Greetings and salutations Zappa fans,
My name is Tom Brown, and I've been a Frank Zappa fan and collector since the first time I heard "Freak Out" in 1966. Not only was I indelibly overwhelmed and inspired by the music upon my first listen to this seminal album, but the lyric content seemed to provide me with a much needed prodding to look at the pathetic state of the world and the human condition in an entirely new way. It proved to be a literal life changing experience for me, much like one of those "born again" weasels who are convinced that they're now one with God, and at peace with the universe. Only different. Through a strange and cosmic quirk of fate, I met Arthur Barrow in 1975, shortly after he moved to LA from Texas, to hopefully acquire the chance to audition with his musical hero, Frank Zappa. I am proud to announce that Arthur and I have managed to remain great friends since that time, and no one could have been happier for him than my myself, when he actually achieved his life's dream and won the coveted bass player assignment for FZ. For those of you who are interested in the details of his audition process and the countless other FZ related stories that he's revealed in interviews throughout the years, please take the liberty to visit Arthur's website--http://www.netcom.com/~bigear to peruse an abundance of swell information and insights regarding his career and involvement with Frank Zappa. For additional info simply type "Arthur Barrow", into your favorite search engine (I would recommend using Google).The purpose of the following confrontation was to avoid hashing over the same specific material again and hopefully provide the fans with something a little different. The criteria for our talk was to see how many remembrances Arthur could conjure up that hadn't been mentioned in any of his previous interviews. The Dr Peppers were served and the tape recorder was turned on...

The following discussion took place on March 2, 2002, at Lo-Tek Studio (owner and proprietor, Arthur Barrow), located in picturesque Mar Vista, California.

TB: Talk to us Arthur. Tell us some funny shit. When did you first become a Zappa fan?

AB: The first album I heard of his that I really, really got it, was "We're Only In It For The Money." I had sort of been exposed to the earlier albums, but you have to remember that I am much younger than you. Unlike yourself, I was just a mere child when "Freak Out" was released.

TB: What, were you eight or nine?

AB: I was only about 14 when "Freak Out" was released.

TB: Okay. That would be pretty demanding on a 14 year old.

AB: Yeah. I had heard "Absolutely Free", but it was just too weird for me at the time. I was a good clean American kid and I was listening to surf music. But I was fifteen or sixteen when I heard "Money" and I liked it. I was first attracted to the lyrics. Some of them seemed to personify things that were happening in my life at the time. Then after listening to it more and more, I discovered how interesting the MUSIC really was. I was thinking, God, what are those chords? It was a true realization for me.

TB: Tell us about "Joe's Garage."

AB: Okay. Aside from some synthesizer parts on the Doors album "American Prayer" in 1976, "Joe's Garage" was the first real album that I was on. The inception of that album came about at the end of the winter 79' which was my second tour. The band was sitting around the dressing room, and we were talking about our remembrances and details about our garage band experiences, and I remember mentioning that we had a green Dodge in my garage, and so on. I didn't have a Stratocaster with a whammy bar back then, I had an Alamo, and a 1 watt, 1 knob, Kent amp. I remember the other guys also talking about their first bands and rehearsing in the garage... that's where Frank got the idea for the song.

TB: So he stole it from you guys? (somebody had to be here to play devil's advocate)

AB: Well no, he didn't steal it, Tom! No. He was inspired by the conversation. It was a reminiscing moment, that's all. Did any of us go write a fucking song about it? No! Frank did. Other people may say that Frank ripped them off, but Frank had the wherewithal to take nothing and make it into something.

TB: You don't have to convince me. I am sold. He always had an uncannily astute ability to use the shit that the band members would say and do and turn it into a piece of art.

AB: Yes he did. And I probably have talked about this before, but when we recorded that album, out of all the complicated shit we were playing, the song that Frank gave us the most grief on was "Crew Slut." He made us do a million fucking takes. He kept saying "It doesn't feel right."

TB: Well, maybe you were fucking it up.

AB: I don't know. According to him we were, but apparently we finally got it right. We finally got one that he liked after doing endless takes. That one that's on there, he thought it was really bitchin'. (much laughter)

TB: Well, what was your impression?

