Ahmet Zappa and Joe Travers: The SDE Interview

To commemorate its 50th anniversary, Frank Zappa’s 1974 album, Apostrophe (’), has recently been reissued in a number of formats, notably as a 5CD+Blu-ray super deluxe edition with session outtakes and a brand new Dolby Atmos Mix.

SDE spoke to Ahmet Zappa – Frank’s son and trustee of the Zappa Family Trust – and Zappa vaultmeister, Joe Travers, who, together, oversaw and produced the new edition, about the album’s anniversary, its enduring appeal, and some of the challenges involved when putting the box set together.

SDE: How did you approach the super deluxe edition? What did you want to achieve?

Ahmet Zappa: It was a real labour of love – we understand the gravitas of this record and the impact it had on people discovering Frank. It really is a fan favourite and a lot of the songs on it are some of his most popular and streamed songs.

If fans are going to spend their money, we really want it to be a valuable experience and to give them things that they’ll truly love. We listen to the comments from the fans.

I find it interesting that you can compare Frank’s stereo mix with the Quad mix and the Atmos mix that we’ve given so much love and attention to with Karma Auger and Erich Gobel – we love working with those guys. They’re so creative and they care so much about the work that they do – they really respect Frank and I think it shows in the Atmos mix.

The Atmos Mix brings a whole new life to the record – it’s a surprising alchemy of the players and everyone’s musical contributions. It feels very joyous and it’s funny – there’s storytelling in the songs and it feels like everyone had a great time trying to bring it to life.

Joe Travers: I think the inclusion of today’s Dolby Atmos technology was a no-brainer because we’d been going down that route for the last few box sets and anniversaries. The inclusion of the Blu-ray was really great – it’s the cream of the crop… We knew we were going to do the Dolby Atmos and include the vintage Quad mix, so what kind of content could I come up with from the vault to surround that?

We decided to remaster the record with Bernie Grundman, which is always a good choice, and, because we had done The Crux of the Biscuit [in 2016] for the 40th anniversary of Apostrophe (‘) we didn’t have too many options as far as studio outtakes and rough mixes – surprisingly, Frank didn’t do too many of those. But the addition of the two concerts helped us a lot – the selection of those was intentional. I wanted to make sure that we chose a concert at the beginning of the year and a concert at the end of the year, to illustrate how Frank’s music and the band was morphing, and how much he accomplished in a single year just with the live stuff.

Was Zappa ahead of his time when it came to recording and mixing music? What do you think he would make of Dolby Atmos and the possibilities it offers in the studio?

Ahmet: He would love it.

Joe: One hundred percent – he was a surround pioneer. He was doing six-channel mixes in 1992 and that format never even existed in the marketplace. It ended up turning into 5.1, which was a different configuration. He was always embracing new technology and he was a total fan of immersive audio. He loved the sonic possibilities of surround sound music, and he would’ve completely kicked the shit out of Dolby Atmos!

Ahmet: I would hazard a guess that Frank would’ve had a much greater impact on music technology if he was still with us – he was always pushing the boundaries. He was a thought-leader and people would come to him – he was working on his own ideas for things… Keep in mind that he passed even before Pro Tools took off and before you were able to send files.

On top of innovating from a sound, mix and production point of view, I think he would appreciate the fact that he could collaborate with different musicians from anywhere in the world – he could send them a guide track and get it back. There was an immediacy with his orchestral work – he wanted an orchestra at his fingertips.

There is a parallel dimension where Frank is hanging out with all of our kids, making us all laugh and telling us how he has created a sonic screwdriver because he loves Dr Who, but if you touch it to your head, you can get 700 hours of new Frank Zappa music!

The 2024 Piano and Vocal Mix of ‘Uncle Remus’, a song which deals with racism and civil rights, is very powerful – it has isolated vocal and tack piano tracks, and turns the song into a stripped-down, emotional ballad. It’s very different to the original…

Joe: That’s what I thought – I sent it to Ahmet and said: ‘Do you like it?’ He said: ‘I love it!’

Ahmet: Yeah – you think about how they build tracks in the studio… It’s really pared down, but it’s got to start somewhere before it gets layers and layers and layers…  It’s beautiful.

