Individuality exemplifies Zappa's music

By Ralph Hulett

The Daily Aztec, 6 October 1977

 Frank Zappa's individuality as a musician can attributed to what he has instigated in popular music. He was the first to record a album as a single piece of music with Freak Out, which influenced later releases by artists like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Satiric lyrics have often surfaced in Zappa's compositions, dealing with segments of society from status-quo American Dream worshippers to hypocritical hippies. Zappa's uncompromising musical road started in the early 1960s, when he learned in Torrance and Pomona what he was up against as a mucician.

"Club managers there felt that musicians were a piece or furniture or a jukebox – you were there to serve them," Zappa said. "I didn't want to do that, so I got fired."

Zappa elaborated on what made his going rough, and also what made him go on. He said popular music at this time was not what he wanted to play, but he still felt he could get a recording contract.

"The music that was making it then was cute, personality music, while the Mothers were real ugly and a mess," Zappa said. "I figured, though, that if there was a rnarket for plastic Creature From Black Lagoon dolls, there was also one for us."

According to Zappa, the Mothers' big break occurred when they were playing at Hollywood's Whisky A Go-Go. Tom Wilson, a record producer, caught the band's act und felt it had commercial potential.

"Wilson saw us doing a song about the Watts riots, and said we were a great white blues band," Zappa said. "He got us a contract, and our first album, Freak Out, cost $20,000 which was astronomical in those days. It was also the first double rock album, which was also unheard of, and MGM didn't know how to sell it."

With subsequent Mothers albums, Zappa claimed that MGM set a tighter record production budget, when later reported record sales that Zappa felt were too low. So he sued MGM, asked for an auditing of the company's books, and moved his talents to Warner Brothers.

"We finally settled with MGM," Zappa said. "I never learned how many Mothers albums they sold, since they told me a freak fire and flood at MGM totally wiped out their sales records. They gave me back the Mothers master tapes, and that settled it."

Zappa had both critical and positive remarks about contemporary music's diffcrent modes, such as punk-rock. He said he liked 1960s punk-rock like Sky Saxon, but when he saw the Sex Pistols on television he didn't think they were "too suave."

As far as art-rock goes, Zappa felt that some groups have no legitimacy in that musical field. Genesis, for example, could be usurpers of musical ideas.

"In the 1960s, so-called art-rock was played by groups like Renaissance, who would pop up on the East Coast, wear tunics and play classical licks on guitar," Zappa said. "A group today like Genesis could have stolen its act from a band who never got a contract und is still lurking around out there in the bushes."

On the other hand, Zappa admitted that he found Gentle Giant interesting, though the group is limited. He emphasized that Gentle Giant is hardly at the pinnacle of what rock can do.

In his own music, Zappa incorporates various forms, including jazz, rock and classical. He said that complicated music is not what hinders musicians, but rather it is the musicians themselves.

"Complicatcd music is limited only by people who are trying to perform it," Zappa said. "In classical music, for example, the composer is at the mercy of those interpreting his work. If the conductor doesn't know what he's doing, then the composer gets screwed."

Zappa said that he composes all the different parts of his music, then works out the auditory details with the musicians. He also claimed that a 12-hour work day is normal for him, since he is heavily involved with recording as well as writing and producing his own music.

"With the early albums, I had less control over the production," Zappa said. "But now I've learned about correct volume, mixing and mastering a record. Zoot Allures has got my own disc mastering."

Auditory considerations are also attended to by Zappa fore his concerts, as seen with his personal asjustments to the SDSU Open Air Theatre sound system. But whether live or on record, Zappa's music is both entertaining and surprising, for it reflects his ever- expanding knowledge as a self-motivated musician.