Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.BZ

[gentle acoustic guitar music]

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

- Got that down. - Mm-hm.

["Sleep Dirt" by Frank Zappa]

[upbeat rock music]

["Joe's Garage" by Frank Zappa]

♪ Wasn't very large

♪ It was just enough room to cram the drums

♪ In a corner over by the Dodge

♪ It was a '54 with a bashed up door

♪ And a cheesy little amp

♪ With a sign on the front that said Fender champ

♪ And a second-hand guitar

♪ It was a Stratocaster with a whammy bar

♪ We could jam in Joe's garage

♪ His mama was screamin'

♪ His dad was mad

♪ We was playin' the same old song

♪ In the afternoon

♪ And sometimes we would play it all night long

♪ It was all we knew and easy, too

♪ So we wouldn't get it wrong

♪ Even if you played it on a saxophone

♪ We thought we was pretty good

- The memory of Frank is so clear in my mind.

That's why I say--

- Every time I read the news or watching the news,

I'm his friend, because, you know?

But, that's the way life is, and I smile, my brother.

I met Frank in 1972.

I was a young kid in high school.

And my schoolmates, you know, we were spending our summer

driving around Europe.

We ended up in Paris.

So my friend called his brothers in Rome.

And he asked us, he said, "Where you guys?

"Who you are?

"Frank Zappa Play Rome tomorrow night."

So we got a shot at seeing Frank Zappa in Italy.

["Florentine Pogen" by Frank Zappa]

In less than a day, we drove all the way

from Paris down to Rome.

We drove all day and all night and we arrive at the gig.

So we saw the show, we loved it.

At the end of the show, we went to the backstage.

At that time you could do that.

[crowd cheering]

There was no security and no nothing.

It was very simple.

And so we were there like regular fans, you know,

outside the door of the dressing room,

waiting for Frank to come out.

And Frank went out, he was really polite.

And that's the way the friendship

between me and Frank started.

He invited me over to the house, and I was so shy.

- Massimo is not an Italian language instructor.

Massimo is, tell them.

- A live publisher.

- When he came to visit us,

I think the deal was cemented because if your

kids don't run away screaming and your cat doesn't run away

and your dog doesn't growl or attempt to bite them,

then they kind of already passed the test.

- Mingas aren't dirty, unless you don't wash the minga.

But if you ever washed your minga--

- He brought a special sort of amusement

along with his friendship for Frank.

I mean, Frank was amused.

- This is my last single.

That fucking single, that Cuban word.

I was there so many times.

I stayed with the kids, you know.

Real kids, small kids,

full of energy, did a lot of things.

- My memories of Massimo are of him visiting the house,

spending time with my father in the basement.

He made my father laugh.

I remember him as an avid nosepicker, of course.

♪ Are we moving too slow

- To me, as a kid, he was like my dad's gross friend.

But they were like two Italians on a stoop,

like those guys together.

They turned into like a comedy duo.

And again, I just thought I feel like Massimo

is leading my father into trouble.

He is a troublemaking friend.

That was my sense of him as a teenager. [laughs]

- Hey man.

♪ When it's froze

♪ And it's hard if it hits on your nose

- And I had a chance to see the man working,

the genius working in his own place.

He was a workaholic, he was working hard,

very hard, you know.

He was able to stay home for hours, for days, weeks.

["Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" by Frank Zappa]

♪ Strictly commercial

♪ Have the unmitigated audacity

♪ To jump up from behind my igloo

♪ Peek-a-boo

- When my father was home, he would sleep during the day

and work at night.

So many times it was just putting food trays

on the dumbbell, lowering the food down

to the dungeon, basement where he was working,

and then hearing the music throughout the house.

["Father O'Blivion" by Frank Zappa]

♪ Dominus vobiscum

♪ Et cum spiritu tuo

♪ Won't you eat my sleazy pancakes

♪ Just for saintly Alphonzo

♪ They're so light and fluffy white

♪ We'll raise a fortune by tonight

♪ They're so light and fluffy white

♪ We'll raise a fortune by tonight

♪ They're so light and fluffy brown

♪ They're the finest in the town

♪ They're so light and fluffy brown

♪ They're the finest in the town

- When we would be together at home with him,

in the rare moments when he would come upstairs,

it was like the sun coming out.

