Em 1967 uma jovem secretária de 21 anos foi contratada para prestar seus serviços como datilógrafa em um quarto de hotel, em Londres. A secretária era Pauline Butcher e o cliente, Frank Zappa. Seu papel era transcrever as letras de seu último álbum, “Absolutey Free”, uma tarefa que logo se mostrou muito mais complicada do que parecia à primeira vista.
Desse primeiro encontro nasceu uma amizade de muitos anos e Pauline acabou sendo contratada para trabalhar como funcionária de Frank Zappa. Algo que lhe rendeu um salário, mas principalmente o privilégio de conhecer pessoas como Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Captain Beefheart e, obviamente, poder acompanhar de camarote o processo criativo de um gênio.
Pauline estea lançando agora um livro chamado “ Freak Out! – My Life with Frank Zappa” e concedeu uma entrevista à BBC.
Why do you think you got on so well?
His manager told me that it was because I wasn’t a groupie and Pamela Zarubica (Zappa’s friend) said it was because I was more intelligent than most of the other girls around him. And I was obviously quite attractive. I mean I wasn’t beautiful or anything, or pretty, but I was very attractive and I had a certain way with me. I’m sure he initially thought I was going to spend the night with him, but I wasn’t. And I’m sure that made him take notice.
Los Angeles must have been quite a shock to the system. How did you find it?
I wanted to go to university. I told Frank that in the beginning and he pooh-poohed it, saying education is a waste of time, teach yourself and all that business. And then when I got to Los Angeles I thought – this is better than university, this is real life.
I was an observer. I was totally outside of the scene and I was a bit snotty-nosed about it all, frankly. I thought they were all like a bunch of teenagers, even though some of them were nearly 30 years old. They scorned American education and scorned the government. Nothing was any good, parents were dreadful… I just didn’t have any time for it.
But as the time went on, a year and a half later, I gradually got drawn in to it. I became very hippified.
The atmosphere in Laurel Canyon changed in 1969. Why?
The Manson murders absolutely changed everything. It really was a very friendly place before that. There were no buses down Laurel Canyon, so to get to Hollywood you just stuck your thumb out and any car would stop and take you down. And you didn’t feel nervous. We had no locks on our doors. People wandered in and out of the log cabin and I didn’t take any notice of them because I was so besotted with Frank Zappa. Charles Manson may have come in – Frank would have been mad enough to have given him a record contract.
But as soon as the murders happened, every house became a fortress. Frank put a speakerphone outside and really fortified his place. Everybody did.
What impact did feminism have on you?
When women’s lib came out, it was absolutely stunning to me – I embraced it totally. I waded my way through Sexual Politics and thought it was fantastic. And I thought Frank would agree with me, because he was for the downtrodden and the disenfranchised and I thought he would see women in that light. And he didn’t. From that moment on I thought, “I know more about this than you do. You’re talking rubbish.” And it was the beginning of my moving away from him.
Pauline working as a secretary in London
What made you decide to write about your time with Frank?
I’ve always listened to radio plays and I wanted to write. A BBC producer said, “Write something that no-one else can write. That’s your best chance of appearing on the top of the pile.” And so I thought the only thing that no-one else could write is this story of me working for Frank Zappa.
I got the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and I wrote to every publisher that was suitable in there, about 50 or 60 letters. And about 12 of them wrote back and said “Yes, send a chapter”. So I knew I had a marketable product.
And then I sat outside in the beautiful weather in Singapore, where I was living, and just wrote for ten hours a day, practically. Did my back in, but that’s that. I really learned how to write while I was doing it.
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