Gail Zappa

Adelaide Gail Zappa ( Sloatman; January 1, 1945 – October 7, 2015) was the wife of musician and composer Frank Zappa and the trustee of the Zappa Family Trust. They met in Los Angeles in 1966 and married while she was pregnant with their first child, Moon, followed by Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva. She had seven siblings, including one half-sibling from her father's previous marriage to Joan Lou Gatt. She was named after her maternal grandmother, Adelaide Silva. She grew up in Hollywood, and lived with her family in London, where her father was posted in 1959, and attended Marymount International School. She also modeled for photographer Terence Donovan.

She worked at the Office of Naval Research and Development, and then moved to New York, where she studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in the mid-1960s. After returning to Los Angeles, she met producer Kim Fowley, and recorded a spoken word single with him as "Bunny and Bear". The record is a satire of Sonny and Cher.

Gail Zappa made a very brief appearance with her then boyfriend, musician Bobby Jameson, in the documentary film Mondo Hollywood, filmed in 1966. She met Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni, the leaders of what became known as the "freak scene" in Los Angeles, and by her own account became something of a groupie.

Marriage and children Sloatman met her future husband Frank Zappa in 1966 when she was working as a secretary at the Whisky a Go Go nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. They married in a civil ceremony in New York on September 21, 1967, late in her pregnancy with Moon Zappa, born a week later. The marriage also produced children Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva Zappa. Gail had a fraught relationship with her oldest daughter, Moon, which seemed to have been repaired at the end of Gail's life. But, upon her death, it was revealed that the Zappa estate would not be divided equally among the four Zappa children, leaving Moon and Dweezil in a weaker financial position. "It's complicated enough to be grieving the loss of a mean mom", Moon Zappa told the Los Angeles Times in 2016, "and then to find out she was meaner than I could have possibly comprehended ... It's comical, the level of betrayal".

In Frank Zappa's work Gail can be seen behind Frank Zappa on the sleeve of his album Absolutely Free (1967) and on the original, parody cover of his We're Only In It For The Money album (1968). Frank Zappa also named Barking Pumpkin Records after his wife's chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or smoker's cough. After Frank Zappa parted ways with manager Bennett Glotzer in 1984, Gail co-managed with Frank, acted as business secretary, and supervised the record labels and mail order business.

After Frank's death Gail authorized the release of the album Läther. Frank had intended to release this in October 1977 but due to legal problems he was forced to shelve the album. Upon release in 1996 Gail said "As originally conceived by Frank, Läther was always a four-record box set." Despite this, Frank had already submitted a group of four individual albums (five full-length LPs) to Warner Bros. Records in March 1977. The four individual albums and the Läther package have much of the same music, but each also has unique content. Gail also claimed that Warner had broken up the Läther recordings into individual albums. However, this is directly contradicted in multiple interviews. In 1978 Frank said "Läther was made out of four albums. Warners has released two of them already and they have two more that they're probably gonna release."

In July 2015, it was announced that Ahmet Zappa would take over operation of the trust.

Death Gail Zappa died in Los Angeles on October 7, 2015. Rolling Stone and TMZ reported that she died following "a long battle with lung cancer". She was 70.