BG: What did you think of David Walley's biography of you, "No Commercial Potential?
FZ: I think it's a piece of shit and I think he's a piece of shit.
BG: What happened?
FZ: Well, first of all I didn't want him to write a book about me, but he insisted that he was going to do it anyway.
Walley told me before the thing came out that he'd worked out this way of laying out the book that was real graphic with a little visual symbol for each of the characters that he'd imagined in this intense mosaic he'd stumbled across. It was so juvenile.
[...]
BG: Why didn't you want a book written about you?
FZ: Well, you know I hate to call somebody a Groupie, but he's a Groupie. And I didn't think that he was the kind of a person that could really write something about me, especially something personal. If he's going to write a review of an album or something like that, he's got enough musical sense where he might be able to talk about it. I'd seen some of the things that he'd said about albums before and I thought it was O.K., and that's how I got to know him.
I told him, 'Don't write this book.' But he said, 'I've already got a deal with the publisher and blah, blah blah, and I'm going to go ahead and do it!' So it put me on the spot where either I had to cooperate with him and give him some interviews that he could use for the book or otherwise he'd have to go out and fictionalize the whole fuckin' thing. Either way I was stuck.
So, I consented to do some interviews at the house, and they were really tragic. He'd start off and ask me some questions and then he'd start talking about his father! And he'd start talking about his relationship with his father, you know, and I'd spend four hours with him sitting there trying to answer questions; and the minute I'd say something he'd constantly be comparing me with his relationship with his father. I was goin', 'Oh no, what's going to happen when this fucker gets in print.' It was just too grotesque.
But the thing that pisses me off most about the book was him going around talking to people and asking them questions about me, and never coming back and cross-referencing it with me to find out if so and so said this—is it fact or can this be supported by anything like that.
Biography must have certain kinds of scruples about it if you're going to do it with any class, you know. Some research, and he just didn't do any.
He never even talked with Gail. If there's anybody who knows something about me, it's got to be my wife! And he wouldn't talk with her because she thought he was full of shit all along. He used to stay away from her.
When the thing finally came out, he sent me a galley at a point where there was already 10,000 copies of the book printed and in the warehouse. And when I saw that fuckin' thing I was really pissed off.
BG: What were some of the grosser inaccuracies of the book?
FZ: Well, calling Herb Cohen a criminal through somebody else's words without being able to support it is libelous. He's got quotes in there from Pamela Zarubica, who he was fucking at the time, and wouldn't bother to check up on anything she said. And she's so coked out and full of shit, you know. She's not a reliable anything. The stuff that Lowell George said, Art Tripp said, Beefheart said and various people in the group critical of me and of Herbie; the things that they said were insubstantial. Just jive. And it really puts me off.
Do you still have any animosity towards David Walley and his biography?
I wouldn't say that it's animosity, but I wouldn't say that it's too enthralling either, because I think that it's a bad piece of work, and I hate to see my name connected with it. I asked him not to write the book, because I didn't think that he could do a good job on it, and he said that he already had a contract to do the book and that he was going to go ahead on it whether I cooperated or not. And so it puts you in a position where somebody is going to write the story of your life, you don't think that they can do it and there's no way you can stop him from doing it. So you have a choice: you can either not talk to him anymore, or you can give him some interviews, and try to give him some information he can use. But what happened at the time Walley interviewed me, is he'd come over to my house, he'd ask me a question and I got to answer it, and then he'd start talking about his father. I mean I spent two or three nights listening him telling how his father sent him to military school, and him comparing me to his father, and I'm going, "Jeeesus!"
And then he would do numbers like he'd bring his girlfriend over to my house, with licks like, "Yeah, you know, I'm going up to interview Frank Zappa, you wanna come along?" And all that kind of shit. And I'd sit there like, "Ngngng . . . " And then, when he had finally finished the book, he sent me the galley proofs, you know the galley proof is the book before it's a book, except that it wasn't. He sent me some printed pages, but there was already 10,000 finished books sitting in a warehouse some place, and there was no way that I could have corrected any of his errors. So it was just an unfortunate thing that happens to someone in show business. And when you're in showbusiness, and somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, I'm gonna do a book about your life," you just tell him, "GO FUCK YOURSELF!"
Well, let me tell you the story of that book. First of all, it was written by a guy who I feel is probably not a very good person. He came to me and said he wanted to do a biography and I said I don't want one and he said, well, I've already made a deal with a publisher and I'm gonna do it whether you help me or not. So on the advice of my manager and my lawyer at the time, they said the best thing to do is to give him an interview because if he's going to write a book, you should give him some information. So he come to my house a couple of times and he would ask me a question and as soon as I'd start to answer, he'd tell me about his father and tell me about the military school that his father sent him to and it was like I was a psychiatrist and he'd bring his girlfriend to the house, you know, like, "Hey baby, go with me—I'm gonna go interview Zappa." And then, the next thing you know the guy disappears, goes away for a while and sends me some proofs of some scripts of a book that is full of shit. It's just got so much wrong stuff, misquotes, his own fantasies, uncorroborated garbage . . . He sends me the proofs. Well, it wasn't really the proofs. They had already printed 10,000 copies that were sitting in a warehouse and there was no way they could change any of the inaccuracies in the book. To me, it's the worst kind of journalism and it turned me off to all form of media, all forms of writers, I mean they're just scum.
