Chronicling Frank Zappa’s long-running history with faeces
American musician Frank Zappa started his music career in the 1960s, fast becoming known as an innovator of avant-garde music, incorporating as many genres as you can think of into his work, from jazz to doo-wop. Zappa never stuck to convention, going against the grain to produce radically creative and unconventional music.
The musician was always full of surprises, although his eccentric nature was well-known. As a member of The Mothers of Invention, he became part of the Los Angeles ‘freak scene’, which also included names such as Alice Cooper and Captain Beefheart. His tenure as one of music’s leading oddballs has meant that a few rather bizarre stories have formed around his name – some rooted in folklore, and some absolutely true. Strangely, many of these tales revolve around faeces.
Let’s start with a story that has been confirmed to be true: the moment when Zappa received a jar of shit from a fan. Although the tale meant Zappa was set for life if he was ever asked, ‘what’s the weirdest gift you’ve ever received?’, there’s absolutely no excuse to give anyone a jar of excrement as a gift, no matter how much you worship their music.
During an interview with the adult magazine Cheri, Zappa explained the story of how he acquired a jar of shit. “My fans do some weird things, I’ll admit,” he said. “There was this girl from Chicago, Laurel, who won a contest. And I was the first prize – I mean, she could come backstage and meet me. And she gave me a present – a Mason jar with one of her turds in it, rolled up into the shape of a cannonball. I didn’t know what to do. I just said, ‘Thank you,’ and put it down on the dressing-room table.'”
Zappa continued: “That was when I had the Mothers with Flo and Eddie, and Jim Pons was playing bass. I’d planned just to leave it in the dressing room – but no, Jim got curious to see if it was real. Was it, or was it not a piece of poop? He carried it around for a while and finally took one whiff – and yecch! It was real.”
That’s not the only time Zappa has been faced with human shit at one of his shows. In 1980, the musician invited Steve Zai to play with him, but the young guitarist wasn’t prepared for the sheer heat and exhaustion that came with extensive touring. The result was a horrific-sounding show where Vai failed to keep his bodily fluids inside. He told Guitar World: “It was the summer, it was way down south, and it was 120 degrees on stage. I was sick as a dog. I mean, I was so sick. I was dehydrated, and I wasn’t sleeping.”
“I was so out of it that – you know those gurneys that you wheel things on – I had to stand on that and get strapped in and get wheeled out onto the stage and then propped up next to the keyboard player, Tommy Mars,” he added. “And all I had on was a pair of cut-off jean shorts and a bucket, because, not only was I projectile vomiting through the whole show, I was pissing out of my ass. It was not fun. I remember standing up there and being drenched in all sorts of bodily fluids. Oddly enough, I played great.”
Finally, we’ll take a look at the infamous folkloric tale that suggested Zappa and Captain Beefheart had a “gross out” competition with each other, resulting in the former eating the latter’s shit. The story sounds too gross to be true – that’s because it (luckily) never happened, even if several people claim to have witnessed the on-stage antics.
The story goes that the pair were trying different ways of shocking the audience, with Beefheart deciding to take a shit on stage. In response, Zappa supposedly picked up a mouthful; after all, how can you top that on the grossness scale?
However, Zappa asserts that the tale is entirely false, writing in The Real Frank Zappa Book, “For the records, folks: I never took a shit on stage, and the closest I ever came to eating shit anywhere was at a Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973.”
So, there we have it, several shit-themed Zappa stories which only cement his legacy as one of the strangest figures in music history.
