Rock & Folk - November , 1967
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| Italiano Español Français | Italiano Español Français |
Interview by Philippe Rault | |
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| Help! The Mothers are coming! |
| Reverse translation from French |
| In New York, I met Frank Vincent Zappa, leader of the most controversial band in the United States, the Mothers of Invention. Their first two LPs, “Freak out!” and “Absolutely free”, were bestsellers despite being systematically banned by almost every American radio station. Everywhere they performed in public, it caused a scandal, because they attack indiscriminately the American government, the American society in general, the sex lives of American women in particular, hippies and LSD users, bad “pop music” and the creamcheese, that colorless, odorless and tasteless paste that, across the Atlantic, is supposed to replace cheese… The only thing they respect: music; not harmonious and delicate music, but rather a blend of Free Jazz, Electronic Music, and Contemporary Music. Enough to horrify untrained ears… |
| However, I must emphasize that the eight Mothers of Invention are the musicians who impressed me the most during my two-and-a-half-month stay in the USA. Here are the insights of their leader, Frank, one of the most extraordinary personalities I have ever met in the entertainment industry. |
| Frank, you are currently finishing a show that has been running for about five months here in Greenwich Village, at the Garrick Theatre. You and the Mothers are from California and have always lived there. What is it like for a West Coast native to spend five consecutive months in New York? |
| At first, I really appreciated the difference in police pressure on people between New York and Los Angeles. The police are relatively better in New York, but the city is so dirty that I believe it is certainly one of the dirtiest places in the world. |
| It must be said that the police in Los Angeles are quite appalling! |
| Yes, exactly like under the Nazi regime in Germany… |
| It seems to me that in San Francisco, on the other hand, the situation is more liberal, the relationship between young people and law enforcement is a bit more relaxed, isn’t it? |
| Oh! The situation is pretty much the same in New York and San Francisco. Call it more liberal if you like! In reality, the state of affairs regarding police activity in the United States is more frightening right now. I think that foreigners who visit major American cities these days are often stunned by what they see and by the acts of violence they witness. |
| In your opinion, what constitutes the normal activity of a law enforcement officer? |
| A police officer here in the United States is an employee of one of the various states. He has a superior who gives him instructions, and this superior has opinions and attitudes that are often far removed from the spirit of the law. The letter and the spirit of the law are two quite different things. American police chiefs have a rather peculiar interpretation of what the law is and what it should be in certain communities. On the street, police officers tend to make value judgments about young people with long hair, about members of racial minorities, and their attitude is completely distorted by this… |
| The spirit of the law and its practical application - I believe there’s an enormous difference between the two everywhere in the world… |
| I don’t know many other countries in the world yet, but I hope the situation is better. A few weeks ago, I spent three days in London and Copenhagen, and everything there seems so peaceful, quiet, clean, and pleasant compared to life in New York… |
| You’re going on a tour of Europe soon, what are you hoping to get out of this trip? |
| Well, first of all, I want to see exactly if there’s a real language barrier and to what extent people will be able to understand what we do. I hope it won’t be too disappointing; I don’t think our European audience will immediately understand what we’re playing; we’ll try to explain it as much as possible so that the audience isn’t left too much in the dark. You don’t have the same social situations in Europe as in the United States, and the majority of our songs are written about social situations that only exist in the United States. As a result, we’re going to spend a lot of time formulating explanations… |
| It’s always surprising to learn that the Mothers of Invention don’t play psychedelic music. In fact, you don’t like the term at all. Why is that? |
