Moon Unit Zappa is showing me her home altar. “The giant-ass crystal,” she explains, “is to clear scary energy away. The pink fountain pen reminds me that writing can be fun.” It would be easy to assume that Zappa—who became a household name of sorts in 1982 with the release of the song “Valley Girl,” a collaboration with her father, Frank—has fallen for the clichés of California woo-woo culture, but that would be a mistake. The Valley girl persona was her invention, and any associations you have with her name are likely just as incorrect.
Like, totally, fer sure.
“Oh, I don’t believe in any of this. But just in case. I’m not taking any chances.”
This kind of aporetic curiosity fuels Zappa’s memoir, Earth to Moon, which opens with a playful reminder of her singular girlhood. “Growing up,” she writes, “I was just like you. I had a rock star for a dad…and daydreamed about my future following in Frank’s footsteps.” She goes on to recall herself pining for more time with her father and “scrawl[ing] my married name ‘Moon Unit Cassidy’” into her diary. Reading this, I laughed out loud because I, too, had an absent father and mooned over Shaun Cassidy. In a memoir that manages to be personal and generational, Zappa depicts herself as often feeling, she explains to me, like “a fish out of water,” in both her own home and the world.
Since I moved to California in 1990, I’ve traveled in the same circles as Zappa, but we haven’t been in touch for some years. On a recent Sunday afternoon, we renewed our acquaintance under a backyard maple with sprawling branches shading her art-filled San Fernando Valley bungalow. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
As someone from a conservative environment, I imagined you grew up in a nurturing, idyllic setting. What could be more exhilarating than parents who considered themselves “pagan absurdists”?
So many things my parents publicly advocated for didn’t happen for us. We didn’t travel as a family. No college. No one gave us a pep talk about how the world works. How to make money. I wasn’t taught how to deal with life or death. The family was a pyramid, and all energy and support went to that. I was trained to be a very good personal assistant.
Your father was an iconoclastic genius who influenced generations of musicians. Do you feel a responsibility to his legacy or his fans?
I’ve always felt pressure to be an upstanding representative of my father’s good name. He was such a good person and such a funny person. I am a dutiful daughter. But I wasn’t writing for his fans. I wrote the book for anyone who feels marginalized or dismissed, or has faced a tremendous loss with no answer. The two things I was kind of pursuing were: Is genius worth the collateral damage? And also, when someone’s final word on you is to not wish you well eternally, you have to find a way to get bigger than that person’s total shittiness.
Your relationship with your mother, Gail, was fraught. And yet, some of the most moving passages in Earth to Moon involve your caregiving at the end of her life. About changing her diaper, you write, “I see this opportunity as a gift, tending to the holy place where she conceived me and then pushed me out.”
It’s my value system to support the people I love. Because there was an expiration date on her meanness, I could easily muster the homestretch endurance and kindness needed to give the woman who brought me into the world a good exit. When I later found out about all she had set in motion, I was beyond blindsided; I crash-landed in the darkest of dark places.
In writing about your childhood and family, how much did you consider other people’s interpretations of events?
I tried to leave room for everyone’s interpretation and not tell the reader how to feel. I am not a victim nor casualty or a cautionary tale. My quest became to get bigger than Gail’s vindictive final word, bigger than her poverty of maternal instincts.
Your story offers no wrapped-in-a-bow ending.
When you have a crappy breakup, it’s tempting to think, “If I had a talk-through, I could have closure.” I’m never going to get that. The thing is, if you actually get that, it can make you hold on longer. If you don’t, you have to find a way to live through it, to redirect attention and make different choices.
You treat us to some sweet moments with your father. In one, the two of you are listening to one of his final compositions, which features the “whistling harmonics of the Tuvan throat singers.” You joke, “Finally, a track I can dance to.” What are you dancing to now?
I am currently in a girl-power, feminist-anthem, not-on-my-watch phase. Every playlist includes my go-tos: Fiona Apple, Kate Bush, Beyoncé. I am also enjoying Chappell Roan.
You don’t live far from your childhood home in Laurel Canyon, with its legendary Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. Do you ever drive by the house?
I never go by the house. It’s been sold twice over, first to Lady Gaga and then to one of Mick Jagger’s daughters. My life has been uniquely shaped by Los Angeles, although Los Angeles is tricky for me. But I get a thrill when I think about how much creativity is happening here. I’ve seen some of the best music and theater in the weirdest places. I can’t be too far from Largo; there’s always something great happening there, and even the worst traffic is just two podcasts away.
Does it surprise you to have settled in the Valley?
When I moved here, I wasn’t stoked, but now I love it. I can get places quickly, my house is my retreat, it’s in a fantastic spot, and I have plenty of parking.
Where do you go from here?
I’m thinking about what I want to say now. What do I have a fresh take on? What would be fun to do? The way my mother handled her death was a big “what the fuck, what am I doing with my time?” We don’t know how long we will be here. Our job is to live it up and surround ourselves with people we love.•
Annabelle Gurwitch lives Beverly Hills–adjacent and is the author of five memoirs, most recently You’re Leaving When? Adventures in Downward Mobility, a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor Writing, now out in paperback.
