Frank Zappa’s onetime mistress wants to release a new album, but first she’ll have to overcome a failed fundraiser and — worse still — a bureaucratic nightmare of the sort that Zappa surely would’ve lampooned.

Nigey Lennon was 12 when she first discovered Zappa’s Freak Out!. She was 15 when she sent him a demo of her own music and was surprised to receive an invitation to meet with him to discuss it at Bizarre Records. She was 17 when he hired her as a guitarist for his 1971 tour to promote his film, 201 Motels. Lennon was still a minor when Zappa — 30 and married at the time — seduced her in Berkeley, according to her book Being Frank: My Time With Frank Zappa.
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