| The way psychedelic music is used in the United States is purely fraudulent. And let me tell you something: I intend to use this fraud! The term “psychedelic” is packaging material. It’s the equivalent of a brand name on a bar of soap. The label “psychedelic” represents any music that an American record company tries to make commercial and saleable to a market of very young teenagers attracted to a bizarre form of rock & roll. Any music that’s a bit strange and doesn’t fit neatly under the labels rock, rhythm & blues, or folk-rock will be labeled psychedelic. It’s simply fraudulent… Now, in London, I was very surprised to discover bands that actually play psychedelic music. I saw the Pink Floyd there and listened to records by a group called “Tomorrow”, and I think they’re really excellent… |
| There’s a strange thing that happens when the English get interested in American music… like when the Rolling Stones started playing rhythm & blues… they had listened to old American rhythm & blues records and tried to copy that style; unintentionally, they ended up with a way of playing that truly became “the Rolling Stones”. We see the same thing with psychedelic music: English groups believed that a psychedelic music existed in the United States; they believed it, tried to imitate what they had heard on records, and in the end, it was they, not the Americans, who found the true psychedelic idiom… I’m very happy about that, by the way, because both of those groups - the Pink Floyd and the Tomorrow - are absolutely exceptional. |
| I’ve listened to the Grateful Dead and Big Brother myself, and I have to admit their songs aren’t exactly avant-garde. It’s simply rock, often influenced by country and western… |
| It’s not even rock, it’s a very cheap form of rhythm & blues; these musicians are trying to prove to the world they have a lot of “soul”, trying very hard to sing like black people, but it doesn’t work! |
| The Mothers of Invention - what category of group would you classify them as? Is it rock, electronic music, social satire, free jazz? How would you, Frank Zappa, define your group? |
| I think we make “contemporary music”, that is, an art form that is linked to our current social environment. What we play can hardly be classified as rock & roll; if we had to be defined, primarily I think we’re non-rock. Our musical material is largely Dadaist, the rest comprises all the bizarre and inexplicable things that happen on stage during the performances. There are a number of events we could never record because, to understand them, you have to be a direct eyewitness. We perform gestures and physical movements on stage that sometimes resemble choreography, sometimes happen intentionally, sometimes are pure accidents, and sometimes involve audience participation. |
| Some very strange things happened on the stage of the Garrick Theatre here in New York; for example, the other night a girl came on stage - she must have been about five feet tall - and she had completely wild hair. My hair is already pretty wild, but this young woman’s hair was truly incredible. A young girl, about eighteen years old, wearing dark glasses and sandals, carrying two shopping bags and a flute… So, she climbs onto the stage, puts down her shopping bags, puts the flute in her mouth, and has a true epileptic seizure in front of the absolutely stunned audience. Naturally, we didn’t stop her, it was quite extraordinary… She stayed there for about half an hour, when she finished, we said goodnight, she left, and no one in the audience knew what to do next… |
| Is your music similar to a happening? Have you yourself ever participated in happenings? |
| Yes, our music is constantly a happening. Every show is different. The songs remain more or less the same, but their order is constantly disrupted, they intertwine or follow one another without any break. Sometimes we play for three-quarters of an hour straight without stopping. Often the audience is mesmerized and forgets to applaud at the end of the songs… I’ve only participated in person in one happening; it was at UCLA in California. I brought along some of my private recordings… |
| Speaking of recordings, you just finished an avant-garde LP for Capitol, for which you are the composer and conductor… |
| No, it was originally supposed to be for Capitol, but then MGM (which releases the Mothers’ records in the United States) was afraid Capitol would make too much money and bought the entire album from them. |
| This album is called “Lumpy Gravy”? |
| It’s a musical ballet; there are no songs. |
| You wrote the music. How long have you been writing? |
| Since I was fourteen or sixteen. |
| Your main influence has been electronic and contemporary music. Who specifically? |
| Varèse, Boulez, John Cage, Stockhausen, Stravinsky, Bartók, Schoenberg. I think Varèse is the master of orchestration. His way of combining instruments was very scientific. Certain instruments, when played together, produce overtones that take on a life of their own if handled correctly within a sound environment. Varèse, in his scores, instructed musicians to push their brass instruments to their deepest recesses in order to obtain completely inharmonic structures. |
