WHOEVER devised the slipknot contract clause “into perpetuity" hadn't conceived a Gail Zappa. She's made it her job to parse the music industry's dense legalese, close contractual loopholes and, most significantly, end what she sees as its iron grip on an artist's past, present and future.
Let me say it in the simplest way. My job is to make sure that Frank Zappa has the last word in terms of anybody's idea of who he is. And his actual last word is his music.
--Gail Zappa
To that end, Gail Zappa has become a vocal advocate for artists' rights. The wife of the late musician-composer Frank Zappa, she has been keeping watch over not just her husband's image and brand but his legacy. Despite what people might think, her dogged efforts are not about erecting razor-wire around all things Zappa but protecting his memory.
Yes, she knows all about the finger-pointing and the grousing, the battles with the record labels about who owns what; the fury and frustration of fans who are unable to download the most famous and seminal works of the Zappa canon. The Zappa Family Trust is in the middle of a dust-up with Rykodisc; Gail Zappa is suing Rykodisc over “copyright infringements including digital rights."