- He was one of those people,

you meet a few in your life if you're lucky,

where when they're looking at you,

there's nothing else in the universe.

You feel like, wow, I'm alone here, except for this person

who's looking at me and paying attention to just me.

And Frank was like that.

You would have 100% of his focus.

If you were a munchkin and you were in need,

he was right there for you.

So that's the luxury of being a dad who's out and about.

- [Frank] Why look at me, I'm a family guy.

- [Narrator] When he's not on the road,

Frank Zappa is very close to his wife Gail,

his son Dweezil, and the rest of the four little Zappas.

- Didn't think any of them wanna make music

like I make music,

but Dweezil is a guitar player,

very excellent guitar player,

even though he's only 12 years old.

[mellow electric guitar]

- When I got to spend time with my father,

I didn't feel like the time we spent together

was a distraction from his work.

And a lot of the things that we did

generally were about thinking and

having fun with creative thought processes,

whether it was games with words,

or when I started to get really involved in music,

being able to discuss music and recording,

and the science of sound, and all kinds of things

that were just fascinating subjects,

that I'm still interested in today.

- Well, right now we're in the Dublin

shooting another television special.

- So in 1982, I was 14.

And I was frustrated because I had a father who toured

nine months out of the year.

He was gone so very much and so I was really missing

having a dad around.

And so I had written a note and slid it

under the studio door basically saying,

hey I've got an idea.

Maybe we should record something together.

That we could get to spend some time together.

And so he woke me up one night, he was like okay.

And he brought me down to the studio and he said,

"Do that funny voice you do at the dinner table."

Now, enough is enough, okay,

I've like had it up to here, okay.

So like barf out, gag me with a spoon,

get the picture?

♪ Valley girl, she's a valley girl

♪ Valley girl, she's a valley girl

♪ Okay fine, for sure, for sure

♪ She's a valley girl

♪ In a clothing store

♪ Okay fine, for sure, for sure, she's a

♪ Like oh my God

♪ Valley girl

♪ Like totally

♪ Valley girl

♪ Encino's like so bitchin'

♪ Valley girl

♪ There's like the Galleria

♪ Valley girl

- Recording "Valley Girl" and then the subsequent success

of that song I think was very strange for me,

and I think also for my father,

because all of a sudden he had an AM hit.

And this is not representative

of the total body of his work.

- Well, what's to take seriously?

Because you know that everything that goes on the radio

is destined to go off the radio.

So it goes on, it goes off, big crazy deal.

- And then of course, we had to do many press things

together, so I was excited because I got to travel

with my father and have some photo shoots.

He hated having his photo taken.

And then he left to go on tour.

[upbeat classical music]

- One day Frank called me and he told me,

he said, "They offered me a tour in Italy."

And I say, "Wonderful, it's a great thing."

- In 1982, Frank went on an international tour.

It was a new band, new drummer and a new bass player,

so completely new rhythm section.

They rehearsed so much material.

So it was one of those supergroups of Frank's,

where it was just like they were so mighty

and so strong in that area.

And they spent the better half of 1981

touring in the States.

So '82, starting in May, was the international tour.

The Italian visit was the last section of that tour.

- And so they arrive from somewhere in New York to Turin.

Once we were there, at the airport, there was a bus

for the crew, for the band.

And there was no car for Frank.

So he jumped in my car, you know, him and John Smothers,

and that was it.

And then the tour started.

And for the entire tour,

Frank and John was always on my car.

[upbeat electric classical music]

- We play Turin, Milan, Genoa.

We played Pistoia and at the stadium at Pistoia,

we arrived and the guard general,

the stadium didn't know there was a concert tonight,

and he didn't let the crew walk and drive in.

And then we played in Rome, then we played Naples.

And so it was a real adventure.

- It was so nice to be in Italy,

because I grew up Italian-American,

and finally I was there.

And we went to so many places, you know, with two weeks.

And the audiences were huge, really huge.

Tens of thousands of people, much bigger than most places.

And for me, the Italian tour with Frank

is one of the highlights in my career,

because it was the first time in Italy.

[upbeat electric classical music]

- The day after Rome was the same days

where the Italian soccer time won the World Championship.

And so it was really strange atmosphere, really electric.

