A FEATURE FROM THE VAULT
PART ONE: THE INTRODUCTION
George Duke. Ruth Underwood. Napoleon Murphy Brock. Legendary Mothers, all. And, the list is endless… there are actually too many musicians to mention here who owe their careers to Frank Zappa. Some of the original or early members of Zappa’s Mothers – including Motorhead Sherwood, Bunk and Buzz Gardner, Jimmy Carl Black, Elliot Ingber – continue to tour as the Grandmothers. More recently, a group of latter day Zappa band members have been working together under the name Banned From Utopia. Though the membership of this group is fairly nebulous – much like Zappa’s many incarnations of the Mothers – the current group (drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Arthur Barrow, percussionist Ed Mann, keyboardist Tommy Mars, vocalist Robert Martin, guitarist Mike Miller, special guest vocalist Ray White, horn players Kurt McGettrick and Albert Wing, as well as the Fowler brothers, Tom, Walt, and Bruce) have just released SO YUH DON’T LIKE MODERN ART on Steve Vai’s Favored Nation label. The album is a Mothers-like free-for-all, incorporating some of Zappa’s more adventurous compositions (“Dupree’s Paradise” and ”Sinister Footwear, Second Movement,” among them) alongside band originals that are definitely in the “Frank Zappa” musical mold (the raunchy “Freeway Vigilante” and the politically incorrect “Christian Coalition Blues,” included). Having long been fans of whatever musical entity that Frank would use to present his music, we here at the Mule simply could not let an opportunity to speak to Bruce Fowler get past us. And, so… we give you… the Man, the Myth, the Legend… Bruce Fowler (circa 2002).
PART TWO: THE INTERVIEW
THE MULE: Hey, Bruce. Let’s talk about a new album, some old albums, and some old memories. First, Banned From Utopia. One of the things I have noticed through speaking to various other members of Zappa’s former band, you guys… it’s almost like a club.
BRUCE: That’s right. It’s like, in the blood. I just went over to Gail’s (Zappa, Frank’s widow) house the other day. It was really, really fun. We listened to some stuff from ‘72, from the GRAND WAZOO band. We looked at this documentary that’s in progress of being made by… in Amsterdam… a guy named Frank Shepherd. It’s really great. It’s a work in progress. He’s has been here twice and he’s coming back again this year – trying to finish this thing.
It goes all the way from the beginning. He interviewed all these different people from the band. It’s really, really interesting. You know… even from being in it, I didn’t really know what his influence was on some of the other guys. So after seeing that, it was great. George Duke was talking about how Zappa opened him up to music and the synthesizer… it was amazing. You’d have to say that everybody who played in the band became a much better musician, first of all. For some guys, it was the only real training that they had. You could have been a self taught musician and come into his band, and by the end of it, you’ve been through the whole thing… you’re highly competent to do other music. You know, we can read and everything.
THE MULE: I understand that he was pretty rough, in the sense that he demanded the best out of everybody. By the same token, he gave everybody a chance to shine in his band, a chance to move beyond a standard Rock and Roll, Jazz, Blues format.
BRUCE: That’s true; he was interested in every kind of music you could think of. He combined Classical influence, Indian music, Tibetan music. He talked about it on the video. All of that stuff is conglomerated into his music. Zarinsky combined with Varese, for instance. He talks about how something in between… a missing link between Zarinsky and Varese. He talks about that for a second. Let’s see… what was the question exactly? I kind of went off. Oh yeah… he was a taskmaster, to be sure. He would say – I saw in print many times – guys can be in this band as long as they can play the music, but if they can’t, they gotta go. It was nothing personal; he just had to have his music performed right. And it’s true, that members of the band – the personalities of the individual guys, had a lot to do with the music that he wrote. Always… from the beginning. He wrote music that those guys could shine bright; he could use the personalities of the individuals in the band. Duke Ellington was like that.
THE MULE: I think all great composers… musicians… have a little bit of that in them.
BRUCE: Yeah. Even if you go back to Strauss and the Classical guys… the guys that were playing with them definitely influenced the way they wrote.
THE MULE: I’m looking at the disc and the people that were involved – besides yourself and your brothers – most of the people involved are latter day Zappa musicians.
