...(fill in the blank) just died...

Today I was saddened by the departure of Claes Oldenburg (93), modern artist who is known for his massive sculptures.




(Poly, if you drop by this point, there's a Claes Oldenburg in Eindhoven called Flying Pins:


And let's not forget this gem:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=simpsons+art&hps=1&iax=videos&...

It doesn't work if you use the little pictures from your search engine. On DuckDuckGo you can click the button "view file" once you've selected an image, that is directly at the address you can use.

Tony Dow

NBA legend Bill Russell dies at 88

Nichelle Nichols

Len Dawson

Mikhail Gorbachev

Queen Elizabeth II

Jean-Luc Godard

Kenneth Starr

Maury Wills

Louise Fletcher

Artis Leon Ivey Jr



1st of August 1963 - 28th of September, 2022.....

Loretta Lynn

RIP Sacheen Littlefeather


It took 6 security guards to keep John Wayne from rushing and attacking her at the 45th Academy Awards in 1973,
while Clint Eastwood mocked her request of TV and Film industry to treat indigenous people as humans.....

Angela Lansbury

Robbie Coltrane dies aged 72

Leslie Jordan

Jerry Lee Lewis dies aged 87



Jerry Lee Lewis at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1975.....

Gallagher

Robert Clary aka LeBeau

^^^^^ If only we could check with Sergeant Schultz, but he probably knows nothing.....^^^^^

This one shook me.....



RIP Wilko Johnson.....

Christine McVie

Gaylord Perry

Bob McGrath

Kirstie Alley

I always used to use the Z-forum topic to check back on who died this year, to prepare for the AIVD puzzle. This is the first year I can't rely on that.

Like every year, going through the lists on the Dutch and English Wikipedias, there are people of whom I didn't know they passed on.

One is Dutch architect Wim Quist, who made one of the most famous Eindhoven landmarks.

Franco Harris

A real shame. 4 days from now they were going to honor him and retire his number.

Terry Hall, lead singer of The Specials, has died aged 63



Terry Hall was the frontman of legendary British ska band The Specials.....

Pele

Vivienne Westwood

Barbara Walters

One more squeezes in right at the finish line...

Pope Benedict

Adam Rich
from the TV Show Eight is Enough

Quote: Originally posted by BBP

Jeff Beck (78)

Quote: Originally posted by tinkamok

Quote: Originally posted by BBP   Jeff Beck (78) Just heard this sad news Bonny . He was brilliant and unique. RIP Jeff.

RIP Jeff Beck…..

Oh man, do I love this album! Godspeed Jeff Beck!

https://www.facebook.com/zblackpage/photos/a.683840995005672/4014859691903769/


Frank Zappa and Jeff Beck, 1967 (from Herb Cohen archives)
"One of my favorite guitar players on the planet. From a melodic standpoint and just in terms of the conception of what he plays, he's fabulous. I like Jeff." - FZ, The Frank Zappa Interview Picture Disk, pt.2

Lisa Marie Presley

Robbie Knievel

Back in the day all the girls wanted to be Renee Geyer…..

'The irreplaceable Renee'

Australian music industry pays tribute to singer Renee Geyer

Callum Godde and Duncan Murray
07:22, Jan 18 2023


Melbourne-born Renee Geyer, one of Australia's most respected and successful soul singers, was discovered to have inoperable lung cancer while being treated in hospital.

The Australian music world is mourning singer and ARIA Hall of Famer Renee Geyer after her death from complications following hip surgery at the age of 69.

Melbourne-born Geyer, one of Australia's most respected and successful soul singers, was discovered to have inoperable lung cancer while being treated in hospital.

She died surrounded by family and friends, her record label Mushroom Records announced on Tuesday.

"Naturally, we are all utterly devastated," a statement said.

"Just last month, Renee sang to a full house and was looking forward to another busy year ahead doing what she loved most.

"She lived her life as she performed - to the fullest - and her passing leaves a giant void in the Australian music industry."


Fellow soul singer and friend Kate Ceberano said Geyer carved the word woman into the psyche of the Australian music mentality.
Geyer fronted a number of bands in the 1970s, including jazz-rock group Sun, before beginning her four-decade solo career.

In 1973, the first of her 15 studio albums was released.

