“Have you ever defecated onstage?”
Straight from the horse’s mouth, take it away Bob Andelman:
When I was a freshman at the University of Miami in 1978, I worked at WVUM 90.5 FM as an air personality. One day, the station manager, Bob “Bear” Mordente, was looking for someone willing to go out to the Royal Biscayne Hotel in Key Biscayne to interview musician and pop culture legend Frank Zappa.
I said I’d do it if no one else volunteered. Then, as now, I wasn’t afraid of interviewing anyone. Then it was foolish; I had no on-air experience and even less experience interviewing anyone for broadcast. Oh, and I knew absolutely zero—ZERO!—about Mr. Zappa.
A time was set for the next day and I went back to my dorm to see if anybody had any idea what I should ask the man. Lucky for me (not really) the drug dealers—I mean students—in the room next to me had piles of Zappa and the Mothers of Invention albums and purported to be experts on the man. Experts on the myth, as it turned out, but “urban legends” as a buzzphrase was still a good 20 years off. Anyway, these two knuckleheads filled me up with wide-eyed stories of ridiculous things that Zappa allegedly had done on stage over the years and I took copious notes.
The next day, Mordente and I drove out to the Royal Biscayne Hotel and our moment with destiny. Mordente handled recording the sound on a reel-to-reel machine so I could focus on Zappa and my litany of ludicrous questions.
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