Dweezil Zappa, the second-oldest child of the late Frank Zappa, is Zooming in from his newly built Hikari Studios in Los Angeles, taking time out from his hectic schedule — which includes his Roxpostrophy Tour celebrating his father’s landmark albums Roxy & Elsewhere and Apostrophe; the Experience Hendrix Tour featuring Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Zakk Wylde, and other guitar greats; and remixing Deep Purple’s Machine Headand the Jimi Hendrix catalog in Dolby Atmos at Hikari.
It’s been a big year for Dweezil, hence the “Dweezil 2024” T-shirt he’s wearing during his Lyndsanity interview. But in a fraught election season, that shirt’s campaign-style logo prompts a discussion of politics—specifically about how his brilliant father (the “rock ‘n’ roll Nostradamus”) “sounded the alarm for a lot of people” and was “really trying to wake people up” in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, and how Frank “would’ve been sounding many alarm bells and giving some clarity to many situations” going on in the world today.
While he seems happy to talk about his father’s politics, music, and influence on his own career and art, Dweezil — who, according to a recent Washington Post exposé about the Zappas’ fraught legacy, no longer speaks with any of his siblings — understandably shies away from discussion his family’s protracted and public legal battle, merely saying it’s “not necessarily a fully resolved thing, but it’s in the background and in the past for the most part.” He says he doesn’t plan to read his older sister Moon’s new autobiography, which depicts a very different childhood experience from his own, and he also has no desire to write his own memoir, humbly (and obviously wrongly) claiming that such a book wouldn’t be interesting. “I don’t know who would ever want to read that,” he shrugs.
To the contrary, the very readable Q&A below and video above clearly prove that Dweezil Zappa has led a fascinating life, just like his father — but a life very much of his own making, on his own terms. While he stresses, “I don’t live in those memories or any of that stuff; I don’t have space for it,” here he does open up about his father’s prescient politics, working with Eddie Van Halen at age 12, his controversial stint as an MTV VJ, and even the failed 1990 Zappa sitcom Normal Life, while also discussing what’s happening at Hikari Studios right now.
LYNDSANITY: Thanks for joining me! I can’t help but notice the “Dweezil 2024” T-shirt you’re wearing. It’s interesting timing. So, I have to ask, would going into politics ever be an option for you? Your dad obviously was obviously quite political, but I don’t think you have ever gotten very political with the music you’ve created.
DWEEZIL ZAPPA: No, I don’t really care about that. I don’t think people, especially now, care what people in the public eye really think — and nor should they. It’s really, just make decisions about what makes your own life better, follow what that moral compass is for yourself. I don’t feel like seeing celebrities talk about politics is worth anything.
I do respect those who do speak out, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think anyone votes because of what Tim McGraw or Ted Nugent or whatever celebrity said.
No, they might feel good that they are aligned with people they like, which is normal, because you would do that with your friend base or whatever. So, to that degree, I think people enjoy some of that compatibility. But my dad was very political, and his music was a playground for his ability to see what was happening in society and make a mockery of it, for the most part. But then also he had times where he was very visceral with the things that he was talking about, and they hold true. You look at songs like “Trouble Every Day” — I mean, that could have been written now, pulled from today’s headlines, and that thing came out in [1966]. He’s always been kind of like the rock ‘n’ roll Nostradamus, and he just had this ability to see where society is going in many ways. And he sounded the alarm for a lot of people.
So, when he talked about politics, I think it was very different from somebody that has a borrowed opinion that they’re just mouthing off. He really did get into the nitty-gritty and follow and study and really pay attention to a lot of the details, so if someone was to quiz him on something, good luck trying to break his train of thought, because he really knew what he was talking about! Whereas other people that just kind of hear something they like and they talk about it a little bit, but then you ask them a deeper question and interview’s over. I think again, for me, I don’t have a real motivation to be somebody that goes out there and just shares opinions for no reason. I think if you really look at the things that [Frank] was really trying to wake people up about, it’s the important stuff really about just saying: “Hey, if you like having your freedom, there are people that are trying to do things to make it so that you no longer will have that in the future.” He was trying to really make sure people could pay attention to how things were being maneuvered — what’s real, what’s not. And there’s a lot more of that that has opened up for a lot of people. There are many more people seeing what this industrial complex is and the fake things that are out there, and how it all has been that way for a long time. People are able to see through it. It’s like seeing the strings for the puppets — they’re clearly there for a lot more people now. And [Frank] was talking about that stuff way back.
