Tell Me You Love Me/Will You Go All The Way For The USA

By Greg Shaw

Creem, March 1971


“TELL ME YOU LOVE ME”/“WILL YOU GO ALL THE WAY FOR THE USA?”
BY FRANK ZAPPA -
BIZARRE REPRISE 0967

Ever since he disbanded the Mothers last year to “give the public a chance to catch up” to his “advanced ideas”, Zappa has only proven that his true creativity ran out some time between We’re Only In It For the Money and Lumpy Gravy, and that everything since then has been a wallet of rehashed ideas and increasingly irrelevant satire. “Tell Me You Love Me”, possibly an attempt to pander to what he considers the 9-year-old taste of the rock audience, is merely an ugly song. The other side is an embarrassingly childish put down of some guy who goes to a USO dance. I could understand if Zappa were satirizing the hippie teenagers who think theyre better than everyone else because they have long hair, but Im afraid thats a little ... advanced ... for Frank. Both sides are utterly uninteresting, musically, just about as uninteresting as Frank Zappas philosophy at this point.