Zappa used to record his concerts on a half-inch, four-track tape machine. Did that give you any issues when it came to sound quality with the live material in the new box set? Were there challenges to overcome?

Joe: Yes. Frank worked with a variety of engineers on the road, and they always seemed to be changing. There was a man named Brian Krokus who was around in ’73, then he left in early ’74, then he came back in the same year. When he left, another guy called Bob Ludwig – not to be confused with the famous mastering engineer – came on board. On the tapes that he recorded, the routing on the channels was very different from what Brian Krokus used to do. The tapes that Bob Ludwig created were definitely assigned by Frank, which was a head-scratcher…

Here’s some forensic information for you – the first channel was a mix of all the band, the second channel was Frank’s guitar, but for the bulk of shows that March, the guitar was overdriven, and we couldn’t use it. Thankfully, there was also guitar in the mix on the first channel, so we were safe there.

Channel three was supposed to be Napoleon Murphy Brock’s vocal mic, and channel four was supposed to be George Duke’s vocal mic, but on the majority of the tapes, channel four was blank. So, as a mix engineer, that was a challenge right there. Thankfully, we found a show that was listenable, and we were able to do the best we could with it – that’s the Colarado Springs show.

It was really important for me to try and find something we could work with from that tour because Frank hadn’t released anything from it, and, in total Zappa fashion, he premiered new compositions on that tour, and the arrangements were different and never played that way again later on in his career.

For instance, if you listen to ‘Florentine Pogen’ from the Colorado Springs show, you’ll hear that it’s burning fast, and it’s got all sorts of different things happening in it. The version that ended up on One Size Fits All a year later was the quintessential one that everybody knew – it’s at a slower pace. He never played the fast version ever again. There are more instances like that in the concert, so that’s why I’m very excited about the Colorado Springs show coming out – there’s so much that has never been heard before.

The second concert was chosen because it was the last show in the vault with Tom Fowler on bass – that was the end of the classic six-piece group that everybody knows and loves. It’s a big deal that we have that one final show.

Joe, in your sleeve notes for the new edition, you recall when you first heard Apostrophe (’). It was in 1981, when you were 12 – you bought a vinyl copy at a record store in your local mall. Prior to that, you first heard Zappa when your uncle played you his copy of Sheik Yerbouti a couple of years before…

Joe: Yeah, hearing that record sparked my interest. It blew my brain into bits, so eventually I knew that I was going to have to get my own Zappa record, instead of constantly going over to my uncle’s and asking him to play it every time.

I just remember the experience of playing Apostrophe (’) and loving it so much – I was so into every minute of the record, and I became a lifer immediately. I just knew that this man and this music were going to affect me for a long time.

Ahmet: I turned 50 in May, so, for me, Apostrophe (’) is my nursery music. I love this record – it’s the Zappa gateway drug. I always recommend it to folks. My top five records if someone wants to dive in are Apostrophe (’), Over-Nite Sensation, Hot Rats, Sheik Yerbouti…

Joe: It has everything on it that you would expect… There are the layers, the humour, the virtuosic performances of the band, the cleverness, the compositions… It’s all there, basically, and it gives somebody a good overview of what makes Frank Zappa’s music tick.

Apostrophe (’) was Zappa’s most commercially successful album. Why do you think that was?

Joe: There were a lot of reasons and I talk about it in my liner notes. Over-Nite Sensation, the album prior to it, laid the groundwork. It opened the doors because that record was a new sound and a new chapter for Frank’s music. Also, he was touring like crazy the year before Apostrophe (’) came out, playing colleges, so there had already been a buzz happening about him – his music had changed, and it was appealing to a larger mass. It was more accessible – Frank was singing more, and the music was fun, and it was witty.

When Apostrophe (’) came out, Frank was on the road for most of the year – while he was in Europe, ‘Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow’ became his first hit single, so with that came a new and larger awareness, and a new level of success. The album contains classic tunes that everybody gravitated to, and the side lengths are very short and very consumable – they warrant repeat listens. The album leaves you wanting more.

Is there a lot more material in Zappa’s vaults that could see the light of day?

Joe: Absolutely – there’s so much and there’s a lot of opportunity there.

Thanks to Ahmet Zappa and Joe Travers, who were talking to Sean Hannam for SDE. The Apostrophe (’) 50th anniversary is available now via UMR.

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