Let's Talk Clothes by Dino Orlando

DINO: Well, you may please yourself but that has bearing on the way you look. Your T-shirts, for instance, I'm sure everybody wants to wear them because they have your face on them.

FRANK: You mean the T-shirts they were selling at the concert last night? I had nothing to do with those things. Nobody even told me they were made.

But your face was on them.

I wasn't told about the shirts or that they were using my face on them. The first time I saw them was last night.

Were you embarrassed when that chick handed you the shirt on stage? You looked at it quietly and didn't make a big to do about it.

That was the second one I had seen. They were selling purple ones that had block print on it - another design. You know, I don't know where those things come from; I don't ask to have them made and I don't receive any money from them. As far as I'm concerned it's a rip-off and I think it's a stupid thing.

Isn't it libelous to use your likeness, Frank?

Yes, but the problem is that you've got to track down who made the shirts, take them to court, and then wait three years. By the time you get into court, you wind up having to audit some books which may not exist at that time. That's what happened with that toilet poster. I never posed for a poster and it went all over the world.

And somebody was making bread from Frank Zappa. That's a classic rip-off.

That probably happens to a lot of people.

Would you put something else on these T-shirts that would represent you more as a musician?

The only time a T-shirt represents something to me as a musician, is when it has nothing on it. I like this T-shirt I'm wearing. It's reversible, it's two colors; if this part gets smelling too bad, I turn it inside out.

Then it smells worse. But you know, the trouble is this: you can't help your fans digging you physically and visually; you can't help that they're in love with Frank Zappa. Aren't you going to do anything about it?

Look here. If somebody wants to wear a T-shirt with a big drawing, and they want to pay some guy X number of dollars for a T-shirt, imprinted with some kind of image, that's their business. If that makes them happy, let them wear the T-shirt.

Do you think 1970 has brought a change in music and in the way we look?

Maybe it has and maybe It hasn't. I don't pay that much attention to it.

I think it has brought a tremendous change.

But these changes are always backwards. It's always a recapitulation of something that has already happened.

What about the things the English artists are wearing; the super-sleek shiny stuff?

Shiny stuff designed along what lines? What's new about a 17th or 18th century costume that's been modified? Also in the United States, we now have this return of the 30's, 40's, 50's.

Not always. For example, I would say that David Bowie, among others, is into space clothes and that's very new.

Those space suits were in films like Destination Moon or one of those old science fiction movies. So I would say that space clothes probably originated from a designer who was making costumes for the 1957 picture awards.

It's new. It's a costume for a new era.

It's not new, it's old. It's from the '50's. It's 1950's modified space clothes.

Maybe you just like the 1950 clothes best. I've seen you wear sweaters with big letters and other things.

I Just happen to have a lot of those clothes.

Well, you've done something good. The 50's are good for fashion, you know, they're coming back.

They'll come back for awhile and then they'll go away.

Everything does.

The 1960's will come hack. Maybe Beatle wigs will be back in 20 years. You watch, they'll be making coats out of them.

rev 3.15.04, RAE Productions