt recall, back when he existed in *this* temporal zone, he always used to get worked up into a demonic frenzy at the mere thought that somewhere, *somebody was writing about him*, and you can't expect him to quit riding herd on *potential dissemblers of poot* just because in December 1993 (our concept of Time, that is) he mutated into a *different* conceptual continuity, now can you?
Yours,
Nigey
