Frank Zappa. Interview in Playboy - Revision history

Spider of Destiny at 17:31, 15 August 2026

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Jason.Kreitzer at 14:15, 10 September 2021

2021-09-10T14:15:06Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 15:09, 4 August 2021

2021-08-04T15:09:30Z

Duncan: Inhale ref

2021-07-24T11:20:23Z

Inhale ref

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 Like his fans, his enemies could take some consolation in the fact that they weren't alone. Zappa's attacks crossed political and ideological lines; he skewered [[Rhymin'_Man#Notes_About_This_Song|Jesse Jackson]], former Surgeon General [[C. Everett Koop]], rednecks and televangelists.
-His music confounded his fans, too. His range often seemed limitless, as he jumped successfully from rock to jazz to classical. He has released more than 50 albums, including "[[Freak Out!]]," "[[Sheik Yerbouti]]," "[[Apostrophe (')]]," "[[200 Motels]]" (also the name of a film, now a cult classic) and "[[Jazz From Hell]]." His classical music has been lauded in stuffy circles, and he has released albums of his work performed by the [[London Symphony Orchestra (The Orchestra)|London Symphony Orchestra]]. in Frankfurt, Germany, his soon-to-be-released "[[The Yellow Shark]]" was the highlight of a festival last fall, and earlier this year the [[Lincoln Center]] for the Performing Arts in New York presented "The Music of Frank Zappa" as part of its Great Performers series.
+His music confounded his fans, too. His range often seemed limitless, as he jumped successfully from rock to jazz to classical. He has released more than 50 albums, including "[[Freak Out!]]," "[[Sheik Yerbouti]]," "[[Apostrophe (')]]," "[[200 Motels]]" (also the name of a film, now a cult classic) and "[[Jazz From Hell]]." His classical music has been lauded in stuffy circles, and he has released albums of his work performed by the [[London Symphony Orchestra (The Orchestra)|London Symphony Orchestra]]. in [[Frankfurt]], Germany, his soon-to-be-released "[[The Yellow Shark]]" was the highlight of a festival last fall, and earlier this year the [[Lincoln Center]] for the Performing Arts in New York presented "The Music of Frank Zappa" as part of its Great Performers series.
 Zappa was able to make enemies even when he wasn't making music. He took on [[Tipper Gore]] and [[Susan Baker]], wife of former Secretary of State James Baker, when they demanded that records be rated according to content – the same way movies are. Zappa testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, calling Gore, Baker and their committee "a group of bored Washington housewives" who wanted to "housebreak all composers and performers because of the lyrics of a few." He lost the crusade but remained a vigorous advocate of First Amendment rights.
@@ Line 166: / Line 166: @@
 A little bit. Every once in a while I, feel like playing the guitar, but I stop and think what I'd have to go through in order to do it. The urge goes away.
-'''Is it particularly gratifying to get commissions such as the one from the Frankfurt Festival last year?<br>
+'''Is it particularly gratifying to get commissions such as the one from the [[Frankfurt]] Festival last year?<br>
 That one was really something. It was a whole evening of my music, which was part of a whole week of my music, new pieces and old. It was performed in Frankfurt, [[Berlin]] and Vienna.

