“Stark raving mad, or the bravest man I ever knew”: How Frank Zappa talked his way out of an assassination attempt
The music world has never seen another figure quite like Frank Zappa. From his origins in Baltimore, the prolific musician and songwriter became a defining figure of American rock music during the 1960s. He introduced mainstream audiences to a variety of experimental music-making techniques that had scarcely been explored prior. Nevertheless, his outspoken personality and radical activism—both political and musical—earned Zappa more than his fair share of enemies.
For the most part, Zappa’s enemies were limited to conservative commentators, who were resentful of his hippie leanings; fellow musicians, who found his dedication to experimentalism frustrating; and his neighbours, who could hardly get a wink of sleep surrounded by the party lifestyle of the songwriter. Partly in an effort to combat this surrounding negativity, Zappa chose to live at a home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, with an army of friends, groupies, and fellow musicians.
Most notably, during this time, Zappa lived in a log cabin alongside The GTOs, a short-lived all-female psychedelic band composed predominantly of groupies who would hang around at Zappa’s digs. In fact, the Mothers of Invention musician produced The GTO’s one and only album, Permanent Damage, in 1969. This radical, communal living arrangement seemed to be very in keeping with Zappa’s own personal ethos, as well as the hippie counterculture spirit that was rife throughout Los Angeles during the late 1960s.
Despite this idyllic, free image, life in Laurel Canyon was not entirely made of peace and love. In fact, the log cabin was very nearly the site of Frank Zappa’s dramatic assassination. This little-known slice of Zappa lore was later revealed by Pauline Butcher, who had been recruited as Zappa’s secretary while on a trip to London and ended up living with him in Los Angeles for a period. In an interview with notbadfilms, Butcher recounted, “It was a very hot day, and the front door was open. Frank was in the sitting room, and this man stood in the doorway.”
“It was August, and he had a suit on,” she continued, “We were used to hippies in T-shirts and jeans; he had a shirt and tie, and his hair was smarmed down and parted on the side. So it was unusual”. However, this unusual situation would soon turn horrific. “He said, ‘Frank Zappa, I’ve brought you a present.’ and he handed Frank this bag of see-through red liquid,” Butcher recalled, “It looked like blood.”
Continuing, she said, “Frank took it in a dramatic and theatrical way and held it up to us and the other people in the room. While he was handing that blood to us, the guy behind him pulled out a gun about two feet away.” Zappa is not the only musician to be threatened by an assassination attempt, but this event at Laurel Canyon was certainly ahead of its time. Luckily, Zappa always had a way with words and was able to talk himself out of the near-death experience.
“Now, Frank, I thought, was either stark raving mad or the bravest man I ever knew,” Butcher remembered, seemingly still marvelling at the experience of witnessing this event, “Because he calmed this bloke down and somehow talked him out of it, putting the gun down, and following him out into the garden to throw [the gun] into the pond.” What’s more, Zappa did not even report the incident to authorities, telling Butcher, “If the police come, he’ll go to jail, and he doesn’t deserve to go to jail.”
The very fact that this bizarre incident was not known about until Butcher published Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa in 2011 speaks to the sheer volume of strange occurrences in Zappa’s life. Reflective of his weird and wonderful music, the songwriter seemed to get into situations that no other songwriter could ever imagine, and talking down a would-be assassin is merely one example.