| Who else do you admire among living composers? |
| Stravinsky and Boulez. Stockhausen as well. |
| Have you heard about the work of the “ORTF Research Group” in Paris? |
| I haven’t followed their work much until now, but as soon as I have the time, I want to listen to Xenakis’s latest works, which I’ve been told are quite extraordinary. Why don’t young people buy Iannis Xenakis records? |
| Perhaps it’s because, for the moment, all they’re offered is the Monkees? |
| Look, if we put as much money into promoting Xenakis as we do for the Monkees, teenagers would buy Xenakis records. |
| They might buy them, but would they really understand much of them? |
| Do you think they understand the Monkees’ affair? Do they understand the Monkees - and I don’t just mean their music! Do they understand that there are greedy businessmen somewhere in an office sitting and devising various ways to shove a manufactured product down the throat of the average teenager, whether he likes it or not, to twist his way of thinking using secret methods whose nature we don’t even know? |
| In the case of the Monkees, it has to be said that young Americans are often encouraged by their parents… |
| Well, does parental approval excuse anything? |
| And from a philosophical point of view? You’re connected to the Provo movement, isn’t it? |
| Yes; unfortunately, there’s almost no Provo movement in the United States. And from what I understand, it’s dying out in Amsterdam now too… |
| What is a “Love-in” or a “Be-in” to you? |
| A “Love-in” is a very dramatic event, in which a group of teenagers, sometimes adults, often mentally challenged people, gather in a public place and pretend to love each other; in order to prove to the world that Love still exists; in fact, to prove to themselves that Love still exists. But none of them really believe it, and I think it’s better that they don’t because if they did, then their situation would become serious. Love no longer exists. |
| That’s quite a pessimistic opinion! |
| Let me be clear, I’m only speaking from a strictly American perspective. I don’t know what the situation is in Europe, but in the United States these days, there are so many people everywhere proclaiming and shouting “I love”, “I love” that you really have to wonder about their sincerity… |
| It’s like in winter when it’s 14 degrees, and someone is shouting “I’m hot, I’m hot!” |
| It’s like whistling in the dark so you don’t get scared. |
| What do you think of the alarming number of young drug users in your country? Do you use any drugs yourself? |
| No, I don’t use any drugs myself. Besides, I’m tired of answering in interviews that I condemn drug use. I don’t think drug use is bad. At least, it’s no worse than seeing your parents get completely drunk! If kids want to get high and enter a realm of consciousness where they’re “wasted”, if they manage to escape their usual environment for 10 or 15 minutes and find a tolerable atmosphere for a few moments, I see nothing wrong with that. I think it’s perfect. |
| Do you think drugs really stimulate artistic creativity? |
| I used various drugs myself during my adolescence and composed some things under the influence of chemicals. Later, I looked back at these “works” and realized they were worthless. I was ashamed of what I had done! |
| I’ve noticed a certain lack of maturity in American youth. That must explain a lot… |
| Certainly. But that’s a normal consequence of our education system, which seeks to keep the public’s intellectual level so low that they swallow every advertising slogan from the consumer goods industry. Having an intelligent and cultured civilization in the United States would be extremely dangerous. Just imagine, if everyone started reflecting on advertising slogans, we wouldn’t sell any products anymore, factories would close and the standard of living would plummet. You have to be a real idiot to buy these products, and the job of our schools and universities is to keep people ignorant so they remain prime consumers. The mechanism is perfectly oiled, as you can see! |
| What is your political position right now? |
| I am “interested”… it’s rather horrible to observe, but nevertheless I am “interested.” |
| Let’s get back to the subject of music. For you, it’s the only thing in life that’s truly worthwhile… |
| It’s perhaps the only thing I still have any regard for, the only thing I respect… |
| Aside from contemporary and electronic music? Do you like jazz and rhythm & blues? |
| Yes, I really like rhythm & blues, Willie Mae Thornton, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Slim Harpo… |
