Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher.wmv

[paulineharrisonbird]

May 7th 1968

In the car, Calvin was monosyllabic, preferring to twiddle with the radio rather than talk. In fact, we were out for three hours and exchanged no more than four words. While Calvin stocked up on artwork and tools, I bought stationery, stockings and a white shower curtain which in the absence of anything else, I hung up with string across the bath.

[paulineharrisonbird]

May 7th 1968

I found Calvin kneeling on the floor in his living room. He was sawing a long plank of wood balanced on an old chair. To my request for a ride into Hollywood, he pushed up on his knees and said simply, ‘Okay.’

Calvin’s dishy looks had not escaped Christine’s friends’ eagle eyes. As I passed his bedroom door, I caught a glimpse of one of them, Sandra. She pulled the sheet to cover her bare breasts but Calvin seemed happy to leave her sitting there on the mattress.

[paulineharrisonbird]

I was relieved when Calvin, wearing low-slung jeans and t-shirt spattered with paint, wandered in and said, ‘I’m going into Hollywood. Wanna come along?’

Would I? I could have hugged him. Anything to get out of the tenseness of the kitchen. It would be a chance to see tinsel town, home to glamorous film stars, chauffeur-driven cars, and commissionaires in green and gold uniforms in front of boutiques glitzy with jewels. How wrong I was. (Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher)

[paulineharrisonbird]

Calvin wandered back in and told me I might get carpet shampoo at the Country Store about half a mile down the hill and agreed to drive me, I could have hugged him. We climbed into his old jalopy in which he’d hobbled across from Philadelphia, breaking down three times on the way. Surprisingly, it started despite the grating roar of resistance from the engine. He hooked one wrist over the steering wheel and glided us down the bends of Laurel Canyon to a little shack nestled under a rock face.

[trankgrappa]

wonderful movie! wow! and verrry romantic :-) i read your book and did like it a lot, it's very intimate and gives more of an inside view of what happened "behind the scenes". thanks very much for sharing this movie and your story. greetings from switzerland, Hansi :-)

[paulineharrisonbird]

@trankgrappa Thank you so much frankgrappa for taking the time to write to me so kindly. I am glad you liked the book and hopefully you'll pass it on to your friends and maybe even your women friends who might like it too, even if they're not Zappa fans - at least that's my hope that I can stretch beyond the Zappa fold. So there you are in Switzerland and here I am in Singapore!

[trankgrappa]

@paulineharrisonbird now it's me who has to tank you for your kind answer :-) that's a part of modern life that i enjoy, the possibility to get in contact with somebody (in singapore!! ;-) so easy and quick. i will pass on the book for sure, hopefully also to women, although i don't know so many english readers. anyway, i think you are beautiful inside and outside and i wish you and your loved ones a happy & wonderful life.

[paulineharrisonbird]

@trankgrappa Okay, so if you get any other feedback from others, I'd be delighted to hear from them, warts 'n all. Keep well in beautiful Switzerland.

[paulineharrisonbird]

May 5 1968. Log Cabin. Hollywood.

Suddenly, Calvin appeared through the back door looking as gorgeous as when I saw him in London, his scrawny frame dressed in hipster jeans and nothing else. I suppose my face lit up because he gave me a small smile and shook my hand. (Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher)

[paulineharrisonbird]

January 1968. Frank Zappa's apartment New York.

Through the knocked-down wall that made one long room, I could see Calvin quietly working by the far window. So Frank hadn’t sacked him for his misdemeanour at the Albert Hall!

He strolled in bringing a piece of artwork to show Frank. He wore torn jeans, his hair tied in a band and looked just as handsome as in London. He nodded a quiet ‘Hi’ and I smiled, reassured by his presence, a sort of balancing act against Frank and Gail.

[paulineharrisonbird]

Sept 23 1967 Royal Garden Hotel,London. People began shuffling to the door and I started to join them but Frank (Zappa) leapt up and grabbed me. ‘Hold on, Pauline.’ I hesitated a moment but noticed Calvin still lounging in an armchair. He’d not uttered a word to anyone and looked bored, as if he wished to be somewhere else. I felt a kinship with him – two lonely souls in that busy space. For a flicker of a second, he caught my eye... (Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher)

[paulineharrisonbird]

1967.

Calvin sprawled in the back of my car, Frank Zappa in the front. ‘Did you get some good shots?’ he asked Calvin.

‘During the concert, no. I was hungry, I went out to eat.'

I expected Frank to explode. ‘I brought you three thousand miles to do one f- thing – take photographs of the show - and you go out to eat? How long does it take to eat?’

‘We couldn’t find anywhere. It took a while.’

No one spoke for the rest of the journey.

[paulineharrisonbird]

The day I met Frank Zappa began like every other day over the previous five years. Had I realised how momentous it would be, I might have clipped my dangly earrings to my ears with more care, raced into London with greater speed and answered the phone at the office more eagerly. But on that dull, drizzly August afternoon in 1967, I had no idea.

(From Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher)

[paulineharrisonbird]

Yet I was not unhappy. I spent the first half of 1970 hanging out at Calvin’s one-bedroom cabin set in its wild hillside and left behind the dream of a glamorous, rich life. Somehow or another, over that long spring and summer, I became a bohemian - that is to say, I settled into the moneyless culture, learning to make do, to live on less, surviving on very little at all.

(From Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher)