Adelaide Gail Sloatman was born on the 1st January 1945, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA, and was a musician and fashion designer, but probably best known as Gail Zappa, the legendary Frank Zappa’s wife. Gail was also a trustee of the Zappa Family Trust from 2002 to 2015 and held titles and copyrights to her late husband’s artistic and musical products. She passed away in October 2015.
Have you ever wondered how rich Gail Zappa was at the time of her death? According to authoritative sources, it has been estimated that Gail Zappa’s net worth was as high as $20 million. In addition to the wealth she inherited from her husband Frank, Gail also worked as a musician and fashion designer, and that improved her net worth considerably.
Gail Zappa Net Worth $20 Million
Gail was a daughter of John Klein Sloatman Jr., a researcher for the US Navy in nuclear weapons, and spent her early years in Hollywood, Los Angeles where she was a friend of Jim Morrison. Her father secured a job in London in 1959, so the family moved to England, and Gail went to Marymount International School. During her teenage years, Zappa was a model for a photographer Terence Donovan.
Zappa’s father found her a job at the Office of Naval Research and Development, but she later moved to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology in the mid-1960s. She returned to Los Angeles in 1966 and met the producer Kim Fowley, and performed a duet with him on a single as “Bunny and Bear”. Gail dated musician Bobby Jameson, and had a brief appearance in the documentary “Mondo Hollywood” (1966). Gail was working at the Whisky a Go Go club when Pamela Zarubica introduced her to Frank Zappa. They married in New York in 1967, and had their first child, Moon Zappa, a week after the wedding.
Gail contributed backing vocals on some of Zappa’s songs, and also appeared on the sleeve of his album “Absolutely Free” (1967), standing behind him, and on the “We’re Only In It For The Money” album in 1968. She also acted as his secretary, and worked as a supervisor of mail orders and labels. Frank died in 1993, and the Zappa Family Trust was founded by Gail in 2002 to protect Franks’ published and unpublished work from unauthorized use. Frank asked Gail to quit the music business shortly before he died, and she respected his wish. In 2015, their son Ahmet Zappa took over the operations of the Zappa Family Trust.
The Zappa Family Trust filed a lawsuit in 2008 against the organizers of the Zappanale Festival, near Bad Doberan, Germany. They demanded from the organizers change the festival’s name and to remove Frank Zappa’s statue that had stood in the city center since 2002. The case went to the court, but it was ruled in Zappanale’s favor.
Regarding her personal life, Gail Zappa had four children with Frank: Moon Zappa, Dweezil Zappa, Ahmet Zappa, and Diva Zappa. She suffered from a lung cancer for many years before she died in Los Angeles on the 7th October 2015.
