Big Bad Frank Rails Against the World
By Blair
Jackson
My love/hate
relationship with Frank Zappa’s music goes back more than
fifteen years and seems to break down about this way: Love His
Music – 20 percent of the time; Think His Music Is At Least
Engaging – 20 percents; Can’t Fathom It, Much as I Try – 15
percent; Think What He Is Doing is Puerile, Pretentious and
Useless – 15 percent. Now, if that seems tilted a bit towards
the negative, remember that Zappa puts out more music than
virtually any other living composer. So on terms of sheer
Number of Pieces Enjoyed (NPE, as we all it in the trade),
Zappa’s doing pretty well. I probably even like more Zappa songs
than Brue Springsteen songs, but then Brue only puts out one
record every three years or so (compared to Zappa’s one every
three months, it sometimes seems) and Bruce’s PPE (Percentage of
Pieces Enjoyed) runs a very high 85-90 percent. Prolific is too
much an adjective for Zappa, “prodigious” is probably more
accurate. And that’s fine – some of modern Western culture’s
best known figures have been fully as prodigious as Zappa. Just
look at the output of folks like L. Ron Hubbard (before he
supposedly died of course), LeRoy Neiman, Rod McKuen, Peter Max
and Barbara Cartland. Yes, the true Giants can really churn it
out. Of course, when you go for quantity, your quality is going
to slip just a tad from time to time, but such is the curse of
being Creative!
In case
you’re wondering, it’s okay for me to put down Zappa’s music in
print because he doesn’t are what I (or anyone else) think. In
fact, he probably both expects and secretly enjoys being trashed
in print. After all, he obviously goes to such great lengths to
offend us and piss us off, we should at least accord him
the courtesy of being pissed off and offended. And since he is
contemptuous of virtually everything on the planet except
himself, don’t we OWE IT TO FRANK to also be contemptuous and
self-absorbed? Of course we do, which is why his introduction is
rattling on non sensically, almost like a song on Zappa’s new
album, Man From Utopia.
There are ten
songs on Zappa’s latest, and it falls almost exactly in line
with the percentages I outlined in the first paragraph. There
are two numbers I love: the album-opening “Cocaine Decisions,”
which deftly lampoons the Drug of the Chic; and the nimble,
multi-rhythmic instrumental “Tink Walk Amok”. In the great
Instrumentals versus Vocals debate, I have always leaned heavily
towards Zappa’s instrumental work. My favorite Zappa records are
Hot Rats, Sleep Dirt and the epic Shut Up ‘N Play Yer Guitar
series, all of which are eighter largely or entirely
instrumental. So it’s not surprising that the three “non-verbal’
tracks on Man From Utopia are among my favorites, even if
“Moggio” sounds like FZ’s 53rd rewrite of “Peaches En
Regalia” off Hot Rats. The way I look at it, better he
plagiarize “Peaches” time and again than “Billy the Mountain” or
“Greggery Peccary.”
Also
outstanding musically is “The Man From Utopia Meets Mary Lou,”
which fuses what is essentially a blues approach with some
finely played contemporary funk. The lyrics aren’t nearly as
interesting as the title. I’d quote a line or two, but there’s
this very imposing little box at the corner of the lyric sheet
that reads: “WARNING: All rights reserved, including publication
of lyric extracts for reviewing purposes. No portion of the
music or lyrics herein may be altered or subject to quotation in
any medium whatsoever without consent from the copyright owner.”
This box intrigues me because it is generally accepted that
reviewers and authors of articles are allowed to print lyric
extracts because it constitutes legitimate commentary on a
record or book or whatever. In short, don’t fuck with Frank. I
know for a fat he is not a cocaine user, but his threat of legal
action at the close of his “WARNING” truly smacks of coke
paranoia. Let’s really tempt fate, however. What follows are 20
words contained in the lyrics of songs on Man From Utopia:
ugliness, scratchy, Aapulo, G-force, brassiere, meat,
motherfucker, underpants, morsel, eclair, blobulent, Kalamazoo,
nooky, corrugated, pooched, clipboard, chicken, kitty, popcorn,
and climatic. Connect ‘em, swap ‘em, make your own Frank Zappa
songs.
And judging
by the three songs on Man From Utopia that fall into my Puerile
and Useless category, writing a Zappa song isn’t as hard as it
used to be. “The Dangerous Kitchen,” “The Radio Is Broken” and,
worst of all, “The Jazz Discharge Party Hats” all sound like
Frank is making up the words as he goes along, singing, speaking
them in a boring monotone above baking that is scarcely musical
at all. Why anyone would listen to any of these ramblings more
than once escapes me. But based on the volume of mail we get
every time we print anything negative about Zappa, I will no
doubt be enlightened by some soul with a higher BTI (Bullshit
Tolerance Level) than I possess. “I dunno, Doc’” I told to my
very expensive therapist recently, “I’m not that amused by songs
about kitchen utensils, John Agar and sniffing women’s
underpants.” “Well, m’boy,” my shrink said, “That's why you're
in therapy and Frank Zappa is a rich man.”