AB: They all sounded about the same to me. They sounded okay as far as I could tell.

TB: Damn. What a privilege it must have been for you to beat out all the other bass players auditioning at the same time as you.

AB: That's right. It was a fine, fine moment, and some might say I was a pretty good musician. But I'll tell you there's a lot of guys out there who were probably pretty good musicians, and who think they're pretty good musicians, and think "well, I could have done that". In fact, I was one of those guys. But I'll tell you what, when I did get in the fuckin' band it was a million times more challenging, and harder, and stressful than I ever imagined it would be. It scared the shit out of me. It was unbelievable the amount of stuff we were expected to remember. Everyone always asks "Oh wow, how'd you memorize all that stuff?" It was a lot of work which I, for one, DID care to do. It took every ounce of mental effort, concentration and will power that I could possibly muster out of my 26 year old brain and body.

TB: You probably haven't been as musically challenged since.

AB: Not even close. No contest. However hard you might think it was, you other musicians out there, it was probably at least ten times harder than that. I thought I had pretty good time, I thought I had pretty good rhythm and all that shit, until I played in that band with Vinnie, then I realized that I still had a lot to learn. I learned a lot from Vinnie about where the time was.

TB:Yeah, he's pretty impressive. He is truly gifted. It kills me to listen to Vinnie. Every time I hear him, I never want to think about playing ever again.

AB: But you have to remember... for instance, I've always had to work and practice pretty hard. I've never been a real virtuoso, or been able to play real fast. Any technique that I have was only achieved by really hard work and hours of practice. A lot of discipline day after day.

TB: What about guys like Jaco?

AB: I'm sure Jaco worked his ass off too. The thing is, it's not enough just to have the gift. You gotta have the gift and be willing to put in the work. You take the combination of those two things and you really got something.

TB: Tell us a little known fact about FZ.

AB: He had a terrible diet. He would eat a piece of pie for breakfast.

TB: Lots of enchiladas? Lots of Cheeseburgers?

AB: Yeah, cheeseburgers. And he had the coffee thing. One time we were in Belgium I think it was, we were served these big steaks, and Frank sat down and took one bite of his and pushed it aside and said, "That's horse meat! That's horse meat! I'm not gonna eat it!" and he got up and left. He was absolutely convinced it was horse meat and wasn't going to eat it. (much laughter ensues)

TB: Was it horse meat? What does horse meat look like?

AB: I don't know. I ate it. It was okay. I'm still here. It didn't hurt me. (much more laughter ensues)

TB: Alright. You feel like sharing any tour stories?

AB: Well, I remember on my first tour, Frank had the engineer make board tapes of the show every night, and after the show we'd go to Frank's room and listen to them. There might be 3 or 4 band members and we'd sit around and listen while Frank sat there in his robe tapping his toes. He'd sometimes get pissed-off when he'd hear something wrong and say "God, that sounds horrible! Man, I can't believe I spent all those thousands of dollars rehearsing this band! It should sound much better than this. I can't believe it!" He was always busting our balls.

TB: That was 78'?

AB: Yeah. We first had that little festival jaunt in Europe at the beginning for ten days or so, and then started the US tour in Florida and worked our way up the east coast. I think it started in September.

TB: You want to talk about the clonemeister portion of the gig?

AB: Being the clonemeister was about the hardest thing I ever did in my whole life. I won't go into details, but there were conflicts within the band that were accentuated by my being thrust into the position of clonemeister. But somehow I lived through it, and in no way did it diminish my appreciation for the extremely grand privilege of being able to play in Frank's band.

TB: Its gotta be a tricky job with all of the egos that have to be dealt with. Which certainly come out when Frank's not around, don't they?

AB: A lot of us have played in bands, right? And a lot of times you'll get in a band and there's been one guy, maybe he's the bass player or the guitar player who is a really brilliant and great player, but he's got a got a weird and twisted personality, and he's screwed up and makes dumb decisions, his life is messed up and he's egotistical. A great musician, but he's really whacked out. Well, imagine a band full of those guys... that's what it was like with the Zappa band. It's enormous pressure, and Frank constantly talked about job security. He would say "Your job security is in question here." He would talk that way to everybody constantly. "There's a lot of guys out there. I've got a whole filing cabinet full of letters from guys waiting to get your job." We'd hear that all the time. That was a concept everybody in Frank's band was familiar with.