But it was her 1974 cover of the James Brown classic It's a Man's Man's Man's World that launched her to a mass audience.

The singer was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2005 and became the first woman to be inducted into the Music Victoria Hall of Fame in 2013.

She also received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award at the Australian Women in Music Awards in 2018 and appeared on the ABC's music quiz show Spicks and Specks.

Mushroom Group chief executive, Matt Gudinski, who is the son of legendary promoter Michael Gudinski, said Geyer was a "fierce, independent, strong and passionate" trailblazer for women in the music industry.

"Renee always did things her own way and we loved her for that," Gudinski said.

Geyer continued to perform and release music after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, with her last album released in 2013.

A 2013 poll ranked her the seventh-best Australian voice of all time.

Fellow soul singer and friend Kate Ceberano said Geyer carved the word woman into the psyche of the Australian music mentality.

"You strutted into our hearts and lives with your soul in your sleeve," she wrote on Facebook.

"Renee the powerful, the diva, the brutal, the original, the temperamental, the stellar, the shapeshifter, the original, the unforgettable, the irreplaceable Renee!"

Australian music legend Marcia Hines described Geyer as a game changer, a soul diva, her sister in song and possessing one of the greatest voices she has ever heard.

Joe Camilleri of The Black Sorrows described Geyer as a "singer's singer."

"Let's not forget the many who were influenced by Renee. Her contribution should never be forgotten.Soul free in sweet harmony," Camilleri posted on Facebook.

Geyer sang backup vocals on a number of Hoodoo Gurus albums, prompting the band to post on social media she had changed all their lives for the better.

"Renee was a fiercely original talent who carved out a huge legacy in Australian music," the band posted.

A memorial for Geyer will be held at a later date.

Back in the day all the boys wanted to be Larry Morris…..

NZ music legend Larry Morris dies, 75, leaving behind a half century of music

Ryan Anderson
16:30, Jan 18 2023


Larry Morris, musician and Kiwi rocker has passed away

NZ Music Hall of Famer Larry Morris has passed away late on Tuesday night, leaving behind a music career spanning more than 50 years.

Morris was a legend of the New Zealand music scene, who still performed up until recently at local Auckland bars.

Long-time friend and singer/songwriter Rietta Austin said Morris was a best mate.

“He was one of those people who inspired you, he could be himself in a world of music where nobody is allowed to be themselves any more.”

“He was just an awesome dude.”

The pair had performed many times together and had planned to do more songwriting in the future.


Morris became the frontman of The Rebels early on in his career, which later re-branded to Larry’s Rebels

Morris was a musical hero in New Zealand – someone who was genuinely talented and a freaking great mate, she said.

“He was a rebel to the end.”

Posting about his passing, the NZ Music Hall of Fame called Larry’s Rebels the first great homegrown pop band of the modern pop era.

“Our condolences go out to all who knew Larry (and that’s a lot!), his friends, family, and to the Rebels – Viv, Nooky, Terry and John.”

“Rest in peace Larry”.

Audio Culture’s Simon Grigg said Morris was one of the greatest figures in New Zealand music.

“Talented both as a singer and a songwriter, absolutely unique and a man who defined his era,” he wrote in a tribute to the late rock star.

There has been an outpouring of tributes for Morris online, with many calling him one of the best ever Kiwi entertainers.

Speaking to Stuff before his 70th birthday in 2017, Morris said he was in the happiest space he had ever been in his life.

"I have a wonderful wife, Gloria, I'm looking after my parents with her help. I have just released two records. Life couldn't be better.

"[Early in my career], when it came time to sort out a name for the band, the other members said, 'well, Larry is the frontman, let's call it Larry's Rebels.
I was very anti the idea, because it wasn't my band but Nooky, Terry and John were emphatic it was the way to go.
I would have preferred it had had just stayed as The Rebels, but that's not how it turned out and the rest, as they say, is history."

In their early days Larry’s Rebel became part of New Zealand pop history with five consecutive top 10 hits and a style and swagger about them
that led their management company to use the phrase "lock up your daughters: Larry's Rebels are coming to town”.

Quote: Originally posted by polydigm

My sister is 76, ten years older than me. She's losing the plot and I'm very concerned about her. In a recent conversation she was complaining about getting old, so I said, come on, Jeff Beck is 78 and he's still touring. Two weeks later he's dead. That blew me away.

