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Moon Zappa's complicated relationship with 'Valley Girl,' 40 years later: 'I just was trying to make my dad laugh'

Lyndsey Parker
Lyndsey Parker·Editor in Chief, Yahoo Music
Fri, September 30, 2022 at 10:36 p.m.·9 min read

In 1982, avant garde rock genius Frank Zappa scored his only top 40 hit, the Grammy-nominated, Zeitgeist-capturing “Valley Girl.” The satirical send-up of suburban SoCal teen life unexpectedly spawned a cottage industry: a cult rom-com that gave Nicolas Cage his first starring role, The Valley Girls’ Guide to Life handbook, and even fashion and cosmetic lines.

The influence of the song’s Valspeaking protagonist Ondrya, created by Frank’s daughter Moon Unit Zappa, still resonates in pop culture today — “It's just a weird thing that just keeps going,” Moon says with a shrug — as evidenced by Clueless’s Cher, Schitt’s Creek’s Alexis Rose, the recurring SNL sketch “The Californians,” and arguably even the vocal fry speech patterns of young people today.

“My dream would be to get Paul Thomas Anderson to do a music video. Maybe his wife could play a Val now,” Moon jokes, 40 years later.

Moon Zappa Valley Girl

But as Moon chats with Yahoo Entertainment to celebrate “Valley Girl’s” 40th anniversary reissue campaign — which includes a new animated music video, merchandise line, and remix by British DJ Flux Pavilion — she is candid regarding her mixed feelings about the single. Making the song was really just a way for her to get close to her absentee, workaholic father, who often locked himself away from his family in his Laurel Canyon home studio. In fact, she never even expected “Valley Girl” to come out, and she admits she felt wronged when Frank included what she’d assumed was just a private recording of “bonding time with my dad” on his ’82 album, Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch — thus making her a reluctant overnight pop star at age 14.

“I just was trying to make my dad laugh,” Moon tells Yahoo. “That was my objective. And so, having it then appear on an album was a kind of exposure and embarrassment and betrayal for me. I wasn't thinking about, ‘We're making a product.’ I was thinking, ‘I'm spending time with my father.’”

Frank Zappa, Moon Zappa - Valley Girl

The idea for the Zappas’ “Valley Girl” collaboration was actually Moon’s, at first. “I was pretty frustrated with the way the house was run. My father was touring all the time, sometimes eight months out of the year, so that's a long time to go without seeing the steady parental figure in the house,” explains Moon, who was often forced to help her mother Gail raise the three younger Zappa children while Frank was away or distracted. “He never raised his voice. He was so funny. He was so smart, so talented, so playful, very improvisational. And so, to miss that kind of stability and that grounding was really just not great, and to just be stuck with a mom who was really missing him as well. … And then when he was home, he would sleep during the day and work at night, so then there were restrictions on our own expression and having to be quiet in the house. And then the world was always revolving around him.

“So, I wrote a note and I said, ‘It has come to my attention that it would be great if you would look for an opportunity where we could work together. If that's the only way I'm going to get to spend time with you, then let's work together. Contact my people.’”



Not soon after, Frank woke up his then 13-year-old daughter at 2 a.m. on a school night and asked to join him in the studio to lay down some impromptu spoken-word vocals, on a song inspired by Moon’s imitations of her classmates at Oakwood, an artsy private school in the San Fernando Valley. “He just said, ‘Just improvise in between the choruses,’ and so I had done this voice that I called this ‘Valspeak’ voice or this surfer-dude voice,” says Moon. “It was a voice I had picked up going to school in the Valley. When I would go to school with these kids, I'd go to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and I'd get to see what I considered normal or stable families were like, and it was exotic to me.”

Moon recalls going “back and forth with some improvisations,” making up “new lingo to play around with that just made us laugh.” While the soon-to-be common catchphrase “grody to the max” was something she’d overheard at Oakwood or possibly at the Galleria mall, she totally invented “gag me with a spoon” and “bag your face,” the latter a nod to The Gong Show’s Unknown Comic. “In some ways, it's science fiction,” she chuckles.



