Exploring the unusual childhood of Frank Zappa
The late Frank Zappa was one of the most uncompromising artists the world has ever seen. His colourful oeuvre is not only incredibly eclectic but also highly influential, with iconoclasm oozing out of everything he accomplished. Drawing on a host of genres from acid jazz to R&B, Zappa is regarded by many as the musician’s musician, and his efforts with The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist are held in an almost mythical standing.
As was to be expected for the embodiment of the term ‘Against the Grain’, Zappa’s upbringing was as unusual as his later life. Born on December 21st, 1940, in Baltimore, his mother, Rose Marie, was of Italian and French descent, and his father, Francis Vincent Zappa, was a Sicilian immigrant with Greek and Arab heritage.
The eldest of four children, Zappa was raised in an Italian-American manner, but all that has presently been said is the standard for many Americans. However, his father’s job caused Zappa to have a unique upbringing. The family moved around a lot, as Francis was a mathematician and chemist who worked in the defence industry.
The Zappa’s spent a time in Florida in the 1940s before relocating to Maryland, where Francis worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at the Aberdeen Proving Ground for the US military. Due to their house being so close to the arsenal, which stored large quantities of mustard gas, gas masks were kept at home, meaning that the spectre of chemical warfare was something that the young Frank Zappa was exposed to early. As with all of us, our childhood significantly impacts our adult life, with references to warfare and the defence industry recurring throughout the musician’s discography.
This wasn’t totally unique, though, as there were many children in Zappa’s boots, but what is incomprehensible, even for the day, is that Francis would intermittently bring lab equipment filled with mercury home from work for Frank to play with. Years later, The Mothers of Invention man later said that he “used to play with it all the time”. Zappa recalled that he would put the mercury on the floor and use a hammer to spray out mercury droplets in a circular pattern, covering the whole of his bedroom floor.
As is commonly known, childhood exposure to elemental mercury is toxic, and in men, it exponentially increases the risk of developing prostate cancer in adulthood. In a tragic turn of events, Frank Zappa was diagnosed with a terminal form of the disease in 1990, and on December 4th, 1993, he succumbed to it.
Unsurprisingly, Zappa was almost always sick as a child, with asthma, earaches and sinus issues plaguing him. In another entirely unbelievable act through today’s lens, one doctor even treated a bout of sinusitis by inserting radium pellets into each of Zappa’s nostrils.
As was customary for Zappa, he used comedy to alleviate the health woes his nose gave him with nasal imagery and references common in his work. He would also opine as an adult that his childhood sickness could also have been related to being exposed to mustard gas when the family lived in Maryland.
Luckily for the young Frank Zappa, in 1952, the family moved for health reasons to Monterey, California, with Francis securing a teaching job for metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. They then moved again before finally settling in San Diego, and it was here that Frank Zappa would cut his teeth as a musician, honing his skills and creating the iconic persona that is so lauded today.
