By Michael McCall
Published on February 25, 2010
Essra Mohawk first encountered Frank Zappa in 1967, walking down
Bleecker Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. She was 19,
visiting New York City from her home in Philadelphia with two female
friends from Los Angeles. She loved Zappa's album Freak Out!, which
had just been released, and when her friends spotted the lanky Zappa
walking down the street with his trademark long curls, Fu Manchu
moustache and soul patch, her friends started shouting out the names
of L.A. locations where they'd seen him hanging out.
Zappa was on his way to the Garrick Theater, where his band, the
Mothers of Invention, was amid a legendary six-month residency. "He
let us in for free," recalls Mohawk, still known by her given name,
Sandy Hurvitz, at the time. "We became fast friends. He started
calling me 'the strange little person from Philadelphia.' "
For Mohawk, the meeting changed her life and her musical direction.
More than 40 years later, Zappa still hovers: He provided her biggest
initial career boost, and then, in a fit of ego and anger, nearly
sabotaged her future before her first album was finished.
But Mohawk survived, perpetually evolving: She's been a
singer-songwriter and a leader of psychedelic jam bands; she's been a
New-Wave chanteuse and a blues-rock belter; she's posed nude for an
album cover and provided vocals for the PBS Schoolhouse Rock series;
she's had cuts by the Shangri-las, Vanilla Fudge, Tina Turner,
McFadden & Whitehead, Peabo Bryson, Keb Mo and Cyndi Lauper, who made
her "Change of Heart" an '80s classic. She's inspired songs by Procol
Harum, Joni Mitchell and David Crosby, among others. Other
collaborations include singing with the Jerry Garcia Band and
co-writing with Bob Weir, and her connections to the Mothers of
Invention and The Grateful Dead make her an underground cult hero for
many. She alternately describes herself as a love child and a feral
child, and holds onto a bohemian hippie aesthetic, wearing tie-dye
and natural fibers, talking about peace, freedom, creative expression
and past lives as such, she's the Nashville chapter head of the
Musicians and Artists for Peace.
Along the way, she's dabbled in nearly every form of popular music
other than country even though Lorrie Morgan cut one of her songs
which is why longtime fans are still surprised to discover she's
lived in the Nashville area for about as long as she's ever lived anywhere.
A gypsy most of her life, Mohawk moved to Nashville 16 years ago
after an enthusiastic endorsement by friend Al Kooper, another
legendary producer and musician. She accepted his invitation to stay
at his house to get a feel for the city. "For Al to be positive about
anything, I figured it must be a wonderful place," she laughs. She
now owns a home in Bellevue, which she shares with her brother Gary,
two dogs and a cat.
At 62, she's also primed for an unexpected career boost: Collector's
Choice is reissuing her first three albums: Sandy's Album Is Here at
Last, released in 1969 on Zappa's Bizarre Records; Primordial Lovers,
a 1970 album on Reprise Records that Downbeat gave five stars and
Rolling Stone once listed among the 25 best albums of all time; and
Essra Mohawk, a 1974 album on Asylum Records.
When Mohawk met Zappa, she'd already released a pop single, "The Boy
With the Way" backed with "Memory of Your Voice" on Liberty Records
at age 16. She'd been offered a songwriting contract by top music
publisher Charles Koppleman, and she had been courted by producer
Shadow Morton, who had provided her songs to the Shangri-Las ("I'll
Never Learn") and Vanilla Fudge ("The Spell That Comes After").
After meeting Zappa, she left the pop world for something infinitely
different. Not long after they met, Zappa ordered a new electric
piano. The day it arrived, Mothers' keyboardist Don Preston was ill.
Zappa remembered Mohawk played piano, so he set it up on the Garrick
stage and asked her to test it.
"I started playing and singing one of my songs, and Frank jumped up
and put a microphone in front of me," she says. "Then he jumped back
into the theater and listened for a bit. Then he jumped back onstage
and said, 'Step into my office.' He walked over to the second row of
seats and pointed, so I sat down. He looked at me and said, 'How
would you like to be a Mother?' "
Playing solo on piano, Mohawk began opening shows for the Mothers of
Invention, staying onstage to sing harmony during the band's set.
Zappa had her sing her own song, "Archgodliness of Purplefull Magic,"
during the band's set, only one of two non-Zappa songs featured
during the Mothers' concerts in the year-and-a-half Mohawk performed
with the band.
"The first band I was in was my favorite band," she says. "I have to
say, it's been all downhill from there!" She then cracks up, leaning
forward as she guffaws in her high, childlike tone, showing no bitterness.
She hasn't always felt so forgiving. Zappa invited Mohawk to Los
Angeles, and at age 20, she started recording her debut album with
Zappa producing and the Mothers of Invention as her backing band. In
the studio, as drummer Billy Mundi played a ride-out she liked at the
end of one of her songs, she turned to Zappa and suggested he let
Mundi play with that kind of freedom throughout the song, instead of
sticking to the charts Zappa wrote for each band member.
"He glowered at me the way he could do and said, 'Who's producing
this album anyway?' " Mohawk, shocked, stopped still for a few
seconds, then said, "You're not." Then she ran out. By time she
returned, Zappa and the band were gone, never to return. She finished
the album with Mothers keyboardist Ian Underwood producing, but he
more often than not erased good takes and, in Mohawk's opinion,
worked at undermining the recording. Mohawk finished it with a strong
band, including Eddie Gomez on bass, Donald McDonald on drums, Jim
Pepper on saxophone and Jeremy Steig on flute.
"I was sad that I didn't get to finish it with the Mothers," Mohawk
says. "It wasn't the album it was supposed to be. But I listen now,
and I really enjoy it. It's very raw and stripped-down."
Zappa and Mohawk later reconciled, staying friends and talking
regularly until his death in 1993. Meanwhile, the self-described
"feral child," so long seen as ahead of her time, feels like her
moment has arrived. She's determined not to let it pass her by.
"I feel very fortunate," she says. "I've managed to be supported by
my music all these years. I've always worked with great musicians. I
have found that the best musicians seem to be the ones who respond to
my music the most. I may not be famous, but I think I'm respected,
and I'll take that anytime. It feels like it's my time again, and I
like that, because I still have a lot of music to make."
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