On the track Echo Pie from Meat Light—The Uncle Meat Project/Object Audio Documentary, Zappa talks to the members of the Mothers about the possibility of them touring without him; the band were complaining they weren’t making enough money, and Zappa says he was unable to tour at that point as he had too much work on. Jimmy Carl Black pooh-poohs this suggestion, arguing that the audience come to see him, not the Mothers.

Months later, in October 1969, Zappa formally disbanded the Mothers saying he wanted them “To be a frightening big band that could play anything better than anybody, but the only thing frightening about the band today is the wrong notes and disinterested performances.”

He would later backhandedly tell The Varsity magazine, “Jimmy Carl Black’s not the greatest drummer that ever happened, but he had a great spirit and he added a lot to the group. Don Preston used to make mistakes all the time in his parts, but he also has one of those personalities that was just so right for the band.”

Black recalled that in 1970, Herb Cohen got the ex-Mothers together and asked if they would like to do an album as The Grandmothers, with Tom Wilson producing. They agreed, but “After we did one recording session, Herb said ‘The title of the album is going to be ‘Frank Zappa Presents The Grandmothers’ and that’s when everybody said ‘No, it isn’t gonna be like that’. Because we didn’t want anything to do with Frank. And then the deal fell through. But that was the beginning of the Grandmothers.”

According to Jimmy, the original Grandmothers were him, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Art Tripp, Roy Estrada, Lowell George, Eliott Ingber and Motorhead.

In the early 80s, after Jimmy and Motorhead had recorded their parts for Zappa’s You Are What You Is album, Rhino Records released an anthology featuring previously unreleased recordings by various ex-members of the Mothers, with artwork by Cal Schenkel.

Don, Jimmy and Bunk then decided to resurrect the Grandmothers and put a touring band together with Tom Fowler on bass, Walt Fowler on trumpet and Tony Duran on guitar. Before a planned tour of Europe, they played half a dozen gigs in the US, including one at The Roxy where Motorhead joined them as a special guest.

In his memoir, Jimmy wrote, “Don had made this life-sized doll and put a drawing of Frank’s face on it and he used to have it propped up by his amp. It was just sitting staring out at the crowd. Motorhead grabbed the doll and started abusing it. He was rubbing it in his crutch and stuff like that.”

Don told me it was later used in a “skit where it looked like we were giving birth to this doll head.”

They curtailed these antics when Don got a call from Frank saying, “Get rid of the doll!’”

After the tour, Tony Duran left the band due to issues with Tom Fowler, who thought he was running the show. Duran was briefly replaced by Denny Walley, who would play a few US gigs before falling out with Don. Apparently Don’s wife Tina had let her car roll down a hill into Denny’s dad’s classic 1969 Nash Rambler, which hit a brick wall that collapsed on top of it. Don said he’d pay for the damage but when planned dates in Europe got postponed, he was unable to. Denny had to sell his Fender Strat to pay for the repairs.

In 1981, Panda Records released The Official Grandmothers Fan Club Talk album featuring Don, Jimmy, Bunk, Buzz Gardner, Ingber and Motorhead. It included a newsletter, a fan club membership card, an autographed picture and a Cal Schenkel art piece transfer.

When the Grandmothers’ European tour was rescheduled in 1982, Denny had been replaced by Mike Miller. By this time, Tom Fowler had also driven out Bunk, who told me “In my entire lifetime, I’ve never met a bigger asshole. He would call me up on the phone and say, ‘I have grave doubts about your ability to play this measure of music.’ Stuff like that. I said to Don, I will never ever play with somebody like that.”

With the success of the anthology album, Rhino released a further compilation called Looking Up Granny’s Dress in 1982. This featured the Grandmothers recorded live in Denmark in 1980, plus more rare tracks by former Mothers Ingber, Ray Collins, Motorhead and Buzz & Bunk, as well as a 1963 Pal Studio recording of Deserie that purported to feature Zappa on drums, but in fact Paul Buff was responsible for all of the instrumentation while Collins provided the vocals.

In 1984, Jimmy learnt that Zappa was planning on releasing all of the old Mothers albums in box sets, as The Old Masters. Jimmy discussed this with Don and Bunk, and recruited a lawyer to see if they could finally be paid some royalties. They spoke with former manager Cohen, who agreed to turn over all the relevant paperwork and let them know what had happened with their money. Apparently when Zappa had sued Warner Bros. in the 70s, there was $200,000 in artist royalties that was supposed to go to the band as part of the settlement. According to Bunk, Zappa instead paid this back to Warners in return for all of the original recordings.

