Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story of Frank Zappa

by Neil Slaven

  At the other extreme were songs like 'Plastic People' and 'Son of Suzy Creamcheese', both based on Richard Berry's 'Louie Louie'. 'Status Back Baby' was a refurbished version of a song from 'I Was A Teenage Maltshop', while 'Duke Of Prunes' had less to do with Gene Chandler's 1962 hit, 'Duke Of Earl', than it did with guying the nonsense of love lyrics in general. There were two extended performances, one instrumental, the other vocal. 'Invocation & Ritual Dance Of The Young Pumpkin' opens with a quote from 'Jupiter, The Bringer Of Jollity', part of Gustav Hoist's suite, The Planets. The tune, a feature for Frank's guitar and Bunk Gardner's soprano sax, was dedicated to Gail, who appears in the front cover's main photograph taken by Alice Ochs, peering over Frank's shoulder and labelled 'My Pumpkin' on its reproduction inside.

  The other extended track was a major composition and the album's highlight. 'Brown Shoes Don't Make It', a scathing attack on those, high and low, who formed America's government, was a complicated piece made up of several sections, with frequent tempo changes and numerous edits. It contrasted the average American family's humdrum existence ('do you love it, do you hate it, there it is the way you made it'), their limited expectations ('TV dinner by the pool, I'm so glad I've finished school'), the corrupt minds of politicians ('a world of secret hungers perverting the men who make your laws') and their triumphalism ('life is such a ball, I run the world from City Hall').

  "These unfortunate people manufacture inequitable laws and ordinances," Frank told London's International Times, "perhaps unaware of the fact that the restrictions they place on the young people in a society are a result of their own hidden sexual frustrations."38 'Brown Shoes' formed part of the album's second side, sub-titled 'The MOI American Pageant'. Versions of the same song, with contrasting arrangements, opened and closed the side; 'America Drinks' is a deconstructed stumbling parody of a cocktail lounge love song; when it returns in jaunty 4/4 as 'America Drinks & Goes Home', it's performed over a cacophony of ringing tills, angry brawls, drunken revelry and seductions. Does this kind of life look interesting to you?

  "The one thing that I think is really good about our music," Frank said in September 1967, "is that the settings for the lyrics are so carefully designed. Those things are so carefully constructed that it breaks my heart when people don't dig into them and see all the levels that I put in them."39 Once again, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. It was impossible for listeners to dissect such a deliberately complex sound collage; nor could they be expected to divine the reasons for his methods of composition.

  This was one of the fundamental conceits by which Frank would separate himself from his audience and which would allow him to reject or bypass all criticism. He was saying, in effect, "If you don't understand musical theory (or the precise origin of a song's theme), then you are not competent to comment." By 1972, he'd altered his stance: "All I'm interested in doing is writing music that I want to hear," he said in a radio interview.40

  Throughout the album, Frank delivered snippets of dialogue, which sometimes provided specific instances of a song's subject and at others a counterpoint. 'Plastic People' began with a cryptic reference, 'There's this guy from the CIA and he's creeping around Laurel Canyon.' Later, he intoned, 'I hear the sound of marching feet down Sunset Boulevard to Crescent Heights and there, at Pandora's Box, we are confronted with a vast quantity of plastic people.' While Stephen Stills' lyric about young people being attacked by 'the heat' fudged the issue, Frank called the police Nazis and criticised the conduct of those that allowed themselves to be manipulated.

  MGM/Verve had placed a restriction on the amount of recording time available for this second album and so its recording was completed in four double sessions, totalling 24 hours. But the mixing was done at MGM's own studios in New York City, because the band had got its first East Coast engagement.

  CITY OF TINY LIGHTS

  The Mothers had been booked to play in New York during the week beginning November 26, Thanksgiving Day, at the Balloon Farm ('sort of a grubby location') at 23 St Marks Place, the building which houses 'The Dom', where the Velvet Underground had made their name. Reaction was such that they were retained until New Year's Day. One review stated, "The Balloon Farm became much more than a discotheque last weekend, and the resident combo became much more than a pop-music ensemble." The Mothers were from "deepest, freakiest LA. They are a perfect embodiment of all that is super-hyped and stunningly creative about West Coast rock."