David Crosby

I'm a little late with this one. Growing up, I was a huge fan of the 3 time (consecutively) World Champion Oakland A's. I'm sure there will be more of these in the not too distant future, but still, it hurts....

RIP Sal Bando (Fuck you, Cancer!)

And the hits keep on coming…..



Guitarist Tom Verlaine, co-founder of Television, dies at 73

Laverne & Shirley together again

Cindy Williams

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love….it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of”. - RIP Burt Bacharach

Carlos Saura (91), renowned spanish film director.

Raquel Welch

^ I did not....

Tim McCarver

I must admit I was hot for fuzzy britches when I was a boy...

Quote: Originally posted by Plook

I must admit I was hot for fuzzy britches when I was a boy...

My old man wasn't a big movie fan, but this poster was on the back of the shed door…..

So One Million Years B.C. made him a movie buff...

Richard Belzer

Wayne Shorter

David Lindley

Jesus Alou, youngest of the Alou brothers. Only the oldest, Felipe is still alive.

Joe Pepitone

Sad news from The Black Page:
R.I.P. Jim Gordon, born James Beck Gordon (July 14, 1945 – March 13, 2023)
In 1972, Gordon was part of Frank Zappa's 20-piece 'Grand Wazoo' big band and the subsequent 10-piece 'Petit Wazoo' band.
He can be heard on albums like Imaginary Diseases, Wazoo, Little Dots, Waka/Wazoo, Apostrophe ('), and Läther.
His best-known recording with Zappa is the title track of the 1974 album Apostrophe ('), a jam with Zappa and Tony Duran on guitar and Jack Bruce on bass, for which both Bruce and Gordon received a writing credit.
Zappa, when introducing Gordon onstage, frequently referred to him as "Skippy", because of his youthful appearance.

Photo taken by Jeffrey Slater at the University of Pennsylvania’s Irvine Auditorium, Philadelphia, PA on November 10, 1972 ('Petit Wazoo' tour)
auf Flickr

...
...


Just read this being fake news - hope so

Quote: Originally posted by AGuyWithAWrench

Nothing to see here....

I posted a note about the allegedly passing of Ralph Humphrey but deleted it soonly after learning, it has been fake news. Sorry for the confusion. At least an interesting lesson about the spread of (mis-)information in our rapidly changing times

One of the advantages of being slow to keep up.

Quote: Originally posted by ursinator2.0

Quote: Originally posted by AGuyWithAWrench   Nothing to see here.... I posted a note about the allegedly passing of Ralph Humphrey but deleted it soonly after learning, it has been fake news. Sorry for the confusion. At least an interesting lesson about the spread of (mis-)information in our rapidly changing times

I did the same in the Zappa General section , and couldnt work out how to delete it so changed it to error .
A lesson on how dumb all over this idiot can be

Harry Belafonte, radical activist and entertainer with a 'rebel heart,' dies at 96



Harry and I share the same birthday on March 1st.

My parents and I saw him perform at the Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Washington, D.C., when I was 11 in 1961. We sat 4 or 5 rows from centerstage.
A couple of rows directly behind us sat then-attorney general Robert Kennedy. During intermission, my parents suggested I get his autograph.
He signed the front of my program, which I still treasure to this day.

Jerry Springer

Gordon Lightfoot

Ralph Humphrey
May 11, 1944 - April 23, 2023

He lost his battle with cancer.

^Sad to hear one the best drummers and muso's

An Oz legend has also recently past on Broderick Smith.

Not well know I guess outside OZ but did spend time with his earlier band "the Dingoes" in the US in the mid 70's
His son Ambrose Kenny-Smith a member of rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

https://youtu.be/919phJQtlK8width=862&height=485

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-01/broderick-smith-musician-and-...

Vida Blue

This one hurts a lot. I was a huge Oakland A's fan growing up through their dynasty. I'm happy that I was able to attend a celebration and 50th anniversary reunion of the 73 championship team and I got to stand and applaud Vida. He did not look well.

Don Denkinger
Long time umpire who will always be remembered for his crucial blown call in the '85 World Series.

A little late, but the (self-proclaimed, and maybe not wrong about that) greatest RB of all time....

