Frank Zappa on Rock and the Religious Right

By David Croteau

S.P.E.W., #1 1986

Ever since the "Central Scrutinizer" began enforcing "all the laws that haven't been passed yet," Frank Zappa has been outspoken for the cause of free speech. In 1985 he was very visible in his opposition to the Parent's Music Resource Center, a group of Congressional wives and other famous Washington women who objected to the sexual references in rock lyrics and called for a record rating system similar to that used for movies.

While his politics and blunt outspoken manner have attracted the mainstream media, it's Frank Zappa's music that has attracted a loyal following. Zappa's musical projects have included more than forty albums (he has his own record company now: Barking Pumpkin), over thirty works for choral and orchestral groups, four ballets, two movies, and two TV specials.

What follows are excerpts from an interview done with WRL's David Croteau. —Eds.

DC : What do you think are the general motivations of the folks who are pushing for warning labels on albums?

FZ : Well, I think there's this strong – this is going to sound ridiculous – but there's this strong Nazi tendency in the United States from certatn people who call themselves conservative when in fact they're nothing more, nothing less, than fascists. They cloak themselves in a religious disguise mainly because it makes it easier for them to get on televtston.

DC : On the Barking Pumpkin "warning" labels that accompany some of your albums ...

FZ : Which pre-dated all this stuff by the way.

DC : I know, I realized that as I went back and looked at some of them. The one I noticed was from Thing-Fish which was '84 right?

FZ : Yeah, I've had the stickers on three albums and The Mothers of Prevention was the only one that came out after this whole business. But I've been talking about the possibility of musical censorship in the United States since the Joe's Garage album which was '75.

DC : Right. What I was going to say is that on those "warning" labels, which are somewhat tongue-in-cheek I suppose but also very accurate, you attribute the attempt to censor rock & roll albums, in part, to "government supported programs designed to keep you docile and ignorant." Could you expound on that a little bit, especially the "government" end of it? Where do they come into all of this?

FZ : The thing that the government does is keep the educational system the United States in piss poor condition. Let's say you were an investor and you were going to put money into the stock market. You took a look at a company, you examined what was going on in that company and you noticed that in order for the company to give the appearance of a better quarterly bottom line they had slashed their R & D department. You know what I mean? OK, if you don't invest in research and development for the future, what kind of future has that company got? The quarterly bottom line might look good because they laid off everybody in their R & D department but what's it going to look like farther down tne road? That's the kind of shit that's been happening in the last couple of decades with education in the United States.

DC : In retrospect, how do you feel about what happened in 1985's round of discussions, Congressional hearings, and attention from the media?

FZ : Well, this has gone way beyond the PMRC just talking about Prince singing about masturbation, that's last year's news. The most recent thing is the Wallmart business.

DC : Which is what?

FZ : Wallmart is a chain of 900 drug stores in 22 states and they announced that they no longer going to sell rock & roll records, Rolling Stone magazine, or any other rock & roll magazine because Jimmy Swaggart said in a sermon that anything having to do with rock & roll is Satan's influence.

DC: Do you think that this will just continue the whole debate?

FZ : Of course it is. Trace it all back to what happened last year. If the record industry would have stood up on its hind legs and duked these motherfuckers there's no way that a guy like Swaggart would be able to get away with a statement like that. By playing it soft and easy with these Washington wives, the record industry helped to instill the illusion that there was something to be ashamed of, that these prudes that were squealing about all this stuff had some merit to their argument. By giving them that, by throwing them that bone, that opened the door for the rest of this shit that's gong on.

DC : A lot of this stuff is coming down from a much broader political climate that exists now ...

FZ : Of course, look at the White House. Even Tip O'Neil makes the distinction between the president and the White House. When the White House is spoken of you're talking about Donald Regan, Pat Buchanan, Ed Meese, all these strange pseudo-criminal types that are wandering around in there that are pulling the strtngs on the dummy making the speeches. Whatever Reagan's popularity rating in the public is, what's coming out of his mouth – if he made it up himself – you know it's usually wrong. You know what I mean? He's a bumbling oaf. He's a better behaved Gerald Ford. The people that are behind the scenes there are pretty clever and they're plugged directly into this network of religious fascists that are crawling over the television airwaves right now. If there is a danger to the youth of the United States it's watching an evangelist on television. I don't want my kids watching that shit. What they're selling is entrely superstitious. You know, Falwell, Swaggart, Pat Robertson, that's really science fiction. I've watched these guys. I saw Swaggart the other day say "Jesus told me nine months ago ..." Now this is a grown man wearing a suit and a tie with tears squirting out of his eyes telling the TV audience that a person who did live at one time and who has been dead for over 2000 years told him nine months ago that America was going to be spared for a while, that Jesus wasn't going to destroy America. Of course we all have to go because we're killing a million and a half little babies every year, but He's giving us a break. During that time could you please send your check. That's the kind of shit that these people are doing.

DC : What about alternative media or alternative resources to get out other views? Is Barking Pumpkin a response to some of the major record companies and their approach to things?

FZ : Well, one of the problems with the way the merchandising in the record business is run today is that a lot of the major labels actualy control the retail outlets. Without Barking Pumpkin and the mail order business a lot of my albums wouldn't be available in certan parts of the country because you can't get them into stores. That's one of the more useful things about having a mail order business. As long as people know where to write for it, if they want to get a record that their local store doesn't carry they can still get it.

DC : There's a lot of independent local stuff' going on these days, is that a useful response?