TB: But you have to admit you did a lot better with the clonemeister gig than Thunes ever did.

AB: Well, I don't think it's for me to say, but there's this guy in Finland named Yuha who's writing a book and interviewed quite a lot of Frank Zappa musicians. He told me that the consensus among them was that I was the best clonemeister. But Frank should have really given the job to Tommy, because Tommy had the most complete understanding of everything that was going on musically. More so than I ever did. Ed didn't want to do it any more. He did it one semester and quit. What can I tell you? Frank asked me to do it and I did it. Actually, I think we all would have preferred it if Frank had done it himself.

TB: The meistering will take some time away from your personal life. That was life consuming, right?

AB: That was 24/7 job, but I didn't mind all that much as far as the musical side of it was concerned. I ate it up.

TB: Talk about the Fowlers.

AB: Walt is one of the under-recognized brilliant musicians. He's not just Bruce Fowlers brother. He is awesome, and amazingly musically gifted and disciplined in the way we were talking about earlier, to a very high degree. He has an enormous musical, harmonic, and otherwise depth. It's nothing short of astonishing.

TB: All the Fowlers are pretty good. You gotta admit, Tom is a great bass player.

AB: If I was going to rate Frank Zappa's bass players in order of my favorite one's, excluding myself of course. I would have to say that Tom Fowler is the absolute, number one best player.

TB: That's a good choice. Who would be next?

AB: After that I'd have to say Roy Estrada.

TB: Roy was very good. I always liked his tone on the records. Who else?

AB: Patrick, of course,and I kinda liked Jeff Simmons.

TB: I see. Are we leaving anyone out?

AB: Are we still going? Any more questions? Don't you want to know what Frank Zappa was really like? Did I tell you about the time he made me a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich?

TB: Was that when you were replacing the original bass parts on the "Money" album?

AB: Yes, that might have been when we were doing the unfortunate bass over-dubs, but It sure was fun for me to be able to listen to the isolated tracks. We were working late and he said "Hey, you want a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich?"

TB: Goddamn man. Dream come true number 241. How many guys get to eat a sandwich made by Frank for them?

AB: Well, believe it or not Tom, I never actually dreamed about Frank Zappa making me a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, but when it happened it was amusing and entertaining, and he made a darn good peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, I tell you what. I enjoyed it and I ate it. I didn't wrap it and save it or try to preserve it in plastic to show to anyone.

TB: Fuck, you could have sold it on ebay.

AB: And Frank Zappa made the best fucking coffee I've ever tasted in my life. I've never before or since tasted coffee as good as I had at Frank's house. I asked him about it and he said it was some European blend that he had picked up. It was great! He'd say "I'm gonna go build a pot of coffee." He had the best coffee and we sure drank a lot of it. Did I ever tell you the first time I went up to the house after the studio was finished, right before we did "You Are What You Is"?

TB: I'm not sure. Tell me.

AB: He had invited us up, and maybe it was the first day of recording, and he was showing us all around and showing it off, being very proud, and he said "This studio cost me a million dollars. You gotta play "Dinah Moe Humm" a lot of times to make that much money."

TB: That's funny. Frank thought everyone who came to the shows wanted to hear "Dinah Moe Humm." I will never quite understand that.

AB: Well, it seemed to be a big hit with the audiences.

TB: I know. He thought they wanted to hear it. For some reason I can't really recall if the bands you were in played it too, but you must have. Didn't you?

AB: Oh fuck yeah. And the funny thing is, as the tour went on it would get a little faster every night. We knew it good. We could play it real good.

TB: Who were your favorite Zappa drummers?

AB: I would immediately rate Vinnie as number one.

TB: As if I didn't know. Who'd be second?

AB: That's easy. Chester Thompson.

TB: What about Aynsley?

AB: I love Aynsley, but for third I'd probably have to say Ralph Humphrey. And I like Chad and then Aynsley, and David Logeman. Let's see, who else was on drums?

TB: Jimmy Carl Black. What about Bozzio?

