Auditions from hell: Was Frank Zappa the most meticulous musician in rock?
Frank Zappa had more in common with neo-classical composers than he had with rock ‘n’ roll. While his music was built around guitar-driven, bluesy R&B, at least in the early days, one only had to keep listening to more than a few albums before getting to the really, really weird stuff. Stuff that sounds like the very limits of what could be achieved with a standard rock band. All this to say that when Zappa wanted to add members to his Mothers of Invention, the audition process wasn’t exactly a casual affair. To play in Zappa’s band, you had to be among the very best there was at whatever you were trying to do.
Sure, there were a few members of the original Mothers who Zappa knew from one of his many different iterations of high school. However, considering Zappa was composing, arranging and conducting full-on, avant-garde classical pieces for the orchestras of those high schools by the time he was 16, it stands to reason he wasn’t just drafting in his mates for the sake of being friendly.
They knew what he was about, and when it was time to expand the band out of Zappa’s immediate social circle, Zappa put any prospective candidates through absolute hell in order to prove themselves. After all, when a guitarist as hugely acclaimed and respected as Toto’s Steve Lukather doesn’t make the cut, you know the bar is set insanely high.
In fairness to Lukather, he was 17 years old when he auditioned for the Mothers, but Zappa clearly didn’t give him a break due to his age. In an interview with Guitar World magazine, Lukather said “I was the sacrificial lamb to get rid of everybody else because there was 150 guitar players sitting there for one position. He [Frank] didn’t want to audition 150 guitar players, so he made my audition impossible.”
Why did Frank Zappa make his auditions impossible?
“I was the first guy. He tortured me… I don’t want to relive it because it was very painful, it was very embarrassing to me. And it was really scary, because he was not nice to me at all.” Lukather didn’t make the cut, but it seems that this rejection was the making of him. He goes on to say “I was 17. I thought, ‘That’s it, my career is over, I’m not good enough, I’ll never make it.’ I tried not to cry. It was just humiliating. And I said, ‘Fuck it! I’m gonna fuckin’ take that energy, and I’m gonna turn it into a positive; I’m gonna prove him wrong. I am gonna make it, I am gonna be somebody. And some day he’ll know that.’”
Lukather may have been made an example of, but it sounds like even if you got in, the experience of auditioning for Zappa was hell on earth. Vinnie Colaiuta drummed for The Mothers from 1978 to 1981and went into detail on the audition process on the Let There Be Talk podcast. He speaks of a regimented, almost production line-like process of waiting in line while musicians went up and were dismissed by Zappa after playing for a few seconds, then Colaiuta’s turn arrives.
He says “I get called up there and I sit down – it was like a laundry list of stuff. It was, like, ‘Okay, let’s see if you can read.’ So he puts ‘The Black Page’ on a stand and I turned my head away, start playing it from memory because I knew it, so he’s thinking of, ‘Oh, a smart one, huh?’ So, he takes it off and he puts this, like, 10-page thing, like, an orchestral piece called ‘Pedro’s Dowry’ on the stand.”
“About eight bars go by, and he comes, he yanks the music off the stand and goes, ‘Yes, you can read, OK. Now, let me test your memory retention. Spit this phrase back at me… and now solo in 17’ or whatever. He goes, ‘OK.’ And it was one thing after the other, like, ‘Check, check…’”The process was not a lot of fun. Seemingly being in The Mothers wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either. However, that was the deal for playing with not just a musician of Zappa’s calibre but a composer of his calibre, too.
He expected people to be able to follow his creative vision, and for that, you needed to be the best around. In Lukather’s case, even his rejections seemed to make you the best around, and if that’s not a sign of something special, I don’t know what it is.
