Free Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies by Pamela Des Barres Page A

away that they would be together forever? "I think we both knew we had the makings for a great relationship, but we were babies and didn't know how to do it yet. Frank was twenty-five and I was just twenty-one. But yes, there was a real conscious effort to make it something exceptional. I was recently on a press junket with Dweezil and Ahmet. During the interviews, a couple of times the question came up: `What was it like, growing up with Frank Zappa?' I had to jump in and say, `They didn't grow up with Frank Zappa-I did!' And it's true!"

    While I have the opportunity, I ask Gail to share some allimportant tips on how she made her rock and roll marriage work for so long. So listen up, dolls.
    "I always believed we were so convinced we were communicating that it worked out that we were. Looking back, it's actually possible that we had no fucking clue, and just thought we were totally in sync because we avoided having conversations about a lot of things. When people ask, `What did you talk about?' I always say, `I can tell you we didn't talk about mortgages, ever."' It always seemed to me that Gail and Frank had such an amazing connection. Didn't they ever discuss "serious matters"? Gail raises her eyebrows knowingly, and shakes her head, "Never. That would be the most dangerous thing that could possibly happen. We never made `decisions' together. He was an artist: he did what he had to do and I did whatever I could to make it easier for him. I made a conscious effort to keep everything mundane out of his way and out of his path so he didn't have to deal with that crap. I figured if he was going to put a roof over my head and I got the benefit of that, the least I could do was spare him ordinary details. I'm not gonna try to say I knew what he was doing or even how to do what he was doing."
    Does Gail mean she didn't claim to understand what was going on inside his excessively creative mind? "Yes. That's what he did. And that's what I found fascinating to the very end: here's a guy who does that stuff, and however he does that, it is way different than my experience."
    Having lived with the Zappa family on and off for a few years, I think a lot of the magic I saw between Frank and Gail was that she did spare him from trips to Ralphs market and other trivialities of life. "Oh yes," she agrees. "Bad things could happen at Ralphs." I tell her that this chapter might be seen as a manual for would-be groupies. "Whenever I've had to answer questions in forms that ask, `What is your profession?' I'd always write `professional wife.' I never, ever put `housewife,' or `wife,' on a form, because it is a fucking job and you can do it well or you can do it not so well."

    I surmise that certain genius artists-Picasso, Shakespeare, or Mozart perhaps-were most likely not regular guys and therefore couldn't be expected to function at their highest ability while having to fiddle with mundane day-to-dayness. Gail chuckles, "It was really more about if he didn't get to do what he wanted to do, bad things would happen. I just never stood in the way. I had seen his frustration with the business side of things, and said to myself, `Don't think you're going to help him in business. He's gonna make choices, he'll have to figure it out for himself, and nothing you say is going to change that.' The other thing I realized was: don't be part of the problem that stands in his way-in terms of him getting his work done."
    I remind Gail that I have long considered her to be as astutely brilliant as her spectacular husband was in her very own way. "I can't drink to that," she laughs. "There's curds and there's whey, you know what I'm saying?"
    Something inexplicable between Frank and Gail definitely worked. There were times I had to put pillows over my head to get some shut-eye while they went at it. Deep down I hoped that someday I'd have such a delightfully loud sex life. "Really?" Gail says, slightly shocked, "I'm so sorry. I had no idea! That's the thing,