On
this particular tour we've just spent 2 weeks rehearsing, for nostalgic
purposes, a collection of songs from the FREAK OUT album. And there's
not much jamming in that. I mean you have to learn the arrangements. We
have one long, continuous slab of relentless FREAK OUT music. It's
funny, you know. If we play that—we haven't unleashed it yet on an
audience, [this Allendale, MI, one will] be our first concert on the tour and it's our newest
piece of old stuff. And we've never done that before. You know we've
never gone out and played vast quantities of stuff from albums. Usually
our show consists of things that are unreleased, or a small sample of
request songs. But now we have like a half an hour or 45-minute
continuous piece of familiar material. And I'm anxious to see what's
gonna happen if we play it for an audience, because we're always
getting requests for things we never bothered to learn.
[...] The FREAK OUT thing [...] starts off with "It Can't Happen Here" and then goes into "Monster Magnet" and then "Hungry Freaks" and "Probably Wondering Why I'm Here" and then "How Could I Be Such a Fool?" "No Heart," "I'm Not Satisfied," "Wowie Zowie," "Let's Make the Water Turn Black," "Harry You're a Beast," "Orange Country Lumber Truck," "Oh 'No," "Watts Riot Song," and "Mother People," and that is all continuous straight through.
There wasn't an audition, actually. [...] When [Phil Collins] called, he was apparently a pretty big fan of (Zappa's) Roxy and Elsewhere, and he was specifically looking for a drummer who could play with another drummer. He wasn't totally willing to just give up the drum chair, so he was hoping to find someone who would be comfortable playing in a two-drummer situation. There was one song (on that album) with a specific fill that a lot of drummers were into at that time. In fact on the first day of rehearsal, the first thing he said is, "Ok, how do you play the fill?" and I knew exactly what he was talking about (laughs). It's two distinctive drums parts that sound pretty amazing. Basically, he said that he had heard the Roxy and Elsewhere album, and he talked with the other guys in the group and had played for them various tracks that I had recorded. I don't necessarily know which ones. And, if I am not mistaken, he had gone to the London Weather Report concert, which happened to be the last gig I did with them. He said that he had already done all of that so, since they were all in favor of it, if I wanted the gig it was mine. That's pretty much how it went.