And Frank loved it because all the noise

and he taped it on his recording machine.

- So Saturday he say this is a great adventure,

and I wanna make an album from this tour.

So he was asking me about if I knew some Italian artist

to do the cover, because he wanted to put

all experience that he had.

- He loved Ranxerox, the character Ranxerox.

Actually Frank told to Nino that he believed

that the power of this drawing was comparable

to Michelangelo drawing.

- And the last show was in Palermo,

you know, the infamous concert in Palermo.

- Hi Tom, welcome to Palermo.

[speaking in a foreign language]

- Why don't you come over and film my discussion

with the taxi driver.

I think this is going to be very eventful.

- All right, this is witness, I'm paying the taxi driver

and Larry has to give me the money, okay.

This is on film.

["Son of Mr. Green Jeans" by Frank Zappa]

- So we ended up in Palermo the last gig of the tour.

And I had this idea of giving Frank a surprise.

And I say, "Frank, what are you doing there?

"Come with me, I drive you around the town,

"and you see Palermo.

"Actually, that's where you come from,

"from Sicily, you're Sicilan."

["Twenty Small Cigars" by Frank Zappa]

So he agree and I immediately left the town,

took him highway.

So Frank's looking around and say, "Where we going?"

I say, "Actually, we're going to Partinico,

"and I wanted to show you the town of your father."

- So we're going to, we're doing the same trip

that we did with Frank.

- Now how did you get Frank to get into the car?

- Yeah, that is a good question.

- Well, there was, it was my charm.

- Yeah, your charm, you got him in there?

- Because I had the idea, I say,

"You wanna see the prison?"

And Frank say, "What are you talking about?"

I say, "Well, you'll love this, I believe you'll love this.

"The main prison of Palermo, the famous Ucciardone.

"The prison where they locked Eldar Mafioso,"

and blah blah blah.

And Frank suddenly say, "Okay, let's go."

And he was in the car and he say,

"I can't believe it." - Because normally Frank

didn't wanna to go too many places when he was on tour.

- Yeah right, absolutely. - Pretty much.

- Stay at the hotel, relax. - I can't believe he was

by the pool. - Yeah, that's kind of rare

for him to do, anyway.

- That's why I told you, he was at the pool with the band.

And also, - The south of Italy

was the end of the adventure, is very nice.

in Italy, you know?

- And it was also unusual for a rock band to come and play

in Sicily, right, I mean at that time,

you didn't have things like Frank Zappa playing in.

- Not only, on the 14 of July,

it's the anniversary of the saint of the city,

the Santa Rosalia.

[rhythmic military drumming]

- We were, without knowing, in the middle

of one of the worst Mafia battle.

They were killing each other.

[intense horn music]

- Yeah, if you use a computer and you Google Partinico,

criminals come up, and then a picture of Frank as a baby.

- [laughs] Really?

["Chunga's Revenge" by Frank Zappa]

- Did he ever talk to you about his experience, Frank?

- You know, he never told me the story,

but I had heard, you know, the little bits of legend.

- I can't remember how Frank decided

to spend his time in Sicily.

But Sicily, of course, has special meaning,

because his father is from there.

And it's just a part of his cultural

heritage, and I don't mean in the sense that, you know,

it's in his genes.

I mean in the sense that

the way the world was explained to him

was through the eyes of some Sicilian people.

At least at some point.

It wasn't the only influence,

but certainly it was part of it.

["Sofa No. 1" by Frank Zappa]

- Here we are.

[speaking in a foreign language] Partinico.

During the Italian tour, it was the only time that Frank

told me a lot about his childhood.

- I remember my father talking about his father coming over

from Italy and having a sense that there was a very big gap

between how my grandfather was raised

and how my father was so different than his father.

And just how the changes of exposure

to another culture continued to

morph and inform you of who you are.

But again, that sense that that was our bloodline,

and that we were Italian.

I mean, we've been claimed by many cultures,

but I definitely self-identify as a Sicilian.

Not just Italian, but Sicilian.

- Most people, when they examine where they came from

or their relatives, like okay, you're Sicilian-American.

What is that about your grandfather, why is he like that,

and how do I fit in somehow?

That's not the kind of a question that Frank Zappa

would ever ask himself.