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 Like his fans, his enemies could take some consolation in the fact that they weren't alone. Zappa's attacks crossed political and ideological lines; he skewered [[Rhymin'_Man#Notes_About_This_Song|Jesse Jackson]], former Surgeon General [[C. Everett Koop]], rednecks and televangelists.
-His music confounded his fans, too. His range often seemed limitless, as he jumped successfully from rock to jazz to classical. He has released more than 50 albums, including "[[Freak Out!]]," "[[Sheik Yerbouti]]," "[[Apostrophe (')]]," "[[200 Motels]]" (also the name of a film, now a cult classic) and "[[Jazz From Hell]]." His classical music has been lauded in stuffy circles, and he has released albums of his work performed by the [[London Symphony Orchestra (The Orchestra)|London Symphony Orchestra]]. in Frankfurt, Germany, his soon-to-be-released "[[The Yellow Shark]]" was the highlight of a festival last fall, and earlier this year the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York presented "The Music of Frank Zappa" as part of its Great Performers series.
+His music confounded his fans, too. His range often seemed limitless, as he jumped successfully from rock to jazz to classical. He has released more than 50 albums, including "[[Freak Out!]]," "[[Sheik Yerbouti]]," "[[Apostrophe (')]]," "[[200 Motels]]" (also the name of a film, now a cult classic) and "[[Jazz From Hell]]." His classical music has been lauded in stuffy circles, and he has released albums of his work performed by the [[London Symphony Orchestra (The Orchestra)|London Symphony Orchestra]]. in Frankfurt, Germany, his soon-to-be-released "[[The Yellow Shark]]" was the highlight of a festival last fall, and earlier this year the [[Lincoln Center]] for the Performing Arts in New York presented "The Music of Frank Zappa" as part of its Great Performers series.
 Zappa was able to make enemies even when he wasn't making music. He took on [[Tipper Gore]] and [[Susan Baker]], wife of former Secretary of State James Baker, when they demanded that records be rated according to content – the same way movies are. Zappa testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, calling Gore, Baker and their committee "a group of bored Washington housewives" who wanted to "housebreak all composers and performers because of the lyrics of a few." He lost the crusade but remained a vigorous advocate of First Amendment rights.

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 Few would doubt that [[Václav Havel]], the Czech playwright-turned-politician, and [[Matt Groening]], creator of "[[The Simpsons]]", make an odd pair. Yet in separate interviews, when asked which person had the greatest influence on their lives, both came up with the same name: [[Biography|Frank Zappa]]. "Who else?" wondered Groening. "I listened to the music, I dissected the lyrics and it transformed me."
-Havel and Groening are not alone. In this years Playboy Music Poll, our readers chose Zappa as the 43rd inductee into the Playboy Music Hall of Fame, where he joins the likes of [[wikipedia:Frank Sinatra|Frank Sinatra]], [[John Lennon]] and [[Bruce Springsteen]]. But even before the votes had been counted, Playboy's editors had Zappa on their minds and had invited him to sit for the "Playboy Interview." The result is an unusual coincidence: For the first time in the magazine's history, an issue of Playboy both announces the Hall of Fame winner and features him in the interview.
+Havel and Groening are not alone. In this years Playboy Music Poll, our readers chose Zappa as the 43rd inductee into the Playboy Music Hall of Fame, where he joins the likes of [[Frank Sinatra]], [[John Lennon]] and [[Bruce Springsteen]]. But even before the votes had been counted, Playboy's editors had Zappa on their minds and had invited him to sit for the "Playboy Interview." The result is an unusual coincidence: For the first time in the magazine's history, an issue of Playboy both announces the Hall of Fame winner and features him in the interview.
 What makes this occurrence even more unusual is that Frank Zappa is no mainstream musician. While he is lionized in Europe, his avant-garde compositions and pointed, satirical lyrics are seldom heard on America radio. As he admits, people are often confused and angered by his work. As the leader of the [[The Mothers|Mothers of Invention]], one of the weirdest – and most brilliant – experimental bands ever, Zappa earned a prominent place in rock lore. He didn't do drugs, he fought censorship and he distributed a [[The Toilet Poster|poster]] of himself seated nude on a toilet, calling it "Phi Zappa Krappa." It's no wonder that the first chapter of his [[The Real Frank Zappa Book|autobiography]] is called "How Weird Am I, Anyway?"
@@ Line 167: / Line 167: @@
 '''Is it particularly gratifying to get commissions such as the one from the Frankfurt Festival last year?<br>
-That one was really something. It was a whole evening of my music, which was part of a whole week of my music, new pieces and old. It was performed in Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna.
+That one was really something. It was a whole evening of my music, which was part of a whole week of my music, new pieces and old. It was performed in Frankfurt, [[Berlin]] and Vienna.
 '''Do you have any theories about why your music has been more popular in Europe than in America?<br>
@@ Line 290: / Line 290: @@
 '''How did Czechs know about your music?<br>
-It had been slipping in there since 1966 or 1967. The first album that was really popular there was [[Absolutely Free]], the one with [[Plastic People]] on it. In Moscow, I was in the Ministry of Culture and met a young guy with a big Communist pin on his chest who said that he had earned his way through school bootlegging my tapes in from Yugoslavia.
+It had been slipping in there since 1966 or 1967. The first album that was really popular there was [[Absolutely Free]], the one with [[Plastic People]] on it. In Moscow, I was in the Ministry of Culture and met a young guy with a big Communist pin on his chest who said that he had earned his way through school bootlegging my tapes in from [[Yugoslavia]].
 '''Were you glued to your TV set when the Berlin Wall came down and the rest of the U.S.S.R. unraveled?<br>