The Grandmothers’ case eventually went to arbitration and a settlement was reached in November 1990.

Gail Zappa never forgot about this lawsuit. Or the doll.

In 1987, Jimmy formed the ‘Austin’ Grandmothers, featuring Ener Bladezipper on bass and, later, Roland St Germain on guitar, keys and vox. They would record Dreams On Long Play, an album of original material that featured two songs from Jimmy’s eventual indigenous American trilogy: Trail Of Tears and The Great White Buffalo. (The third song, Chief Old Fox would not be released until 2005 on the compilation Indian Rock Songs.) The album was released by Muffin Records in 1993, by which time Jimmy had moved to Italy and Don came out of ‘temporary retirement’ with Bunk to rejoin the Grandmothers, alongside Ener and Roland.

This incarnation would tour with the Muffin Men, but was short lived as Don and Roland did not get on. It was reported that Roland was fired via fax.

Jimmy had wanted either Jumpy or Roddie from the Muffin Men to replace Roland, but instead they went with Italian guitarist and Zappa lookalike, Sandro Oliva.

1994 saw the release on Munich Records BV of the mostly live album Who Could Imagine?, which featured excerpts from a phone call with Roy Estrada (seated on the crapper), one of Bunk’s monologues (Tenor Sax Is So Sexy), Don reciting Beefheart’s Neon Meat Dream Of An Octafish, Jimmy singing Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s Lonely, Lonely Nights, some Don and Oliva originals plus, of course, a smattering of old Mothers tunes.

When The Grandmothers returned to the UK to play St Helen’s Citadel, Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree and two nights at the Jazz Cafe in London, Jimmy recalled: “We were on stage in London. It was 21 December 1994 – Frank s birthday! We’d played the first part of the show. I went up to the dressing room and there was a girl there with a manila envelope. I thought she was a fan who wanted me to sign something. She handed it to me and I said, ‘Have you got a pen?’ She said, ‘You don’t need a pen for this!’ It was from Gail, suing us because some of the promoters had been billing us as the Grandmothers OF INVENTION. All our contracts read ‘The Grandmothers’, period. Nothing ‘...of Invention’ was ever there, it was the promoters did that. We had no control over what they did.”

The band were about to sign a deal with Polygram to release an album, but Gail also threatened to sue their agents (the Leighton-Pope Organisation) if they didn’t drop them, killing the deal.

Shortly thereafter, Don would temporarily retire again, briefly putting Sandro in the driving seat. The Eating The Astoria live album would ensue, recorded in London in March 1998.

After a lengthy tour of North America in 2000 – with Don and Sandro both vying to be the band’s musical director – The Grandmothers split in two. Sandro said the tour, “Had some of the most embarrassing playing/singing one could ever experience on stage.”

Don initially formed a short-lived US version of the Grandmothers featuring Billy Mundi, before settling on a line-up that included Bunk, Roy and Napoleon Murphy Brock; Jimmy attempted to form an ‘EU’ Grandmothers with the remaining band members plus Zappa’s sister Candy Zappa. In 2002, both bands planned to tour Europe which, according to Sandro, caused “a lot of confusion with promoters and venues that were already dealing with our tour.” So the EU version called it a day.

The Grandmothers ‘West’ (with Don, Bunk, Roy, Napoleon and special guest Bob Harris #2) headlined Zappanale in 2002; Black briefly guested with them (on Love Of My Life), but was incensed at being sidelined by Preston, with whom he never worked again.

The band then changed their name, with the management noting, “These are not the Grandmothers of old, who only played music FZ wrote between 1965 thru 1969, these are The Grande Mothers Re:Invented who perform music written between 1964 and 1983.”

The initial line-up was Don, Bunk, Roy and Napoleon, with Chris Garcia on drums and Ken Rosser on guitar. This iteration played a concert in Leipzig in March 2003 with the 11-piece Chamber Orchestra Of Invention. The concert was recorded by the Classic-Jazz division of Warner Bros. Records for an album called A Grandmothers Night At The Gewandhaus; it was comprised of mostly Zappa pieces. A ‘bonus track’ (Of No Consequence) was also recorded at the same concert and can be found on Don’s 2007 album, Works.

They returned to Zappanale the following year, though Bunk had to sit that one out for what became a ten year hiatus; his place at the festival was taken by percussionist Ed Mann.