It is interesting when we talk about how prescient he was and how maybe people are catching up with him. What do you think he would think of recent events? The last 10 years or so of this world have been crazy.
Yeah, it’s been crazy. He would’ve been sounding many alarm bells and giving some clarity to many situations, and doing it in a way where people could really understand it. He just cut right to it. There was no BS in what he was saying. I think that it’s too much to go into, but he clearly would have been an important figure in letting people know what to be on the lookout for. But ultimately we are where we are, and people have to wake up and look at their surroundings and figure out what is going to be best for what they want for their lives and for their kids and stuff. There’s just so much stuff that’s so out of control and beyond what anybody could ever have imagined, yet it’s just kind of been back there as a grand master plan that people have been working on and they’ve been doing a good job of rolling out this garbage. But it would be nice if there were a few people that could be on duty looking out for everybody.
Well, there are so many things I would love to talk with you about your own life and career. You’ve got so much going on right now. Tell me about Hikari Studios.
I was always planning to, at some point, build a studio of some sort. It was just a question of when and how. And I got pushed further along down that road because I had to stop touring abruptly because of the whole lockdown thing, which affected any touring musician. At that point the studio had been in progress, but we just kind of pushed forward in other places that I hadn’t really considered prior to that. It was originally going to be a place to just do rehearsals, because I was touring annually. I did that 14 years in a row. So, then when it did get locked down, I started doing some research on things that could maybe futureproof the studio and give me more options to do things, if I was going to be working in town. It was then that I really took a deep dive into Atmos and all of the multi-channel stuff that was really being pushed. It’s the Wild West in a lot of ways. So, I jumped into that early on and built a studio that would be very good for any kind of future project that was multi-channel. And since building it, I’ve had a chance to work on some really cool things, including Deep Purple’s Machine Head [50th anniversary reissue], which I mixed in stereo and Atmos.
I’ve interviewed Giles Martin, who is George Martin’s son, about working on all of the Beatles’ reissue boxed sets that have come out. Are you involved with any of the many Zappa reissues? Have you remixed or worked on your dad’s stuff?
I should be, but somehow or another, there has not been anybody creating that opportunity. That’s probably going to change at some point. There are, I think, some things at play that have always been there to make it so it wasn’t an option, but maybe a new era has dawned at this point.
I don’t know how much you want to even go into it, but I’ve been under the impression that whatever family legal drama was happening kind of got resolved.
Well, it’s not necessarily a fully resolved thing, but it’s in the background and in the past for the most part.
I’m glad to hear that! I’ve interviewed your sister Moon before. She has a book out. Are you ever going to do your own autobiography? Have you thought about that?
I haven’t. I just never really think about that stuff as being interesting. I don’t know who would ever want to read that.
I assure you, you’ve had an interesting life! I assure you there’d be people that would want to read about that, but I respect if that’s not where you want to focus.
I mean, probably not right now. My tour [was] August into the middle of September, so Aug. 1 through Sept. 11, and then I’m on the Hendrix tour in October. So, that’s always fun, because it’s just a chance to play some Jimi Hendrix songs with a whole group of different musicians. They usually have 20 or 30 different guitar players on the tour, so it’s a bit like summer camp for guitar players.
That’s awesome. So, obviously we’ve mentioned your dad and the work you do to keep his music alive, and perhaps some work you might be doing in the future, with the rollout of seemingly endless stuff from the Zappa vault. Your dad was obviously very prolific. I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but when I used to see you and Moon guest-VJing on MTV and stuff, you were the one of the four siblings that seemed to be the most in the public eye. The term “nepo baby” didn’t exist then, but I’ve interviewed many second-generation musicians about the weird position of being the child of a famous person and then going down a similar career path. From what I could see, it didn’t seem like it was challenging for you. I don’t remember any backlash. But did you ever think, “I’m just going to be like a dentist or a lawyer, I’m just going to do something else”? Or was it like there was no choice, that you had to do music?
