Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa: Laurel Canyon 1968 - 1971

by Pauline Butcher

Overview

This new, revised and updated edition of Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher will be released in a slightly smaller paperback “B” format.

Pauline Butcher realised after she had written the first edition of Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa that she no longer needed to live in his shadow. This realisation, along with the success of the book, gave her new confidence. In the first edition, she upgraded all of the women in Frank Zappa’s life and downgraded herself. With this new confidence, she has revised her book so that the relationship between Frank and her is the central thread.

Living and working at Zappa’s log cabin for four years, Pauline spent her days and nights in the company of Hollywood royalty. From drinking sessions with Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull to visits from Eric Clapton and Captain Beefheart, Pauline brings to life the realities behind the perceived glamour of Hollywood, and paints a perceptive picture of the creative process of Frank Zappa’s writing and the backdrop that inspired it.

In a new chapter about the Charles Manson murders of Sharon Tate and her guests, which happened just a few miles away from the log cabin, her musings on how quickly ‘life could change from major to minor’ provide a fascinating insight into the experience of living in Hollywood with a musical legend at a time when it felt like no one could be trusted. With this background of chaos that brought an end to the optimism of the sixties, this book captures the intense experience of a young woman thrust into the madness, both within the log cabin and beyond.

Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa is a coming of age story in the 1960s with Women’s Liberation being the driving force to change. This new revised edition will contain a wealth of new material, including a dossier of what happened to the cast of characters who hung out at the log cabin and who drift through Pauline’s story, excerpts from the author’s private letters home about life in Hollywood, and five interviews which Pauline conducted with Frank Zappa, published here for the first time, on subjects as diverse as parenting, children, AIDS, composing and evangelism. All these come together to create a revelatory portrait of Frank Zappa and the strange and unique friendship that the author had with him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780859655705
Publisher:	Plexus Publishing, Limited
Publication date:	11/29/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	1,125,605
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

London-born Pauline Butcher worked in Los Angeles as Frank Zappa's PA from 1967-1971. During this time, she ran the fan club of the Mothers of Invention, and managed the all-girl rock act the GTOs. After returning to England in the early 1970s, she studied at Cambridge University, and went on to teach A-level psychology.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Meet Up

1 Absolutely Free 10

2 Brown Shoes Don't Make It 16

3 The Albert Hall 25

4 Greenwich Village 32

5 Sexual Dilemma 39

Part 2 The Log Cabin

6 Is This For Real? 50

7 Frank Arrives 58

8 Work - Well Sort Of 65

9 Musicians and Freaks 69

10 The Mothers of Invention 72

11 Suzy Creamcheese 81

12 The Beatles and Ruben and the Jets 86

13 Communal Living 90

14 Life Magazine 95

15 Mom and Dad 99

16 Gail 101

17 The Mothers of Prevention 107

18 San Francisco 112

19 Gail Rebels 122

20 All About Frank 128

21 Mick and Marianne 136

22 Ian and Ruth 142

23 A Date at Anaheim 149

24 United Mutations 155

25 The Little Room I Lived In 158

26 Trouble Coming Every Day 162

27 Lemme Take You to the Beach 168

28 Christine Frka 177

29 The GTOs 181

30 Put Down that Gun 186

31 Missing Frank 194

32 Cynthia Plaster Caster 200

33 Three Little Red Pills 206

34 Goodbye to All That 213

Part 3 Woodrow Wilson Drive

35 Moving Up 218

36 GTOs Turn Professional 222

37 My Birthday Party 230

38 Christmas 1968 233

39 Cocaine Decisions 236

40 Motherly Love 242

41 Romance 247

42 The Murders 253

43 Ottawa 256

44 Can't Do That On Stage Anymore 262

45 Cast in Bronze 265

46 The Dangerous Kitchen 270

47 Calvin 275

48 Goodbye Mothers of Invention 279

49 The Little House I Used to Live In 283

50 Women's Liberation 287

51 Any Way the Wind Blows 292

52 200 Motels 297

53 The World Turns Upside Down 302

Part 4 England

54 Back Where We Started 308

55 Charades 314

56 Resolution 319

Frank Zappa Interview 327

Postscript 342

A Note To This Edition 351

Editorial Reviews

• 'The book describes a formative time in the life of an innovative musical artist, which Zappa most certainly was. But it also captures a particularly intense experience of a very brief, yet enormously influential, period in the evolution of western womanhood.' – The Guardian
• 'Freak Out! provides an affectionate, revelatory but clear-eyed portrayal of the peculiar dynamic at the heart of the Mother superiors inner sanctum. Zappas contradictory nature is deftly delineated (he stood in judgement on almost everyone in the outside world yet I knew no other man more unassuming, humble or compassionate) and a compelling cast of minor characters drift through the narrative: an elliptical, quixotic Captain Beefheart, the luckless, rudderless Wild Man Fischer, gentlemanly multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood, visionary sleeve artist Cal Schenkel and Paulines eventual charges, the unruly and elemental GTOs. A vital purchase for those that love their Mothers. 4*s Reviewed by Oregano Rathbone' – Record Collector
• 'Only the most ardent Zappaphile or various Mothers of Invention and hangers-on who made up the freak show surrounding Frank Zappa's Laurel Canyon log cabin would recognize the name of Pauline Butcher. Even so, Freak Out! gives the onetime English secretary and part-time modeling instructor the opportunity to tell her insider's view of the head Mother, one that's revelatory and keenly perceptive. In 1967, Zappa ordered a typist up to his London hotel room, and when Butcher arrived, they hit it off to such an extent that eventually he offered her a job as his personal secretary. She accepted, moved to Los Angeles, and was promptly thrown into madness that from the distance of time seems irresistible. With a backdrop of the chaotic late 1960s extending into 1972, Butcher battles Zappa's wife Gail, develops interesting friendships with musician Ian Underwood and album artist Cal Schenkel, wrangles the GTO's (an all-girl act produced by Zappa), and meets a variety of eccentrics and rock stars: Tiny Tim, Captain Beefheart, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, and members of Pink Floyd. Offering deeply personal glimpses of Zappa, Butcher's coming-of-age story is so captivating and vividly told that many will be surprised to discover it's her first book.' – The Austin Chronicle

From the Publisher