That's not interesting to him.

What is interesting to him is

how you come by an education by virtue of contrast material.

["Sofa No. 1" by Frank Zappa]

- So here we are.

I mean, I drove your father and John here.

I think we probably, if I remember well,

we parked over there and went out.

Your father was looking around in sunglasses,

very surprised, just like you are now,

you know, looking around.

- Just the way Massimo tells the story is so funny, anyway.

So for us to experience it and know that they went

into this place and probably seemed like complete,

you know, aliens from another planet to the people

in town at that time.

- Nobody was here, nobody.

And Frank look around and,

no, John Smothers look up and say, "It's a ghost town."

I tell us, "Don't worry everybody's behind the shades,

"watching us." - All these shutters.

- Yeah right.

They still shut down, you see?

But there are people behind there watching us.

And then we moved to the bar down there.

It was the only bar.

Didn't look like this.

- I know it was probably different when my dad visited,

but it was just great to see that here's this town,

still with its own personality in a modern time,

but it's almost a town where time stood still

for Partinico, you know.

I liked that people were coming to the fountain

with their plastic jugs to fill their water.

That, to me, was remarkable that that's happening now.

- Your father was here, we took a coffee here.

And there was a phone booth here.

I believe there was a phone booth there.

And we checked the phone book.

- Looking for Zappa.

- Looking for Zappa.

I was really on the name, you know,

trying to find some relatives of him,

but he didn't know anybody.

So we saw the town.

And Frank make a question.

"I would like to know how in the beginning of the century,

"my father was able to leave from here and hit New York."

[gentle instrumental music]

- There was this ceremony that the town set up

in the mayor's office.

And we weren't really sure what was going to happen

when we went there.

We told that there was a bit of a surprise.

Here's the mayor, who's dressed

in like a very slick black suit,

kind of shiny, almost Miami Vice.

- Thank you so much.

- Down this way?

So this is the street.

This was, number 13?

Go check on that.

Can't really, no doorknob.

Hello?

- It's such a small space.

It's the size of a shoe, like the shoe box,

like so small of a space that they left it.

It's incredible.

I don't even have words to explain what,

what seeing that was for me.

- [Diva] There's a water bottle in there.

- There's a water bottle in there.

- [Diva] And what looks like a nitrogen like...

[woman speaking in a foreign language]

- A butane tank or something?

- [Diva] But it's like, it looks like a--

- Is there a kitchen?

- [Diva] But it's not, no.

- You don't see a kitchen?

- [Diva] Well, now, no.

- To see this place, see that they walked out of this door

and got on a boat to go to America,

it's a crazy journey.

I thought about could I right now leave my whole life

and go to some other place with nothing

and rebuild a life with having to learn a new language,

and maybe not be able to use the skill you already know.

Could I do it, I don't know.

I mean, that's a heroic effort for anyone to do.

But now you reverse time and you think about it

in terms of the uncertainty of travel,

how did anybody do it?

["Peaches en Regalia" by Frank Zappa]

- So, on the way back from Partinico,

we went straight to the Favorita, to the city.

There was no organization.

There was no security waiting for artists and everything.

So we have to walk with the car inside the Favorita.

- [Man] How do I get, knock right here.

["Peaches en Regalia" by Frank Zappa]

- That's old. - Aw man, I wish I could

have seen it.

- Yeah, but I'll tell you one thing was really amazing.

We stopped to get a cup of coffee

at this place called the Tropical Bar.

Desolation, right?

They've got a room with video games.

I mean, like five of these things all going full blast.

The town doesn't have enough water.

The streets are all rocks.

This is the city where the guy, the Mafia boss of New York,

is from there. - Originally?

- Maybe he still lives there and runs the world

from this place.

And when you see it, if you ever see it,

you cannot imagine how anybody could even get out of there.

It's just total trash and rubbish.

- [Man] Are there any traces of your family still there?

- No, we looked in the phone book, there's nothing.

- [Man] Of course, there might not be anything.

- Yeah, maybe they have an unlisted number.

- Play in a dumpster.

- Oh, it was a dumpster.

The streets were like, no pavement.

- Fourth world. - Yeah, fourth world.

- Fifth world. - Last world.

- Eh, they're all having a good time.

Okay, let's do soundcheck.