I didn’t really worry about any of that stuff, because I just figured whatever I did was going to stand on its own based on the effort and the work that I put into it. I was OK with whatever that outcome would be, like, “This is what I do, this is how I do it. Like it or not, that’s it.” That’s how I’ve always been. So, I’m not concerned. It’s not as if having a famous last name in this area did a lot to open many doors. My dad was not really popular in the way traditional “rock stars” are popular. He was kind of more a guy that drew a bit of concern from people. He had ideas that were bigger than most could handle, and so he always said, “The last name is what will get you in trouble. It’s not going to be something that’s going to help you.”
You said before that father was a straight-shooter. Was he like that as a parent? I get the impression he probably didn’t talk down to his kids. What was he like when he was kind of educating you about the world and about music?
It was really more, for me, watching what he did and the way he did it. That was how I formed my opinion of the world and what things are important, how you interact with people. I’m speaking just for myself. It wasn’t lectures or anything. I was fascinated by what he did. I think we had a lot in common, and it was easy for us to get along and understand the things that were interesting in the world and why creativity was just this open source of excitement and a purpose in life. I think he loved just being able to create something out of nothing, and that was something he did daily, for hours and hours. So, he was not necessarily the guy that was going to sit down and tell you, “This is how it goes.” It was, for me, easy to watch what he did and say, “Oh, I would like to follow that path in that way.” … It just happened that I had a very good role model in what my dad was doing, and so I followed in many ways in my own life, musically and otherwise.
Did you spend a lot of time in his home studio?
Yeah, for sure. It was the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, and I was in there as often as I could be, paying attention to what he was doing and how he was doing it. I really did learn a lot about recording, a lot about music, a lot about being a bandleader, all kinds of things, just from watching what he was doing and how he did it.
I’m wondering why you were the one among the four Zappa kids that gravitated towards that studio life and that musical life.
I don’t know. I was always somebody that could envision something and just go after it and then do it. If I wanted to be good at something, I would spend the time to do it because I could see in my mind’s eye, “Oh, I need to do these things to get from here to there. And then once I get from to that point, I can go to the next thing.” So, it was motivation, but it was self-induced motivation. And I could see that that’s how it was done. My dad did a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. You can only do that if you really are confident in knowing what you want to do and how to do it and know all the steps. He was more of an auteur, in the way that he controlled the vision of everything: the writing of the music, the way it should sound, the way people should perform it, the visuals of whatever he was working on when he did those specials and the films and things. He was very clear-minded about what he wanted to do and how to do it.
Obviously, so were you. You were only about 12 when your first single came out — and another genius, Eddie Van Halen, was involved! I know that you’ve told that story probably many times, I’d love to hear it, because you got to learn from the greats.
The thing about Edward Van Halen is I started getting interested in the guitar. I always loved my dad’s guitar playing, but you had to know a lot of stuff to be able to play the music that he wrote or play in that style. It wasn’t something that I could see specifically in my mind when I was 12, because it just seemed like, “Oh, there’s so many layers to this. I have to find the one thing that I can drill down on, that can give me the focus to get to the place that I need to get to.” And the music of Van Halen, and the guitar playing of Randy Rhoads when he was playing with Ozzy Osbourne, those were probably the most popular things on L.A. radio when I was 12… and that kind of guitar playing was laser-focused to just jump out of the speakers. I loved the sound of it. I figured out how to make similar kinds of sounds and I was really getting into that, playing eight or 10 or 12 hours a day because I was so into learning the techniques and trying to figure out how this stuff was being done.
But out of the blue, we got a phone call at the house one day, and it was a guy purporting to be Edward Van Halen. … So, of course, my ears perk up. [My mom is] like, “Get on the other line, see if you can tell it’s him!” Now, there’s no way I could have known if it was him or not, because back then you never heard musicians talk unless you heard them on the radio or maybe on some kind of TV interview. It was very rare. You only really saw them in pictures in magazines or on album covers and stuff. So, the only frame of reference for his voice was the voice that was heard on “Unchained,” where you hear, “Come on, Dave, give us a break.” So, I’m just listening for a few minutes and I’m like, “Well, this could be legitimate.” But you never know. It could just be some crazy person pretending to be somebody.