In 2018 Bunk told me, “I’ve always been into taking care of myself. I have almost 40 years of getting up, going swimming and working out. And Don and I are vegetarian. So it was a shock to know that I had prostate cancer. I went to an acupuncturist, I went on a detox, and within about six months it was gone. And I haven’t had any problems since.”

Rosser would stay until 2006, and in 2008 became part of the band that played the official Joe’s Garage musical in LA.

I wonder if Gail knew of his then recent past?

Rosser’s place in the Grandmothers was taken by Miroslav Tadić, who in 2010 was replaced by Robbie ‘Seahag’ Mangano.

Tadić would return for a US tour in early 2012, the same year Roy went to jail and was replaced by Tom Fowler – and Don got relegated to ‘special musical guest’.

Mangano quickly returned for a spring tour of Europe in 2012, followed by summer dates in the US and winter dates back in Europe. Before the year was out, Mike Miller (who like Mangano, also played with Banned From Utopia) returned on guitar and Dave Johnson (who like Mangano, also played with Project Object) was on bass.

A live album from this turbulent year was issued on NDC Records, incongruously titled Happy Mothers Day. In the liner notes, Mangano and Fowler’s names had been changed to ‘Gahaes The Great’ and ‘Anon E. Mous’; echoes of Z’s Music For Pets, where Keneally and Beller were depicted as dogs ‘Bing Jang’ and ‘Arkansas’.

The line-up of Don, Napoleon, Garcia, Miller and Johnson carried on with European dates throughout 2013, though Max Kutner from the Magic Band depped for Miller for some US dates in the summer.

By 2014, Napoleon had gone (and so too the ‘Grande’ affectation) and the Grannies were back to Don and Bunk, with Kutner, the ever-faithful Garcia plus bassist Dave Parlato (of Wazoo and Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra fame). They toured extensively that year, including dates with The Magic Band in Australia (Kutner was guitarist for both bands).

Sadly, Parlato was struck down with pancreatitis ahead of a scheduled performance at Zappanale, where his place was taken by the Magic Band’s Eric Klerks. Happily, a concert prior to Dave’s early departure was captured for posterity on fillum by Pinguin Ing. Büro, titled Duke Of Prunes: Live at the Fabric – Hamburg, Germany. The line-up with Kutner and Klerks would finish the tour, recording a live album for Sireena Records at the Meisenfrei Bluesclub in Bremen.

In spring 2018, Don, Bunk and Garcia had Ed Mann as a special guest for the Grandmothers EU farewell tour. To coincide with the tour, Moms Records released an album called Free Energy, a mix of live and studio tracks written by Don, Ed, FZ and George Carlin.

Mann was scheduled to join the band again at Zappanale that year, but in May fell from a ramp and fractured his pelvis as he was about to take the stage with Club d’Elf at the Flyday Music Festival. On the last day of the festival, I went backstage and chanced upon Don & Bunk and Chris sitting with Ener, Sandro and Jimmy’s widow Moni. Why the heck I didn’t take a photo I’ll never know, but it was a bittersweet experience to see these lovely folk chatting about times past and people passed.

Of the original 1970s Grandmothers, only Don & Bunk – plus Art Tripp, who quit the music biz in 1978 – remain.

May these other Mothers rest in peace:

Lowell George (fl. 1945–1979)
Buzz Gardner (fl. 1930–2004)
Jimmy Carl Black (fl. 1938–2008)
Herb Cohen (fl. 1932–2010)
Tony Duran (fl. 1945−2011)
Motorhead (fl. 1942–2011)
Ray Collins (fl. 1936–2012)
Billy Mundi (fl. 1942–2014)
Roland St Germain (fl. 1953–2022)
Ed Mann (fl. 1955–2024)
Tom Fowler (fl. 1951–2024)
Mike Miller (fl. 1953–2025)
Elliot Ingber (fl. 1941–2025)
Roy Estrada (fl. 1943–2025)

The story of the Grandmothers would be incomplete without mentioning three ‘other people’: Andy Cahan, who produced the early Rhino and Panda albums; Billy James (fl. 1960-2025), who wrote the book Necessity Is… The Early Years Of Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention and had various Grannies guest on a number of his Ant-Bee albums; and Reinhard Preuss, the manager of Muffin Records who played a crucial role for the band in the early 1990s and has just overseen the release of The Weasels Sessions 93.

 

This is an edited version of an article that will probably appear in a future Frank Zappa FUQ book. The image used is a poster I nicked for a 1993 show that never was; the band hadn’t slept for 20 hours, but dropped by to tell waiting fans (ie. Fred Tomsett, Gorgo and me).