'Frank's an Icon, and My Dad'

Moon Unit Zappa on navigating childhood as a rock star's daughter

- MOON UNIT ZAPPA

RECENTLY, WHILE STROLLING IN THE DEPTHS OF the San Fernando Valley, I saw a sidewalk stencil that said, "Not all cults are bad." I had to laugh. In my memoir, I revisited the old territory of growing up the daughter of a rock icon who I always saw as one part Spock and one part Jesus. I didn't just compete for his affection in my childhood home, I battled the fervent flock he ministered to, his fans, proselytizing to the feverish believers with his acerbic, satiric siren songs.

My family dynamic was not dissimilar to a cult. I willingly ate, slept, drank and lived for our larger-than-life leader. Only ours was the good kind because I couldn't get enough of my father's gallows humor and unending output of creativity.

Each album in my father's vast catalog is a time capsule, each tune a memory generator transporting me to a fixed location in space and time. Sometimes I'm as tall as his tibia listening to playback in his makeshift studio in our basement in what would become our Laurel Canyon compound. Or I'm suddenly 9 and sitting atop a big metal case on casters on the side of the stage at one of Frank's shows, watching my God-like father I idolized smoke and sermonize on his guitar.

I received my first journal when I was 5, with an inscription from my blood hero in Frank's beautiful block script in black ink. When I wasn't writing short stories about my imaginary camels T'Mershi Duween and Sinini, or drawing myself dressed as a nun, I was crudely sketching [mom] Gail and Frank sideways and naked, stacked on a mattress like pancakes from Du-par's.

Later, in my teens, my journals became a record of my father's whereabouts and my subsequent complaints about his absence. In a touring cycle, he might stay gone for the better part of a year, with only the briefest returns, a bird alighting on a branch.