But my dad ends up getting on the phone, and probably 15 minutes later, Edward shows up at the house. My dad invited him over. And he walks up the stairs with a guitar that’s not in a case — he’s just holding it. It’s this purple guitar with a piece of black tape over the headstock, so you couldn’t see the name of the guitar. And he’s walking up these stairs. I always tell this part: As I was watching him walk up, he might as well have been a superhero. I mean, it was backlit with a smoke machine and the whole thing. He was wearing the jumpsuit from Women and Children First, and he had the Van Halen necklace on. So, it’s like, “Yeah, for sure, that’s Edward Van Halen!”
He ends up coming in the house, and within seconds of him walking into the studio and plugging in a guitar, I was asking him to play “Mean Street” and “Eruption” and all these different things so I could see up-close how he did it. And that’s burned into my mind. But over a period of years, I got to talk to him and play with him and really sort of discuss guitar in a lot of different ways. And he did end up producing the first thing that I ever did, which was called “My Mother Is a Space Cadet.” Donn Landee, who did the original Van Halen records, was the engineer, and they ended up producing the record. And for the longest time, I had no idea how that even happened. In fact, I don’t really know how he was asked to do it by my dad, or how it even came up. … My friends that were in my little teenage band at the time, we were all just blown away that this was even an experience that we could have. It did alter my DNA for that rock vibe — whatever guitar was before that, it was amped up a million percent.
I’ll finish it up with saying that I did have a very unique set of circumstances where Edward came to one of my shows. We were opening for Jeff Beck at the Nokia Center back around 2010, and he wanted to come see the show and say hi to Jeff. He ended up coming to the show during soundcheck, and then he was checking out the things that we were doing. Normally I would’ve gone to a show of his and talked to him afterwards backstage, but he was at my show saying, “I don’t even know how you play that one song. Show me that one riff.” It was like a total role reversal. It was a very unique situation for me. It was interesting to have that, because up until that point, I was still always in the mindset of a teenage kid that was just really excited to be able to be up-close with Edward Van Halen.
That’s amazing! So, “My Mother Is a Space Cadet” came out 1982, which was same year that Moon Zappa’s “Valley Girl” came out. Did you feel any competitiveness with Moon over the fact that she’d sort of accidentally stumbled into having this hit song, while “Space Cadet” wasn’t all over the radio and Solid Gold in the same way?
No. I think it was just like, “Hey, that’s exciting that Frank’s actually got a song on the radio.” It was unusual. He had had other songs that were on the radio before, but the thing about my dad’s music is the stuff that got on the radio is the least representative of the rest of his catalog. It’s easy for people to get the wrong impression if the only songs they have ever heard are the ones that got on the radio. So, one of the things I did when I started touring [Zappa Plays Zappa] was to really not focus on any of those things. For the most part, I wanted to focus on the things that I felt needed to be better understood or have more exposure. It was really more about him as a guitarist, as a composer, and really learning the tricky, most complicated, sophisticated things that he did.
But for better or worse, “Valley Girl” was a big hit. It was maybe a double-edged sword for both your father and your sister. But then MTV was just beginning to start, and I mentioned how you were a VJ…
I didn’t really do a lot of that. People thought I was on there a lot more than I was on. I only ever did about 12 weeks over a period of two years. … I had fun doing that stuff, but I remember you would have these introductions that were before videos — you’d have to back-announce videos saying, “You just saw Lionel Richie’s ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’!” Sometimes I just wasn’t a fan of some of these things that I was having to talk about, and I couldn’t force myself to look as though I was. And I think that was an unusual thing for the time, to have somebody that’s a talking head on TV show with some sort of visible look that maybe they were not satisfied with the material that was out there. There were other things too. I think there was a time where there was a 7-Up slogan that I used to make fun of after I had to back-announce something, like, “This video has been brought to you by 7-Up. Feels so good coming down.” And then I would say, “From what?” And they didn’t like that!
I have zero personal memory of this, but on the subject of TV, according to my research, you and Moon also had a sitcom for a while, and Cindy Williams, aka “Shirley” from Laverne & Shirley, co-starred on it.
