Frank Meets Gail

Gail and Frank

Gail(born Adelaide Gail Sloatman; January 1, 1945) and Frank met in Los Angeles in 1966 , the year that Frank's first album Freak Out! was released. He was flying into town after finishing his first promotional tour, and Gail had gone along with one of his friends to pick him up at the airport. At that time in her life, Gail was, by her own admission, an experienced groupie. Nevertheless, she was not prepared for the impact that Frank would have on her when he stepped off the plane. "I was just devastated", she says. "I didn't know what to do. It was like you were totally stripped of any preconceived notions about anything". For one thing, in person Frank was pretty imposing. "He probably scared the shit out of his mother too", laughs Gail.

But Frank couldn't have been too intimidating, because within a month Gail was living with him. The next year, she got pregnant by him. Two days before Moon Unit was born, they were married in a no-frills ceremony at City Hall in New York. (This was Frank's second marriage; his first had ended long before.) In lieu of a wedding ring, Frank bought Gail a little ballpoint pen from a machine for a dime and pinned it to the front of her dress during the ceremony. (For the next few years, Frank would give Gail a pen or a pencil on their anniversary.)