Frank Zappa Once Ordered Preteen Daughter Moon Unit to 'Hide the Gun' During an Explosive Fight with Her Mom

Moon Unit Zappa details her unconventional childhood with her Rock and Roll Hall of Famer dad in her new book 'Earth to Moon: A Memoir'

Growing up is hard to do, but it can be especially challenging when you're growing up the daughter of a rock god who's more connected to his music than to his own children, and his mercurial, disappointed wife.

Moon Unit Zappa, 56, survived her childhood anyway, bruised but not completely broken. The writer and actress — who scored a Top 40 hit, "Valley Girl," with her Rock and Roll Hall of Famer dad Frank Zappa in 1982 at age 14 — details her journey to self-awareness in her new book Earth to Moon, A Memoir (out now via Dey Street Books). Although she describes Frank, who died in 1993, as a guy who rarely raised his voice, his confrontations with Moon's mom, Gail Zappa, who died in 2015, could nonetheless get heated and scary.

Related: Moon Unit Zappa Explores Trauma in New Memoir: 'What Happens When Your Mother Is Your First Bully?' (Exclusive)

Frank and Gail often argued about his rampant infidelity, and in Earth to Moon, the oldest of their four children recalls one particularly explosive fight that happened when she was in sixth grade. Moon was sleeping in her bedroom with her baby sister Diva in a crib beside her bed when the sound of their parents in the heat of battle jolted her awake.

"I hear Frank one room over saying, 'Calm down,' in a voice that isn't loud but feels like strong arms pushing you into a chair," Moon writes.

After checking to make sure Diva was OK, Moon put the pillow over her head and went back to sleep. Soon, her dad was by her side waking her up. "Gail is on a rampage. I need you to hide the gun," he told her before exiting. "My father runs towards the sounds of Gail's frantic feet," Moon writes. "My legs feel like jelly. My heart is ponding in my ears. I am scared."

Gun? What gun? Moon writes that she didn't even realize they had a gun. A frantic search began. Moon never found the gun, and eventually her parents stopped fighting.

Related: Moon Unit Zappa Recalls Her Dad Frank Zappa's Final Days, Reveals His Deathbed Message to Her (Exclusive)

Despite the less-than-ideal experience of growing up with a distant father who was often on tour away from home or locked away in the recording studio and a mother whom Moon calls her "first bully," Moon tells PEOPLE that Frank and Gail Zappa taught her important lessons about parenting.

"I mean, on the most basic level, whatever they did, do the opposite," says Moon, who has a daughter, Mathilda, 19, with her ex-husband, Matchbox Twenty drummer Paul Doucette. "I mean, I literally was like, "OK, don't do that, and then don't do that."

"But at the same time, the magic of my mother's... her decorating style, her sense of color, her sense of whimsy and play, the fact that she read to us growing up, there were some of those things that I did take on. I mean, I think I was pretty good at taking the best of what I experienced."

"And then, I think, like anyone, you try to cherry-pick the stuff that works and the stuff that doesn't, but just on the most basic level, drive them to school on time, make them a lunch, show up at the school events, ask them what they're interested in, just on those most basic levels, take them to the doctor. These kinds of things, I definitely did differently."

Earth to Moon,: A Memoir is published by Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, and available wherever books are sold.

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