Jim Brown

Goodbye to the Acid Queen.

Quote: Originally posted by polydigm

My sister passed away last night, aged 76. She lived in Sydney, so 1600 km (1000 miles) away and we weren't particularly close, but kept in touch. She'd been freaking me out for some time with her attitude, after becoming an alcoholic during the Covid-19 squeeze. It seems she just gave up on life. My main feeling about it, is that it is just completely weird and not something I would have in any way predicted about her before Covid-19 came along. Makes me even more determined to follow through with my own plans.

Poly so sorry to hear of your sisters passing I know your a non-believer but I still have you and your family in my prayers...

The Unibomber

@polydigm

Thats bad news .
Hoping you have a quick and mild version .
Get well soon .

Treat Williams

Alan Arkin

Tony Bennett

Pee Wee Herman
aka Paul Reubens

It's a double-header tonight:

Robbie Robterson




.....and Searching for Sugarman, Sixto Rodriguez




they get the distinction of sharing their date of passing with Jerry.....

Bob Barker

Jimmy Buffett

Gary Wright

Steve Harwell of SmashMouth

Ducky from NCIS

Brooks Robinson

Michael Gambon (Professor Dumbledore)

Diane Feinstein 90

A little tardy with this one.

Dick Butkus. Helluva player!

Ron Barassi 27 February 1936 – 16 September 2023
"was an Australian rules footballer, coach and media personality. Regarded as one of the greatest and most important figures in the history of the game, Barassi was the first player to be inaugurated into the Australian Football Hall of Fame as a "Legend",[1] and he is one of four Australian rules footballers to be elevated to the same status in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Barassi

Suzanne Somers

Carla Bley



Carla Bley & Steve Swallow - Romantic Notions #3 / Walking Batterie Woman [Night Music 1990]

Bull (Richard Mole)

Very sad 54 Matthew Perry

I'm a bit behind....

Roselyn Carter

Henry Kissinger

Sandra Day O'Connor

Denny Laine

Wow what a talented musician, I saw him with Paul McCartney and Wings in 1976 on the Speed of Sound Tour, the guy did it all...RIP Denny...

Ryan O'Neal

Tommy Smothers

Bud Harrelson

"Trixie" - Joyce Randolph

Norm Snead

Richard Lewis

Péter Eötvös - hungarian composer and conductor. Conducted the last ever project in FZs lifetime, the unreleased The Rage And The Fury.

Bruce Plante


Adam Zyglis


John Darkow


Dave Granlund

Duane Eddy, Whose Twang Changed Rock ’n’ Roll, Dies at 86

"When the Beatles play a low E, it sounds like a low E. When Duane plays it, it sounds an octave lower!" - George Harrison

Peter Gunn Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=296wS9ome4M&t=30s

Roger Corman, The B-Movie Legend Who Launched A-List Careers, Dies At 98

John Darkow


Donald Sutherland, the towering actor whose career spanned ‘M.A.S.H.’ to ‘Hunger Games,’ dies at 88

Tom Fowler

nooooooo my favourite FZ bassist

Found that entry on facebook including a nice interview excerpt that i didn't know before:

RIP Tom Fowler, bass player and a member of Frank Zappa's band. He was one of three brothers who played in Zappa's ensembles (Bruce Fowler on trombone 1972-1975 and Walt Fowler on trumpet for a 1974 tour).
Tom Fowler played on some of Zappa's classic 1970s albums including Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe ('), Roxy & Elsewhere, One Size Fits All. He also played on albums by Jean-Luc Ponty and Steve Hackett, and on Hal Willner's productions That's The Way I Feel Now - A Tribute To Thelonious Monk and Lost In The Stars The Music Of Kurt Weil.
In a 1996 interview by the Evil Prince that appeared in the T'Mershi Duween fanzine in March 2000, Tom Fowler talked about his role as a bass player with Frank Zappa:
From a bass player's point of view, I just tried to give his stuff body so it worked, it had contrast and a nest for it to hatch in. So Frank could do anything he wanted and there would still be music going on. Whereas if it was just him doing that all by himself, if you stripped all the other stuff away, you wouldn't be able to sit and groove. They weren't the greatest feels of all time, what we did. We never played any jazz when I was in the band, but we could have. The whole band was basically a bunch of jazzers not playing jazz.

