“I’m afraid so.” I shrank a bit, afraid of his reaction… Of course, this was not the first time I had left a purse somewhere; for years I used my pockets to avoid such awful situations, but here it was again, and this time, it was a disastrous distance in time and space."
The idea is if you do something on the stage that nobody would ever imagine could or should be done, you’re helping everybody feel a little freer.
FM radio waves started the fire. I tuned into the rock station and went room to room, turning each wall speaker down in case anyone came home. In the kitchen, I turned it up. I bounced to the rhythm, waving the dishrag, but when the speaker there moaned, you know I got to move… I let it possess me. My limbs expanded in all directions, changing rhythms as did the song, moving in ways I had never moved before. My mind expanded too. I felt so free! I moved into our big living room, soon surprising myself with a leap at the songs’ climax that turned in mid-air for a perfect landing. I was not a jumper, why did I feel so light?
The stereo would be louder! Soon I had The Doors’ song, “Light My Fire” playing and began moving in a different way. My hips undulated, every bone in my spine could move separately, and this dance became seductive. Some girls had big sisters, most watched television, the lucky had classes and the popular had cheerleading. I discovered dance on my own, did it my own way. I loved the music that enflamed the movement.
My younger brothers often hammered on the wall between our rooms and shouted, “Turn that music down!” Too bad, boys, that’s not gonna happen. (At least until Mom intervenes.) But on the radio, rock music was a shared culture. There was one other girl in my class who shared my passion for music, and when Janice came over, we shut my bedroom door, turned out the lights and just listened to my stereo: to the Vanilla Fudge, the Moody Blues, Deep Purple, Jim Morrison and the Doors. The sex god body and faun face of Morrison and the news on the radio about his provocative shows lured us deeper into his poetry-set-to-drums-keyboard-guitar. Eyes closed, we swayed in delight to his lyrics, caught in another time and space he created.
Live music was even better. Now that I was sixteen, whenever I could, I drove the twenty country miles to Atlanta to a hear a band or see an art movie. The girls I knew could not stay out so late, but I could and I did. Didn’t I walk in the thick woods behind our house alone? Didn’t I ride my horse down strange country roads alone? Going to the city alone was just another notch in my independence belt and I never thought of the danger. I couldn’t wait for a new experience; I had to go find one. Four miles from home, I could turn right and be on the Atlanta Highway, a straight shot into the big city that was an ever-changing lab for my experiments with life.
Tonight my lab was the Fox Theatre on Peachtree Street, the pulse point on Atlanta’s jugular. My adrenaline began to rise along with the drum solos rolling out of the radio. I raced towards the City, singing along, my heart singing to the beat whenever I didn’t know the words. I pictured the familiar Egyptian Revival movie palace up ahead, where our family had viewed the annual Christmas showing of It’s A Wonderful Life. The Fox had first opened and closed in 1929. Now in its shabby age, it was hosting traveling comedians, Broadway plays, and lately, rock concerts.
Outside the theater, I wove through the line of people waiting to get in, past the entrance and the Arabesque box office—Wait, what was that commotion? Screaming curses, a struggling girl was being carried to a paddy wagon, one limb to each of four cops, her long hair brushing the street, her friends tussling with the cops behind her. What was the problem? It wasn’t drugs—people were already smoking and passing joints in the line and the cops ignored that anyway at large gatherings where they were outnumbered. Maybe the Atlanta “pigs” had more important things to do. Like get this screaming girl into the van and out of here. Maybe she was having a breakdown, a bad trip. I wished her well, but took my place in the line. Later, I would meet that girl on her organic farm near Athens and discover we had the love of that music in common. What had happened to Bea? She’d had a problem with her ticket and was furious at being turned away!
The line dissolved as we pushed through the doors and into the lobby: pillars, arched doorways and walls painted in stripes with Mecca-like motifs backdropped velvet drapes, mirrors in mosaic frames, patterned floors of marble tiles. Through the next doors into the theater with its stage and proscenium for sets, a second rising stage in the orchestra pit with a 3,622-pipe Möller theatre organ, and a deep tiered balcony. The walls rounded upwards, with a three-dimensional Far-Eastern skyline blending into the sky above.
In the Fox, it was not enough to blink the lights to notify patrons to take their seats, coming back from intermission or the bar. Instead, slowly, the lighting changed from late afternoon to sunset. Golds and pinks streaked subtly behind the minarets at the edge of the town painted on the wall.
