¡Alucina!

Overview

London. The year is 1967. Pauline earns just enough to live in the magical metropolis of the sixties counterculture. She is twenty-one years old and works for an agency who places secretaries, located in the heart of the city. One day, an unexpected encounter changes her life forever: she receives a call from a gentleman named Frank Zappa, who is urgently seeking the service of a typist to transcribe the lyrics of his album, Absolutely Free. An unlikely request, not without minor flirtation and an exuberance of confidence, Pauline accepts the position and becomes part of his inner circle in Los Angeles. No true fan of Frank Zappa can claim to own a complete collection of his work without this unique diary, the most revealing and intimate portrait of Frank Zappa ever written.

Reviews

"The book describes a formative time in the life of an innovative musical artist, which Zappa most certainly was. But it also captures a particularly intense experience of a very brief, yet enormously influential, period in the evolution of western womanhood." — The Guardian, on the English-language edition.

Author Biography

Pauline Butcher worked as Frank Zappa's secretary in California for four years before moving back to Britain in the 70's, where she has since worked as a freelance music journalist.