Students placed Styrofoam Frank Zappa over Chopin in college prank, leaving long-term mystery

From satirical concept albums to musical parodies, Frank Zappa was famously pro-silliness. (He even released a live LP with the seemingly rhetorical title Does Humor Belong in Music?) So if anyone would have appreciated a good concert-hall prank, it was him. Perhaps the greatest ever occurred in the spring of 1975, when two clever students at Pomona College created a bust of Zappa’s face using papier-mâché and Styrofoam—then used it to cover up the revered visage of Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin.

The identity of these culprits—and their surprisingly detailed methodology—remained a mystery for almost four decades, until, following a series of reports, they came forward with the full story in 2012. The reveal can be traced back to a passing comment during a speech by Cameron Munter, then a U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, who cited a pair of high school students "who shall remain nameless." The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin then dug further into the tale, uncovering some more details, before the real pranksters—John Irvine and Greg Johnson, math majors from the college’s 1976 class—revealed the full truth to Pomona College Magazine.

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According to Setlist.fm, Frank Zappa played two shows at Pomona on April 11, 1975, holding court at Bridges Auditorium (nicknamed "Big Bridges"). The venue was decorated with the faces of five classic composers, and once Irvine and Johnson heard about the upcoming show, they decided that Zappa should join their elite company. "We were looking up at the front of Big Bridges and said, ‘Well, gosh, he should have his name up there,’" Irvine told the publication.

Realizing that quirky reality took two weeks of detailed planning and labor. They had to get on the roof of an adjacent gymnasium, bridge the four-foot gap with a ladder, and do some climbing—a move that Irvine later described as "stupid." After measuring out their dimensions and brushing off some friends who spotted their high jinks, the duo decided to cover up Chopin with their ramshackle masterpiece. ("I’m not big on the Romantics," Irvine said. "I would never cover up Beethoven or Bach.")

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The students created their tribute using Styrofoam, papier-mâché, and an aluminum frame, with Zappa’s face on one end and a pot leaf on the other. The final piece was impressively massive, weighing somewhere between 60 and 70 pounds, so it was easy to spot. Campus officials reportedly took down their work after a few days, but the legend of their irreverence stayed alive over the decades—as did Irvine and Johnson’s friendship. The story has also become an essential part of Pomona College lore, even warranting an entry on their official timeline under the title "The Great Zappa Prank."

If only we knew if Zappa got to see their handiwork. Ironically, the late guitarist-composer appears to have enjoyed the music of the man whose face his replaced. In an interview reportedly conducted some time in 1984, he talked about how his music taste included a lot of classical: "Well, what I do is I take cassettes with me on the road because sometimes you're sitting in the hotel room and you just want to listen to something, but what I take is not rock and roll," he said. "I like Chopin. I have Purcell. I have Webern. I have Varèse. I have Bulgarian music. I don't listen to rock and roll."

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