@@ Line 194: / Line 194: @@
 '''Church and confession?<br>
-Oh, yeah. They used to make me go. They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When the penguin came after me with a ruler, I was out of there.
+Oh, yeah. They used to make me go. They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When [[Nuns|the penguin came after me with a ruler]], I was out of there.
 '''So you were headstrong.<br>

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 Zappa's music had been smuggled behind the iron curtain since the Sixties, and he had become a hero to the Czech people. His song "[[Plastic People]]" was an underground anthem. When he visited Prague, students told him that he had been considered one of the worst enemies of the Communist state. One student told of being arrested by the secret police, jailed and beaten. "We are going to beat the Zappa music out of your head," the officer screamed. Upon meeting Zappa, the boy said, "Our dream has come true today."
-Havel was so enamored of him that he made Zappa the country's special ambassador to the West on trade, culture and tourism. Zappa had big plans to help bridge cultural and economic barriers with the West. The appointment, however, was derailed by Secretary of State Baker. Columnist Jack Anderson reported that Baker was "carrying an old grudge" from Zappa's dismissal of Susan Baker as a "bored housewife." "When [Baker] arrived in Prague," Anderson wrote, "he had his surrogates convey his displeasure to Havel." Havel succumbed to the pressure and canceled the appointment.
+Havel was so enamored of him that he made Zappa the country's special ambassador to the West on trade, culture and tourism. Zappa had big plans to help bridge cultural and economic barriers with the West. The appointment, however, was derailed by Secretary of State Baker. Columnist Jack Anderson reported that Baker was "carrying an old grudge" from Zappa's dismissal of [[Susan Baker]] as a "bored housewife." "When [Baker] arrived in Prague," Anderson wrote, "he had his surrogates convey his displeasure to Havel." Havel succumbed to the pressure and canceled the appointment.
 Zappa came far to have such high-placed enemies. A song called "[[Mr. Green Genes|Son Of Mr. Green Genes]]" made people think his father was the character on "Captain Kangaroo," but in truth, he is the son of a meteorologist who did research on poison gases for the military. [[Gas masks]] hung on a wall of the family's home in case of an accident with the chemical weapons his father studied.
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 '''Did that group metamorphose into the Mothers of Invention?<br>
-That was just a high school band. After I got out of high school and moved away, I played other kinds of gigs, like a short stint with Joe Perrino and the Mellotones. We are allowed to play one twist number per night. The rest was Happy Birthday, Anniversary Waltz and all the standards. I wore a little tux and strummed chords, bored. I got sick of that and stuck my guitar in the case and put it behind the sofa and left it there for eight months. I got a job doing greeting card designs, and for fun I wrote chamber music. I ran into some people who knew a guy named Paul Buff who had a studio. I started doing some worker over there. I met Ray Collins, who was working weekend gigs with the Soul Giants. He got into a fistfight with the guitar player. They needed a substitute guitar player in a hurry, so he called me. I got really involved and learned how hard it is to run a band, especially if you are trying to put together some nonstandard musical offering with no money. You try to convince a musician that it is a worth-while thing to do, when deep in his heart every rock musician thinks that he, too, should be the fourth member of [[Cream]] or the eighteenth Beatle. That group of people became the Mothers, anyway.
+That was just a high school band. After I got out of high school and moved away, I played other kinds of gigs, like a short stint with Joe Perrino and the Mellotones. We are allowed to play one twist number per night. The rest was Happy Birthday, Anniversary Waltz and all the standards. I wore a little tux and strummed chords, bored. I got sick of that and stuck my guitar in the case and put it behind the sofa and left it there for eight months. I got a job doing greeting card designs, and for fun I wrote chamber music. I ran into some people who knew a guy named [[Paul Buff]] who had a studio. I started doing some worker over there. I met [[Ray Collins]], who was working weekend gigs with the [[Soul Giants]]. He got into a fistfight with the guitar player. They needed a substitute guitar player in a hurry, so he called me. I got really involved and learned how hard it is to run a band, especially if you are trying to put together some nonstandard musical offering with no money. You try to convince a musician that it is a worth-while thing to do, when deep in his heart every rock musician thinks that he, too, should be the fourth member of [[Cream]] or the eighteenth Beatle. That group of people became the Mothers, anyway.
 '''So named because?<br>
@@ Line 263: / Line 263: @@
 '''Do you keep up with popular music now?<br>
-What's to keep up with? If anything's sensational, it won't be on MTV, it'll be Sister Souljah on Larry King.
+What's to keep up with? If anything's sensational, it won't be on [[MTV]], it'll be Sister Souljah on [[Larry King]].
 '''You had your own talk show on FNN for a short time. What started that brief career?<br>
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 [[Category:Interviews with Zappa]]