BRUCE: That’s right. I came in in ‘72, with THE GRAND WAZOO, before the George Duke/Jean Luc (violinist Jean Luc Ponty) days… actually, it was in between, because he was in there during Flo and Eddie, I believe. I’m not sure about it… I’m not sure that’s actually true, but maybe it is. At any rate, the band with Jean Luc Ponty that began in ‘73, that was really a strong instrumental band, so the guys could play really hard music. The first band… the original Mothers… those guys were entertainers. They had great personalities and they were funny and everything, but they weren’t heavily trained musicians in the technical sense. The music he wrote later on… during the Flo and Eddie era… when the guy threw him off the stage in London and he broke his leg. He was in a wheelchair for a year… during that time he wrote a lot of really hard stuff. He was looking to have really well trained guys, and the character of his band changed drastically. I’m good friends with some of those original Mothers… (keyboard/synthesizer player Don) Preston and Ian (Underwood, keyboards and woodwinds). Ian, now he was heavily well-trained; and Preston is well trained, but the other guys… not really. They’re more beat guys. The music that we learned so well by playing it a million times is that Jazzier, modern Classical, technical stuff. Sure, we played the earlier pieces, too… a lot of them. But, there was a strong emphasis on the more complicated music. Plus, it’s a lot of fun for a musician to play that stuff.
I think it’s interesting to note that a lot of these tribute bands, they’re all playing that stuff from the ROXY… record (ROXY AND ELSEWHERE, an infamous live album from 1974). The same stuff we played. So we kind of found out… we don’t play the same stuff as everyone else. But that’s the fun stuff to play. And also, Frank… his personality is so strong on some of those tunes, that it’s kind of weird to do it without him singing it. Even “Montana,” for instance… we didn’t do that for the longest time because it just seemed like it wasn’t going to be right. There are a couple instrumental tunes… guitar tunes that we don’t do because they really were Frank’s features on the guitar and we don’t want to do it. And… I don’t think he wanted people to do it, either. A lot of people miss him… it’s not a matter of having a tribute band and having that being some kind of a thing. It’s just a matter of having a lot of fun. It’s such an integral part of our history and we’re just drawn to do it.
THE MULE: There are 10 songs on the album and half of those are original numbers.
BRUCE: That’s the other thing. We don’t just want to just be a tribute band; we want to have our own thing. The tradition of speaking out against the establishment, especially now with what’s going on… it seems the world needs some people who are going to stand up and tell it like it is. Instead of being a commercial… talking about your girlfriend or whatever and have a sort of nothing music. In the tradition of Frank, you have to get in and battle it out with the forces of evil. I think part of the reason we were hired in the first place by him, was that we sort of felt the same way he did about censorship and politics. And, as he says on this tape… he says, “Deviant behavior is necessary because you have to deviate from the norm in order to do something different” and, who knows… it might even be an improvement. That’s really well put. And plus… we like comedy; it’s fun to make fun. It’s kind of taken in fun, but we’re truly horrified by what we see going on around us. What was your reaction to those tunes?
THE MULE: The originals? Listening to the disc all the way through its almost seamless… you guys obviously got your chops.
BRUCE: One of the hardest things about that record was getting the right order of tunes. We tried a million of them out. And that’s probably the best we could do. We had a few other tunes that didn’t make it onto the CD. I think it came out pretty good, considering. And, you’re right… guys like Chad… he’s such a great drummer. All you have to do is stick with him. We recorded the rhythm section and then, we overdubbed just about everything else… although we kept all the original rhythm tracks and then we added additional rhythm stuff; like a lot of the original guitar tracks and keyboard tracks are there, but there might be another one added.
THE MULE: I think that you guys have definitely captured the spirit of Frank’s adventuresome nature and his desire to present what may possibly be alternative viewpoints in a method that people are going to actually listen to and – whether they realize it or not – they are receiving this message. Does that make sense?
BRUCE: Yeah. I think it’s important to have some message. It’s interesting that my daughter’s a musician… and she’s 14 and she’s talking the same way. I think that maybe this generation that’s just coming up might be more interested in genuine music… with actual players. We have so many machines running around doing everything… in music, too. Not that I have anything against it; believe me, I use it all the time.
I really like the way machines have entered the music world. They have made a lot of things possible that weren’t before. I can just imagine what Frank would be up to if he had the current machines. But still, you got to have a guy who can play it to have the true expression. Our thing is that we can still do it… I don’t know… we’re getting older, you know. It’s been along time since ‘72… 30 years ago! We played that stuff so many times that it’s just not that hard… even though it’s really hard to do it. We’ve already been through that. And a guy like Chad, he can come over here and we can pull out a tune like “Sinister Footwear,” which is incredibly complicated, and he plays it right down. Like we just did it yesterday. That’s amazing.