When asked what was the hardest thing for him to play with Zappa, he answered:
Probably the stuff on 'Greggary Peccary'. I didn't really know that when he handed me the charts before we started recording. Some of it was really hard and I hadn't even seen it before. It's good to rehearse shit that's that hard. But I was on a pretty high level at that time, and a lot of the musicians who were on that session were the really good guys from around town. Compositionally I think that's some of the best stuff I ever did with him and that he wrote while I was in the band.

Oh yeah, Greggary Peccary belongs to my absolute FZ favourites, gave the whole album a listen after reading Toms statement


Btw, just found the entire interview where those snippets above are taken from:

R.I.P. Tom Fowler (June 10, 1951 - July 2, 2024)
Photo taken at DiscReet Rehearsal Studio, L.A., June 21, 1974 (from the unreleased TV special)
TF: I started out in Salt Lake City with all my brothers at six years old. Then when I was in sixth grade – I guess that made me about twelve – I started playing upright bass. I played that for a while. Then I heard Hendrix and Zappa, believe it or not, and I decided to play electric bass. I started on that when I was about sixteen. I'm forty-four now. When I was seventeen, I ran away and joined a rock band called It's a Beautiful Day. I did two records with them. I spent a year at the University of Utah; then I moved to New York and played with a trumpet player who died right after that. I played with [trombonist Bill] Watrous (?) there and a guy named Enrico Rava and various goofy jazz things. After that, I went to San Francisco and played with a bunch of bands out there, nothing too spectacular. I went back to playing violin. I had a kid and I was twenty years old, felt like a lost soul.
Then Bruce called me up and I auditioned for Frank and somehow I got the gig. I hadn't even been playing bass, but I guess he got sick of looking for a bass player. This was in 1973. The audition was very simple. He had me play a couple of odd muted things and groove for a while, and then he said 'OK, you're it'. That was a really good band. I then just did Frank's stuff for a few years until I broke my hand in the middle of a tour which was my downfall. We were playing football and I broke this bone right in the middle of the tour in Dayton, Ohio. I stayed with the band and directed. I had all the notes on the keyboard and I would point at them with a chemical wand that glowed in the dark. We had one horrible bass player after another and tried to do it and there was no way it was working, me trying, to count them into D flat and all this odd metered stuff was going by. There was no way these guys could have done it; they would have to have known the music. I tried to get Abe [Laboriel] to do it; he was in Boston, but he passed on it. I don't know why. He was a good enough player to have done it, I think, but it was just too much too fast.
With Frank, we were on a salaried rehearsal schedule of about a month before every tour. He would change all the music around. Like, 'Village of the Sun', he turned it into a Country and Western tune and he would do that with all the stuff. When we first tried playing 'Inca Roads', that was an instrumental, real slow, then it changed into what it is today.
Q: Arthur Barrow says you were his idol because you could play all that difficult stuff, like on 'Echidna's Arf'. So how was that?
TF: Arthur can play all that stuff. When I started doing it, not many other guys were doing it too. Frank was experimenting. We did a tour with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and we took turns headlining. I remember we were playing at the Spectrum in Philadelphia which is a basketball arena with the dressing rooms upstairs. I was down there listening to the Mahavishnu and I go upstairs and there's Frank writing odd metered tunes on the spot that were heavily influenced by McLaughlin's stuff. Immediately he saw all these opportunities to do new stuff and we started doing it.
When I was in It's a Beautiful Day, we recorded a live album at Carnegie Hall and Mahavishnu opened up for us. Nobody had ever heard of them. It was the band with Billy Cobham, Jan Hammer and all those guys. So we go into the backstage area and suddenly we hear all this shit and nobody could believe it. The rest of the guys in the band had no idea what they were doing. I was a good enough musician to hear all this odd stuff, but nobody was doing it at that time. It was a total freak out. They blew us away and we were the headliners. They destroyed us. I recall there was this one gigantic black guy who slept through our whole set and draped over three rows of seats right in the middle of the auditorium, so you couldn't help but see him. It was unbelievably nerve-wracking. I already knew about McLaughlin from the Tony Williams Lifetime stuff.