  'R.G.' went on: "These eight musicians made the Balloon Farm a concert hall. They seized the stage and belted the world's first rock'n'roll oratorio to an audience that was either too engrossed or too confused to do anything but sit and listen. The show was a single extended number, broken into movements by patter, and fused by repeated melody-themes. Especially notable was the use, as leitmotif, of music from Boris Godunov, sewn into the fabric of the song so that it became an integral part of the melody and not a sequin pasted on for class." The review ended: "The Mothers of Invention haven't arrived yet, but they strive with outstretched fingers towards something perceptively unique. Their first album, Freak Out!, is the most poorly produced package since the Hindenburg Zeppelin but don't let this baby-dribble fool you. The Mothers of Invention are to be watched, and leader Frank Zappa deserves your attention, and your three bucks."41

  Not that their money was worth much on the city's streets, as Frank recounted to a Dallas radio interviewer: "We were grubby and long-haired and stuff that sort of thing hadn't really taken over in New York — and it was the middle of winter and we were warm-blooded. It was freezing there, snow and everything, and we'd had to go to a used clothes store before we left Los Angeles to get some old overcoats to wear. We looked like a bunch of immigrants standing out there in the streets, you know, and the cabs wouldn't pick us up to take us home. We had to walk home in the snow every night after the job."

  Their month-long tenure also drew an appreciative article in the Christmas Day edition of the New York Times by Robert Shelton. Declaring them, "The most original new group to simmer out of the rock'n'roll underground in the last hour-and-one-half," Shelton called Frank the "Dada" of the Mothers, as well as "a spindly-framed, sharp-nosed gamester whose appearance suggests some of the more sinister aspects of Edgar Allen Poe, John Carradine (him again!) and Rasputin."42

  Frank was on good form for the interview. "I am trying to use the weapons of a disoriented and unhappy society against itself," he said. "The Mothers of Invention are designed to come in the back door and kill you while you're sleeping." He identified one of the band's short-range objectives as doing away with the Top 40 broadcasting format because it was "basically wrong, unethical and un-musical". Shelton also commented on the use of classical elements in the band's arrangements, to which Frank replied, "Stravinsky in rock'n'roll is like a get-acquainted offer, a loss-leader. It's a gradual progression to bring in my own 'serious' music."43

  Another progression was taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. In November, 'It Can't Happen Here' had been issued as a single in England. It was reviewed on the November 12 edition ofJuke Box Jury, a staid BBC television programme that voted the week's releases 'hits' or 'misses'. The guests on that week's show, presided over by disc jockey David Jacobs, were singers Bobby Goldsboro, Carole Carr and Susan Maugham, and comedian Ted Rogers, with audience member Robert Stringer as the casting voter. 'It Can't Happen Here' was played between the Small Faces' 'My Mind's Eye' and Jonathan King's 'Icicles'. No prizes for guessing how it fared. Other records reviewed that night included 'La-La-La-Lies' by The Who, 'Willow Weep For Me' by the Alan Price Set, 'Pamela' by Wayne Fontana and Sandie Shaw's 'Think Sometimes About Me'.

  Writing in the December issue of Queen, Nik Cohn dismissed the Mothers' music as "revamped Dada, souped-up Ginsberg and warmed-over Dylan. The only thing new about the Mothers is the speed and glibness with which they've become successful." Comparing the Mothers to those he called "the precursors", Cohn found the Mothers "plain dull. This record is
meant to be a brainstorm, a wild fit, and it should be monstrous or lovely, obscene or apocalyptic. Instead, it sounds tentative and self-conscious, painfully aware of how naughty it's being." English pop intellectuals were already running round with their tongues hanging out over the Mothers, apparently, but Cohn didn't intend to join them. "The only thing that depresses me is that I'd like pop to be genuinely progressive and alive, and I hate a supposedly new sound to come out as tired and old-hat as the Mothers."

  5:

  LUMPY GRAVY

  The Mothers needed more than hats when they travelled from New York to Montreal for two weeks of gigs. "We played a club called the New Penelope," Frank told David Sheff, "and it was twenty degrees below zero. We walked from our hotel to the club and the snot had literally frozen in our noses by the time we got to work. The wind instruments got so cold that if you tried to play them, your lips and fingers would freeze to them. The instruments couldn't even be played until they were warmed up."1

  Back in Los Angeles, work was still scarce and some of the band had families to feed. Frank, as usual, had work to do. He'd been commissioned by Nick Venet, the Capitol A&R man who'd signed the Beach Boys and produced their first albums, to compose and conduct an original orchestral work. Venet assumed that, even though Frank was signed to MGM/Verve as a member of the Mothers of Invention, the contract did not cover either of the roles expected of him by Capitol. Unfortunately, he thought wrong.

