The Frank Zappa family drama seems to get worse with each passing day, as brothers Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa have been publicly arguing about their claim to their father’s legacy. While Dweezil is out on the road, bringing the music of Frank Zappa to fans everywhere, it seems that Ahmet Zappa has been hanging on to the famed Zappa Family Trust with his sister, Diva.
The latest Zappa to weigh in on the family drama is Moon Zappa, the eldest of the four. Moon posted a lengthy note addressing the situation, claiming that “GZ [Gail Zappa, their mother] managed to make 20 million dollars disappear with the team she had in place, the team the ZFT has lovingly kept in place. Does NO-ONE think this is INSANE? Why keep the same team that sank the ship, especially if a secret deal was struck a year earlier with no financial improvements…OR is there secret cash in offshore accounts or secret LLC’s in all their names? I was never paid for Valley Girl…I think that might have brought in a little green…”
She also talks at length about the potential projects that she’d want to work on with the music of Frank Zappa, but that her siblings’ control over the Family Trust is making that impossible. Read the passage below:
I wanted to turn our childhood home into a bed and breakfast/museum/retreat center where fans could pilgrimage and artists could record on sacred soil. I wanted to cook meals for you in the real Dangerous Kitchen and teach you yoga in my childhood living room. I wanted Dweezil to give you a master class on music in the home studio playing the guitars he inherited. I wanted Ahmet to give you a tour of his old bedroom and let you slide down his firepole and I hoped you’d watch Bruce Willis movies with Diva in her old bedroom with the glitter floors while she kept steady hands diligently continuing to knit her mile long scarf. I’m sorry the fans will only have “Zappa approved” dry goods and experiences from two of us instead of four. I wanted to write and direct a bio pic and do a 3-D doc on my dad and record an album of songs of my dad’s I curated that girls and prudes like me might like with Pharrell Williams producing. I wanted to write and assemble the first four person family memoir about our awesome dad. Just some of my still born ideas…Oh well…
Hopefully the Zappa children can work this out and move on to what matters most: the music of Frank Zappa. Read Moon Zappa’s full statement below.