I speedily slipped my way to the front, having the advantage of being a single body, no encumbrances, relatively small, but couldn’t make it all the way—too many ladies! I settled back into my soft upholstered seat on the third row, and I grinned as the familiar stars appeared above. Stars! Stars twinkled on the ceiling and constellations wheeled majestically across the fabricated sky. It was the perfect atmosphere to begin the suspension of disbelief. The sky grew darker to give the entertainment’s magical light its due, but at any time we could look up and see the stars. Tonight’s star that had pulled us to the Fox was a California band: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
Zappa and the Mothers had first caught my attention at the Starlite Drive-In on Atlanta’s perimeter. Amidst the cars of people, I sat cross-legged, alone on the roof of my VW-bug. The acid I’d dropped was taking effect. Alice’s Restaurant (1969) had just finished, and 200 Motels (1971) was starting. While Alice was about a clear conflict between the mainstream and counter-culture, Motels was solidly within the drop-out, tune-in world being created by rock music. Frank had created a film about a band who was on tour, and the night they spent playing in a fictional town, aptly named “Centerville”. Zappa and his band members were characters in the film’s band, of course, and sometimes they turned into animated characters. Frank must have liked Mary Poppins and its dancing penguins as much as I had! My jaw dropped as the plot and characters progressed; tv and even the art movie theater had not prepared me for this. LSD had, though, and kept me company as I flew down the road of thought and sensation, firmly anchored to the blanket on top of my car.
With 200 Motels, I recognized genius on the prowl. I managed to see the movie three more times. Each viewing I gained a new perspective; new ways to see the scenes, to understand the language, to notice details. I became convinced that without a master’s in music theory, I would never understand its full meaning.
My new high school had a rigorous program with lots of term papers, so I chose Frank Zappa for my research. In a magazine interview, he proposed that groupies were the new priestesses, sacrificing their bodies to the God of Rock. What? Sex in the age of drugs and rock’n’roll could also have a religious side?
Already I was experimenting to find the depths of that highly touted emotion, love. Lovemaking was my own rite of choice—I did not accept the cold sex of my first time and moved to the practice of free love. Intellectually I saw no reason to say NO. Physically I was protected from pregnancy; I was on the Pill. I wanted to feel something, and I chose to open wide not just my legs, but the door of my heart. I chose to love each man I had sex with; fully and unconditionally. It did not require repeat business to love a man – who cared if I ever saw him again? What mattered was that tender care in the moment. I could see into that person when they were intimate with me; I could connect deeply and, in the process, see into my best, most selfless self. Free love was a pure act. The quote from Frank was the first sign that other people were really thinking about this. Frank seemed to think that the free love religion had rituals, too.
His favorite color was purple, and I could sew. I had made the outfit I was wearing tonight at the concert: crushed velvet, burgundy hip-huggers that flared in pleated bells below the knee, and a purple velvet, scooped-neck top with bell sleeves, trimmed in wide purple sequin braid around the neckline. More of the trim formed a big Z on the front. I was ready! I had debated carrying a “Groupie for Zappa” sign but no, I would just chant it. Being a groupie and hanging out at the stage door did not appeal to me. I would worship Frank from the fringe.
As the band walked on stage, I shouted repeatedly, Groupies for Zappa, Groupies for Zappa! Maybe others would join me? There were a few looks but no response. I continued shouting until the band started playing. Then I started listening.
As the band merged with us on this musical journey, my eyes were drawn to the near-naked women writhing at the foot of the stage. Were these groupies? Ready to devote themselves for the night to any one of the band members, though longing for a particular one, say, Jimmy Carl Black? Ansley Dunbar? Or Zappa himself, with his Greek-Arab-Italian looks, Zappa? What would it be like to spend an evening with a genius? Would he even want to talk? These thoughts dissolved with the onslaught of music, melody I could barely follow, its sprechstimme, spoken word interrupting any rhythm, instead injecting a shocking, eroticized, light-hearted sarcasm. This wasn’t music. I didn’t know the name for it then, but Zappa at this time was arranging and staging performance art. My body did not respond to this music; it created on flame—my mind was reeling in a smoke of confusion. Around me the crowd was rapt and irreverent, shouting, clapping, and some, like me, just processing.
I turned the radio off as I drove homewards; I had a lot to think about. I realized I was attracted to Zappa because he was a thinker and I knew so few of those—most of the thinkers I’d met were dead or unbridgeably remote, leaving their words for me in books. Though I respected Zappa, his thoughts, movie, and music, I would never buy one of his records. I’d remember his theory about groupies as I entered a few backstages in the future; hell—I’d remember it a lifetime.
I added some thoughts about the concert to my research paper about Frank Zappa, how he did his part for the revolution through shocking his listeners into examination and doubt. I filed the paper with my teacher; it raised her eyebrows, but it earned me Most Improved Student of the Year in the subject of English. I learned something new from Zappa: before long I would be experimenting with performance art of my own.
Draft Scene from the forthcoming memoir by Deborah Wilbrink: The Experiment
Postscript: My future husband was actually backstage with the genius…here's a clipping showing Evert Wilbrink with Frank Zappa in 1971!