As far as the song’s scenarios narrated by the plucky Ondrya, a couple of them were quite adult – the references to S&M and a creepy flirtatious teacher, for instance. Moon says those eyebrow-raising verses reflected her unorthodox, or some might say dysfunctional, upbringing. “I think that's a product of growing up in a hypersexual home,” she explains. “I always joke and say people were in the nude making candles near my playthings. … There was a portrait in the family home of kind of an orgy scene. There were Zippy the Pinhead cartoon comics laying around, and Oui and Hustler. And there was a lot of stuff around – vibrators! I had the bedroom next to my parents and heard sex. I knew my dad messed around on my mother. I've got many journals where I've got drawings that are just naked people chained up and having sex. It's stuff that you shouldn't be drawing at age eight, nine, and 10.”

And then… “Valley Girl” came out and became a leftfield mainstream hit, leading to appearances on The Merv Griffin Show, MTV, and Solid Gold. The song’s vapid Ondrya and politically incorrect teacher character had been based on real-life people at Moon’s school, and she was mortified.



“I thought, ‘Oh no, these people are going to get their feelings hurt,’” says Moon. “I thought we were going to get sued. I thought a truant officer was going to come and take me away. It was very stressful for me. I didn't think about it in terms of, ‘Oh, I'm launching my career.’ I just thought, ‘Oh no, who are we getting get in trouble with now?’

“I'm just a sensitive person. I don't like people to get their feelings hurt or be exposed to stuff — if they didn't ask for the exposure. I was just worried about this one girl in particular who really kind of inspired the song the most for me. And then my teacher… those two I had worried about them getting their feelings hurt, of being exposed to attention, unwanted attention — the way I felt I had this unwanted attention on me. It really put me into a state of anxiety. Plus, I was going through puberty, so my skin wasn't great. The last thing I wanted do was have any focus on myself.”



As it turned out, Frank had mixed feelings about the single’s success as well. He was frustrated that the satire seemed to go over many listeners’ heads, and that he didn’t profit from all of the above-mentioned spinoffs from the song. “Valley Girl’s” success also affected Moon’s relationship with her dad, in good ways and bad.

“My father always wanted to have commercial success. It just so happened it didn't happen until that song. And then that song came out at a time when he was already scheduled to go on a European tour, and so the American press that suddenly needed to be done was left for me to do,” Moon says. “And that was extremely stressful as a teenager, just trying to get through ninth grade or something. And then a lot of the interviews, they onlywanted to interview me. And so, then there was this strange dynamic between me and my father, like: ‘Is it an accident that when I step in, we have a success? Or am I just an instrument that he's using as a tool?’”

Moon Unit and Frank Zappa TV interview 2-1-84 daytime TV show

Moon says “Valley Girl” also altered the Zappa family dynamic in another aspect: “I think it bonded my father in a way that my mother was resentful of, because now I'm in photographs with my father. I'm paired with him. … I went on Letterman with him and we did a bunch of talk shows and we traveled together here and there. … So, he and I were the two ‘showbiz’ people in the house. … I was never wanting any of the fame part of it, but I admired my father, so I wanted to be a working artist like my father.”

As it turned out, Moon got her wish: While she'll probably always be most associated with "Valley Girl," over the past 40 years she has steadily worked as an actress, journalist, comedian, voiceover artist, singer, and author (with a memoir about her fraught childhood currently in the works). She also got to pay homage to her father when she accepted his posthumous Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honor at the Hall’s 1995 induction ceremony. “I feel happy that I got to spend that that time [with my dad]. It's just fun to just know that that that opened a door for me to go deeper inside my own creativity,” she says.

“But if I hurt my teacher's feelings, or if I hurt the girl who inspired the song, I sincerely apologize. I hope it brought you joy and connection and closer to your own creativity, and just know that I'm thinking about you all still today.”

Watch Yahoo Entertainment’s full, extended interview with Moon Zappa below, in which she discusses her Solid Gold appearance, attending the Grammys in a handmade dress, hanging out at the Galleria, and more:

Moon Zappa looks back at "Valley Girl" 40 years later

The strangest gift Frank Zappa ever received: a jar of shit

Thomas Leatham
Tue 29th Nov 2022 19.00 GMT

Frank Zappa was known to defy all expectations, but amazingly, he once gave an interview for the adult magazine Cheri, conducted by the 1970s adult film star Cherry Bomb. Cheri had been known to combine the world of adult film with that of contemporary pop culture. For example, Cherry Bomb herself would hang out with the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, while there would be an in-depth analysis of particular sex acts.

