#246 - The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out! (1966)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION
The multi-talented Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore in 1940, but moved a lot as a child due to his father being a chemist and mathematician for the defense industry. When they settled back in Maryland, the lived near an Army arsenal that stored mustard gas, so they had to keep gas masks in the home, which ended up having a profound effect on Zappa, hence the amount of references to germs and germ warfare in his work. His dad would also bring home mercury-filled lab equipment and would let Frank play with it. We now know mercury exposure increases the risk of developing prostate cancer, which Zappa later died of in 1993. He was also treated for chronic sinus issues he dealt with as a child with a pellet of radium inserted into each of Zappa's nostrils. The family soon moved to California to help his health issues. He joined his first band as a drummer in high school. He also got a phonograph around the same time, and his vinyl collection included R&B, doo-wop, and obscure sound experimentation albums. His ability to compose music was flourishing by his senior year, and after dropping out after one semester of college, he started to write and produce songs for other local artists. A few years later in 1964, he was spending more than 12 hours a day in-studio experimenting with audio and sometimes performing in local bars at night. The Mothers of Invention first formed in Pomona, California in 1964. Their hallmark was sonic experimentation, creative album art, and elaborate live performances. They were originally an R&B band called the "Soul Giants" pre Frank Zappa, who came in to replace their first guitarist and became the band's defacto leader. Frank knew fellow-band member Ray Collins from earlier in the decade when they were in the same musical circles. Zappa insisted that they perform his original material, and on Mother's Day in 1965, changed their name to the Mothers. Record executives demanded that the name be changed, and so "out of necessity," Zappa later said, "we became the Mothers of Invention." Zappa on the goals of the group - "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything." The band's original repertoire consisted of R&B covers, but after Zappa joined the band, he encouraged them to play his own original material.
Absolutely Free" was released the following year. After "We're Only In It For The Money", they released "Cruising With Ruben and the Jets" later that same year. They released Uncle Meat in 1969 before Zappa disbanded the original line-up due to financial issues. With 9 group members, and only so much royalty money to go around, Zappa pulled the plug. Some members were bitter due to Zappa being a perfectionist. Zappa reformed a new version of The Mothers (without "of Invention). They would release 6 albums through 1975. Zappa went on to have a successful solo career in the 1980s and into the 1990s in the jazz and rock realm, winning 2 Grammy's (one posthumously) and received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 1998. Zappa died from prostate cancer in 1993, 17 days before his 53rd birthday.
In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed 62 albums that with the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and also designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the RnR HOF in 1995. There, it was written that "Frank Zappa was rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres—rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music—with masterful ease". In 1998, he received theGrammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In total, he was nominated for 9 Grammy's, winning in 1988 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for "Jazz From Hell", and then in 1996 for Best Recording Package for Civilization Phaze III. The Zappa Family Trust has released additional albums after 1994.
Many musicians from diverse genres have been influenced by Zappa's music. Alice Cooper, Larry LaLonde of Primus, Devo, Kraftwerk, Trey Anastasio Jeff Buckley, John Frusciante, Black Sabbath, Living Colour, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Steve Vai, System of a Down, and George Clinton have all cited Zappa as inspiration.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – FREAK OUT!
Freak Out! is the debut studio album by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, released in June 1966. It was recorded in 4 days in March earlier that year. Often cited as one of rock music's first concept albums, it is a satirical expression of frontman Frank Zappa's perception of American pop culture and the nascent freak scene of Los Angeles. The album was produced by Tom Wilson, who signed the Mothers. Zappa said many years later that Wilson signed the band to a record deal under the impression that they were a white blues band. The album features Zappa on vocals and guitar, along with lead vocalist/tambourine player Ray Collins, bass player/vocalist Roy Estrada, drummer/vocalist Jimmy Carl Black and guitar player Elliot Ingber (later of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, performing under the pseudonym "Winged Eel Fingerling" Although the album was initially poorly received in the United States, it was a success in Europe. It gained a cult following in America.
It's the first salvo in Zappa's career-long project of synthesizing popular and art music, high and low culture; while these pieces can meander, they virtually explode the limits of what can appear on a rock album, and effectively illustrate Freak Out!'s underlying principles: acceptance of differences and free individual expression. Zappa would spend much of his career developing and exploring ideas -- both musical and conceptual -- first put forth here. Freak Out! contains the rudiments of almost everything that followed, and few of Zappa's records can match its excitement over its own sense of possibility.
"All the songs on it were about something", Zappa wrote in The Real Frank Zappa Book. "It wasn't as if we had a hit single and we needed to build some filler around it. Each tune had a function within an overall satirical concept If you were to graphically analyze the different types of directions of all the songs in the Freak Out! album, there's a little something in there for everybody. At least one piece of material is slanted for every type of social orientation within our consumer group, which happens to be six to eighty. Because we got people that like what we do, from kids six years old screaming on us to play "Wowie Zowie". Like I meet executives doing this and that, and they say, "My kid's got the record, and 'Wowie Zowie''s their favorite song."
Zappa later found out that when the material was recorded, producer Tom Wilson had taken LSD. "I've tried to imagine what [Wilson] must have been thinking", Zappa recounted, "sitting in that control room, listening to all that weird shit coming out of the speakers, and being responsible for telling the engineer, Ami Hadani (who was not on acid), what to do." By the time Freak Out! was edited and shaped into an album, Wilson had spent $25–35,000 of MGM's money ($292,500 in 2023 dollars]). Zappa once wrote that "Wilson was sticking his neck out. He laid his job on the line by producing the album. MGM felt that they had spent too much money on the album.
“Freak Out!” reached No. 130 on the Billboard chart, and was not a critical success when it was first released in the United States. Many listeners were convinced that the album was drug-inspired, and interpreted the album's title as slang for a bad LSD trip. The album made the Mothers of Invention immediate underground darlings with a strong counter-cultural following. In 1999, the album was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
The album was a major influence on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as the Beatles' Freak Out! Zappa criticized the Beatles, as he felt they were "only in it for the money"
The album's back cover included a "letter" from Zappa-created fictional character Suzy Creamcheese (who also appears on the album itself), which read: "These Mothers is crazy. You can tell by their clothes. One guy wears beads and they all smell bad. We were gonna get them for a dance after the basketball game but my best pal warned me you can never tell how many will show up ... sometimes the guy in the fur coat doesn't show up and sometimes he does show up only he brings a big bunch of crazy people with him and they dance all over the place. None of the kids at my school like these Mothers ... specially since my teacher told us what the words to their songs meant. Sincerely forever, Suzy Creamcheese, Salt Lake City, Utah." Because the text was printed in a typeface resembling typewriter lettering, some people thought that Suzy Creamcheese was real, and many listeners expected to see her in concert performances. Because of this, it was decided that "it would be best to bring along a Suzy Creamcheese replica who would demonstrate once and for all the veracity of such a beast."