But Frank was heavily influenced by that stuff. We thought we were two of the best bands around at that time. We matched up OK. I was matched with Rick Laird, and Hammer and Duke matched up pretty well. Frank didn't really match up with McLaughlin because they're totally different players, but he was totally unique in his own guitaristic way. He told me he would close his eyes and see his guitar solo written out in his mind, as he plays it in space. When you're on stage with all the floodlights, it's black. There's the lights and then there's space. It's kinda like being in outer space. So Frank would look up into this space and see his solo while he was playing. I don't know if that's true, but that's what he told me.
I had a couple of bass solos, a couple on violin too, believe it or not. The last gig of a tour, I think. we were in Boston or somewhere, he made me sit in the lotus position and play a violin solo. I was a yoga freak in those days. Ralph Humphrey and I used to play lotus soccer. I invented this game and you had to stay in the lotus position to move. Those times were fun as hell.
Q: How much freedom did Frank give you when you were constructing the songs?
TF: One thing that people don't realise about the bands is that Frank didn't write everything by any means, but he remembered everything. When we were having those long rehearsals, we were all jiving around and having fun; not at first, but as we got looser. The 1974 band was really loose – we could anything we goddamn wanted. It was really unfortunate that I broke my hand because that was like the beginning of the end. Frank was really impatient. I could play three weeks after the accident; that's when we did 'One Size Fits All'. Right at the end of the tour, he had booked a studio in Colorado and ended up with virtually nothing. Then we came back to LA and did that album which is a good one. They did 'Sofa' in Colorado, I know that. They did one other song and I had to overdub the bass part which was really awkward and the feel wasn't right. I think this was 'Can't Afford No Shoes'.
But parts of that record are really good. Some of the songs had parts and at other times, you could make up your own stuff. I made up a lot of my own stuff. But if it was a unison part, then I played the part. A lot of the charts just had chords on them, but some of the stuff didn't even have charts. He'd just come in, play a song and we'd start doodling around until we figured it out. The point I was trying to make about rehearsals is that we'd be coming up with all this goofy stuff, like jokes and so on, and Frank would remember them all, the bits where we played stuff he liked and we'd remember the good stuff too. Then it would all gel into this band thing. But Frank had the amazing ability to remember all the stuff he liked and throw out all the stuff he didn't like, and keep it all at a high quality.
Q: What were the hardest things to play?
TF: Probably the stuff on 'Greggary Peccary'. I didn't really know that when he handed me the charts before we started recording. Some of it was really hard and I hadn't even seen it before. It's good to rehearse shit that's that hard. But I was on a pretty high level at that time, and a lot of the musicians who were on that session were the really good guys from around town. Compositionally I think that's some of the best stuff I ever did with him and that he wrote while I was in the band. But he wrote a lot of stuff. After that, I barely ever saw him again, just a couple of times.
Q: So it really helped that you could sightread?
TF: Yeah, but I couldn't sightread bass clef so well. I was better on treble clef. Bruce helped me a lot. If we had something that was really hard, it wasn't so difficult to learn how to do it. If you had the methodology down, then you could do any of the variations of the odd meters. When we didn't know how to do it, we would reward ourselves with a joint if we could play a certain passage. We would practise it for a few hours and then when we'd nailed it, we'd relax and have a nice joint. It was quite funny because he was completely against drugs. I had a little note under my door one time 'No more drugs on the road or you will be unemployed'. Everyone in the band received that note. One of the equipment guys was caught and I guess he spilled a few beans. I never drank or took anything before a gig. I would practice for a couple of hours before a gig, focussing in on what was coming up.
Q: I think Bruce told me you tried to learn pieces faster than he did, and you couldn't keep it to schedule so you wouldn't talk to each other.
TF: (laughs) I don't remember that. What an idiot. That shows you how competitive he is. It's probably true, but it's subliminal; I don't know ... He had to play about fifty times as many notes as I did. I was playing bass; he was on trombone. If you check things like 'The Be-Bop Tango' – I had to learn that on violin when we played it with the Banned from Utopia because we had Arthur Barrow on bass. I didn't play it too great, but I learned how to play it. I hadn't been playing violin for years and all of a sudden I have to try to remember how to play violin and Zappa's hard shit which I never had to play on bass. I had some pretty difficult bass parts, but the bass is never really expected to play really hard stuff. He gave me some parts that were almost as difficult as anything else out there at that time. Once he got his computer shit going, he didn't need anybody. Of course by then it got sterile and pathetic and I never listened to any of it at all. I didn't like it.
