Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa (Laurel Canyon 1968 - 1971)

This new, revised and updated edition of Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa by Pauline Butcher will be released in a slightly smaller paperback “B” format.

Pauline Butcher realised after she had written the first edition of Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa that she no longer needed to live in his shadow. This realisation, along with the success of the book, gave her new confidence. In the first edition, she upgraded all of the women in Frank Zappa’s life and downgraded herself. With this new confidence, she has revised her book so that the relationship between Frank and her is the central thread.

Living and working at Zappa’s log cabin for four years, Pauline spent her days and nights in the company of Hollywood royalty. From drinking sessions with Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull to visits from Eric Clapton and Captain Beefheart, Pauline brings to life the realities behind the perceived glamour of Hollywood, and paints a perceptive picture of the creative process of Frank Zappa’s writing and the backdrop that inspired it.

In a new chapter about the Charles Manson murders of Sharon Tate and her guests, which happened just a few miles away from the log cabin, her musings on how quickly ‘life could change from major to minor’ provide a fascinating insight into the experience of living in Hollywood with a musical legend at a time when it felt like no one could be trusted. With this background of chaos that brought an end to the optimism of the sixties, this book captures the intense experience of a young woman thrust into the madness, both within the log cabin and beyond.

Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa is a coming of age story in the 1960s with Women’s Liberation being the driving force to change. This new revised edition will contain a wealth of new material, including a dossier of what happened to the cast of characters who hung out at the log cabin and who drift through Pauline’s story, excerpts from the author’s private letters home about life in Hollywood, and five interviews which Pauline conducted with Frank Zappa, published here for the first time, on subjects as diverse as parenting, children, AIDS, composing and evangelism. All these come together to create a revelatory portrait of Frank Zappa and the strange and unique friendship that the author had with him.