Is Vince ready?

- Yeah [mumbles].

- The footage reveals a lot of the setup.

So you get a general vibe about how everybody was feeling

at that time.

It was the last show of the tour.

It was a nice sunny day, the weather was good.

It was an exciting feeling around there.

The band was onstage and they were playing,

and everyone's kind of in a good moods.

And then they start playing in the sound check,

and that all goes well.

And the prospect of having Massimo come on stage that night

and play was a biggie and that was fun.

- Maybe Frank's, maybe Frank's wants you camera me

about I don't know exactly what.

Maybe he wants some better Italian expression to tell.

I don't know. - Oh yeah, yeah, we'll do it

before the show. - Yeah.

[upbeat rock music]

- The Italian language is famous for bad words.

He was fascinated by Italian bad words.

He wanted to know all of the bad words.

So when we were going to Palermo he asked me,

"So what are the bad words of Palermo?"

And I told him that the king of the bad words,

of Palermo, of course, minchia.

And he laughed and he loved the way the words sounds,

and he was repeating himself.

So he had the idea, immediately he called me up and say,

"Now that we're doing the sound check,

"can you write some lyrics with the minchia word

"on the songs that we use, on the music that we use

"for the soundcheck for the warmup, to warm up the band?"

That's the way that Tengo na Minchia Tanta was born.

["Tengo na Minchia Tanta" by Frank Zappa]

- The soundcheck with Frank was always interesting,

because he's always doing something, writing something,

recording something.

- That's the other reason this also explains,

when you see this, you'll understand why he chose Massimo

out of the millions of Italians he could have picked,

go on the stage and make an announcement,

because Massimo was going to perform with them.

And he didn't get his chance.

So this is as close as he gets.

[cheering and applauding]

- [Man] What's this called?

- It says I have a big bunch of dick.

- I started in '77 with Frank,

so that was my first intimate

big-time rock-n-roll event period.

And then when we came to Italy, in particular,

it was, this is again way back in time,

so it was new, big rock-n-roll shows and stuff,

as he then played out in Palermo to a,

it wasn't really a standard routine

to put on a show like that.

And Frank had his own sounds, his own lights.

Plus to see other countries' crews to deal with this

and adapt to a big show like that,

that's, I think, why all the confusion happened.

Though I was filming it and Joe Travers told me

that there's a lot of footage,

he mentioned it to me.

He said, "Oh, I want to see it hopefully one day."

- One, two, three, four.

["No, No Cherry" by Frank Zappa]

♪ Well, I found out baby

♪ You told me a great big lie

- I got onstage and I looked out

and there was more people than I've ever seen in my life,

ever, in one place.

And it was a big soccer stadium.

And they were all lined up.

["Outrage at Valdez" by Frank Zappa]

- What happened at the gig in Palermo,

at that time we did not know.

["The Mammy Anthem" by Frank Zappa]

So the only thing that we knew that the stage

was very strange, because they set the stage

in the middle of the field.

- [Joe] Oh they noticed it.

There you go, look. - They could probably hear it.

- [Joe] See, that's the beginning

of the concert right there.

- We couldn't really see that was going on,

but we see some movement or something.

- And we were very high.

The stage was very high off the ground.

All of a sudden, somebody got over the barrier,

and they ran up to the front of the stage.

And you know, I'm looking down at them,

and they were just one little person there going,

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, hi, I'm here, I made it."

- [Joe] I wonder why they wouldn't let them in the field.

- It was a wrong setting, to begin with.

I guess they wanted to save the lawn.

But that's how it all happened.

That's how it all went down.

- And the guards beat the shit out of them.

["The Mammy Anthem" by Frank Zappa]

- Hello.

Welcome to the last show

of the last European tour.

- You can actually tell what's going on,

because you as you see, when Frank goes out

onto the stage, I'm so used to seeing this kind of footage

from being at a concert.

And the sound of the audience comes up.

And it's got a special quality to it.

And when Frank goes out onto the stage,

the sound is different.

You know right away something is wrong.

You can sense it, you can see it in their gait.

In Frank's gait I can see it.

There's something going on out there.

- Scott Thunes.

Steve Vai.

And our special guest star, Massimo Bassoli.

Are you ready?

I hope so.