As for Zappa, his interview went down at the St. Regis Hotel. Cherry appeared to be instantly infatuated with the man. She wrote: “And there he was, crouched and glowering on the couch. I’ll tell ya; I was just stunned. Forget your Mick Jaggers and your Robert Plants – this guy is gorgeous up close! Frank Zappa radiates an animal magnetism, a bumpy allure his photos have never approached.”
The interview began with a discussion of Zappa’s appearance on Saturday Night Live. When Cherry asked whether he had scored the slot on the show through friends in high places, Zappa dourly answered: “I have no friends.” Zappa had written a song for the sketch about a humanoid creature called the Conehead.

However, he was also somewhat cynical of the format of television in sum, adding: “The Conehead is a way of life. I think Americans are beginning to realise it means something important. Unfortunately, TV hasn’t taken the big step to capitalise on it. They should have a Conehead series on NBC – a situation comedy every week. That would be great! Only the Coneheads, though.”
Cherry then asked whether Zappa’s highly sexualised live performances had been any deliberate attempt to “gross out” his audience. However, Zappa insisted that he did not necessarily mean to freak out his audience nor to arouse them beyond the normal state of watching intense rock music. He then noted an extraordinary gift he received from one of his fans. 

“My fans do some weird things, I’ll admit,” Zappa said. “There was this girl from Chicago, Laurel, who won a contest. And I was the first prize – I mean, she could come backstage and meet me. And she gave me a present – a Mason jar with one of her turds in it, rolled up into the shape of a cannonball. I didn’t know what to do. I just said, ‘Thank you,’ and put it down on the dressing-room table.”

He added: “That was when I had the Mothers with Flo and Eddie, and Jim Pons was playing bass. I’d planned just to leave it in the dressing room – but no, Jim got curious to see if it was real. Was it, or was it not a piece of poop? He carried it around for a while and finally took one whiff – and yecch! It was real.”

According to The Black Page - The Zappa Page :

The best story you ever read about the Montreux Casino fire during the Mothers concert on December 4, 1971


Alain Rieder
Time Manipulation Drum Blog
On December 4, 1971, I went to Montreux with my friends, to attend the Frank Zappa concert that was going to take place in the afternoon.

I had just turned 16, but I remember having pictures of Zappa and the Mothers on my bedroom wall from the age of about 13. In particular, I had cut out the famous photos taken by Art Kane and published in 1968 in LIFE magazine, for which they had posed with babies, because those photos amused me.
[img]https://www.timemanipulation.com/en/tmblog/resources/Frank-Zappa-&-Babies.jpg[/img]
So my first contact with Zappa was more visual than musical, but by the time of the 1971 concert, I was already familiar with some of his records. I had been very touched by Hot Rats, which seems to me to have been the first of his records to be really successful. I also had Weasels Ripped my Flesh that someone had brought back from New York, Chunga's Revenge, and Fillmore East: June 1971 that had just come out.

We walked from the train station to the Casino and as we passed a movie theater I saw a poster for 200 Motels, the film Zappa had made shortly before, but which I had never heard of before.

Intrigued by the poster, I assumed that a screening was planned, but I didn't take the time to look into the details of what it was about, as we were in a hurry to get to the concert venue. I thought about looking on the way back, but on the way back I had something else in mind. I bought the LP when it came out, but I had to wait until 1982 for my first opportunity to see this film, while living in Los Angeles.


The Montreux Casino was an old building inaugurated in 1886. A modern hall had been built in the garden on the lake side for concerts and other events, and it was accessible from the ground level by crossing the old building. The ground being slightly sloping towards the lake, the situation of the hall corresponded to a second floor.
This is where the Montreux Jazz Festival was held in the summer, but during the rest of the year other concerts were organized there monthly, under the name of Montreux Pop, and people came from far away to attend them.
I was 14 years old the first time I went, in August 1970. There were two concerts on the program, with three bands that were supposed to play twice each. I remember seeing Black Sabbath and Taste, but Cactus the third band had been blocked at the border and only played the second show which I was unable to attend.
Taste was Rory Galagher's power trio, and their shows were recorded, resulting in the record that is called Live Taste.
The bassist for Cactus was Tim Bogert, also bassist for Vanilla Fudge, and I had the opportunity to meet him in 1981, as he was teaching at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles where I was studying.

That day in August 1970, Claude Nobs was on stage to announce the next concerts and that's when he told us that Jimi Hendrix was coming before the end of the year. There was an explosion of joy in the audience, but unfortunately Jimi died on September 18, which really affected me because I liked him and his music a lot. It was also the time when the movie about the Woodstock festival was released.