Yeah, it was on CBS. It was called Normal Life. The thing about that show was originally we sort of pitched it as “Addams Family Ties,” because it was more like what you would see in The Addams Family where what they did was weird to everybody else, but normal to them. That’s kind of how our upbringing was in [the Zappa] house. So, the show was originally pitched to CBS as going down that road, but then as it started to go into production, somebody at the network said, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s make them really normal, and then have wacky neighbors!” And it suddenly became this show that was probably not even as good as Charles in Charge, which was not a good show. We got stuck in this machine there where it wasn’t what we had originally thought we were going to do. We ended up doing, I think, 12 episodes of it or something.
I think your vision for Normal Life would’ve been much more interesting. You and your siblings in real life certainly did not live a normal life. Were you aware of that when you were growing up? Or did you think it was normal?
Well, yeah, because with every family, whatever they experienced in their house is “normal” to them. So, it wasn’t unusual to us. The thing is ,my dad didn’t have a bunch of people parading in and out of the house. He was actually working, and if people were there it was because they were working. He wasn’t a super-social guy. He didn’t have a big circle of friends. So, with the stuff that was going on at the house, I think the [school friends] that came over enjoyed that there was a certain kind of freedom, in terms of you could speak freely and say whatever you wanted, how you wanted, and you weren’t going to get in trouble if you said something — using a word that maybe somewhere else you wouldn’t be able to use! Because my dad had a great philosophy, which was that “words are just decoration.” And he also talked about music as a way to decorate time. So, if you’re talking about using words that want to get the point across, some get the point across better than others. So, emphatic uses of words like “fuck” can do different things in different ways. I think kids that visited and heard that you could say that kind of stuff, they thought, “Oh wow, this is wild and crazy!” But really, what’s the big deal?
So, it wasn’t wild and crazy at the house. I’ve never taken drugs. I’ve never been involved in anything that’s gotten me in trouble with the law. I’ve just never been interested in any of that kind of stuff. I’ve never been drunk. I’ve never smoked any cigarettes. Other people who had “normal” lives got all messed up and involved in all that kind of stuff. Go figure. To me, it’s really just what you do, what you focus on, the path that you want to put yourself on. And even people in the same household can have a vastly different experience growing up. Whatever my sister talks about doesn’t resonate with me, because I didn’t have that experience at all.
Have you read Moon’s memoir?
No.
Do you plan to?
I doubt it.
Well, it is interesting how people can have different experiences. And I’m glad that obviously the experience you had led you to your career. Are there any other random things on your Wikipedia page you want to chat about? I have a list of interesting, random things you have done…
I never look at my Wikipedia page!
I mean, working with the Fat Boys, Donny Osmond, Pat Boone… the list goes on..
I mean, all those things just seemed like, “Oh yeah, this will be fun!” The whole point of life, I think, is to have new and different experiences and follow your curiosity. And if you find that you like something, you do more of it; if you find you don’t, you don’t. It’s a very simple thing. I’m in the moment. That is the only place where you can make any decision that matters or will change something in real time. So, when I have experiences that are good, they will lead me to want to do something similar. But I don’t live in those memories or any of that stuff; I don’t have space for it.
Ultimately, I just really like doing things that allow me to have a chance to be creative in music. I don’t have a desire to be in front of people. That’s not really a thing that motivates me. But I do like the camaraderie of playing with musicians [onstage, on tour] and being able to play something that happens in a moment that is unique to that moment, and maybe unique to that audience. I think that’s something that my dad also really liked, was just that something could happen that only a certain amount of people saw and felt in that moment, and that’s different from what might happen the next night or two weeks from now or whatever. Those little experiences in life can be life-altering. I’ve had things like that even at my own shows, where I’ve brought kids up onstage that were in the audience, where I could see a kid that might be 5 years old or 8 years old who doesn’t play an instrument, but we bring him onstage and I put a guitar on him. And then I find out 10 years later that that kid is now a musician. It’s moments like that that were similar to me, where I got to have that experience with Edward Van Halen when I was 12 years old and it altered my life. So, whenever those little things can happen, I like to see if that would be something — a chance to have that push forward in the same way.
This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch the full, extended video interview above for additional talk on Dweezil’s Hikari Studios, tour plans, the Gumby song he and Moon Zappa released in 1989, and more.