["Dancin' Fool" by Frank Zappa]

- And then of course when you realize

they can't see anything.

They have no idea if there's five people or 10,000 people.

♪ One of my legs is shorter than the other

♪ And both my feet's too long

♪ Course now right along with them

♪ I got no natural rhythm

♪ But I go dancin' every night

♪ Hopin' one day I might get it right

♪ Dancin' fool

♪ Dancin' fool

♪ Dancin' fool

♪ Dancin' fool

♪ Dancin' fool

♪ The disco folks all dress up

♪ Like they's fit to kill

♪ Walk on in and see them there

♪ Gonna give them all a thrill

♪ He's a dancing fool

♪ Chop a line now

♪ Cocaine decision

♪ You are a person with a snow job

♪ You got a fancy gotta go job

♪ Where the cocaine decisions that you make today

♪ Will mean a million somewhere else

♪ We'll do it your way

♪ Cocaine decisions

♪ You are a person not in my class

- They had the armed forces, the National Guard,

with shields and guns around the whole perimeter.

♪ I don't wanna know about the things that you pull

♪ What you say affects my heart in such a way

- And then suddenly we start hearing sounds,

rumors, or riots.

- They have no idea what's going on.

♪ Cocaine decisions

♪ Cocaine decisions

[tear gas firing]

- And this is what you see from the stage, nothing.

Just a black hole.

[tear gas firing]

♪ Cocaine decisions

♪ You are a doctor or a lawyer

♪ You got an office with a foyer

[tear gas firing]

♪ Cocaine decisions

♪ You are a movie business guy

- They just, they overreacted, really.

♪ To Acapulco

♪ Where all your friends go

- Massimo, come here.

Yeah, bring the band on down behind me, boys.

[tear gas firing]

- Now listen, we want to continue the concert.

We want to keep playing music.

Will you please be calm?

Sit down and relax so we can play music.

["Nig Biz" by Frank Zappa]

♪ I signed on the line

♪ For seven long years

- [Moon] And you can see how stressful

and how scared he must have been.

- [Gail] But he's also thinking about the audience.

- Of course. - Because if they start

running, they're gonna die out there,

whether they're hit by bullets

or whether they just trip over and get trampled to death.

- You know he's just so

in the moment, - Well, he was like a Gandhi.

and on the case.

♪ I could smoke

♪ But now I'm beat up and broke

♪ They said I oughta re-record

♪ The tracks of my tears

♪ They said hey this is it

♪ It's gonna be a big hit

♪ With my name up in lights

♪ Nig biznis, nig biznis

- The policemen was shooting tear gas inside the stadium.

And the people in the stadium watching the show

was taking the tear gas and send it back to them.

♪ Has brought disaster

♪ On this poor heart of mine

- Right now's the time to play the blues.

- And then when the tear gas would continue

around the stadium, the people that were here

were all in a panic and running.

And it came all the way around and finally it hit the stage.

Now I don't know if you've ever felt tear gas,

but it's very unpleasant.

And I was, [choking], you know

and starting to tear and choke.

[people screaming]

- I think what happened in Palermo is just not so uncommon

in those times, especially with the governments

being what they are from time to time,

and those attitudes extending down to people

who are employed by the state, and also carry guns.

And fortunately, I don't think anybody died from that event.

- Ray White.

Tommy Mars.

Chad Wackerman.

Ed Mann.

Bobby Martin.

Scott Thunes.

Steve Vai.

Thomas Nordegg.

Thanks for coming to the concert.

Hope you liked it, have a good night.

- [Gail] So that's the premature ending of the show.

- [Joe] We're an hour and six minutes in.

- We just got off and a complete riot broke out.

And we were backstage and there was complete chaos.

- Come on.

- All they're giving me is one drop.

Whoops, missed.

- So yeah, there's crazy mayhem going on.

The concert's over, they can't leave.

So they're stuck there.

- Massimo, [words drowned out by crowd]

- He's so stressed still.

He's like what do we do with the time in the bunker.

- [Frank] Italian language lesson.

This is the desk of an Italian--

- This is just how friendships are built.

Massimo and Frank in the trenches together,

this is what happened.

This is certainly the basis for an ongoing

you know, sort of respect.