I remember other concerts I saw there, Deep Purple, Procol Harum, Jethro Tull and Santana, between 1970 and 1971. I also remember missing bands I really liked like Led Zeppelin and Chicago, or Santana's first concert there.
So on December 4, 1971, I had just turned 16, I was already familiar with the place, but I had no idea that I was going to enter this hall for the last time.
At that time, there were no chairs, it was not yet the fashion of the standing concerts, and the public sat on the floor, sometimes on a cushion or on a jacket rolled in a ball, which was my case.

That day, there was an unusual decoration on the ceiling. It was probably planned for the end of the year celebrations, and it seems to me that it was a tropical decoration, with or interlacing reeds or lianas, with paper or polystyrene flowers perhaps. What is certain is that all this material was dangerously flammable, as the future has proven!
What you can see above the stage must have been acoustic panels.

At the time I didn't know all the songs played, I understood very little English and in this version of the Mothers there was a lot of dialogue. I remember Zappa's entrance on stage wearing what I thought was a robe and holding a coffee pot. I liked this slightly eccentric side, even though we know that Zappa was a very intelligent man.

You can see the coffee pot on the Orange brand amp head, to the right of Zappa. The garment is probably the one on the black speaker cabinet, which I'll talk about later.

I remember when Frank announced Call Any Vegetable by saying "this is a song about vegetables", the audience started to applaud, but all the lights turned green instantly and the applause was cut short by the surprise felt by the audience. When you listen to the recording of the concert, you can hear it clearly.

So here we are, after about an hour and 20 minutes, the band has just played the melody from King Kong, and leaves the stage to Don Preston for a synthesizer solo. Don fiddles with the oscillators of his Mini-Moog, it is a coincidence, but he produces sounds that may sound a bit like an alarm.
The end of the concert
I'm sitting in the center, about 2/3 of the way across the room. The sound of the synth suddenly stops, and I see flames in the ceiling 10 or 15 meters away from me on the right. Mark Vollman says "Fire! Arthur Brown in person!" Then Zappa says "Calmly go towards the exits, ladies & gentlemen".

I didn't see, but a guy fired a flare gun towards the ceiling. At the beginning, the fire is very small, I think that it will be put out quickly and that the concert will continue. I drag a little to go out, I hesitate to leave my jacket rolled up on the floor keep my space on the floor, well in front of the stage!
People go out quickly and very calmly, and the firemen and guards on duty get a little upset to get us out faster.

The fire grows quite quickly, and people open the curtains that hide the windows on either side of the stage. I see some people grab chairs to break the glass.
I see a little blood, someone has been injured, but it seems to be minor.
Once the windows are broken, we feel a big draught rushing in the room, which drives away the smoke, but also fuels the fire.
I decide to go out that way, the ground must be about three meters down, there is a ledge I hang from and I drop into the grass without any problem.

A friend of mine, whom I didn't know at the time, told me this:

"Alain, I was there too! It is with a WEM speaker cabinet sound system that was on stage that I grabbed with other people to break the windows, which enabled us to escape by jumping in the grass below...
I remember very well Zappa very calmly telling the audience to get out without panicking. I think that his calmness allowed a quick and safe evacuation.
In the rush, I had left a small Moroccan bag in which I had put my things and an Afghan coat (made of sheepskin, very trendy at that time) and especially my documents. Before jumping, I went back on my steps to take back my things which were exactly where I had put them.
Coming out of the smoke, a fireman, visibly surprised to find me there in front of him kindly asked me to leave... "quickly because it's very dangerous to stay there!"
I had the impression that Don Preston's "moog" was still making weird sounds on the deserted stage... So I grabbed my stuff and quickly walked out through the broken windows. It seemed to me that a few moments later, the ceiling collapsed."

This speaker cabinet is clearly visible on the right side of the stage, and on one of the previous pictures we can see its three letters logo in the upper right corner, a little blurred but very characteristic. According to Frank Zappa, the Orange amp went the same way.
The stage was very low, at most three feet, and that's what made it easy for another friend of mine to climb it and end up walking down a backstage staircase with Zappa.
Another guy managed to reach out and grab Frank's wah-wah pedal. Being a guitarist, he still uses it today. Appart from a cowbell mentioned by FZ in an interview, it may be the only instrument to have survived the fire.