But enough
irreverence. It you’re looking for mean-spirited barbs, listen
to virtually any Zappa record, or hey – while you’re here, why
not stick around to read what FZ has to say about hippies,
people who ripped off “Valley Girls,” and audiences who enjoy
classical music. If that last topic appears out of place, let me
explain. This interview, conducted by Regan McMahon and me, was
based around a specific event originally, namely Zappa's
appearance as guest conductor for a one-time-only salute to
modern music pioneers Webern and Varese on the occasion of each
composer’s 100th anniversary. Zappa, ever faithful disciple of
Varese, agreed to conduct two pieces played by San Francisco's
Contemporary Music Players, for whom the concert was a high-
priced
benefit. And Frank was a picture of decorum at the staid SF War
Memorial Opera House that evening, wearing a tuxedo even, and
leading the musicians with more dignity that I thought possible.
You see, even though Frank Zappa thinks you're stupid, he really
does love music and wants you to appreciate the Good
Stuff – like Varese (and Zappa, he would probably add).
Break out the
violins now everybody because, as Alex said in Clockwork Orange,
here comes the real weepy part. I fully expected to like Zappa
upon interviewing him and the fact is I did. He is, to no one’s
surprise, extremely bright, funny and articulate. If he
occasionally lapses into Frank’s Theories by rote almost, that’s
understandable – if I talked to jerks like me all day I'd
try to come up with zippy, quotable one-liners that I could use
again and again, too. Dressed in a hideously mismatched sweat
suit that would make Mr. Blackwell run for cover, Zappa
patiently fielded questions on a wide variety of topics. He was
alternately charming and condescending, obliging and rude – in
short, everything you’d anticipate Zappa would be like. He
seemed most excited when discussing the innumerable projects, he
has on the burner right now: an album of orchestral music and a
revolutionary stage show that would use his music, among them.
Naturally, though, this being the scandalous and
sensationalistic rock press and all, we left in mostly stuff
about “Valley Girls” and tossed the serious junk. Or some of it,
anyway. And so, through the miracle of modern technology, you
can sit back and enjoy this fractured conversation with rock's
reigning genius-pervert-guitar hero-stinker-and possessor of the
last great “soul patch,” Frank Zappa – my best friend.
You’ve
been committing your band in concert for some time, but
conducting an orchestra on pieces you didn’t write – like the
Varese works – must be quite different. How do you see the
conductor’s role in that sort of formal setting?
The conductor
is supposed to provide a visual representation of what the beats
are so you can synchronize the musical activities of all the
players in an ensemble. In other words, the musician has a piece
of music in front of him which is essentially his instructions
of what’s supposed to happen within a given time frame in the
piece. In rock and roll, you have bass and drums setting up the
meter for the whole band usually and everyone thrashes away
behind them. In an orchestra you have a guy waving a stick
around that makes patterns in the air that tells you where the
“one” is, the “two” is, where the ”seventeen" is. It’s those
patterns you draw in the air combined with the control you have
with your left hand over dynamics that determine how well you
conduct.
A lot of
conductors working today are out there for the glamor and are
out there to give their choreography their best shot because
they know the audience that comes to hear the music can’t tell
the difference. I don't think you’re conducting for the
audience. It's for the musicians. The easier you can make their
jobs, the better the music is going to be – it's that simple.
How do
you feel about the decorum that surrounds “classical” music?
I think it’s
one of the things that keeps a lot of people away from it. The
audience it needs to attract has been driven away by the pompous
putrescence of it all. That world is so weird. I'm not really a
denizen of that world, but what I’ve seen is that people are
really out of touch with reality. The way it is now in the
classical world is that people don’t go to hear the music as
much as they go to be seen by other people. I’m talking about LA
now, because that’s what I know. Go to the Music Center and you
see doctors, lawyers, maybe a few “music lovers” – you can tell
them because they're wearing the berets. [Laughs] Most of these
people wouldn’t know the difference between a good performance
and a bad one. A lot of them are schmucks, and they go to see
conductors doing a schmucky job in front of orchestras who are
doing a schmucky job. Then, as soon as intermission comes, they
run out to the bar to discuss stocks and bonds, and then
afterwards it’s out to dinner and some other entertainment
event, all with the same kind of people. If that’s what they
like, there should be plenty of it for them. They should be able
to see plenty of grandiose conductors, weeping, tearing their
hair out, bleeding with the music, arms rising into the air
during every crescendo. They should have that to the maxi and
then they’ll really think they saw a great performance. [Laughs]
You
recorded an album with the London Symphony recently. Do you find
the orchestral format limiting at all?