  Lumpy Gravy was conceived roughly as a half-hour oratorio that combined the elements of rock band and orchestra, interspersed with idiosyncratic dialogue, percussion interludes and musique concrete. It's said that it took Frank 11 days to write but the finished work was plainly created in the studio, for it's a dazzling combination of the above forces, edited with humour and often with rapid precision. Much of Part One consists of different arrangements of 'Oh No', following one upon the other, sometimes at double speed. A vocal version of 'Oh No' was later issued on Weasels Ripped My Flesh, and the tune, with or without words, became a staple in the repertoire of successive Zappa bands. All this is punctuated by Varese and Stravinsky-like orchestral interludes, Motorhead monologues about girlfriends and their cars, and conversations by various individuals with their heads in a grand piano, the strings resonating to their voices.

  This last was a typically contrived Zappa 'event', in which he placed people in a controlled environment, suggested their topics of conversation and recorded the outcome. In no time, people were competing for the privilege of going in the piano. "The cast of characters that wandered in and out of the piano covered everybody from Motorhead and Roy Estrada to the sister of the guy who owned the (Apostolic) recording studio (Gilly Townley) to Monica the Albanian receptionist to bunches of people whose names I can't even remember."2 These last included Spider Barbour, Ail-Night John the studio manager and Louis Cuneo, responsible for the 'psychotic turkey' laughter. Over the course of three days, eight or nine hours of bizarre conversations were recorded.

  Part Two continued in the same vein and included the theme of another Zappa mainstay, 'King Kong', before Zappa himself intones, "Cos round things are (pause), are boring' and a perky version of 'Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance' fades into the ether. Some of the orchestral sessions, including woodwind players breaking down in humorous frustration, took place in Los Angeles before the tapes were taken back to New York for completion at Apostolic during February.

  Capitol had invested some $40,000 before MGM/Verve got wind of what was happening and threatened a lawsuit. The matter went unresolved for over a year until Verve eventually bought the finished masters at cost and released Lumpy Gravy after We're Only In It For The Money, which had been recorded in the meantime. An acetate exists of two titles, 'Gypsy Airs' and 'Sink Trap', which Capitol may have considered releasing as a single.

  While the first Gravy sessions were planned and recorded, a 'return' gig was arranged at the Lindy Opera House, 5214 Wilshire for February 3/4 and advertised in Freep. "Yes, Ladies and Gendemen, Boys and Girls, Policemen and Tourists. . .! The MOTHERS return to play for what's left of the LA underground. We'll mention the Police and Gov't and we can all nod our heads together while we all cop out. We've been rehearsing a whole bunch of new numbers like 'BROWN SHOES DON'T MAKE IT', 'I'M LOSING STATUS AT THE HIGH SCHOOL', and a new Funset Strip version of 'WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?' that is guaranteed to titillate your Liberal backgrounds."

  Another, this time full-page, ad appeared in the next issue with the headline, "HEAR THE NEW M.O.I. SONGBOOK". The "Songs Of Love" were 'Duke Of Prunes' and 'Memories Of El Monte'; "Songs Of Spiritual Significance", the original 'Electric Banana' 'At last you too can know what Donovan picked up on . . .', and 'Call Any Vegetable'; "Songs We're Sick Of Playing" included almost all of Freak Out!; and "Songs We Just Learned This Week That Will Sound Crappy" were 'Agency Man' 'Wherein RONALD REAGAN is elected to the PRESIDENCY because nobody took the time to stop him' and 'Archie's Home' 'What if Archie Shepp could play an ELECTRIC BASSOON?' In 1967, Frank must have regarded the idea of Reagan being elected President as outlandish rather than prophetic. But he underestimated 'the great communicator', if not the power of the business interests who wrote his scripts.

  Nat Freedland reviewed the evening in Freep 134: "Frizz-gated, evil-goateed, wraithlike and stocking-less, Frank Zappa is — among many more other things than anybody else in the pop explosion — the Brecht and Weill of rock music. Much of his melodic approach could be an electronic 'Son Of Threepenny Opera'. Marching quarter-note melodies, one note per word, the magnificently precise Mother drummer accenting each word.

