Being Frank: My Time With Frank Zappa

Rating:
Summary: Reviews from the publisher
Review: Being Frank: My time With Frank Zappa
Expanded From The Original Classic

Since his untimely death from prostate cancer in 1993, the legend of iconoclastic musician Frank Zappa has continued to grow. The decade following his passing has seen the publication of a number of books, both sacred and profane, which examine his life and work, but the best, and only, up-close-and-personal account of the man and his music remains the original: Nigey Lennon's Being Frank: My Time with Frank Zappa. Musician/author Lennon maintained a personal and professional relationship with Zappa during the period which is generally agreed to have been the composer's most creative, and she invests her recollections with considerable musical and emotional insight.

"....Being Frank can be viewed as a cautionary tale, a cinema verite' rock-and-roll moral fable, an historically accurate emotional portrait of one of America's most enigmatic modern musicians during an important transitional period in his life when he was free of the emotional/financial baggage of the original Mothers of Invention and could do as he creatively wished...what makes Zappa such a quirky individual and his music so irresistible...is precisely what Nigey has patiently and passionately documented...between the two of our books is a valuable portrait of one of the more intriguing and enigmatic cultural figures of the Twentieth Century, god help us all.
--From the Introduction by David Walley, author of No Commercial Potential: The Saga of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention

This edition is a reaffirmation of Being Frank's validity as a "must read" book and hell, even a "must re-read" book! Just like Frank's music, the deeper you get into this book, the more you will get out of it.
--From the Foreword by Greg Russo, author of Cosmik Debris: The Collected History and Improvisations of Frank Zappa

"irreplaceable...is the word to describe Being Frank...[Lennon's] memoir is both spiky and musically literate...Lennon's previous books were on Mark Twain and Alfred Jarry, which indicates the kind of cultural perspective required to get a grip on Zappa: something brighter than rock-journo pedantry."
-- Ben Watson, author of Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play

Rating:
Summary: If I had a highlighter
Review: I bought the book when it came out years ago. I desperately wanted it to be true, however portions of it sounded familiar. I took a highlighter and marked any part of the text where the information in it could be found in secondary sources. Granted most of the stories were Zappa favorites, "... the closest that I ever came to eating sh** was at a Holiday Inn in Fayetteville North Carolina," but other moments make oblique mentions of things like an article in Guitar Player from around that time period. Most of the information in the book can be found in secondary sources. What remains deals more with the author's life than Zappa's. If someone has a lot of Zappa in print, they won't need this book at all.

Rating:
Summary: Better left unsaid
Review: I found this little number at the library, and I suggest that if your even remotely compelled to read this strange bit of fact/fiction/fantasy, you should get a free copy that can be returned also. I find plenty of these accounts plausible and probably just a groupie account of some wonderful events that meant more to her than anyone else. There is nothing wrong with that but it does'nt warrant a book.

Rating:
Summary: Bad, Nigey, Bad, Bad...
Review: If there was ever a tell-almost-all book that needed another trip through the typewriter, this is it. Lennon can't decide whether to name names or keep quiet, so usually you're left to guess who she's talking about. (Everybody knows it was Tina Turner and the Ikettes, Nigey. Why not just say so?) That's no problem if you're a know-it-all, dyed-in-the-wool Mothers fan like me, but what if you're not?

Lennon claims to have spent a portion of the '71 tour with the Mothers as Zappa's guitar tech/road whore/stand-in guitarist. That much is believable, and band members have since said they remember her. HOWEVER: She also claims to have played on stage with the Mothers at a couple of shows--shows which, conveniently, have no booted copies floating around among collectors, so there's no real way to check. (None of the aforementioned band members remember her EVER playing on stage, but they admit that 25-30 years is a long time ago, and they may have forgotten.)

Worth reading, but it needs another draft.

Rating:
Summary: Does truth belong in journalism?
Review: Nigey Lennon's book is problematic for the Zappa fan. First off, it seems to contradict with the image of Zappa that he himself created and that the Zappa Family Trust continues to perpetuate: that of a brilliant composer and thinker, who while being somewhat of an iconoclast and eccentric, was also well-grounded and devoted to his family. Lennon, on the other hand, talks about Frank on the road, and presents an altogether seedier side of him. The problem is, who do we believe?

I tend to be somewhere in the middle, leaning towards the Zappa picture, not just because I happen to be a Zappa fan, but because there is a lot more evidence for it. No doubt he was not a perfect father or family man-- when you're on the road half the time and in the studio the other half, it can be hard to make time for your kids. Not to mention that when women are throwing themselves at you, like they no doubt were, fidelity is a difficult trick to manage. But I find Lennon's claims to be more than a little outrageous.

As another reviewer already pointed out, while it's perfectly plausible that she worked with Frank, there is no evidence apart from her word that she ever played on stage with him. And her claims about their relationship seem to be her romanticized recollections, tinged with bitterness from later in life. I have no problem believing that Frank and Nigey had some sort of sexual relationship at one point in time, but Lennon presents it as some sort of "true love" and tries to make herself into Zappa's muse. I'm sorry, but I have only one abbreviation for that: B.S. Her claim that "Andy" from the "One Size Fits All" album is really Frank's bitter lashing out at her for their break-up? HIGHLY doubtful. Her claim that the material from Grand Wazoo and Waka/Jawaka was written for her as some sort of synaesthetic musical/sexual gratification? Yeah, right. And I've got a bridge to sell you.

As other reviewers have pointed out, most of this book is really about Lennon, and not about Zappa. More auto than biography, this is the work of a jaded ex-groupie, who found herself briefly on the fringe of the life of a mysterious and talented composer, and has tried to imbue her very minor and periphery role with far more importance than it ever warranted.

On a purely stylistic note, Lennon's writing style is a little weak, and unoriginal. Rather than writing in HER voice, she uses a watered down imitation of Zappa's style from his Autobiography, the Real Frank Zappa book.

Rating:
Summary: NOT in it for the money!
Review: This book is an accurate, funny, and well-observed portrait of one of the most enigmatic figures on the American music scene.
It is most of all a portrait, warts and all, of a human being trying to deal with a human universe, something which Zappa held at a great distance from himself, and despite his protestations to the contrary had difficulty in dealing with. It will and has ticked off many members of Zappa Anonymous who've been fed a steady diet of well... publicity which Zappa in his lifetime encouraged and ironically and inevitably became its victim after his death. I highly recommend this book for those who are interested in historical and sometimes hysterical accuracy. She was there at a crucial time in Zappa's life as a confidant, a lover, and a working member of his band when he was recuperating from a grievious accident which nearly cost him his life. This book is part sociology, part auto-biography and describes her coming of age and the influence that one of America's great enigmatic figures had on her life. She writes well with a great sense of ironic detachment, which is as idiosyncratic as the person whose life for a time she shared.

Rating:
Summary: Who Nigey Lennon??
Review: Who is Nigey Lennon? There are no reference anywhere else to her.
If she knew Zappa ever, it is insignificant.