After jumping from the window, I go around the building to find my friends, and I see people coming out of the main door with Zappa posters in their hands.
I can't imagine that the whole building is going to burn down in a very short time, so I go back in through the main door and come out with some posters.

I had this poster already, as it had appeared folded in eight in a Swiss German magazine called POP. The poster distributed at the concert was the same size, but it was not folded. It didn't have the POP logo on it, but the paper was also very thin.

I may still have a copy of the folded poster, but I think it's in eight pieces.
I found the following picture on the net.
[img]https://www.timemanipulation.com/en/tmblog/resources/1971-04-xx-Pop-[Switzerland]-v6n4-poster.jpg[/img]
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Frank, wearing his coat.





Then, the building is totally on fire, the night falls and it is really impressive.
I particularly remember the moment when the roof collapsed to the first floor with a loud noise.

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FZ interview about the Montreux fire on youtube

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Happy Zappadan everybody!

Adrian Belew: What Was My Audition for Frank Zappa Like

"Changed my life, that handshake did."

"I flew out to Frank's house - my first time on a plane. That's how green I was.

"They picked me up and took me to his house in the basement, which would turn into his studio over the years. It was just a big empty room.

"Frank's sitting behind a console, he's got a cigarette in his mouth, of course, and there's a microphone in the middle of the room.

"Unfortunately, there were people moving things all over; here goes a piano in front of you, they're setting up something over there and so on. It was very distracting. Frank gave me a long list of songs. I had to borrow the albums from friends because I was so poor.

"We started, and he’d say, 'Okay, let's try 'Andy,'' and I'd play it for a minute or two and sing some things, and then he'd stop me, take another puff and say, 'Okay, try 'Wind Up Workin' in a Gas Station.'

"I was fumbling and really being distracted by all the stuff going on. I had nowhere to go, so they were gonna take me back to the airport and fly me back home, so I just watched everyone else's terrifying auditions.

"I watched keyboard players and percussionists and thought, 'Oh my god, these guys are so great, I don't know how I'll ever be in this band.'

"There was a moment at the end of the day, though, where it was just Frank and I standing there, and I said, 'I'm sorry, I really thought I could do this, and I thought it would be different.'

"He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I thought it would just be you and me somewhere quiet where I could show you that I could do this.'

"So we went up to his living room and sat on his purple couch, I took my little Pignose amp and stuffed it between the pillows so I could turn it up as loud as I could, and we started over. We got about a third of the way through and Frank was starting to sing along with me.

"Finally he put his hand out, shook my hand and said, 'You've got the job.' Changed my life, that handshake did."

Asked on what caused the end of his involvement with King Crimson just before the band's latest three-drummer lineup was assembled, Adrian replied:
"Simple! Robert [Fripp] just pulled the plug. [Laughs]

"We had done 10 shows as a five-piece band with new drummer Gavin Harrison along with Pat Mastelotto, and I thought we were gonna continue on from there, and at the end of those 10 shows, Robert seemed to be game for that as well.

"But within a few weeks, it was over. He said I'm not gonna play anymore,' and that was that. When he put together the current lineup, he had something totally different in mind, and he told me it wouldn’t be right for me and I wouldn't be right for it."

Quote: Originally posted by ursinator2.0

Asked on what caused the end of his involvement with King Crimson just before the band's latest three-drummer lineup was assembled, Adrian replied: "Simple! Robert [Fripp] just pulled the plug. [Laughs] We had done 10 shows as a five-piece band with new drummer Gavin Harrison along with Pat Mastelotto, and I thought we were gonna continue on from there, and at the end of those 10 shows, Robert seemed to be game for that as well. But within a few weeks, it was over. He said I'm not gonna play anymore,' and that was that. When he put together the current lineup, he had something totally different in mind, and he told me it wouldn’t be right for me and I wouldn't be right for it."

Don't get me wrong, I'm very impressed with the latest incarnation of King Crimson and their performances of that era of material, but most of the new stuff they've come up with doesn't grab me that much. Robert Fripp has never been a significant composer in his own right, whereas Adrian Belew brought a significant compositional element to the table and would have continued to do so. Maybe Fripp couldn't handle that.

Most recent entry on the black page providing a download link to issue 145 of Shindig magazine including an article on early L.A. freak scene.


Have a zappy xmas