For those of you who might not know…about Pamela Zarubica

The next significant woman in Frank’s life – after his first wife, Kay Sherman, and his ‘his buxom red-haired companion’ at Studio Z, Lorraine Belcher – was Pamela Zarubica.

When they met circa. 1965,  Frank told her he was adamant he never wanted to get married again, “It was for him the music always, and only the music. A little action on the side was welcome, and in those days a little action was what he got. He had no money, he wasn’t famous, nor did he fit the mould of the traditional hot guy in the early 1960s.”

They lived together for a while, but she always maintained that their relationship remained platonic – because she chose for it to be – though she would later tell Co de Kloet that she caught crabs from her ‘roommate’.

In 1966, just after the release of Freak Out!, Zarubica introduced Frank to Gail Sloatman, who he married a year later.

Belcher says of Zarubica, “She always claimed to be the muse behind Lenny Bruce, Phil Spector and Frank – like they would have been nothing without her! I was in awe of anyone having that much self-confidence…or maybe self-delusion.”

Zarubica herself wrote that, “Contrary to a lot of information published, even by the man himself, there was a relationship of great significance. I was with him when he wrote Who Are The Brain Police? Indeed, I was the subject of some of his earlier works and my voice has appeared on many of the earlier albums.”

Zarubica can be heard on both We’re Only In It For The Money and Uncle Meat. Frank also hired her to be the Suzy Creamcheese of The Mothers’ 1967 European tour: “All she did was sit on the stage when we played the Albert Hall – didn’t do anything!” he would later say. You can see Zarubica reminisce about the show here.

A few years later, she married Howard ‘H’ Parker (who of course gave Frank the burnt Hendrix Strat) simply to enable her to live in London. She wanted to come to the UK to look for her son, who she had given up for adoption a few years before. From photos, you can see that she was noticeably pregnant with him when she came to London with The Mothers in 1967 (see video above).

Although she consistently refused all offers to write a book on Frank herself, and never agreed to take part in anyone else’s, including Barry Miles’ (she also turned down my request for an interview, sports fans!), she was quoted extensively in the books on FZ written by David Walley and Michael Gray.

When The Old Masters, Box One was made available exclusively through Barfko-Swill in 1985, each copy included a booklet with a photo of FZ with Pamela. These were initially individually defaced with a marker pen (see image below left), and subsequently litho-perverted (see image below right). When quizzed about this, Gail claimed it was ‘art’ (with a capital F) – “as in ‘composed of varying quantities of exogenous sources and endogenous sources’,” according to ‘the cool guy who wraps stuff so it doesn’t break’, Gerald Fialka (aka the Barfko Banksy).

In the summer of 1993, Co de Kloet was flying to LA to conduct his final interview with an ailing FZ. He was astonished to find that he was sat on the plane next to someone named Zarubica. This turned out to be Pamela’s uncle, Mladin, who hadn’t seen his niece for 20 years. He recalled that in the 60s she lived with a strange-looking musician called “Zeppo, Zappo or something.” Co told him how Pamela had contacted him a couple of years previously and had spoken very fondly of her time with FZ.

On his arrival at the Zappa house, Co relayed all of this to Frank, who said, “You met Mladin? Wow! And thanks for telling me about Pam – but don’t tell Gail!”

Co eventually met up with Pamela in London in 2006 and conducted a full interview with her. You can read it in his excellent book, Frank & Co.

In 2010, Pamela “went to the retrospective at the Roundhouse. I wanted to see the question and answer session with Gail and Dweezil. It was disappointing that Ian Underwood couldn’t make it and that most of the questions came from men. They were mostly about the music. For myself, I cannot discuss issues and reissues, live concert footage versus recording quality. The Frank I knew was the world’s greatest guitar player, father, son and a composer of great insight, humour, wisdom and true genius. But ultimately the Frank that I knew was a friend.”

Zarubica passed away in 2023 and her ashes were scattered on the beach in Broadstairs, Kent.

You can watch Pamela’s feature length film, Goodheart, here: