Credit: Dangerous Minds / Alamy

It’s one of the most simple examples of cause and effect you could ever use. Whatever kind of art you make attracts a similar kind of person. You make basic-ass art, and you attract basic-ass people. You make sad art, you attract sad people. You make weird art, like Frank Zappa famously did and… you can work out the rest.

Honestly, calling Zappa a peddler of weird and nothing more kind of sells him short. He was no novelty act, the way that a surprising number of people seem to believe he was. He never made work that was weird for the sake of weird because he had nothing of value to actually say (hi Captain Beefheart, how ya doin’?). Zappa was a genuine artiste. Someone who really could do it all.

You want crunchy, headbanging proto-stoner rock? Check out the early Mothers of Invention records. You want the freakiest of free jazz? Look at everything from Hot Rats to The Grand Wazoo. Off-kilter psychedelic pop? His mid-1970s commercial peak says hi. Even if you have a hankering for some classical music, the man basically spent the last decade of his life as a working orchestral composer, so anything from the 1980s and early 1990s is for you.

Yet, let’s not split hairs here, Frank Zappa made weird music, that much is undeniably true. Which meant that yes, the kind of people it appealed to were almost certainly weird too. This isn’t an issue. I write articles for this website for a living, most of the time, weird is great. That “most of the time” is doing some seriously heavy lifting because, as anyone who’s made weird art will tell you, sometimes the people who gravitate towards are the not-so-great kind of weird.

It sounds like Zappa dealt with many people like this in his time, which seemingly made him completely unflappable even when confronted with a fan who only identified themselves as “Raven” in 1968. At the time, Zappa was still living in “The Log Cabin”, a hangout pad in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, that had its front door open pretty much at all times. Anyone was welcome, and the address was something of an open secret in the LA rock scene, which explains how a man as clearly distressed as “The Raven” could get there.

He walked in and found Zappa holding court with a number of his friends and colleagues. He introduced himself, said that he had a present for Zappa, then handed the guitarist a clear plastic bag that held a pint of (hopefully) fake blood. Then he pointed a revolver at the rock legend’s chest. It’s a testament to how good Zappa was at dealing with psychos at this point that he remained calm and talked to Raven about how this area had a lot of police activity (it didn’t) and that if he was caught with that gun, he’d be in a lot of trouble.

Zappa then told Raven he knew exactly where to hide the gun, and that together, everyone was going to perform a psychedelic ritual that would keep them all safe from the cops. Zappa led Raven and the rest of his terrified friends out into the garden, where a sinkhole had opened up and flooded a few months before. This “psychedelic ritual” involved everyone throwing something of theirs into the sinkhole, with Zappa gently encouraging his attacker to throw the gun in.

After everyone had completed the task, Zappa sprinkled some leaves on the top, said, “It’s taken care of now,” then encouraged Raven to leave, as everyone was very busy. The would-be assassin did, at which point the rest of Zappa’s group started demanding that he call the police on the man that nearly shot him. In arguably the weirdest act of the whole experience, he refused. After all, that would send the poor lad to prison, and no one deserved that. At least, according to Zappa.

He did immediately start looking for a new home after that, though, one that he was a little more guarded with the address of.