FZ : My advice to anybody who's doing anything independent is to set up a mail order business. Even if you're independent one of the problems that you face, suppose you've got a new artist and you're trying to promote an album or whatever, if you go to a store even if you get them to take some of your records into the store, then you've got the big problem of getting them to pay for them. The stores take them on like a 90 day credit or something like that and they have a tendency to shit all over the little independent producers. So the best way to do it is to do it mail order. Then the people who want that kind of music can get it and the people who made that kind of music can earn a living from doing it.

DC : What do you think's going to happen now that the record companies have backed down on the whole issue of warning labels? They haven't taken the opportunity to stand up so now what's the next step?

FZ : Well, I have a very low regard for most of the people who are executives in the record industry. I think they're really a bunch of whores and far beyond cynical when it comes to the way in which they do business. In my estimation they blew it last year. Now they could turn it around if they spent some money, if organized and got tough and went out there and fought this thing – not just because they're fighting to protect the interest of the world of music, or just because it eventually keep them in business, but because it's the right thing to do from a Constitutional standpoint and from a purely American standpoint. You've got to get in there and fight these guys because the fascist fundamentalist extremists in the Unted States are really a menace. They've got a lot of money and it's all tax exempt. You can't audit their books. And they virtually control a large portion of the policy-making machinery in Washington, DC. The way they do it is because they can scoop up all this money. It works like this: they show you a picture of a little black baby with flies on its nose. "Send me the money, we're gonna feed the baby." You can never make them prove they fed the baby but they got the money. Here's what they spend the money on: they buy sattelite time, they buy video installations, they set up what they call "colleges" which are basically brainwashing places to crank out more of these little fascist agents. And then the rest of the money – this is millions and millions of dollars they take in every year – is used as political donations for candidates who will play ball with them. You don't think it's strange that suddenly all kinds of people are getting "born again"?

DC : At a very convenient time in history.

FZ : Oh yeah, it's a fucking joke. When you're "born again" you're plugged into a financial pipeline that's unbelievable. Do you know who Pat Robertson had as a guest on his television show yesterday morning?

DC : No, I'm afraid I missed that one.

FZ : Nelson Bunker Hunt! He's the major funding source for most of what goes on in the fundamentalist right. He and Coors. I wouldn't be surprised if Hunt's got a lot of bucks in Robertson's campaign. Robertson's not exactly hurting because he takes $273 millions dollars a year – tax free. Now look at the state of Virginia. You've got Robertson there and you've got Fatwell there. They're both taking in lots of money, and they both own real estate, they own city equipment, and they employ a lot of people. How does that convert into clout in the real world? Certainly that gives them more of an impact on state politics than the guy who's driving a cab.

DC : Do you think the financial clout is why this continues to go on and is not being seriously challenged in a major way?

FZ : Well, it's money. Look at it this way. Remember Jim Jones – Jonestown?

DC : Yes.

FZ : Before he went to Guyana he lived in San Francisco. He started off his little cult and they were in a storefront but the next thing you know he's got a church and he's got a bunch of people going to the church. A wise man once said that the difference between a cult and a religion is how much real estate you own. As soon as he's got a church and he's got constituents, guess who wanted to have his picture taken with Jim Jones? Just about everybody in San Francisco politics because he can deliver x amount of voters. A lot of people after Jonestown wished that they had never had their picture taken with this guy.

DC : How can young people and folks in general, oppose this kind of stuff? What's the best way to organize?

FZ : You have to start letter writing campaigns the same way these so-called Christians do and demand that the propaganda which is being spread by these people on television be either removed or greeted with equal time from the local opposition. They get on television by buying the time. If you write to the television station and say you don't want your children watching this stuff because it makes them stupid. That's something that leads to suicide and crime – that type of Christianity. You know the Meese Commission went around trying to decide whether or not there's a causal relationship between pornography and sexual violence. I think a commission needs to go out and find out what the relationship is between religious superstition and violent crime. There's too many people going out murdering in the name of Jesus these days.

DC : Or historically, for that matter.

FZ : Yeah. If the goal of the government is to make things safe for the family and to protect us all from these unwanted social influences, the worst one of all has got to be contemporary Christianity via the tube. You have to fight this shit because unless the guy owns the station sees that there's a lot of mail that comes in that says "We hate this shit get it off the air or give me something else that shows an opposing point of view that my kids can watch ..." because maybe I don't want my kid signing up for a lifetime of donations to Pat Robertson or Falwell because that's all that shit is.

DC : Do you think artists will have to organize themselves since the executives are not doing their job?

FZ : Well, I don't think that the artists have an inclination to do that because this is not fun work. If you think it's terrific to go and argue with these bastards ... it's hideous to even be in the same room with them. Most artists who start off in the music business just want to play music, they don't want to do politics. If somebody urges them to do politics there's no guarantee that they're gong to do it well. I've seen some of the people on talk shows that went on last year to argue about the record rating business and they really were imbeciles. They didn't know what to say and they didn't know how to say it. Basically they were set up by the interviewers. The people the other side, all they do is talk, they don't have to worry about writing songs or anything. They've got one issue and they pummel you to death with it. And then of course, you're arguing against people who are like the wife of the secretary of the treasury and the wife of a senator and all these people who give the illusion of being ...

DC : Respectable?

FZ : Yeah. And here you are a lowly rock & roll musician who's supposed to stand up in favor of free speech on records.

WARNING/GUARANTEE