| Are these artists quite old, aren’t they? |
| It’s the blues I listened to when I was a kid. That music was popular in the United States between 1955 and 1958. I know that in France and Europe, they’re releasing only now some of these old records… |
| There’s been a lot of talk about “Uncle Meat”, without really knowing what it was. Can you explain that to us? |
| “Uncle Meat” is a young lady whose real name is Sandy Hurvitz. Now, if you release a record in the United States under a name like that, it’s a flop for sure. But if she’s someone with a pleasing appearance and you call her “Uncle Meat”, then the record will be a hit. You folks in Europe and Paris might have some trouble understanding that reasoning, but that’s how it goes here. Sandy is exceptionally talented, she writes excellent songs, and her performances are even better. Around Easter this year, she was playing in our show at the Garrick, after which she went off to let loose in San Francisco… she put feathers and flowers in her hair, bells around her neck, and went on tour with the Grateful Dead… basically, the typical American teenager’s leisure… |
| And then she came back to the Mothers? |
| Yes, she caught on quickly: she rushed back to New York, where we’ll be recording her in the near future. |
| By the way, how did you discover her? |
| Quite simply. She arrived at the Garrick one day, settled in, got to know the band members, and never left us again. It was only much later that we discovered, to our great surprise, that she could sing remarkably well. We then decided to record her and showcase her talents to young audiences… |
| Isn’t there a contradiction here with your social stance? You work like capitalists while each of your works attacks the capitalist system? |
| There’s no contradiction. We use the same methods used to sell washing machines, hemorrhoid ointments or fresh cream. Thanks to these methods, I’ve been able to draw public attention to my band and to other artists like “Uncle Meat”. |
| So, you’re prepared to use the very weapons of the people you attack? You completely reject the passive reaction methods of hippies? |
| First, hippies are incapable of destroying the system. They don’t have the time, they’re too busy “getting high”, searching for their artificial paradises. Second: they don’t know how to act; they’re still kids… The only way to act effectively against a system of life as appalling as that of the United States is to use the system’s own weapons against itself. The people currently running the country are so greedy that they’d rather earn a dollar than try to understand what’s really going on. They don’t think about the future, they completely lack imagination, and when you let your imagination die, then you’re really in trouble… because the person who can foresee things you can’t has, automatically, an advantage over you… |
| What do you think of beat philosophers, like Ginsberg? |
| I don’t feel any affinity for figures like Ginsberg or Timothy Leary… or Billy Graham… |
| The owner of the Fillmore Auditorium? |
| No, not him. The Bill Graham of the Fillmore is a tough businessman, and as such, he deserves nothing but my admiration… |
| The preacher then? |
| Yes, that Billy Graham. I believe that he, Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg are, in the end, the same person, but dressed in three different ways. |
| To get back to the subject of music, you’ve already told us that you like contemporary music; what do you think of the current craze for Eastern sounds? |
| I really like Eastern musics. But I’m firmly convinced that, for example, Indian music should primarily be listened to in India, and not in a rock atmosphere like in the United States. What I mean is that, transposed into a pop context, that music undoubtedly loses its profound meaning. It becomes nothing more than a gimmick… Ravi Shankar at the Monterey Pop Festival, or sitar lessons at the Indian Music School in Los Angeles - for me, they’re really not exciting at all… One of the reasons hippies like Eastern music is because… it’s different. Maybe I don’t understand it at all, but one thing I’m sure of is that my parents hate it. If I like this music, they’ll be very angry… Hippies are primarily looking for bizarre costumes and unpopular causes… just to be different… it’s the ostrich tactic, burying their heads in the sand to avoid the real problems! |
| Being different rather than conforming to the usual rules of society - don’t you think that’s the healthy attitude of people who are looking for something different, who want to break free from routine and daily brainwashing? |
