Frank Zappa started what became the family business in the early ’60’s, in a garage in the Mojave Desert near Edwards Air Force base. He was charismatic. He dove into his craft with laser-like focus and passion. He was smart, cutting edge, musically daring, and had a business sense that bordered on the surreal.
From the mid-’60’s to the early ’90’s he was hugely influential across the rock world, all while he did his own thing. He was the face of the recording industry in the Congressional hearings in the late ‘80s.
He had very few hits but his output was prodigious. His image was instantly recognizable to any rock fan across the planet.
From the start he considered music a business. His business. He learned early that he should own his own songs, then he learned that he should own his own record labels. He had a business plan, he executed it flawlessly even when the unexpected popped up.
When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1992, he designed his estate so that the business would thrive for generations.
He made his wife, Grace, the de facto 'CEO’, his four children had management roles, two followed their father into the industry and continued with his work. It worked, collections of Franks music were rolled out, royalties rolled in, the company was robust.
Then Grace died in 2014. For all the planning Frank did he never made provisions for a successor to Grace. It is a very common mistake. Like most other family businesses with the same mistake, things fell apart.
Two of the kids managed to get, barely, control over the company. They did not get along with the other two – the two working musicians. One son, Dweezil, was sued by his siblings to stop him from performing his father’s music and selling merchandise even though he paid the proceeds to the estate.
It was ugly, no one was in charge. Parts of the company were sold off piecemeal. The company was at least $5 million in the hole. Panicking, the children put the family home in Laurel Canyon on the market. The house they grew up in, where Frank had his recording studio and a vault containing every piece of music, every concert, every TV appearance Zappa had ever made. The house had hosted virtually every major rock artist in the world.
It was priceless, but Lady Gaga bought if for, forgive the pun, a song.
Last month, on the 46th anniversary of Zappa’s seminal album, Freak Out, the children made millions when they sold Frank Zappa’s “prolific catalog, film archive, publishing rights and his enormous “Vault” of unreleased material” to Universal Music Group. The deal included his name and likeness.
Two things to know about all this:
(a) naming contingent ‘CEO’s might have saved all the fighting and heartache, the house, and everything else; (b) Frank Zappa despised music companies and fought them tooth and nail his entire professional life – now one owns his name and likeness.