Huntsville-Madison County Public Library discussion

Zappa's Moon

It is not absolutely necessary to be familiar with the music or the public persona of Frank Zappa in order to appreciate this memoir, written by his first-born daughter Moon about her life growing up in a family that operated in an inversion of conventionality, one in which the prevailing convention was Chaos. That lack illustrates the extent to which Moon was exposed to her father’s music on a daily basis. He was gone on tour or to another rehearsal space frequently and even when he was at home, he was shut away in his basement studio working at night and sleeping during the day.

On the other hand, her mother Gail, was all too present. While Frank was tending to his music and occasional live-in groupies, Gail was tending to the kids. She was more even tempered when they were very young. Moon was two years older than Dweezil, so they would often sleep with their mother while their father was out of town. She would also read story books to them, doing the various characters’ voices.

However, when Moon was only four, Gail decided to delegate some responsibility for looking after little brother Dweezil. One telling incident is when Gail was gone from the room, returned and found something in Dweezil’s mouth—one of the razor blades Frank used for splicing recording tape. Immediately, Gail focused all her fury on Moon for not watching Dweezil closely enough. Moon learned immediately that, as the oldest sibling, she would be the scapegoat and shield for her younger brothers and sister.

Moon had a very active imagination as a small child, often drifting off into daydreams. Gail would say, “Earth to Moon,” to get the child’s attention. As the years went by, “Earth to Moon” became an insistent, persistent taunt, usually followed by a phrase such as “Life isn’t fair” or “The world doesn’t work that way.”

When Moon was nine, Frank walked in on her perusing the record collection and gave her a brief rundown of what types of music was included and how to put a record on the turntable, how to tell the RPM of a record. Then he showed her his old collection of 45’s and told her she could have them.


In the early 1980’s thirteen-year-old Moon places a note under his door requesting to sing on one of his records and claiming that she is very good at an “Encino accent.” Shortly thereafter, Frank wakes her up in the middle of the night and beckons her downstairs with him to make a record. He has actually built a musical background for a song, punctuated by Moon’s vocal impressions of “Valspeak” i.e. “Ommigod”, “Gag me with a spoon”, “Like, totally”. What results is a song called “Valley Girl” with guest vocalist Moon Zappa. He actually gives Moon co-writing credit and it is released as a single, ironically becoming the only Top 40 hit of Zappa’s career.

This unexpected success thrusts the somewhat shy Moon into the spotlight as she appears with her father on the talk show circuit and performs the song with him on TV. It also has an effect on the power dynamic with mother Gail. Suddenly, Moon is involved in an enterprise with Frank that excludes her mother. Gail is quick to remind Moon that she’s only getting this flurry of publicity because her parents are allowing it. Moon also gets hate mail from angry real life Valley girls claiming that her depiction is insulting. All of these negative by-products taint her enjoyment of the success.

There are some positive results of this newfound fame. Moon and Dweezil land a short-lived sitcom, ‘Normal Life’ (thirteen episodes), Dweezil is a guest VJ on MTV, and Moon gets some acting gigs.

By the time of Frank’s prostate cancer diagnosis, Moon has already taken the reader through several twists and turns along with the ongoing emotional bullying of her mother, who persists in making it difficult for Moon to love her as each attempt at sympathy is met with a toxic zinger of reproach. Confiding in her father does not work before he gets sick when the extent of his fatherly counsel is “Just don’t think about it” and after his diagnosis is “Moon, I don’t have the strength to deal with all this.”

During the years in the wake of the “Valley Girl” success, Moon’s profits, handed over to her mother, enabled her parents to buy a house for her. When her father’s illness becomes severe, Gail informs her that they need to sell Moon’s house in order to pay the $250,000 in doctor bills as Frank has no health insurance. The mother gives and the mother takes away.

When Gail dies of lung cancer, Moon thinks she can finally love her mother without qualifiers. However, they discover that Gail altered the family trust that she and Frank had signed in 1990. Instead of splitting the estate evenly four ways, she gave 30 percent to Ahmet and Diva (the two younger children) each — making them “the sole and exclusive managers of all business” — and only 20 percent apiece to Dweezil and Moon. Gail continues to fire toxic barbs, even from the grave. All of these legal land mines exploding at once sabotages the relationships between the four siblings. Moon understands that they have been emotionally battered as well. She intends ‘Earth to Moon’ to be a step toward healing their collective trauma.

Moon does a masterful job of projecting herself into the state of mind/emotional development of each stage of her life. Each chapter is written in present tense. She either has phenomenal recall of minute details from events that happened several decades ago or kept a very detailed journal from an early age. Scenes such as the death watch of the family surrounding Frank as his life ebbs away and the episode in which Moon’s three-year-old daughter Matilda has an extremely high fever and congested lungs and subsequent rush to the hospital have the pace and high drama of a gripping film.

I rank ‘Earth to Moon’ alongside the phenomenal memoirs of Mary Karr (‘The Liar’s Club’; ‘Cherry’’;‘Lit’). I don’t know if she’s already excavated all of her personal drama but whether ‘Earth to Moon’ acquires any sibling/sequels or is an only child, it is a significant contribution to the craft of memoir writing.