Dunno if this has been discussed here, but a couple years ago, former Zappa bassist/clonemeister Arthur Barrow wrote his and published his memoirs. It's called Of Course I Said Yes (if you read the book, you'll understand very quickly why that's the title...think of it as sort of a refrain).
I'd like to say that I put off buying the book because I knew that I'd eventually get a chance to buy the book directly from Arthur himself, but the truth is I just procrastinated. Fortunately, Arthur came to town last night with a Zappa tribute called Furious Bongos (very good band, btw, if you get a chance to see them), and I was able to hand over my 15 bucks and get it autographed all within minutes of each other. Also got to talk Arthur a bit before and after the show.
He spends a fair amount of time talking about playing with Frank. There's lots of stories about how he got the gig with Frank, he talks about being on the road, dealing with the "Mean Girls" of the band, some craziness that happened here and there. He reveals the origins of several songs, also what exactly the "Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression" is and who came up with that title. He also talks about his job as "clonemeister" for several tours, meaning he led rehearsals when Frank wasn't around. He's got a great line about drilling the 1980 band (the first one that Steve Vai played in), and how he threatened to make a tape loop that of himself saying "Turn down, Steve!" that would play every five minutes, because Vai kept turning his amp up too loud.
But he also talks about working with other people. He talks about the bands he was in before he worked with Frank. He talks about his days in the 80's playing sessions as a keyboardist (he says he bought an expensive Roland Jupiter-8 in the early 80's, which quickly paid for itself as he got a lot of session work with it). He talks about working with Giorgio Moroder. Remember the band Berlin? Did you know that's Arthur playing keyboards on the three songs Moroder produced for them? Terri Nunn is essentially the only actual member of Berlin on any of those three songs, and on You Take My Breath Away, the entire song is her, Arthur, and a drum machine. He talks a bit about working with Robby Krieger and son.
I haven't actually finished the book, I've only read a bit of it, just sort of playing I Ching with it, and opening to random sections and reading stuff. But it seems like a very good book for anyone who likes hearing the kind of stuff he tells in the book. There's not much of the scandalous sleazy stuff in the book (though he does allude to the "something disgusting" that happened to Steve Vai, which Steve then "made the mistake of telling Frank about" which inspired...well, if you know Frank's 80's era music, you should know which song I'm talking aobut).
In short, without hesitation, I totally recommend this book to anyone who's into Zappa, or just wants to read about a journeyman musician and all the work he's done throughout the years.
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Originally Posted by GuitarGeek
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