“Earth To Moon!”

Wednesday is about books, and reading — and writing. Today, Moon Zappa’s incredible memoir, Earth To Moon. A devastating book. But a brilliant piece of writing.

I feel like a lot of people know about how Frank Zappa gave his kids some weird-ass names. And maybe they even know that, if they’d never heard a note of his complex, sometimes brilliant music. Right? There’s son Dweezil, who also plays guitar. And Ahmet. There’s baby daughter Diva, not so weird, but by association it’s still eccentric, especially given the time it was bestowed upon her. And then there’s Frank’s eldest daughter and first born with his wife Gail. They called the child Moon Unit. She pretty much just goes by Moon, seemingly always did.

“Earth to MOON!” Gail Zappa would shout, demeaning, detached, angered. Gail has been dead for nearly 10 years. Frank’s been gone more than 30. It’s time for Moon to find her peace. She buries her parents all over again in her recently released memoir, Earth To Moon.

The Zappa household across the 1970s must have been bonkers. Anyone even passingly familiar with Frank’s music has probably had that thought. Even if you’ve never heard a note, and why bother now — I was once a borderline Zappa fanatic, these days I can make it through a tune or two now and then, max — there’s plenty for you to absorb in this, erm, frank and startling account of a childhood robbed, misplaced, stomped on by dark (Frank) and damaged (Gail) parents.

Apologies for the lack of trigger warning, and my candid way of hurtling through this — the book could be terrifying and tormenting for many. But as a reader of so many music memoirs, and a fan of the sub-variety of entertainment bio, the one written by the offspring of famous people, I’m able to raw-dog my way through pages of this shit. And lap it up. I fucking love it. Not so much to dine on the misery, just baffled by the lunacy and often blown away by the humanity (of the writer), or the absence of humanity (by the parent/s).

That’s the case, in both reads, with Moon Unit Zappa’s beautifully composed, devastating book.

I heard her talk about it on Marc Maron’s podcast (they briefly dated). And was intrigued enough to want to read it, but worried the real story might be lost inside of hippie-spiritualism truths of eventually finding ones self after having had to self-sooth, self-parent, self-care, self-love. And, again, I’m not saying that to mock — I just worried that the writing was going to be florid.

From the opening pages, Moon’s book is harrowing, but beautiful. It’s well-written, clear, strong, a voice emerges. And is sustained. It might take some people a while to get to grips with the slightly hokey device of writing in the voice of the character at various ages — she is six and seven and wondering why the groupies walk around the house without bras, sometimes without clothes at all. She is ten and 12 and starting to massively resent her own mother, and having to be a mother to the younger kids in the house. But mostly I found this voice, if not 100% effective, then certainly very affecting.

The second half of the book is Moon as adult and writing in a less contrived style. So, I guess, hold on, if the start bugs you at all (and I liked it, if anything) it calms down (in at least one sense).

Frank made music mostly for himself. And to occupy himself. He was so fully committed to the bit that he would work right through the night in his basement studio and sleep like a vampire through the day. He was an absentee parent even when he wasn’t on tour. He loved, as his own daughter has to point out, getting his dick sucked, making music, smoking cigarettes — and his family. Sadly, it was pretty much in that order.

Gail is possibly slightly damaged good before she connects with Frank. But as Frank’s lifelong adult partner, and eventually widow, she projects all of her seething resentment at him fucking any female that moves, sometimes including Gail of course, onto her children. She is also so caught in the sway of, as Spinal Tap put it, “whatever Eastern philosophies happened to drift through my transom” that when Moon develops a crippling case of teen acne she is sent to some quack who is completely inappropriate. There’s far worse than that though, and Gail isn’t a fan of normal medicine and science, she’s also not a fan of ever being called ‘mum’, nor does Frank want to be ‘dad’; not a deal-breaker every time of course — every house has its own rules — but they are such an embarrassment to the idea of being actual parents it’s like they kinda knew it, on at least one level. And owned it in some way.

