How did you get interested in Zappa and, ultimately, come to play with him?
A friend of mine had a copy of Hot Rats. At the time I was into Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, but I really liked Willie The Pimp; it had a great guitar sound and a great riff.
    Then, when I was about 13, I saw him on The Dick Cavett Show with the Turtles playing Who Are The Brain Police? with an extended guitar solo. I had started playing the guitar when I was 10 – you know, copying Grand Funk Railroad – and hearing this solo and seeing his fingers move, it got me.
    Then I heard the Fillmore East album, which again had great guitar, plus some funny stuff like Do You Like My New Car? By the time of Over-Nite Sensation, I was completely into it. I thought, 'This is it!' So I went to see him play at Brooklyn College and I couldn’t imagine anything else like it in rock; the way he used Ruth Underwood, George Duke, Chester Thompson, Tom Fowler, it was everything I ever wanted.
    Then I saw them again at the Forum in 1974 and I started taping the shows.
    By 1975 I was going to 14 shows per tour on the East Coast. I followed the band with Terry, Patrick and Eddie in 1976 and I became friendly with Davey Moire – we’re both from Brooklyn – just before the Halloween shows. One night I was watching over his cases and he came back and said something about, "...well, you know how Frank is." And I said, "No, I don’t. I’ve never met him." And Davey was really surprised and said, "Tomorrow night, come backstage." So I took my girlfriend, Chrissy.

Any connection with the one in Titties & Beer ?
A lot of people ask that. I don’t know. But there are lots of connections to me in Joe's Garage.
    Anyway, I met Frank and he said come up to the sound check and I kind of followed him around. I watched him on some other chat show and afterwards he told me he was putting another band together – the one with the horn section used on the Zappa In New York album. That’s when our friendship really started to develop. He said he liked my guitar playing, but all his other guitarists were singers, so I never thought I’d be in his band.

Before you played guitar with Frank, you told of your encounter with Ms. X on stage at a New York Halloween show in 1978 – is that a true story?
Yes. I told him it in Florida and he recorded it. He laughed all the way through. As the shows progressed, he said, "I really want you to do it with us." I changed the name for the show. I think he was testing me to see if I could handle it – and I handled it!
    Later on, in a dressing room, we picked up a couple of guitars and he showed me a riff, I played it and we carried on like that for about twenty minutes. A friend taped this and when Frank heard it he went, "Wow! Do you know this song?" and we continued to jam.
    The turning point came when he took me and my friend out to dinner on my birthday. We were in this little place in New York and William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg were at the next table. Frank introduced us, "This is Malcolm, he’s a taxi driver. And this is Warren; he’s a guitar player..." And I thought 'Fuuck!'
    Two weeks later, he asked me to play on his European tour.

In his memoir, By Way Of Canarsie, your younger brother Rob states that Ms. X was Ernest Aron/Liz Eden, who's desire for sex reassignment surgery was the reason behind the robbery portrayed in the film, Dog Day Afternoon.
No, Ms. X was International Chrysis [born Billy Schumacher, the Bronx-born drag queen and protégé of Salvador Dalí]. The only thing my youngest brother got from me was the fumes of my band smoking weed through the vents three floors up. He does not know me at all: I left when he was still a child. Anything he says happened is guesswork or extremely lazy research.
    Liz was a friend, though: I went to the premiere of Dog Day Afternoon with her and her boyfriend, Tony. That was the first time I was ever flash-photographed, à la rock stardom!

Okay. Fast forward to when you relocated back to the US after Duran Duran: do you regret any of the nude photos and videos?
My only regrets are real estate related.

Right! The Arf Society is hoping to acquire a boxed Rock Rod– the dildo moulded from your cock and balls – to exhibit at Zappanale in 2018. Any suggestions on where they might get one – used or unused?
Ha! I'll tell them we'll make a new one, film it (for a documentary) and call it... 'Grandpa Meat'.
    Just kidding, of course!