Moon Zappa's Particular Life is Universally Relevant

A Review of "Earth to Moon: A Memoir" by Moon Unit Zappa

Moon Unit Zappa’s life was remarkable long before she became an actress and writer. The eldest daughter of composer/guitarist/performer Frank Zappa was destined to have an unusual life no matter her name, and anyone named Moon Unit was predetermined to have incomparable experiences, regardless of her parentage.

Zappa has published her second book and first work of nonfiction. Earth to Moon (Dey St.) is brimming with details, many previously little known and unknown anecdotes of its author’s unusual life and incomparable experiences, highlighting the predictable and unpredictable episodes of life with and without the maverick genius of a father with a penchant for unusual names. (You think his kids have unusual names? Wait until you learn what he named his pets.) Simultaneously, Moon (no hyphen—Unit is her middle name) relates the universal aspects of her life as she struggles to understand family dynamics that are not always so different from other families and forges her own steely, determined life independent of her formidable family. The particulars and universals of Moon Zappa’s story ensure it is essential to any fan of hers or her father’s and of interest to many who are not particularly interested in either of them (yet).

The eldest of four, Moon’s middle name signified that the Zappas had become a family unit (it has nothing to with a lunar module). Her status as the eldest thrust her into enormous responsibility as her mother enlisted her to help raise her younger siblings while her father was either on tour, working at night and sleeping during the day, or cavorting with mistresses and groupies. Often, when they did see their father, he was fighting with their mother (and the couple may or may not have been wearing anything). Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva referred to their parents as Frank and Gail. Consonant with the casual nudity, the Zappas sometimes acted as if their children were more like friends than their kids. While Gail chose her life as the wife of a philandering rock star, her children did not choose a household with their mother and their father’s mistress together, and this Zappa fan was disappointed that Zappa, despite his brilliance, apparently didn’t think deeply about the potential damage his lifestyle inflicted on his children as well as his wife.

With the help of journal entries and her keen memory, Moon recounts slices of her life with almost literally incredible detail and integrates them all into a structured book bifurcated by the death of her father (she calls him her hero) and the deaths of her “chosen parents” which occurred in rapid succession. (Her chosen parents were a therapist and an acting teacher. She refers to them as June and Roy, respectively, but notes in her introduction that some names have been changed.) Part I is titled “Earth”. In this part, her mother, who often comes across as discouraging and distant, frequently says, “Earth to Moon, the world doesn’t revolve around you.”(Decades later, Moon would matter-of-factly relate anecdotes of her childhood during interviews. Off the record, her interlocutors would tell her she was a victim of child abuse.)  In Part I, Moon, who is actually empathic and agreeable despite her mother’s comments, devotes herself to her family and the rest of the Earth around her, learning about the world and growing into it. In Part II, “Moon”, she relates finding herself; becoming independent; succeeding as a writer, actress, and mother; and getting married to and divorced from Matchbox Twenty drummer Paul Doucette. The tribulations of this part are almost as intense and acute as the losses in the first part. She weathers her daughter Mathilda’s serious illness, loses Gail, and becomes estranged from all of her siblings after learning, after Gail’s death, that she allocated less of an inheritance to Dweezil and her than to Diva and Ahmet.

Two of the most fascinating messages Moon ever sent are reproduced verbatim. One is the note she slipped under her father’s home studio door that led to their collaboration on “Valley Girl”, his only US Top 40 hit. (Unusually, she addressed him as “Daddy”, not Frank—Gail didn’t get a “Mom” until a proud moment at the end of her life.) According to Moon, her mother told her the single was only successful because of Frank, not her, and her mother would later tell her all her successes were due to her being Frank’s daughter. The second note is the short, sweet olive branch of a group text message she sent her three estranged siblings. (Sadly, as of last report, Dweezil still hadn’t responded.)

The family stories are fascinating. Moon remembers when her siblings and she would look at souvenir keychains with personalized license plates, lamenting at the absence of Moons, Dweezils, and Ahmets and trying to decide which of the common names was the ugliest. (One of their choices was Bruce.) Later, she instructs everyone in her family to notify her when her crush Jon Bon Jovi is on MTV. When Dweezil helps her meet him, she is instantly uninterested when she learns his Zodiac sign (in one of the more naive moments of the book). The stories of the people in Moon’s life who are not family are equally noteworthy. The people are numerous and some of the better known include actress and friend Justine Bateman, actor Erik Estrada (a stranger who coerced her into her first kiss), an unnamed heavy metal drummer with whom she had her first sexual experience, and boyfriend “Woody” (undoubtedly Woody Harrelson). As the book progresses, she recounts every experience from the mindset of the person she was at the time, which contributes to the book’s storytelling arc of a girl’s coming of age into a woman.

Fans of Frank may also learn new details. I didn’t know his tune “T’Mershi Duween” was named after Moon’s imaginary camel friend. I also didn’t know that the title of the piece “RDNZL” (pronounced “redunzel”) was something he called Gail and is a portmanteau of redundant and Rapunzel.

The book has a few shortcomings. Moon’s life after her father’s death is given short shrift. Perhaps there were valid aesthetic or other reasons for this, but the paucity of detail of Moon’s life after her father’s death implicitly reinforces the Zappa family ethos, emphasized throughout the book, that Moon’s values were subordinated to her father’s and of less importance than her father’s. (E.g., she dedicates Earth to Moon: “For Jett, for my father, and for me”. There is one reference to Jett in the acknowledgements. A reader has no way of knowing who Jett is as there are no references to this person, whom she likely met after Frank’s death, in the rest of the book.) Also, at least one of Moon’s memories are contradicted by the historical record. Moon recalls performing “Valley Girl” live once (and only once). Fans hoping for a rare live performance of “Valley Girl” needn’t look for it. Her father’s live performances are well documented. It’s hardly surprising that the iconoclastic Frank Zappa never performed his one Top 40 hit live. Moon is probably remembering her performance of a “Valley Girl”-esque monologue in the middle of a live performance of her father’s “King Kong” in Munich on June 26, 1982, the only time anything close to a live performance of “Valley Girl” happened. This may come across as pedantic nitpicking, but Moon remembered it as a one-off performance of “Valley Girl”, and she likely wouldn’t want to mislead casual Frank Zappa fans searching in vain for a rare performance on YouTube that never happened.

Earth to Moon’s shortcomings are minor.  Earth to Moon’s values are numerous and luminous. Its author’s warmth and benevolence are evident on every page.

Through every high, low, and midpoint, Earth to Moon is a riveting, compelling, almost addictive account of a particular life in all its universal familiarity and appeal.