Well, you
can't quite get the rhythmic accuracy of a rock and roll band.
You can beg for it and you still won't get it. The London
Symphony is 107 guys and that’s hard to coordinate when what
they’re being called on to play is fairly complicated and you
don’t have as much rehearsal time as you’d like. The stuff we
just did is about 90 percent what I wanted. The worst of it is
about 75 percent, and that’s about as good as you can hope for
with a group that large.
But this is
music written for an orchestra. It's not rock and roll – no fuzz
tone here, folks. It has nothing to do with that world. It’s not
the missing link between “Louie Louie” and Beethoven's Fifth.
It’s complex music for a large group. I’d be a happy guy if all
I was interested in hearing was tiny music. It’s a lot cheaper
to record, but I like the big string sound and the London
Symphony has that.
I assume
that your reputation as a serious musician precedes you when you
work with the London Symphony or the Chamber Players, but is
your credibility hurt at all when you have a huge, trendy
novelly hit like “Valley Girls”?
I’d be
willing to say that if it hadn't been for “Valley Girls,” they
probably wouldn’t have called me up to do this [the Varese
tribute] because they know that since “Valley Girls” I can sell
more tickets for the fundraiser because now I'm “hot.” [Laughs]
So you’re
being used.
Yeah, but I'm
happy to be used for this purpose. It’s worthwhile.
Maybe
someone will do a tribute to your music in 50 years.
Don’t hold
your breath.
What do
you think you will be remembered for?
I probably
won't be remembered, but my daughter [Moon] will be for “Valley
Girls” because she’s contributed a viable thing to American
culture: she’s made it possible for other people to make
merchandise and derive profit from it, which is the only way to
judge excellence in America.
This has
been a sore point with you – I know you have several pending
lawsuits against people who have cashed in on the craze. Why
should you have control over “Valley Girls” merchandising?
Because the
whole merchandising schmeaze was generated by the song. The song
is a copyrighted object.
But
didn't Valley lingo pre-date the song? If someone had made a
record of hippie lingo in the ‘60s, should they have owned the
rights to “groovy” or ”bitchin’" or whatever?
That’s not
the point. If the lyrics are copyrighted and if some of those
lyrics were extracted from real things Valley people said, and
others there were made up at that recording session and done in
that tone of voice, and then the song itself was constructed
from nowhere, and then the whole thing is subverted by other
people for merchandising use, the people who made the original
art are entitled to remuneration.
Where do
you draw the line. though? Is “grody to the max” a creation or
an interpretation of something that already exists?
I’m sure you
could sit down with Moon and go through all the words in that
song and she’d tell you who said what, and what she actually
made up at the session. In fact, I think l was the one who came
up with “bag your toenails.”
That was
inspired.
[Mock humbly]
These things … they just come out of me! [Laughs]
Do you
think the merchandising that's been done is in worse taste than
the original song? There's a certain level of satirical bad
taste Americana in the song.
I can't
really answer that because I don't think the thrust of the song
is “bad taste Americana.” The song was ’written as a piece of
documentary reportage: these people here talk like this, act
like this. This is a song about them. It’s reporting with a
beat.
That's
questionable.
What's
questionable about it?
Well,
it’s still an extreme interpretation with satirical overtones.
Go out to the Galleria and talk to people and maybe that’s
“documentary reportage,” but you said yourself a lot of what
Moon said was created in the studio.
Then we have
nothing further to discuss on the subject because I'm telling
you what my intent was when I put the song together. Again, my
intent was to make a statement about these people, who are
there, who do this. That is taking real facts from a
real place and putting it into a song. I do that in a lot of
songs. If you think that is “an extreme interpretation” you’re
way off on a tangent somewhere. It’s just a comment. It's like
if I do a song like “Jewish Princess” – here they are, they look
like this, they do this. Documentary. Same thing with “The
Legend of the Illinois Enema Bandit.” It’s reporting. There’s
the one on the Fillmore East album about a girl getting hosed by
a mud shark; you think it's preposterous but it’s real. It's a
kind of folk music – a small contribution to American life. I
take it seriously and try to be as accurate as I can.
You’ve
said that your occasional successes allow you to work on
projects that are perhaps less commercial but more important to
you. What will the success at “Valley Girls” do for you?
To be quite
honest, “Valley Girls” hasn't generated that much money. It’s
generated a helluva lot of press, but the album [Ship Arriving
Too Late to Save Dreaming Witch, definitely 1982’s best album
title] didn’t do spectacularly. We sold 260,000 units in the
U.S. and maybe another 100,000 outside this country. Sheik
Yerbouti sold a lot more.
