“Earth to Moon”: Growing Up Zappa

Moon Unit Zappa, the eldest child of radical rocker Frank Zappa and wife Gail, has written a new memoir titled Earth to Moon, which reveals an explicitly non-traditional upbringing. While this may come as no real surprise, some of the details might. According to Moon, her father spent much of his time in the studio, on the road, or with other women, leaving the children at home with a very frustrated mother who made Moon the chief recipient of her ire.

Moon craved stability and structure but that was not to be with having a rock and roll dad and unhappy mom – her first bully. At age four, she tried running away to Hollywood to Schwab’s Drugstore in hopes of being discovered like Lana Turner. She was privy to her mother’s obsession with witchcraft, something Gail used against Frank’s groupies. Moon even tried casting a spell on a school bully when she was 11 but gave up dark magic after that classmate got injured from a fall off the monkey bars.

The writer, actress, and entrepreneur’s introduction of her book reads: “I partly wrote this memoir as a reclamation, to tell my version of what happened in my childhood and early life as a gift to myself, as a map that charts how and when I ended up as an adult. Growing up doesn’t end when you become an adult…Make peace with what hurts and head toward joy… Write your future with the ink of today.”

There were spurts of good times such as family visits to the zoo to see a cheetah Frank and Gail had adopted or like the time her dad showed her his prized records: Johnny “Guitar” Watson, the Goldberg Variations, and Erik Satie and then gifted her his giant collection of 45s. Moon writes about reaching out to her dad in hopes of him getting everything off his chest as he lay dying in bed from prostate cancer. Instead, he shuts her down with, “I am too sick to do this, Moon.” Gobsmacked by his reaction, she writes, “I just didn’t think that we wouldn’t resolve everything, because I had a very different relationship with my father [than with my mother]. He never raised his voice once. He was always very direct.”

The family faced more upheaval following the death of their patriarch, largely due to Gail’s machinations. She lied about there being no will, sold her husband’s music catalog twice, and went on a financially reckless spending spree. Before she died in 2015 from lung cancer, Gail did ask for forgiveness from her daughter but there would be one final twist of the knife. Gail had set up an unequal distribution of power and assets among her children, leading to estrangements and legal battles that exist to this day.

Moon Zappa confesses to admiring her mother’s strength, noting that “she never deserted her post as our leader in battle even if she helped perpetuate the war.” As for the title of her memoir Earth to Moon, it was a phrase Gail used to get Moon’s attention. She certainly got ours.

-Sharon Oliver

Fair use image of Earth to Moon