  "Zappa is also the most avant-garde arranger in rock'n'roll. His 'Archie's Home' number interpolated the incredibly complex New jazz sound of Archie Shepp's style into a series of nonsense word turns. . . Sure, the Mothers run in a little protest and satire to keep up the far-outnik image. But it's pretty much kiddie boo-hooing. 'SELL US A PRESIDENT, AGENCY MAN' . . . 'NAZIS ARE RUNNING THIS TOWN' . . . It's gutsier than the ran of the Top 40, but Dylan, Ochs, or the Fugs it is not. Why don't you take on some of these cats' groovier art-rock, Zappa?"3 How about that "groovier"? The final third of the review went into a Jack Kerouac stream-of-consciousness vision of the extended improvisation section of the programme and ended, "Welcome home, Mothers."

  TREACHEROUS CRETINS

  How the Mothers came to be invited to play at the ceremony for the ninth Grammy awards in New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is lost to posterity. The blame for initiating the awards can be laid at the door of the Hollywood Beautification Committee. In 1955, this august body was planning the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a sequence of stars to be set in the concrete of Hollywood Boulevard going west from the junction with Vine Street, in an attempt to halt the area's slide into sleaze. As the film Pretty Woman illustrates, they failed signally in their endeavour; even in daylight it's the seediest part of town, pimps and hookers of all faiths commandeering the star-set sidewalk after dark.

  The Committee asked the five gnomes of the music business — Jesse Kaye of MGM, Lloyd Dunn of Capitol, Sonny Burke of Decca, Paul Weston of Columbia and Dennis Farnon of RCA — to suggest a list of names for the 1,200 stars planned. The gnomes did what was asked of them but then began to consider an award that would be presented for artistic merit rather than commerciality. The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) was duly formed on May 29, 1957 in the back room of the Brown Derby restaurant. The Grammy was named after the statuette of a wind-up gramophone with its amplifying horn, a composite design based on Edison, Victor and Columbia originals.

  The award ceremony for the 1966 awards took place on February 14, 1967. The programme read "Music by Woody Herman; Entertainment by the Mothers of Invention". NARAS was looking for credibility; Frank didn't intend to give it to them. His resolve hardened when he read the otherwise hilarious Stan Freberg's pompous Credo that NARAS judged records "on the basis of sheer artistry and artistry alone".

  When the Mothers took the stage,
Frank went for the fat cat's throats: "All year long you people manufactured this crap, and one night a year you've got to listen to it! Your whole affair is nothing more than a lot of pompous hokum, and we're going to approach you on your own level."4 The band then proceeded to ravish 'Satin Doll', the tune with which the Woody Herman band had opened the evening, dismembering dolls and handing the limbs out to the stunned audience. The only bright note in an ugly evening was when John McClure, head of Classical A&R for Columbia Masterworks, approached Frank to say, "When you get tired of that dipshit label you're on, why don't you come and make a deal with (us)?"5

  The New York chapter of NARAS met the following Monday and told one another how disgusting it had been. "Everyone rolled their eyes in the back of their heads and said, 'What a schmuck, what a tasteless dope,'" said Nick Perito. "The idea (in inviting Zappa) had been to lend some energy to a prestigious affair. He turned it into a bar-room."6

  Frank may have regarded the band's performance as prestigious, too. If Absolutely Free had been in the shops, it would undoubtedly have sold in greater quantities. But, once again, MGM were complaining about the album artwork. Frank's vertical design for the gatefold sleeve incorporated a photographic collage and a brightly coloured cartoon representation of brown-shoed America's typical habitat. The word 'buy' appears frequently, most notably on a flag that says, 'BUY America' and 'Move Your Goods With Patriotic Sell!'. Another message read 'You must BUY this album now. Top 40 radio will never ever play it'. 'KILL UGLY RADIO', in large letters, appeared on the inside sleeve. What MGM's legal department objected to was the phrase that ran along the top edge of the American flag: 'WAR means WORK for all'. This was not included in the truths that Americans held to be self-evident and MGM refused to print it. Eventually a compromise was reached whereby the phrase remained but printed in a light grey rather than 100 per cent black.