Patrice JoAnne Zappa was born eleven years after her brother Frank, on 28th March 1951.

In 2003, she published My Brother Was A Mother – A Zappa Family Album, which focuses on the family’s early years. The book has since been reissued twice, with additional material including fan recollections of meeting Frank.

Patrice (better known as Candy) has sung with a number of bands in the US and Europe, including the Ed Palermo Big Band and the Muffin Men. She appears on a number of tracks on Nigey Lennon’s Reinventing The Wheel album (including on a duet with Jimmy Carl Black on the expanded version – Reinventing The Wheel Reinvented – issued in 2013).

She performed at Zappanale in 2002 with the Lennon/Tabacco/Zappa band, returned in 2016 as a special guest of the Muffin Men and the Zappa Early Renaissance Orchestra, and again in 2019 when she sang with Treacherous Cretins and the Ed Palermo Big Band. In 2014, she wrote a foreword for the book chronicling the first 25 years of the festival, called We Are The Other People.

In 2005, she provided lead vocals on a number of tracks on the album Neonfire by Neonfire.

The album also featured American R&B singer and songwriter Nolan Porter, who Candy married in 2007. (Porter’s 1970 debut album No Apologies featured former Mothers Jimmy Carl Black, Roy Estrada and Lowell George. The follow-up, Nolan (1973), spawned the UK northern soul hit If I Could Only Be Sure featuring Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson.

Very sadly, Nolan passed away in February 2021. Later that same year, Candy published his biography, titled If I Could Only Be Sure: The Life Of Nolan Porter.

I was introduced to Candy by the late Nigey Lennon, and conducted an interview with her in 2001 (this can be found in my book Frank Talk: The Inside Stories Of Zappa’s Other People). I first met her at Zappanale in 2002, where the festival poster featured a drawing of Frank on the toilet.

Next year, Candy is scheduled to appear in the movie Zappa And Me about photographer Robert Davidson, who took the photo of her brother on which the Zappanale image was based.

We have remained in touch since 2001 and she very kindly wrote the foreword for my book Zappa The Hard Way in 2010. I thought it was about time I interviewed her again!

 

At Zappanale in 2002, you said if you’d been told as a little girl that you’d travel to Germany and see pictures of your brother with his trousers around his knees everywhere, you wouldn’t have believed it. When were you first aware of the infamous Zappa Krappa photos?
I don’t remember the exact date but it was sometime in the late 70’s. I was amazed that he looked so composed, I would have surely asked the man to leave!

What did your mother think about it?
I have no idea if she even knew the picture existed.

As you know, a documentary about the photographer is currently in production, which you will be taking part in. Any idea why Alex Winter didn’t approach you to appear in his Zappa movie?
I didn’t have any idea of the movie even being made until it came out. I was amazed that there were home movies of my parents’ wedding. It would have been nice to be included in the making of it.

Have you had any contact with Frank’s children since Gail passed?
Nolan and I went to Dweezil’s concert, I forget the year, maybe 10 years ago; and in 2018, Ahmet invited Nolan and myself to the Whiskey A Go-Go in Hollywood to hear The Zappa Band (Bobby Martin, Ray White, Chad Wackerman, Scott Thunes and a couple other players), and Diva was also there.

Did you learn anything new from your brother’s Frankie & Bobby books?
Yes, I didn’t know about Bob’s encounter with his shop teacher and how Frank ‘convinced’ him to never do that again!

Sadly, all of your brothers are now gone. What more can you tell me about Bob and Carl?
Carl was my playmate in our younger years. He lived with my parents until they both passed and then came to stay with me until he moved to Arizona to live with his friend, Jerry Collins. Then he moved to Michigan, after Jerry passed, and lived with Jerry’s son. Carl lived there until his passing in 2020. Bob, being much older and married, I didn’t get to hang out with him as he lived in New Jersey with his wife, until her passing in 2015. He then moved to New York, Manhattan, and married his long time sweetheart Diane. He passed in 2018.

And your half-sister Ann?
Ann was a wonderful lady. My father was married before he married my mother, to Nell Cheek and they had Ann. She was born in 1931. I first met her when I was six and our family lived in Lancaster, CA. She was a teacher and had a son and daughter (my nephew and niece) even though we’re only a few years apart in age! She had a delightful wit and was a generous, caring soul. Ann lived in North Carolina and wrote a couple of books.

Even after her passing, Nigey Lennon continues to be questioned and mocked online over her relationship with Frank. In your introduction to her book, you wrote, “Nigey is one of the few people that knew Frank and was close enough to know him well and could tell me about my own brother.” Has your view of her changed at all?
Not really.

How did you come to sing Los Lobos’ Kiko And The Lavender Moon on the Ed Palermo Big Band’s One Child Left Behind album?
Ed Palermo contacted me, asked me to sing that song and, I think, another song. My publisher, Greg Russo, also wrote songs for his CD Neonfire and asked Nolan and I to sing them - he even came out to LA to hear us record them.

But were you aware of the Los Lobos song before Ed asked you to record it?
No, I’d never heard it. But I learned it and grew to love it!

In your book, If I Could Only Be Sure: The Life Of Nolan Porter, you mention that days after Nolan passed a friend offered you use of his studio to record anything you wanted. Did you take him up on that offer? Is there a Candy Zappa solo album in the offing?
I tried to do that twice, but each attempt failed. I have to find a way to get to my friend Paul’s house to record. A lawyer friend of mine, Larry Rogak, put several of my songs that I recorded and a couple that I wrote – Amazed and Could He Be The Loving Kind – and put them together on a CD, that can be found on YouTube, called To Be Perfectly Frank.

Although Nolan worked with Jimmy Carl Black, Roy Estrada, Lowell George, Paul Humphrey, Jim Gordon and Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, plus he was related to Napoleon Murphy Brock (Nolan’s mother was briefly married to Napi’s uncle), did he know Frank at all?
Nolan never met Frank in person, but his manager took him up to Frank’s house one time. Frank was on tour and wasn’t home.

Do you still have Frank’s Abstract Self-Portrait?
No, I don’t. [1]

Obviously when Frank was starting out, he was trying his hand at all sorts: painting, puppetry and of course music. Were you aware of his brief tenure as a beat poet, writing under the pseudonym Vincent Beldon
No, I never heard of that.

Yes, he had something published by the Three Penny Press in 1959 called L.A. Night Piece. I'll send you an article I wrote about it. [2]
   Okay, final question: do you remember your last conversation with Frank?
I called Frank in May of 1992 and was lucky to talk to him. I asked him how he was doing and he said, “Well Candy, I have my good days and my bad days.... this is my bad day.” I said, “Don’t worry, Frank, heaven doesn’t want you and hell’s afraid you’ll take over!” He laughed at that – weakly, but he laughed. Then I told him I loved him, he said he loved me too and then I said that I wanted to come see him. He said, “Not now, we’re still on the same planet”, but I thought, for how long? That was my last conversation with Frank.

Thanks for that, Candy. I look forward to seeing you again - on the red carpet at the premiere of Zappa And Me!

 

Interview completed on Sunday 5th July 2026. Photo of Candy with brother Bob taken by the Idiot Bastard at Zappanale in 2002.

[1] This original oil on burlap painting by FZ was sold via Julien’s Auctions in May 2015. Frank gifted it to Candy “many decades ago, so I imagine it was painted when he was in his late teens or early twenties – possibly while Frank lived in Ontario with his first wife Kay.”
[2] This can be found in my book, Frank Zappa FUQ.