Over the last decade or so, guitarist Dweezil Zappa has toured the country — including three stops at Bridgeport’s now-defunct Gathering of the Vibes — as Zappa Plays Zappa, performing note-perfect tributes to the music of his father, Frank Zappa. (Dweezil’s unit even took home a Grammy in 2009.)
No longer: Dweezil’s current project, which arrives at the Warehouse in Fairfield on Friday, Oct. 28, is called the “50 Years of Frank: Dweezil Zappa Plays Whatever the F@%K He Wants — The Cease and Desist Tour” — a move necessitated by a very public dispute with brother Ahmet and sister Diva, who gained control of the Zappa Family Trust (and the name “Zappa Plays Zappa”) after their mother, Gail, passed away in 2015.
Dweezil spoke to The Courant about the conflict and what it has meant for Frank Zappa’s musical legacy.
Q: Are you disappointed that Zappa family issues had to play out in public?
A: That could have all been avoided, but that wasn’t up to me. That’s exactly what they intended to do. They have tried to strong-arm a situation that they should have looked at more carefully. They’re also trying to use smoke and mirrors on the public to try to tell them things are different than they are. My brother’s [Ahmet] open letter to me is disingenuous and phony. If you read my response, it really does point out the Swiss cheese that he has tried to perpetrate.
Q: I sense there has not been any reconciliation since your response.
A: They’ve taken it further now to try to get a federal trademark for the surname “Zappa,” so that they can stop me and my sister Moon from professionally using the name “Zappa” for anything. They don’t want me to use it for personal appearances, public appearances, touring, anything professional, under the guise that it would confuse the public that, really, the “Zappa” is “Frank Zappa.” Meanwhile, they’re trying to use it so that they can brand the name for products that have nothing to do with my father, such as beer and wine and yoga pants.
Q: Is there satisfaction in knowing, among your siblings, that you’re the only person capable of playing your father’s music at a professional level?
A: That’s something that has been known to everyone for decades. It’s not something I did so that I could have satisfaction. I do this as a
labor of love. I’m proud of my father’s accomplishments, and I wanted his music to carry forward. It seems obvious to me that if there was an opportunity to present the music to future generations that didn’t get to see Frank, it would be worth making the effort. He’s not going to be on the radio. He’s not going to be supported by media and the press. The only way it can move forward is through a grassroots operation to present the music to people.
I took quite a bit of time to learn how to play the music and to put a band together, and I went out on the road. I’ve been doing it for 11
years. That’s the only thing that has been out there to move the music forward. The Zappa Family Trust, while run by my mother — she put a few records out, but what else did she do? There was no campaign to get his music anywhere further. She tried mostly to stop things from happening, even trying to stop me from what I was doing, and then Ahmet and Diva continued. It’s more about the prevention of Frank’s music instead of the preservation and attempts to grow the music. It’s pretty obvious what’s been going on for a long time.
Q: How does the conflict play out for you on a show-to-show basis?
A: They had ideas that they could control it, but they lost the plot. The first issue was that they claimed they controlled the name “Zappa Plays Zappa,” which Gail trademarked a year and a half after I already had started touring. She claimed ownership of the name. In that trademark that she got, there is some squirrelly language, made to create the distinction between the two uses of “Zappa.” One would be the obvious reference to Frank Zappa, and the other would be any member of the Zappa family who wished to go on tour to promote Frank Zappa’s music — in other words, creating the idea that it’s not me, it’s not Dweezil Zappa, that I’m not the other Zappa. It’s anyone in the family, because at any time, if Ahmet or Diva or Moon wanted to go on tour and call themselves “Zappa Plays Zappa,” they could do it. But none of them have ever shown any interest or ability to do so.
Ahmet and Diva claimed that I couldn’t use the name. They tried to say I would have to pay $150,000 for every song that I played if I was out promoting the music or touring under the name “Zappa Plays Zappa,” and none of that is real. There’s no basis for making a claim like that, but that’s how outrageous they and their legal team tried to take it. There are so many things that are absolutely bogus about what they’re doing.
When I changed the name to “Dweezil Zappa Plays the Music of Frank Zappa,” they sent another cease-and-desist letter saying I couldn’t use the name “Frank Zappa.” It’s another meritless claim. If you’re a garage and you fix Volkswagens, you can say you fix Volkswagens. You’re just stating what you’re doing. I have the same ability to state that I’m playing Frank Zappa’s music. Rather than keep going on a day-to-day basis, I’ll just go under the name Dweezil Zappa. What they’re trying to do now is remove the name “Zappa.”
Q: It’s your last name.
A: Not only that, I was born before them. I guarantee you they’re not going to enforce it on themselves. Ahmet’s not going to not be “Ahmet Zappa” when he tries to get some sort of movie producer credit on something. They’re infantile in their ideas of what our father’s legacy is, and they have no ability to do what I do, and they’re pissed that they can’t control that.
Q: So, on tour, you’re at least able to play whatever you want, as the tour is called. You don’t have to worry about it.
A: Nope. But here’s the thing: There are dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of bands that go and play nothing but Frank’s music. They don’t get cease-and-desist letters. They don’t get any issue from the trust. The one person who’s related, because they want to try to make money from it, is the one they want to try to block.
Q: My perception was that, when your mother was alive, the trust was fairly rigid about who was allowed to play Frank’s music.
A: She tried to create a scenario where Frank’s music was protected more so than anybody else’s music, because she imagined that she could bend the legal use of what’s called “grand rights.” She wanted to make everything about Frank’s music fall under that term, because she claimed it was all part of one … Frank had done interviews saying he viewed his music as part of one big project. “Project/Object” is what he called it. He said everything was interconnected. Because of that, she tried to say it’s all one grand work, one thing, and that it requires a license to play his music. Grand rights doesn’t work that way on paper. It started with Andrew Lloyd Webber: If you wanted to play all of the songs from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” you could do it. The moment you have a costume onstage and a camel and a palm tree in the background, you now have a visual element that says, “We’re doing the show, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’.” Now you need to pay grand rights.
We don’t impersonate Frank. We don’t wear costumes. None of that works. The same goes for any other band that plays Frank’s music. She tried and failed on numerous occasions to go after people, but it can all be laughed off. The only person making money off it is the lawyer.
Q: Do you have any of Frank’s scores or manuscripts?
A: No, that stuff is being dealt with by the trust. Who knows when they’ll be selling that off. They’ve done so many other things. I was given all of my dad’s guitars, and they were repossessed by my mother, simply because they were being stored at the studio, which is the house I grew up in where she lived. She just randomly claimed they were hers again. She ended up agreeing to give three of them back to me, three of them of my choosing, but the ones I chose Ahmet decided to keep for himself. He agreed to give three others to me and then to put the others up for auction, to sell to the public. So much of [the online auction inventory] is misrepresented, saying it’s Frank’s, and a ton of it is stuff that Frank never saw. He had nothing to do with it. It’s well past his tenure. Everything they’re doing is a systematic dismantling of our father’s life for profit, without any regard for anything. They’ve put their things in there as well, their own paintings, Diva’s knitwear. I don’t understand the thought process behind any of that stuff. It’s so weird.
DWEEZIL ZAPPA performs at the Warehouse in Fairfield on Oct. 28 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $65 to $100. fairfieldtheatre.org.