- I just want you to,

just like this was a real language school,

somebody has just paid a lot of money to come here

to learn how to speak Italian,

and this is an Italian language school,

give them the works.

You guys back out of the way.

Before we go on.

- The first important words that you have to understand

of the Italian language is [speaking in a foreign language].

That means [speaking in a foreign language].

- This is not the first time that Frank has been threatened.

And this is maybe because they're firing guns out there.

But the reason why he had the vest in the first place

is from death threats. - For threats, yeah.

- But this is the occupational hazard of rock-n-roll

for anyone who is political.

- They won't stop shooting those tear gases

at the kids.

Before they shoot, you gotta have the boys

throw rocks back at them.

[conversation drowned out in the room echo]

They're shooting at them and now they're loading,

they're caught being shooting back.

- [Frank] That means I have to get my zipper in.

[fireworks exploding]

- It's a big one, it's all the way.

The rainbow, close to the rocks.

- Sicilia to me opens a doorway to

all the things that I remember Frank saying

about his family and how they felt about Sicily.

Frank's father was always telling him

that all of these inventions, they were from everywhere,

were invented in Sicily.

That there would be nothing of culture anywhere

in the entire universe, were it not for Sicily.

Hearing this when he was a child

has to have opened a window for him to say,

"Ah, I will fly through here.

"And even though I am small and insignificant

"and isolated like Isola,

"I can do things that no one else can do."

[laughing] [quirky music]

So now I come here and you know what, I believe it.

[audience applauding]

[upbeat orchestral music]

- In Frank's career, he took a very difficult path

to do what he wanted to do.

A very singular maverick style

of doing what he did.

And I can recognize that people from Sicily

definitely have that sort of independence

and creative thought process.

I think there is a bit of that Sicilian history

within our family, whether we are cognizant

of it coming out.

I think it's more apparent when we're here.

I mean, even just meeting the relatives we had here,

there are

certain things that we learned in talking with them.

Last name Zappa.

- His last name is Zappa.

- Not only do we find a whole bunch of Zappas

that are, in many ways, characteristic of the family

that I thought I was looking for.

You know, they are so not like the family I came from,

so not like the family that Frank came from,

but they are very representative of a true family spirit.

And they were here in Sicily, which is so crazy.

- Wow! - This is, this is--

- The facial hair, wow!

- [Massimo] This is the brother of your grandfather.

- Look at the hair, the mustache, it's amazing.

- My memories of my paternal grandparents are very strange.

I remember them as small people in a small house

with stubborn ways.

And there was not a lot of discussion about feelings.

Feeling became a meal, usually sweets. [laughs]

So there was always that sense of like a gap

between what you wanna say and what could be said.

And this subterranean love,

but with this thing that you couldn't break through,

which I call that Italian thing. [laughs]

- It was amazing because the family was explaining to us

that there were several siblings.

And the father of that Zappa family

had purchased land for the family to live.

And I don't remember if was five girls and five boys,

or how many children there were.

But all but two of them live on this street

and live in houses right beside each other.

And they spend all of their time together.

["Little Umbrellas" by Frank Zappa]

- My father had a degree of that Sicilian thing,

but he was a very emotional and sensitive person.

I think because he was an artist,

he was a very soft-spoken,

logical, gentle person.

And it brings tears to my eyes to think about how

thoughtful he was in his words and his actions

as a parent.

[mellow rock music]

- As I continue to play music and play his music for people,

it's a way for me to continue having a relationship

with something that's still familiar to me.

And through playing the music and

the experience that we had here in Sicily,

where people celebrating him and being proud

he's from Partinico, and all of that stuff,

it's a chance for him to still be here for us.

[upbeat band music]

I noticed you see all the flamenco stuff.

- I'm sad that there is nothing, he wasn't here longer.

The silence is horrible.

But I'm grateful for what he did manage to do.

[applauding]

The two things that I think that Frank loved the most,

that represented his life,

was first freedom,

and second music.

And through music, and when you have that experience,

or whatever it is that you choose,

but for Frank it was music,

you discover freedom.

And you don't want anyone or anything to have the power

to be in your way to such a degree

that you cannot do the things that you are destined to do.

And I am lucky that I have this thing that I know

that compels me.

And I saw Frank do that with his life, as well.

[uplifting music]