THE MULE: Yeah, definitely. The guy is incredible.
BRUCE: He is incredible. I think one of the traditions of Frank is to have this drummer who is just a monster and then he’d have a bass player who holds down the fort and keeps this solid-as-a-rock time going on while Frank and the drummer go crazy. That’s something that all these great drummers that started out on the scene, about the time of Flo and Eddie… about ‘70 or so… Frank was an R and B guy when he was younger. He was loving R and B… and he played R and B guitar, too. That’s very interesting, you know? I think that he got more interested in Jazz… more interested in Classical music and the rest is history. We’ve all kind of been that way, even before we met him. My father is a music professor and he taught me about those rhythms before I met Frank. That’s how I was able to pass the audition… because I had already had some practice superimposing one rhythm on top of another.
THE MULE: The one thing – we’ve already touched on it – is you’ve got to be able to play the stuff. I was lucky enough to see Frank later on, in 1980. Arthur was in the band… Steve Vai was along with him… Ike and Ray (guitarists/vocalists Willis and White)… Ed Mann… Tommy… they would pull out these songs from seemingly nowhere. And Frank would lead them through it. It’s just like – you know… I mean, you were in the band – a wave of the hand or a nod of the head and… you’re off.
BRUCE: Yeah… the signal. He would make up a set of signals and we’d write ‘em all down; then, we’d have this list of stuff that it meant. It might be changed from tour to tour. We had to know them well enough so we could go from anything to anything else at the drop of a hat. Also, there would be certain things that he could insert in the middle of any tune just by putting up his little finger or some other signal… two or three or four or five, even… or some other thing, like the sign for the “C” chord… you know, the little “C” with his hand. That “C” chord was very useful and poppy in places. I was noticing, in fact, that this 1972 GRAND WAZOO, which had 22 people in it… they were in the middle of this one tune and there were three different free sessions that went on for 10 minutes. It was wild. I had forgotten all about it.
He really got into some stuff… he was obviously just conducting us on the spot. I like to do that… freeform conducting. It’s really fun. I did it in Amsterdam for this orchestra a couple of years ago. We wrote a bunch of orchestral tracks that were based on WAKA/JAWAKA and that kind of stuff. After the big Holland festival, which featured Frank that year. They actually did 200 MOTELS live… we did “Gregory Peckory” live with Ensemble Modern… then we had this third group, the Metropol Orchestra, and we did our concert… which was pretty loose and I just started conducting, because the conductor couldn’t do it… there was no way! You had to see Frank do it in order to have some idea of what he wanted. So, I just started conducting them and then I just turned around and started conducting the audience and they were right with me. I didn’t have to tell them what to do or anything about it… what signals meant… they just did it. It was great! That thing was recorded, but they’re hiding the tape. They won’t even give it to Gail. They’ve got it hidden, you know? It’s weird. I’d love to see that come out.
I think, along the lines of music and Frank – and us, too – I’d like to see the stuff retain its spontaneity and not go the way of some Jazz, which is now like a highbrow music… with tuxes and everything. I hope this doesn’t do that. That’s one thing that I kind of wonder… Frank, the greatest composer of the 20th century… kind of turns me off because of that. For instance, when guys do arrangements of the music, there might be stuff that we improvised… and now it’s written down, like its gospel. Like, guys put music in front of me – “Play this!” – but that’s stuff that I made up. That’s my stuff… I can’t do that!
THE MULE: Within the current group, do you have the opportunity to do any of that… orchestrating on the spot?
BRUCE: Oh yeah. We do it. Ike was in our band and he drifted out before we did this record. I have a feeling that certain guys will probably be in and out of the band. Like him… Ike would do it. He would conduct in that Zappa manner. I can do it… different guys can do it, but it’s important for somebody to stand out there and do something because it keeps everything together. On the other hand, we can just play free… and that’s sort of the same thing. You do it by just listening, where nobody is actually leading us. But somebody needs to get out there and actually lead us in order to get that to work. It’s like… There’s one tune, “Christian Coalition Blues,” the last tune (on the SO YUH DON’T LIKE MODERN ART album). That’s our jam tune. It’s just a Blues, and then it goes into this sort of rap thing. It’s actually Rob Reed rapping… as if Rob Reed was a rapper. He’s the guy who started the Christian Coalition in the first place. He looks like he’s about 12… he doesn’t age… ever. Now he’s a big wig in the Republicans, you know… he’s an advisor and everything. This was actually written a long time ago; it was when we did a tour, at least five years ago. It’s a little out of date, but its never out of date because they keep doing the same stuff.