AB: Bozzio's good of course, but for me, Vinnie's the guy. I had the privilege of playing with the Jimi Hendrix of drums. In terms of not just technique, but everything. The way that Jaco Pastorius is the Jimi Hendrix of the bass. Hands down, he was the bass player. There are not many players that are serious that would argue with me about either of them. And it's the same way that Bruce Fowler is the Jimi Hendrix of the trombone. Did you know that I actually met the Jimi Hendrix of the bass?

TB: No. When did you meet Jaco? You never told me that.

AB: When I was in Sweden, in 77', the year before I played with Zappa. Remember when I went to Sweden with Bjorn Skifs, who had a big hit covering the B. J. Thomas song, "Hooked On A Feeling," the Oogga Chucka guy? The guy from Blue Swede.

TB: Yeah, but you didn't tell me you met Jaco.

AB: I was over there touring with Bjorn Skifs, we were playing at the Folkets Parks in Sweden, and it's one of those little outdoor parks everybody went to in the summer, because these poor people up there are so far north that it's frozen from September until May. Then during the summertime it's daylight all the time and so everybody stays up all night, and parties and drinks, and goes crazy for about three months. I got hired as a guitar player to play with this guy Bjorn who was a Pop star there. He had little teenage Swedish girls following him around. Weather Report, who were in their heyday, with Jaco, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Airto and Alex Acuna, were playing in Sweden in one of the out door park theatres. We had a night off and a couple of the guys in the band asked me if I wanted to go along and see them, and we were off. And they were fucking great! It was brilliant. They were wonderful. And the people were so polite in Sweden, everybody would applaud after the number, and then there would be dead silence. I'm out in the audience, and after a few songs I'm thinking, god, I can't really hear Jaco. I really want to hear Jaco. Jaco needed to be turned up a little bit, and so at the end of the next song I decided to yell real loud, "turn up the bass!" I noticed that Jaco heard me and looked around, and they started playing the next song while Jaco walked out to the front of the stage to listen, and waved to the sound guy to turn him up. They actually turned him up and then I could hear him a lot better! (Arthur laughs) I got them to turn up the bass, and afterwards I went up and hung around like a groupie and waited around to meet and talk to him. I told him I'm the guy who yelled to turn up the bass and I'm a bass player too, and it was, "Hey, how ya doin'?" We shook hands and he had big hands. I have big hands and his were twice the size of mine. Big giant hands. He said he had been doing red Bolivian blow the night before, but was a straight arrow when he went on stage. Did I ever tell you about the time Frank played a gig on painkillers?

TB: No. Tell us.

AB: We were in France and he had a toothache. It was right about the time he had just written "In France" and he was always having tooth problems, and he had a bad toothache. And he took some kind of pain medication. Some big time pain medication and he got a shot of it before the show, and he was slogged. He was as high as a kite. He was fucked up. I remember it was an outdoors venue with some sort of awning covering the stage. But it was a great show as I recall. We were in France for a fucking month playing night after night in tents. We had a big bus and we drove around playing in circus tents. I remember we were somewhere in France on this miserable tour and Frank got this shipment of manuscripts from Steve Vai, this was before he got in the band, and Frank told us about this kid in Berkeley and how he'd transcribed the guitar solos from "Joe's Garage". Tommy and I looked at it, and turned to look at each other thinking that oh my god, we've had it. There's this next younger generation of musicians coming along that's going to totally blow us out of the water. Look at this fucking kid transcribing this stuff. But after we looked at it a little longer we found some inaccuracies and errors and then we felt a bit relieved.

TB: But it looked pretty impressive, I'm sure.

AB: Oh yeah. Speaking of France, do you have a tape anywhere of the original live "In France" that was done to the "In Cars" backing track? You know the Gary Numan song?

TB: It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't know offhand.

AB: You should check your tapes. It was somewhere in France during the tour with David Logeman in 1980, which was so highly criticized because we kept doing the same set over and over again, but that's because poor David had only ten days to learn the songs.

TB: Well, I've always defended David Logeman. That couldn't have been easy.

AB: Stringbeans to Utah baby. Stringbeans to Utah. (Arthur actually said "Greenbeans from Utah" here. Which I like a lot, but I'm not sure if he really meant to say that. So I changed it.)

