In this June 1, 2005, photo, the widow of late rock singer Frank Zappa, Gail Zappa, poses for a photo prior to a press conference in Berlin.
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It did not specify the cause of death and said no further information would be released. Frank and Gail Zappa had four kids together: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva. Mrs. Zappa spearheaded the release of more than three dozen posthumous albums under her husband’s name and ran all of the prolific artist’s enterprises, and she recently gave the okay to a documentary about the famed experimental rock musician.
Gail Zappa, the daughter of a nuclear weapons scientist who went on to study fashion, married Zappa when she was 22 and soon managed her husband’s music business and raised their four children.
An announcement from the Zappa Family Trust likewise affirmed her demise saying that she “left this world gently at her home… encompassed by her youngsters.”
“Gail will forever be identified as a key figure in the creative renaissance that is Laurel Canyon”.
“The recollections she deserts are for sure her own particular artistic expression”, it peruses. But, she noted, he never said what to do with his publishing catalog – the rights to his compositions – and so she defied his request and became the keeper of his musical empire.
Gail Zappa in 2012. Ahmet Zappa was appointed the new trustee of the Zappa Family Trust in July 2015, and has been working with Universal Music Group to continue to release his father’s music.
At a Senate hearing in 1985, Frank Zappa described that plan “an ill-conceived piece of nonsense” that violated the First Amendment.
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She did all of this, by her account, to protect the integrity of her husband’s work. In one notable instance, Gail Zappa sued the German music festival Zappanale for using her family’s name without permission, and for promoting the festival with an image that looked like Zappa’s trademark mustache. “And his actual last word is his music”.
