By Jose Oliveira & Rosine Alleva – Rock At Night EU Editors
It was time for Rock at Night to catch up with these virtuoso musicians who had crossed paths with Zappa, and to pose the ultimate question: Was Zappa a Genius?
Lineup
Ray White – Vocals, guitar / Jamie Kine – Guitar
Mike Keneally – Keyboards, guitar / Scott Thunes – Bass
Chad Wackerman – Drums
Interview
RAN – It’s a great pleasure and a great honor to meet you after all these years, because I met you in 1988. (I’m 78 years old now). First of all, how is Robert Martin doing? I met him a few years ago and he gave me an interview where he told me about some of the adventures he experienced during the Zappa period.
Ray White – The last word I heard was that he was smiling at someone who came into his room. I thought that was a good sign. I haven’t heard a word yet, but we’re hoping for the best.
RAN – Frank Zappa was known for his relentless pursuit of perfection and his demand for rigor from his musicians. Could you share an experience or a memory that illustrates this quest for perfection and how did it influence your own musical approach?
Scott Thunes– Jamie?
Jamie Kine– I’ll give this one to you.
Chad Wackerman – Yes, I think he wanted perfectionism. It was really hard writing his music, I believe. Many sections of the music were very classical, which were written correctly, others weren’t correct. very black and white and beyond that he would work on sty-light the music. But yes, to have its full impact, it had to be right. I think everyone in the band wanted it to be right. Sometimes I found the band even more difficult on ourselves, and it was on the whole band. That’s my opinion on it.
RAN– Of course. In your opinion, what are the most important lessons you learned from your collaboration with Zappa?
Mike Keneally– I felt during rehearsal periods that he wanted to have a good time. And if he was enjoying himself, it meant something was going right in the music. If it became too torturous and too difficult to get the proper result, it might be time to stop and start working on something else. It always seemed that the music had the most life, the most spirit to it when everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. As time went on and I started working with my own bands, that was one of the most important lessons I took with me.
RAN – How would you describe the creative spirit and the dynamic within the group Banned From Utopia?
Scott– Well, I never wanted to be in this band because it started with people who weren’t part of the Zappa’s world anymore, hence the name of the group. And I always laughed from a distance. I never saw them play, or hung out with them. I don’t like musicians in general anyway. The fact that I’m with these guys shows they’ve matured a lot and it’s easier to hang out with now. The camaraderie is pretty high standard now.
RAN – What differences or similarities do you perceive between the scene of the 80s and that of today?
Chad- Things are completely different today. There was no social media, no internet. It’s completely different. Record companies felt a lot of power. Nowadays, most people don’t sign with record companies! They’re putting up their own music. They have a lot of responsibility in handling their own promotion. They spend a lot of time on music but also having to spend a lot of time on social media, to try people to come to the gigs . People used to buy music. Now they don’t! They used to tour to promote their CDs. There are no CDs. Now you’re just trying to get people to show up to gigs
RAN- But I think it was better before. Don’t you agree?
Chad– In certain ways, and other ways, no. It’s harder to get your own music, unless you are signed to a record company. But now the problem is the albums, there is so much out there. It’s hard to get noticed, I think.
Mike– Basically just trying to get people and buy shirts.
Chad– Yes, basically, the bands are in the clothing business.
RAN– So, was Zappa really a genius?
Scott– Oh yeah, no doubt! The definition of a genius who can put disparate elements together in a functional and useful way, Frank was unparalleled. His mind was so quick. Anything that you think you just invented, he thought of it already. And any time you said something, or somebody else said something, he was able to put that together. That’s why all his material doesn’t sound, and I don’t just mean his music, but his words, his phrases, his titles, these are just things that pumped his head and made perfect sense to him at the time. And we’re all desperate to have a microscopic slice of that in our lives.
Ray– But as we all know, try as he may have tried, but he couldn’t do the Hambone. Hahaha!
Scott– Not a genius, obviously! Not a genius! (General laughs). Prove! But we should have started that way. The Hambone, no. Genius, yes!
RAN– Is there a particular anecdote that is especially close to your heart
Scott– I met Vincent Price a long time ago. He played Captain Hook in a show in a song. When I was six, my mother took me backstage. I took his hook, I took his hook! Hahaha!
Ray– He could take a monkey, a chimpanzee and a baboon, teach them three cords, and at the end of the month, he had 70 songs. But nobody wants to go on the road with a dork, hold it, a double dork, wait, a double dork but rash…
RAN- For those discovering your music this Friday, what do you want them to take away about your band and your journey?
Scott– Practice! Mike– Practice makes it ok.
Scott– The only reason we’re doing this is because we’ve practiced our fucking asses off. If you don’t do that, it doesn’t matter. Oh, and have fun, because that’s Ray’s mantra.
Mike– No, just slow the Hambone hahaha! And you’ll be fine! Learn the chords. And you’ll be at peace.