Gail is Frank’s manager, she runs a record label from the house, and starts to bury herself in that work as much as she can. Probably smart, since Frank’s got a teen groupie from New Zealand in his basement. She’ll eventually get kicked out, but clearly made an impression on the house, she is mentioned several times. She’s even named, eventually. So chances are someone reading this might know her. Apparently when she finds out Frank has cancer she rings the house, decades after being given the boot, and asks if Gail wouldn’t mind if she tries to get one more kid out of him before he goes, what with Gail’s shop now closed.

Honestly this book is fucking outrageous! It’s amazing. Baffling, startling, satisfying in some way(s), super funny, and utterly, tremendously heartbreaking.

At 13, Moon writes her dad a letter — he hasn’t been kicked out or anything. He’s just behind a closed door most nights in the basement working, or he’s away on tour.

That letter gets her the “gig” of recording with her dad. Which is a move. She really just wants to hang out with him. But Moon has perfected a troll of the “Valley Girl” accent and she rips out a roast of improvisations over a chorus Frank’s knocked up on the quick.

It becomes Frank Zappa’s only “hit”. It’s the start of the MTV era and it gets a video, and promotional tour where Frank and Moon go on Letterman, and other talk shows. She is dragged out on stage around the world. And her post-mortem in these pages has it that her mother resented her (further) for forming a bond with her father; jealousy. And her dad resented her for making him a novelty-hit maker; he’d been a musician for some 15-20 years and several dozen albums by the time of his Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch, and its Valley Girl single, replete with Moon’s letter as liner-notes/inside cover artwork.

Gail is unhinged the whole way through this book but Moon’s teen years are particularly tough. She’s expected to run the house for Gail, she’s also got acting aspirations, and various offers turning up. Many of them don’t amount to much. But she does get a break in a way, by being able to live outside of the Zappa House Madness, and becoming basically a legal guardian to brother Dweezil.

Maybe you know, already, that the children are locked in various weird legal battles with one another, and there’s been estate issues since Frank died, further complicated with Gail’s death. That makes the book even sadder. There are sliding pay scales in the Zappa house, even after both Frank and Gail have left the building.

But through it all of course there’s hope — or else I wouldn’t be recommending it as a book, wouldn’t care to write about it.

Moon looks for love, and loses it more than she finds it, and worries she’ll never actually find anyone. She has no role models, she’s also never seen much actual love in the house where she grew up. A lot of fucking and fellatio, not many hugs.

Moon parents herself, and Dweezil, and Ahmet and Diva, at various stages and times. And then she does find her own success, her own love, her own life. Well, for a bit at least.

I’ve gone off Frank Zappa’s work completely. And then returned to it and decided he was clearly some form of genius. That’s possibly still the case, but this book made me hate him more than at any other time. I’ve read his (very entertaining, smart) autobiography, and many books about him. I’ve listened to not quite everything, but most of the official releases from his lifetime, and a good chunk of the start of the posthumous bounty. And then it just all got too much, too same y, too unnecessary, too silly, too crude and cartoonish, too cruel.

At various times, I’ve completely relaxed all of that, because Frank was a tough taskmaster but still a quite extraordinary bandleader, and certainly one hell of a talent-finder. So you can listen to certain albums for the playing and players alone.

But my relationship with his music feels forever changed after reading this.

The torment, neglect, the stacked piles of levels of abuse and ignorance he showed to his family, the “arrangement” he and Gail had that clearly wasn’t in any way healthy or reciprocal or family-conducive/oriented is just downright bizarre to read about in an age of instant cancelation.

The Zappa neckbeards might not like this book. Might decide that it’s irrelevant to their box-set collecting. But there was clearly something rotten in the Zappa basement. And it wasn’t just Vicky, the bra-less groupie that eventually went back to Auckland. She, too, was a victim — in some way — in all of this.

Earth To Moon is the best book I’ve read this year. It blew my mind several times. And it might blow yours too you know. Zappa fan, or otherwise.