Frank Zappa's 'last word'

"I'm the front-of-house mixer," Gail Zappa says, settling into a soft chair near Travers, just to the right of an old console setup in what was most recently Frank's editing room in their Laurel Canyon home. Gail usually makes herself available only for the nuts-and-bolts sound bite related to a release, "but it's not often that I can get into the grommets and widgets and explain what's behind all of this."

Her position hasn't always made her popular -- she's butted heads at times with everyone from record execs and label lawyers to fan boards and tribute bands. "I can't go out and be the rebuttal witness every minute because I just end up looking like the screaming shrew that I'm getting the reputation for being."

But she has her reasons, and they're rooted in a promise: "My job is to make sure that everything is as clean as you can get it. . . . I don't want anybody standing between the audience and what Frank's intention as a composer was and still is. [W]hat I've discovered in the process . . . comes down to one simple thing. Because everybody wants to remake his image. And they can . . . Well, they can all pound salt!"

Fifteen years gone, and Frank Zappa still casts a long shadow. Gail, like Travers, often speaks of him in present tense. And though, on this late-summer afternoon, no one occupies Frank's old console chair, there are all sorts of winking reminders salted about everywhere. Gold records and old album covers. A "Nixon for Governor" poster hangs on a far door. Scores of "Zappa" license plates, gifts from fans from across the country, frame the old console, and photographs, tucked into unexpected places, have a fun-house effect: the eyes seem to follow you. It's not a spirit that hovers but an ethos; standards to be upheld. Gail Zappa is not custodian of a ghost but of a force that still has power to prod and provoke.

Keeping watch keeps her busy. There are the cover bands to police, and there is even the historical narrative of Frank's band The Mothers to keep close tabs on. It can be all over the map -- tribute bands asserting that they are "embodying the spirit of Frank Zappa," an old band member claiming collaborator status. "Do you remember 'Police Woman'? Pepper?" Gail Zappa asks. "That's me. The ultimate Sgt. Pepper."