Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] no one had played his records on the radio and yet over twenty years, he'd sold enough records to make him a rich man. Even John Lennon, when he visited Frank, had been deferential. 'I may be popular, but he is the real thing.'"

Yes, Frank Zappa was the real thing in music. He was also a man of many contradictions so it probably is not astonishing that while most of his life he wanted to make "serious" music he built most of his fame and made most of his money in the "unserious" rock genre. He was, or at least tried to be, a real artist, yet many people know him only for outrageous, shocking performances, associations with various "freaks", and occasionally puerile behavior and offensive sense of humor.

Pauline Butcher's FREAK OUT! My life with Frank Zappa (2011) is a very good read: unpretentious, not gossipy, and, in fact, quite serious. It begins in 1967 when Ms. Butcher, 21 years old at the time, was hired as a temp to type some lyrics for Frank Zappa when he was visiting London. Not only did he tremendously impress her when they met, but he liked her too. It is quite possible that he liked her exactly for what she says he did: she was a straight-laced, forthright, prim young woman: a marked contrast with people who usually surrounded him - his "entourage of freaks."

I do not like the misleading publisher's trick on the back cover: one sentence of the blurb is emphasized in big font:

"'Do you think if we f**ked, you could still work for me as my secretary?' - Frank Zappa"

thus implying that there is a lot about sex in the book. Blessedly that's not true! A reader who is looking for salacious details of freak orgies will be severely disappointed. Yes, there is a bit about Cynthia the Plaster Caster (Wikipedia has a nice article about her), but that's basically it.

Ms. Butcher worked as Frank Zappa's secretary from 1968 to 1972, and lived with Zappa family and his entourage in the famous Log Cabin in Hollywood Hills for most of that period. The reader gets a glance into the everyday life of the admittedly strange group of people occupying the residence, of which Mr. Zappa and Ms. Butcher seem to be the most "normal", whatever the word may mean.

This is really a good read - I am repeating myself - the writing is refreshingly amateurish (in a good way!) and the descriptions of events and characters quite believable, even such details as Ms. Butcher's tribulations with hearing the f-word and resisting its use herself. I have learned a lot of new things about Frank Zappa even though I have already read several books about him including a great biography that I reviewed here on Goodreads Zappa. A Biography (other titles of books on Zappa are included in that review). Ms. Butcher's great characterization of Frank Zappa is included below the rating

Three-and-a-half stars.

"He could delight in ribald tales of travels with the band, but complain with the coldest cynicism about their performance. He welcomed people into the house, and then groused when they hung around. He could be a sympathetic listener, or a mocking tease who ripped at your beliefs and enjoyed the flap. He collected people and then behaved like they were not around. He voiced libertarianism but ruled his band with an iron rod. He feted the disenfranchised and outcasts, yet coveted a capitalist's lifestyle for himself. He scorned the American people for their ignorance while criticising the establishment for treating them like children. He stood in judgement on almost anyone in the outside world - and yet I knew no other man more unassuming, humble or compassionate."

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