TB: Ah yes. My theme song. Goddamn, Frank was great.

AB: He was, but Frank was always dissatisfied like any artist will be. I loved 200 Motels. I thought it was a masterful achievement. The score is fantastic, even though the album never sounded very good technically. It was just awful. But the music was great! Brilliant compositions and orchestral parts and I thought he was a genius. I was at Frank's house one night and I told him that I thought it was a masterpiece, and he said "Oh, it was so awful, the performance was terrible, the orchestra made all these mistakes. It's horrible, I can hardly stand to listen to it." And I told him "Goddamn. I can't believe you really feel that way." It blew my mind, but to Frank, it was all fucked up. I kind of put that together with what he was saying about us when he'd tell us "You guys are fucked up, all those mistakes, I can't believe it." But it's just his way and that's what it takes to get things right. People may think that it's just magic, and Frank snaps his fingers and suddenly has this band of great musicians that just do it. Oh man, there's just no fucking way, it's through hard work and solving problems, and figuring things out and keeping at it and working it, and working it, and working it. That's what it's about. That's what makes it happen. Just working his fucking ass off and never giving up.

TB: I can't think of anybody who literally worked as hard as Frank did. There's no one that ever worked as consistently and had the command of the musical language that he did. He was relentless.

AB: He was a twentieth century rock composer kind a guy. He was the Jimi Hendrix of that. He really was. No one comes close. I think one of Frank's greatest contributions, which has unfortunately been lost or overlooked, was his concept of taking an electric rock band that performs on an orchestral level of discipline and compositional material. It's something that's been largely lost and to me it was probably his greatest contribution. The concept of something like an "Inca Roads" or "Uncle Meat", "Echidnas Arf", it's just great stuff that's unparalleled. "Peaches en Regalia". It's a whole other dimension than what the usual rock bands are capable of. It's as if he's been forgotten for his ability to do that. And the band was great at that, I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but it was killer. You can't do that with a fucking computer and tell it to do something "Devo cocktail piano style". You can't tell a computer that and expect it to know what you're talking about. You can tell that to Tommy Mars, though, and he'll execute it immediately, and it'll be perfect. It was like cut and paste and the band actually functioned as giant, mutant, living computer. Frank would just tell us what to do and it was an awesome thing, but currently, it does not exist anywhere. It was beautiful. They'd set up the PA and the lights with all that power running through it, and night after night we'd get up on stage and start doing all the tricky stuff and I'd look out into the audience to watch their jaws drop open, "how can they really do that?" and when they see that the band can really do it, plus a million times more, you can see their brains exploding. That's very gratifying

TB: All I know is, that every fucking Frank Zappa show that I ever witnessed, I was never disappointed. It was obvious to me that it had to be the hardest working band in show business. And I'm not being facetious.

AB: It was a lot like being in a orchestra, and it was so loose at the same time. He would just turn around and give us a hand signal, and what orchestra could do that, to suddenly change the arrangement of the whole piece? Remember that tape you brought over with the extemporaneous version of "Andy" on it? You asked me about the weird version of "Andy?"

TB: Yeah, the Normal, Illinois tape.

AB: I thought, what weird version of "Andy?" We always played it stock, so I was puzzled, but it turns out it was all a result of hand signals, yet it was so seamless! When you have a band like that touring night after night for months, it becomes uncannily tight. You apply all that discipline and you can do something like that off the cuff. It's fucking fantastic.

TB: I can imagine. Adrenaline city. Fuck. And now it's gone.

AB: It was a long time ago. I was extremely, extremely privileged to play with Frank Zappa.

TB: You gotta admit.

AB: God bless Frank Zappa for giving me that opportunity. Thank you brother.

Once again, please visit Arthur's website http://www.netcom.com/~bigear for the further adventures of life with Frank Zappa, and information on how to order the wonderfully performed and produced Arthur Barrow albums. Here's to my long time, great and talented friend Arthur, and if he won't say it, I will...Arthur, you are the fucking Jimi Hendrix of the clonemeisters, and a pretty fucking good musician to boot. All hale AB.

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