Q: When Zappa was taking his weird solos, did he give any instructions to the rhythm section?
TF: One thing that happened that drove George Duke and me nuts was that Bozzio, during my last tour, would play that elastic shit with Frank while Duke and I were supposed to keep time, and it was really confusing. We'd be there watching each other's feet to see where the beat was, literally because it was so confusing and irritating too. It was no fun. Bozzio's a great player though; I'm not putting him down. He was following instructions, but it just didn't work for some reason. Maybe it was my fault, I don't know.
But before that, from a bass player's point of view, I just tried to give his stuff body so it worked, it had contrast and a nest for it to hatch in. So Frank could do anything he wanted and there would still be music going on. Whereas if it was just him doing that all by himself, if you stripped all the other stuff away, you wouldn't be able to sit and groove. They weren't the greatest feels of all time, what we did. We never played any jazz when I was in the band, but we could have. The whole band was basically a bunch of jazzers not playing jazz.
Q: Which tour was the most fun with Frank?
TF: The one where we played in Helsinki, for the 'Stage' CD. The funniest gig I ever played with Frank was in Copenhagen on that tour. We reached the end of this song, I don't remember which one, and nobody felt like ending it, so we just made up shit. We were so tight that it must have sounded like something he composed. We played for a while and jammed, and we were laughing our asses off. That was a great tour, that last European tour.
Q: Did you know that you were rated one of the best bass players in Frank's band by the fans?
TF: One of the best? Who are the others? I'll kill 'em! (laughs) I went with Jean-Luc Ponty (after 'Bongo Fury') which was a big mistake. His music was pretty fun, but it was unbelievably loud, way too loud. After a gig, I'd go back to my hotel room and it would still be loud. My ears would ring all night. It was painful and it was a drag and he paid us nothing and politically it sucked. It was a real drag. But some of the guys in the band were OK. Allan Zavod was in the band. He was hysterical. He'd play a chord, then twirl round and try to hit the same chord again. He never did. He always missed it, but it was pure comedy. It wasn't totally bad but it ended bad and I have a bad feeling about it.
Q: How did you find playing with the Banned from Utopia after all those years?
TF: The last tour we did was a lot of fun. I'd never played with Chad before; he's a real good player. It hasn't reached its peak. I'd like to see it get to the level of that European tour in 1974, and it could. It's got the same quality of musicians. The guitar player in there, Mike Miller, is really terrific. We've known each other forever. I think we'd be better off playing our own stuff. In a way, we'd be sort of playing his stuff. He was a big influence on all of us and we're together because of him, and we can all write. We're not untalented people. Frank isn't the only guy with talent. We offer some stuff that's kind of along those lines, and I think he was influenced by us too. What I'm driving at is he gets too much credit for the things that the guys around him contributed. He gets more than he deserves on a lot of the stuff. I don't think anybody seems to know that or give anybody any credit other than him, because I'm telling you, he was great but a lot of the stuff he did was organised things that were in the air from everybody else and he couldn't have done that stuff in a vacuum. If you take out all the other guys' contributions to a song like 'Inca Roads', it's not going to be 'Inca Roads' any more. Or on half of that stuff; it's just not going to be there because he didn't think of it. He remembered it and he organised it. So in fairness to the other guys, we at least deserve to be listened to in the organisation which is similar to what he put together. We're his legacy, that's what I think. We're the only real legacy apart from the recordings that are worth listening to and there's a million of them. But if the bands want to have something new, that's related cosmically or otherwise, we're it. Maybe not just this band. There were a lot of guys who played with him who were good musicians and who can write. Those guys deserve to be heard by his fans and that's the way to keep him alive.
Q: What did you do after playing with Zappa and Ponty?