Can you
gauge in advance which of your projects will be financially
successful.
No. Never
have been able to.
“Dancin’
Fool,” for instance, was a timely song.
It was, and
Sheik Yerbouti was one of the best-selling albums I’ve
ever made but it wasn’t because of “Dancin’ Fool.” It was
because of ”Bobby Brown Goes Down,” which was a hit all over
Europe. That album sold almost a million units, most of them
outside the U.S.
Is the
language barrier a problem?
Sure it’s a
problem. That’s one reason we use lyric sheets. But even then,
they'll come across strange words, like “plook” or
“cheerleader.” What does a person in Spain think of a word like
“cheerleader”? That's one reason most songwriters stick to
boy-girl situations. It makes it much easier to understand
because it's so simple.
Who do
you receive input from about your music? You don't respect
critics and you don't use a producer. How do you judge the
success of a project?
I’m the only
person who can judge it because I know what the facts are –
where it came from, what it took to do it, how close it got to
realization at the time I was recording it, what the pressing
quality was, and the problems with reproducing the music on a
home system. The rest is purely subjective. Only the person who
puts a piece together is in any position to judge success or
failure.
What do
you miss from the '60s?
The Garrick
Theatre in Greenwich Village. We used to play there six nights a
week, two shows a night. It was great.
You hear
some performers lament that there was more involvement at shows
in the late '60s.
Oh really?
You mean like when people used to go to Grateful Dead concerts
and lie all over the floor with a blue cloud over their faces?
Whatever entertains you!
Why do
you disdain that?
Have you ever
tried to leave a place where people are lying all over the floor
in a blue cloud or passed out? It's dangerous.
But a lot
of those shows, even your own, had more spontaneity –
What’s
spontaneous about being so fucking stoned you can't move? Come
on! The ’60s were a bunch of people who were wasted out of their
fucking minds – under the control of the government without
really knowing it, especially in the Bay Area [see BAM, January
1978 for a more exhaustive look at Frank’s theory that the
government secretly distributed drugs in the community]. It was
all nice and groovy if you liked to be toasted. l thought the
'60s were a rotten time.
Are you
aware that a lot of people go to your shows “toasted”? l
distinctly recall seeing a nice, gray-blue haze over the crowd
at the last one of your shores I attended.
Haze is a
pervasive thing in American society. It doesn’t just happen at
concerts, either, but in lawyers’ offices and government offices
as well. The Hazing of America is a byproduct of the ’60s.
Everyone discovered how groovy you could be if you were
chemically altered. Drugs help defeat the logic mechanism. You
can’t approach the world logically because you’re so voluptuized
by what’s happening.
How
logical do you want to be when you listen to rock and roll?
I like to be
logical all the time, period. Of course I have no friends,
either. [Laughs] I like to know what I’m seeing. That doesn’t
mean I have to be analytical every second, but if I’m looking at
this jar of mustard [indeed, there was a jar of line mustard on
the table in front of him; he was not hallucinating] I don’t
want to think, “God, this is a beautiful girl!” It’s a jar of
mustard! The ’60s made it fashionable to be wasted. The ’60s
also made it okay to be a beggar.
Do you
have a sense of how many fans from the Mothers of Invention days
have stuck with you?
Not really.
We get a lot of younger kids at the shows. I think most of the
fans who were at the Garrick Theatre now own their dads'
businesses. There were two guys we used to call Loeb and Leopold
[after the brainy, but psychotic killers] who were regulars at
the Garrick, and when I played at the Palladium [also in N.Y.C.]
in ’81, I looked out in the front row and recognized one of
these two. Well, now he’s a record distributor in Queens. He’s
totally straight, but I recognized him anyway. So i brought him
up onstage for old time’s sake. What this guy used to do at the
Garrick was run down the aisle in the middle of the show, jump
onstage, grab the microphone, scream into it at the top of his
lungs, fall on the floor and then he wanted me to spit Coca-Cola
all over his body. I'd do it, too. [Laughs] The audience would
actually wait for it – “Here he comes! Now Frank’s gonna spit
Coca-Cola on him!” That night at the Palladium I asked him if he
wanted me to give him a Pepsi treatment and he said he wasn't
dressed for it.
Most of the
other people who used to come see me probably aren't even pop
consumers anymore because let’s face it – you get to a certain
age and you don't want to go to a hockey rink to see a concert
and you don’t want to get poked on by a 15-year-old. That's not
entertainment to them, so they stay home and listen to music on
really expensive hi-fis.
To Frank
Zappa records of course.
Just the
smart ones! [Laughs]