| Ultimately, their social position is simply a form of inverted conformism. Conformism that manifests itself in a different way, but conformism, nonetheless. They have formed a parallel society; the same events occur, except that they dress in a strange way. The majority of hippies are just as ready to follow the theories of Ginsberg, Leary, and other idols of that ilk as ordinary citizens are ready to follow the pronouncements of Lyndon Johnson or other arms dealers in the United States. |
| Caught between the “straight people”, the ordinary American citizens, and the hippies, do the Mothers of Invention manage to get their message across to the public? |
| No, not completely. First, there’s a practical problem, the language. In the United States, people speak very differently from New York to New Orleans, there are many things we say that are incomprehensible to a lot of people. The second problem is that the issues that interest us go completely over the heads of the average American and of today’s American youth. The majority of young people in the United States are completely uninterested in politics; for our message, if we have one, to reach them, they would need to pay enough attention to take action and try to change things. |
| Do you think that young people in Europe are more aware of political issues? |
| I’m convinced they are, and the best proof of that is the Provo movement in Amsterdam. Young people in the United States should take charge of their own interests. Those under 25 represent 55% of the American population; but it’s people between 50 and 70 years old who govern the country, people with complexes due to an overly strict and puritanical upbringing. Today’s youth are much freer, sexually among other things, but also because their values are different. The nation’s governing body is constantly reacting against it… Why doesn’t it step down, make way for its successors? If the new generation took the reins, the older generation wouldn’t have to suffer, mom and dad wouldn’t have to suffer! They could then enjoy a comfortable retirement on their land… somewhere in Texas! |
| What is your opinion on the racial question in your country? |
| It should have been addressed a century ago. First of all, this problem should never have existed, but well, it does, and I don’t think the riots are improving the situation. The only thing they might have brought about is the understanding among white people that the vast majority of people of color were unhappy with their lot… In any case, you shouldn’t expect to burn down two hundred blocks one day and find racial equality the next morning! |
| Do you have any friends among black people? |
| I don’t have any friends… or hardly any! The producer of our recordings is black, Tom Wilson. He’s a great guy, we get along well… Tom Wilson has been the avant-garde producer in the United States for twelve or fourteen years. He was the first to record Cecil Taylor; he produced most of Dylan’s records. Two years ago, he convinced Dylan to electrify his guitar and adopt a Top 40-style sound to reach a much wider audience. If Dylan hadn’t managed to get his protest songs played on the radio, it’s certain that protest music would never have existed on a national and international scale. Tom also recorded the Velvet Underground. A lot of people don’t like that band, and I myself reserve my opinion on what they do live; but I like their album - it’s exactly the folk music of perverse New York. |
| Frank, you’re one of the most active musicians I’ve met in the United States. Do you work around the clock? |
| Only eighteen hours a day! |
| Mostly composing? |
| No, actually, that’s a problem that’s been bothering me in this period, for the past three months, I haven’t found the time to work seriously on new material. I’ve composed a lot of songs, but initially, it was orchestral compositions that interested me. Writing a song is the B, A, BA, you just lay down a few chords and come up with some lyrics; writing for an orchestra is a whole different ball game. The circumstances under which I wrote “Lumpy Gravy” were pretty crazy, I had eleven days to compose and record this ballet, and in the same period, my wife and I were evicted from our home in Hollywood, we had to find a new place to live and move there, and I essentially composed “Lumpy Gravy” in two motels, in rather bizarre conditions… |
| Your landlords kicked you out! What do people think of the Mothers in Los Angeles? Or rather, what do people think of the Mothers in the United States? |
| I don’t think Americans are very enthusiastic about the Mothers. There are a few people who think we’re great, but the majority are still convinced of the Monkees’ superiority… and after all, maybe they’re right! |
| Maybe they’re right? |
| Yes, in any case, the Monkees are clean and pose absolutely no danger. Let’s make that clear! |
Original text from site Zappa Books. |