This is one of my favourite Zappa performances:
Childhood
Zappa was born on December 21, 1940, in
Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Rosemarie (
née Collimore), was of
Italian (Neapolitan and Sicilian) and
French ancestry; his father, whose name was anglicized to Francis Vincent Zappa, was an immigrant from
Partinico,
Sicily, with
Greek and
Arab descent.
[nb 2]
Frank, the eldest of four children, was raised in an Italian-American household where
Italian was often spoken by his grandparents.
[1]:6
[11] The family moved often because his father, a
chemist and mathematician, worked in the defense industry. After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to
Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the
Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the
Aberdeen Proving Ground run by the
U.S. Army. Due to their home's proximity to the arsenal, which stored
mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the home in case of an accident.
[1]:20–23 This living arrangement had a profound effect on Zappa, and references to germs, germ warfare, ailments and the defense industry occur frequently throughout his work.
[12]:8–9
Zappa was often sick as a child, suffering from
asthma,
earaches and
sinus problems. A doctor treated his sinusitis by inserting a pellet of
radium into each of Zappa's nostrils. At the time, little was known about the potential dangers of even small amounts of therapeutic radiation,
[12]:10 and although it has since been claimed that nasal radium treatment has causal connections to cancer, no studies have provided significant enough evidence to confirm this.
[13]
Nasal imagery and references appear in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time collaborator
Cal Schenkel. Zappa believed his childhood diseases might have been due to exposure to mustard gas, released by the nearby chemical warfare facility, and his health worsened when he lived in Baltimore.
[1]:20–23
[12]:10 In 1952, his family relocated for reasons of health to
Monterey, California, where his father taught
metallurgy at the
Naval Postgraduate School.
[1]:22 They soon moved to
Claremont, California,
[14]:46 and then to
El Cajon, before finally settling in
San Diego
