...The Zappa’s spent a time in Florida in the 1940s before relocating to Maryland, where Francis worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at the Aberdeen Proving Ground for the US military. Due to their house being so close to the arsenal, which stored large quantities of mustard gas, gas masks were kept at home, meaning that the spectre of chemical warfare was something that the young Frank Zappa was exposed to early. As with all of us, our childhood significantly impacts our adult life, with references to warfare and the defence industry recurring throughout the musician’s discography.
This wasn’t totally unique, though, as there were many children in Zappa’s boots, but what is incomprehensible, even for the day, is that Francis would intermittently bring lab equipment filled with mercury home from work for Frank to play with. Years later, The Mothers of Invention man later said that he “used to play with it all the time”.
Zappa recalled that he would put the mercury on the floor and use a hammer to spray out mercury droplets in a circular pattern, covering the whole of his bedroom floor.
As is commonly known, childhood exposure to elemental mercury is toxic, and in men, it exponentially increases the risk of developing prostate cancer in adulthood. In a tragic turn of events, Frank Zappa was diagnosed with a terminal form of the disease in 1990, and on December 4th, 1993, he succumbed to it.
Unsurprisingly, Zappa was almost always sick as a child, with asthma, earaches and sinus issues plaguing him. In another entirely unbelievable act through today’s lens, one doctor even treated a bout of sinusitis by inserting radium pellets into each of Zappa’s nostrils.
Unique.
faroutmagazine.co.uk