Growing Up Zappa: Moon Unit Zappa on Valley Girl, and the rock-and-roll patriarchy
The Unspeakable Podcast
Meghan Daum
4.8 • 784 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2024
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Writer, performer, and Gen-X legend Moon Unit Zappa joins Meghan for a conversation about her new memoir Earth To Moon. She talks about being the eldest child of iconoclastic musician Frank Zappa, growing up in the chaos of the 1970s and 80s rock-and-roll scene, the cultural phenomenon of the hit single Valley Girl, fissures within the Zappa family, and forging a life and career in the today’s creative economy.
GUEST BIO
Moon Unit Zappa was born in 1967 to legendary musician Frank Vincent Zappa and his second wife, Gail Zappa. At the age of 14, she appeared in Frank Zappa’s career-defining song, “Valley Girl,” which later helped jump-start Moon’s career. Since then, Moon has firmly established herself as a writer, actress, comedian, artist, podcaster, and tea merchant.
Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.
HOUSEKEEPING
✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: New ones will be announced soon. See where we'll be!
🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The worst for me was the message that I got because if he was having these other relations |
| 0:09.7 | and they didn't matter to him and he gave them his time and attention, I was doing kid math |
| 0:14.7 | and saying, well, if they don't mean anything and I get even less time with you, that I must be |
| 0:19.7 | worth less than the thing that |
| 0:21.5 | doesn't matter. |
| 0:22.8 | And so I just got the message I wasn't allowed to exist and that I didn't exist. |
| 0:29.7 | Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. |
| 0:31.8 | I'm your host, Megan Down. |
| 0:33.8 | My guest is fascinating and pretty legendary figure, Moon Zappa, known to many as Moon Unit Zappa. |
| 0:42.8 | She is the eldest child of the iconic musician Frank Zappa, a true eccentric who worked across |
| 0:48.8 | genres and produced a staggering amount of work before his death in 1993 at the age of just 52. There are four Zappa |
| 0:57.1 | kids in all, Moon, her brother, Dwezel, and younger brother and sister Amit and Diva. Their mother, |
| 1:03.8 | Gail, was an unusual person in her own right and devoted herself to Frank's career, despite |
| 1:09.3 | endless infidelities. Moon covers all of this and more |
| 1:12.9 | in her new memoir, Earth to Moon, which talks about growing up in the public eye and also in her father's |
| 1:19.1 | shadow. She overshadowed that shadow in 1982 when a song she recorded with her father on a lark, |
| 1:25.9 | Valley Girl, became a cultural sensation and her father's |
| 1:29.3 | only hit single. Now, if you're old enough to remember Valley Girl and the Val Speak that Moon |
| 1:35.2 | captured before anyone else did, you know how big a phenomenon that was. If you don't, |
| 1:40.9 | I think you'll get a pretty good sense of it in this conversation, which covers a lot of ground, including the wrenching legal dispute that tore the family apart following Gail's death in 2015. |
| 1:51.8 | This is a great conversation, not just about family and celebrity, but also about writing, including how to write about complicated relationships with parents, which is |
| 2:01.7 | something I have some experience with. I will just say quickly that we are now into the fifth |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in -196 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meghan Daum, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Meghan Daum and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.