THE MULE: There are certain things that don’t go out of vogue.
BRUCE: No… if we play that tune, we go with whatever current event is happening. Like when Clinton was having all his troubles, we had the blue dress. I went to the thrift store and got a blue dress and I put a bunch of Elmer’s Glue on it… so that it would look right. And that was on-stage and, you know, it was fun! We invent these vignettes… we’ll start talking about something and it gets into like, a little play. Frank started that early on. When he first started doing his stuff at the Derek Theatre in New York, he experimented with the audience… he went to London and did this kind of a play, where the group all broke up on stage because some of the guys wanted to actually have notes to play; then they brought an orchestra out and had a big fight between the band and the orchestra. This was on this video that I just bought the other day. That’s the kind of thing you definitely want to do. That makes our gig so much more fun for us… rather than just going out there and playing.
The other thing is – as with Frank – where a set list is only presented to the band moments before we go out… like five minutes before we’d go out, we’d get the set list. We’d be squealing, “Oh, my God! We haven’t played this one for weeks! How does that go again? What’s my part?” Take a quick look at your part because we’re not supposed to have any music out there… and we had 125 tunes in ‘88. It was hard to remember ‘em all… and the thing is, it was the opposite of a touring band that goes out and does the same exact show for an entire year or something. Like the current way of doing a show… which is cool, too… it’s a totally different thing, with all the lights… everything’s programmed… the stage moves and all that stuff. That’s the opposite of the way Frank liked to do stuff. I like both scenes really but, man, if we had to play the exact same thing every night, I don’t know why we’d do it. Which is never going to happen with this band. We’re doing it because we really enjoy it… that’s the bottom line. We’re not great businessmen, though. We’re going to need some help. That’s why I appreciate you calling me.
THE MULE: I’m looking at an album that came out on Rhino in ‘82, by the Grandmothers. I see that your brothers are in the band but, at that time, you weren’t involved. Were you ever involved with them and how would you compare that band of ex-Mothers – ex-Zappa sidemen – to the current group, Banned From Utopia?
BRUCE: This is a similar thing to us, in a way. Those guys are more of the earlier guys. The difference between us and them is that we’re playing more of the later stuff… not that we shouldn’t do that. We did play some of the stuff from WE’RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY… we’ve played that before… and we’ve played some stuff from FREAK OUT before… “Help, I’m a Rock,” we played that. So, we’re not, like, exclusive or anything. We’re not going to not do that stuff… it’s just that we didn’t put it on the record. I think, interestingly enough, the Grandmothers are playing the stuff that we were playing when we were in the band… it crosses back and forth.
Those guys had a history with Frank; the business of it caused a big problem. So, they’re not really in great favor with the Zappa family. And… I don’t know how important this is or isn’t… basically, we want good relations with the Zappa family. You have to be kind of careful about the way you use the name Frank Zappa and stuff like that because… we don’t own it. It’s him… it’s the family that deserves it and owns it and everything. In a way, the Grandmothers are more split up from the family… they had a pretty bad fight with Frank. I think its valuable that those guys are playing. They’re fine and… I think they’re going to actually go play in Europe real soon. They have some guys that I know that are in the band… some LA musicians that are friends of mine. They’re trying to get a better band… their band is getting better, all the way around… the instrumental playing of it. They weren’t that great at first, technically; now they are getting some other new players that are really good. They’ll be good and I think they’re going to Germany soon.
We’ve got to come out and play; we’re working on that now. We’re going to go play… we HAVE to go play. My problem is that I work in the movie business; I’m an orchestrator… so I get busy. I can’t do this… I can’t organize the band and still do the work I do. I’ve got to have help. Having a big group is what we need… we need the percussionist… we need the singing, which takes three guys really… and how could we do it without the horn section? That’s what’s different about us; we’ve got the horn section.
PART THREE: THE CONCLUSION
That wasn’t the end of our conversation with Mister Fowler, boys and girls, but it was the end of our tape. So engaged were we with this interview that we forgot to turn the tape over and lost probably another fifteen minutes of reminiscing about Frank and some of the other players involved in this and other projects that Bruce has been involved in. Banned from Utopia’s current release, SO YUH DON’T LIKE MODERN ART, features ten tracks – five originals, five Zappa compositions – all played as only a group of Zappa-nurtured musicians could play them. I’m certain that Frank would be proud.