TF: I played with a bunch of goofy guys in Japan, then Ray Charles. It was maddening, no money. It was interesting to play with him, but he's not a very nice dude. At least, he wasn't to me. His organisation is cruel, in a way. They do things to hurt people on purpose. He seems kind of aloof. I couldn't even communicate with him. I got the gig the day before the tour started and the equipment manager had copied the charts and some of the charts started on bar two and there was no bar one. I'd never seen them before. There was a big blank space then there was bar six. I couldn't play the first note because I didn't know what the hell the note was. I didn't know the time signature, the key. So he starts screaming at me for not knowing the note. I said 'Man, I wish you could see these charts' so he could realise it was impossible to start with.
He started to use me as a fall guy for his humour. The critics nailed the shit out of him for doing it, said he was cheap and an asshole basically, so he stopped doing it. I had the stuff down at the end. I got what I needed to get out of it musically but it was tedious. Long bus rides; rules like you had to wear a shirt with a collar in the bus; no blue jeans in the bus. We had to pay for our own hotel rooms. He was making huge dough and he wasn't giving us any of it. And that's basically the story of it. I could have made more money doing three barmitzvahs in LA, after the expenses. But musically, he's got a lot of good points.
The other thing about that band – do I sound negative? – is that he's in the stone age of monitors. He won't allow monitors on stage or allow you to mike the backline through the PA. We were playing outdoor festivals and all you could hear was him if you weren't right on top of the stage. I couldn't hear him or the solos. He's right in the vortex of the sound, so he hears everything and nobody else hears anything. It was ridiculous. We played a gig in Stuttgart and there was a riot when people wanted their money back because they couldn't hear anything. He's got a bigband and you can't hear it. Why not just have him do a solo act? But there were some good musical things that happened occasionally. One thing about him is how slow he plays some songs. He starts slow and gets slower. And it's hard to play really really slow; and that's the only band I've played in where somebody did that. It was real effective. If I compare any of those gigs to even those with Jean-Luc, the latter were way funnier.
Q: Can you tell us something about the Fowler Brothers band and your solo album 'Heartscapes'?
TF: That's all my own stuff. Ralph Humphrey had a band with Mike Miller and a bass player who died and I dedicated the record to him, performing it at his wake. The album doesn't have great continuity. It's got a bunch of different stylistic stuff. It's a pretty good album.
The Fowler Brothers stuff was at least as hard as any of Zappa's stuff, at least from my viewpoint. It was like Zappa in many ways. We had dance contests. There was some pretty out instrumental music that Bruce and my youngest brother Ed wrote. That band still exists but we're not doing very much at the minute. We played the Monterey Festival a couple of years ago. We've never really pursued it. No-one's ever shown interest in managing us, but people liked it. None of us can organise worth a damn, so we just basically go our own way and don't do shit.
But the Banned from Utopia forces us to organise things a bit. The only two guys who haven't been in the Fowler Brothers are Tommy Mars and Chad.
Q: Can you tell us something about rehearsing 'Echidna's Arf? That's one of the reasons why you're idolised.
TF: (laughs) It was a bunch of different tunes stuck together, wasn't it? It was actually pretty simple. I don't really remember how we did that. Some of it was written out. I think we just started playing it pretty slow and it just became faster and faster. You just had to go and learn it; I think I was pretty much doubling his guitar line, wasn't I? He composed it on guitar and taught it to us that way; I don't think it was ever written out. It's a pretty well constructed piece and it's long. It has a good effect on an audience because it sort of loosens them up, makes them more receptive to the other stuff that happens at various times. A live situation has to have lots of peaks and valleys and it's a good show, then you can have slow stuff. Ray Charles doing super slow. Frank Zappa and Ray Charles in concert together for the first time, with special guest appearances from Jean-Luc Ponty and It's a Beautiful Day. And there's my life in a one concert nutshell. Fowler Brothers as the opening act. Then we all go to my restaurant and eat something.

Interview in L.A., April 24, 1996, in Tom's restaurant it appears, by the Evil Prince, published in T'Mershi Duween, #64, March 2000

Quote: Originally posted by BBP

A sad day for Clue fans as Martin Mull passes away.

Quote: Originally posted by Plook

Dam, he was in our VIP party at the DZ concert in Las Vegas, he was a very nice man and his assistant was nice too...Bummer, I will find a picture.

Tom Fowler April 2015 at the Brooklyn Bowl watching Zappa Plays Zappa, I apologize for the crappy picture but we were trying not to go all Fan Boy on him, he was very nice man.

Shelley Duvall (75)

John Mayall was go to Blues when I was a wee boy...