Ray– Hahaha! World peace. I’m not one of the role models. World peace and do the hambone!
RAN – So, a question for everyone. Was Zappa very strict with you?
Scott– He was very strict, but when he wasn’t, I say this to a lot of people, he was one of the fairest people I’ve ever met. He gave people time that you wouldn’t think he or other people would give time to. But for whatever he believed in about himself,he was an educator. And he spent most of his time trying to teach us his music, but when he wasn’t, he was trying to learn about people his music, he was trying to teach orchestras his music, but he was also trying to teach people who were ignorant about certain aspects of life, about how he saw life. Every song, every album, every moment he had, he was doing that. But when you get him backstage, and somebody would come up with, what I would consider a stupid question, he would down and fucking explain it to him in excruciating detail how they were wrong. And he was right.
Mike– I never understood the word strict used as a critic. He was paying us to play the stuff. And that’s the easiest relationship to understand as possible. I pay you to do this thing .The thing I’m paying you to do is to play the music well. And if you show up day after day without playing the music well, he’s not gonna to enjoy that very much, understandably. It’s just that in the world of music, sometimes a more relaxed attitude about that will take hold, and people think that everyone is grooving, doing drugs or whatever and having a good time. But you can’t play this music without a certain strict mindset that requires hours, days, weeks, months of practice. And all Frank wanted was for you to show up at rehearsal and at the gig knowing how to play the songs. If you did that, there was no problem whatsoever .
RAN – But there was a lot of pressure….
Scott- No, once you’ve practiced, that was the point of all the rehearsals. That was the baseline. The baseline of your function is to get it done. Once you’ve get it done, you can relax and do the stagecraft. Because nobody wants to see someone staring at their neck. So if you’ve got your act together, you do all the stuff you did, plus dance around, give the audience something they want from you. Adding to Mike’s comment about the strictness, part of rehearsals is to learn what the capabilities of the band are. He would sometimes come up against the capabilities of the band. You can’t get blood from the turnip. So he would try and try, and try, until some songs just didn’t make it. Because the ensemble wasn’t about that. Every ensemble had their strengths.When you had the 70-71 vaudeville group, they were very good at doing tons of very crazy things on stage but they weren’t doing the super mega hardcore complicated stuff. We could do that, but we weren’t very funny. So we didn’t do the funny stuff on stage.
Mike– The capabilities of the band were very important.
RAN- Did you have good relations with Zappa’s three children?
Scott– I lived up at the house for a while. I was in Dweezil’s bands with Dweezil and Ahmet. Mike and I were both in that band. Moon came out with us when we first toured in California. I’ve known her since she was fourteen. I was part of the family group.
Ray– So, Ahmet was born in 76, that’s when I met them. They were babies.
Scott– Yes, and Gail and I got along very well.
RAN- Within the Zappa family, there has always been a fierce determination to preserve and safeguard the integrity of Frank Zappa’s work. How do you view this approach to protecting and passing on his legacy?
Scott– Ray, first.
Ray– To me, it’s autopilot. They cherish their dad. They cherish the music. They don’t want anybody to walk in and undo what’s been built. It’s crazy to expect anyone to accept that. I think they’re doing the right job. He’s a role model for other people. When you see a father, a mother or someone in the family, a friend, if you’re associated that tightly to, you don’t want their legacy to go to waste. You protect it, you enhance what you can and hands off you know, that’s their world.
Scott– I believe that Frank’s music has a baseline of competency and once you’ve nailed that, you can do whatever you want with it. Once I started learning Frank’s songs for the first two tours, I was very regimented. But then the third tour, I did what I wanted. And from that point, he’s never told me anything to do. Everything I did was perfectly fine. Once you’ve reached a certain point, he let you go.
Dinner time guys!!! Soup’s on if you want to get some more strength before the concert it’s now!! (General laughs)
RAN – To wrap things up, you’re currently on quite a European tour. Is everything going well? Is the audience responding to your expectations?
Ray– Everything’s fine. Good musicians, good friends. The audience? It’s incredible, absolutely brilliant!
RAN– Tonight, there will be many German people because we live near Freiburg. It was a great pleasure to meet you guys, some of you again, and thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity! See you next century!
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All photos ©Rene Higelin
I was born in Portugal and lived the Sixties exploring the great UK Rock magazines: "The New Musical Express" and "Melody Maker". Ray Charles and Pat Boone were my father’s fav. I became “The Great Pretender”. Cliff Richard was our Elvis Presley. As a beach boy, with my first guitar, I met a beautiful French girl on the beach! It was the Summer of 69!! We got married and rock music was our dowry. In France, I became a Wine Genetic Research Scientist. One of my works contributed to the decoding of the genome of the vine! As a rock journalist, I’ve worked twenty years for the Portuguese and Brazilian Rock Press. I ‘ve interviewed so many great artists. Then, one day I met FRANK ZAPPA! I got into trouble for introducing my wife to "Uncle Meat"!
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