The interview took place in one of Frank's work rooms, surrounded by his piano, guitar, tape decks, massive speakers and boxes and boxes of tape. There was a neat little pile of soon-to-be-published compositions and some transcriptions of guitar solos on the piano bench. He proved to be on extremely gracious host; after the interview was over he played me five sides of upcoming material, and even got me a beer. I mean, would you play d.j. to a nosy journalist on Christmas eve?
The three sides of his new double album, Sheik Yerbouti, I heard were pretty impressive. [...]
The live New York tapes were also exciting, particularly the sections with L. Shankar, the Indian violinist who has been playing with McLaughlin the past few years, and who has recently joined Frank's band. So a lot has been going on, but as he explained it to me, Frank Zappa is always a busy man.
While the [Anti-Defamation] League [of B'nai B'rith] was harping, [FZ] was readying other projects: Warts And All, a double live album, was culled from performances at the 1978 Halloween show in New York and a January engagement at the Hammersmith Odeon in England; Shut Up And Play Your Guitar is an album of blistering Zappa guitar work, sans vocals, which he plans to sell mail-order. "It's just for fetishists," he says, laughing. "For those who want to hear my guitar work, that's the album for them." With these works completes (but as yet unreleased). Zappa moved into Village Recorders on April 11, [1979], planning to record a couple of songs and then split.
He currently has two LPs in the can—Warts And All and the all instrumental Shut Up And Play Your Guitar and is about to release Acts II and III of his rock opera, Joe's Garage. He recently produced Touch Me There by Indian violinist L. Shankar, and he is currently in the final editing stages of his film, Baby Snakes.
Research, compilation and maintenance by Román García Albertos