Being Frank by Nigey Lennon Read Free Book Online

was industrial-grade .
    When I finally had my throat cleared, the guitar plugged in, and the volume adjusted, Frank whipped out the first chord chart. It swam under my eyes, a work of art copied precisely and delicately in calligraphy that was so clean it was almost prissy. While I was still peering at it, Frank picked up his guitar and counted off. Unprepared, I stumbled badly in the first bar, before he had a chance to begin his lead. “I-I don’t think I know the fingering on this chord,” I stammered, feeling my face flush.
    Zappa didn’t need to look at the chart. “That’s A suspended fourth,” he said. Hmmm ... He demonstrated the fingering on his own guitar. “Try it again.” We got a little farther along in the song, and then I tripped over another Walter Piston voicing. Frank enlightened me, and we went on. Actually, despite my screw-ups, I soon relaxed. I could feel that we had an intuitive mutual sense of rhythm and timing. Just as I had reveled in our first conversation, I rapidly lost myself in our musical dialogue. The chords and melody flowed effortlessly, and when I suddenly got carried away at one point and slipped into the lead, Frank shifted smoothly to rhythm. After letting me play through the head, he nudged me back into my accompanist’s role by resuming with an extremely florid solo. His chord changes were considerably more complex and fluent than mine, but he made it plain that he had no desire to ‘comp’ behind anybody, least of all me. We ended the song together, neatly, and I looked up. My face felt like it was on fire. “ Whoo-ha! ” I exclaimed. “What a song!” Frank nodded, a slight smile visible beneath his mustache. “Make your eyebrows go up and down?” he asked. I chuckled at this picturesque figure of speech. “My foot too.”
    We worked our way through charts until my fingers were raw. After a couple of hours, Frank let me take a break. I was about ready to drop anyway. “Looks like you’re working for Air, Moisture and Pain,” hecracked, making a joke about my blistered digits and Blood, Sweat and Tears. He stuck out his left hand and showed me his own incipient calluses. “I ain’t been so diligent myself lately ‘bout practicing,” he observed in a caricature of some raspy, mumbling blues singer. I found myself staring at his thumb the way I’d earlier ogled his schnozz. My hero was turning out to be a veritable prodigy of alien physiology, The Beast With Ten Fingers … His fingers were long and supple, but he had wonderfully flat, utilitarian thumbnails. Why, he could have been a bricklayer and really made something of himself . I was suddenly seized with an urge to stick his thumb in my mouth and suck on it. The impulse, which seemed to leap into my mind unbidden, made me blush, and I quickly looked down at the music in front of me; although he wasn’t being crass about it, I suspected that if this were something other than a business-type situation, Frank would have been offering me any digit I happened to be interested in, and suggesting utilities for same.
    When we resumed, I continued to have my share of trouble with unfamiliar chords, and a couple of times I could tell that Frank was a bit impatient with me. I didn’t care, though. I had thought I liked his music before, when I was just a passive listener; but now that I’d actually gotten my hands on it, I felt like I’d received a reprieve from reality. It was as if I had slipped the dismal bonds of my mundane existence and emerged into a fiery realm where everything was exalted and not a little peculiar. By the time Frank finally called a halt to the runthrough, I was feverish, exhilarated, incoherent. I liked this new state of existence so much that the thought of leaving it was unbearable.
    When we finally put down the guitars, Frank looked at me with an appraising expression. “Glad you