Pat Towne stages Frank Zappa's 'Joe's Garage'
BACK IN the '70s, Pat Towne was one of those boys who was out there listening -- listening for something out of the ordinary, something with substance. "I was the kind of kid who didn't dance in lock step to the disco beat, because it looked like everybody was marching in step and becoming mindless," Towne says.
As a prog-rock guy into Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes, Towne was fascinated by Frank Zappa's abstract expressionist musical canvas. But there was something else, an anti-conformist message, that he found intriguing: "His music attacked those kinds of people and that kind of thinking. It instantly appealed to me. As well as it being great music."
He'd first connected with Zappa's 1973 album "Over-Nite Sensation" in high school, but when a friend visited his dorm room with a copy of "Joe's Garage" a few years later, Towne was hooked. It was a concept album that took on sweeping themes -- religion, overzealous government, sex, consumer culture and was "full of all these funny snippets and side remarks. When I saw that the album said 'Act I,' that stayed with me. I had images in my head of what scenes would look like. It existed in my head as a pipe dream."
Towne finally is getting a chance to bring that dream to life on stage. This week, the Open Fist Theatre will present the world premiere of "Joe's Garage," Zappa's three-act rock opera, adapted by Towne (who is directing) and the show's producer, Michael Franco. It's been an obstacle course of sorts to say the least -- from gaining Gail Zappa's consent ("I did a PowerPoint presentation and acted out scenes in front of her!") -- to evoking just the right mood. "I told the design team, 'This is the palette, the album cover. Let this stimulate your conversation.' "
Chance put Towne in contact with the Zappas' daughter, Moon (the voice of "Valley Girl"), in 2005. She played a part in a play that Towne had directed, and he worked up the nerve to ask her about approaching her mother to stage the piece.
"Gail said he'd actually meant to have it performed," Towne says, but money and time were issues. "He could make a . . . lot more money doing rock 'n' roll."
For a piece conceived nearly 30 years ago, it retains a topical immediacy and shock value, producer Franco says. And what did Zappa see? "Through satire [he] showed people what they really were: You know people right now who are making love to machines, Internet porn? We know people like this. That's something that Frank Zappa wrote about in 1979.