@@ Line 28: / Line 28: @@
 Havel was so enamored of him that he made Zappa the country's special ambassador to the West on trade, culture and tourism. Zappa had big plans to help bridge cultural and economic barriers with the West. The appointment, however, was derailed by Secretary of State Baker. Columnist Jack Anderson reported that Baker was "carrying an old grudge" from Zappa's dismissal of Susan Baker as a "bored housewife." "When [Baker] arrived in Prague," Anderson wrote, "he had his surrogates convey his displeasure to Havel." Havel succumbed to the pressure and canceled the appointment.
-Zappa came far to have such high-placed enemies. A song called "[[Mr. Green Genes|Son Of Mr. Green Genes]]" made people think his father was the character on "Captain Kangaroo," but in truth, he is the son of a meteorologist who did research on poison gases for the military. Gas masks hung on a wall of the family's home in case of an accident with the chemical weapons his father studied.
+Zappa came far to have such high-placed enemies. A song called "[[Mr. Green Genes|Son Of Mr. Green Genes]]" made people think his father was the character on "Captain Kangaroo," but in truth, he is the son of a meteorologist who did research on poison gases for the military. [[Gas masks]] hung on a wall of the family's home in case of an accident with the chemical weapons his father studied.
 The family moved frequently before ending up in Lancaster, California, where Frank played drums in the school marching band. His musical taste, however, was eclectic; while his classmates swooned over Elvis, he listened to composers such as [[Edgard Varèse]] and [[Anton Webern]].
@@ Line 185: / Line 185: @@
 '''Your father worked with poison gas for a living. Did you understand the implications of that?<br>
-Yeah. I just took it as a fact of life. We lived in a place where we were obliged to have gas masks hanging on the wall in case the tanks broke, because you could die. Thinking back on it, if those tanks had broken, those gas masks wouldn't have saved us.
+Yeah. I just took it as a fact of life. We lived in a place where we were obliged to have [[gas masks]] hanging on the wall in case the tanks broke, because you could die. Thinking back on it, if those tanks had broken, those gas masks wouldn't have saved us.
 '''How close were the tanks?<br>

@@ Line 251: / Line 251: @@
 '''Is that when you had your runnin with [[John Wayne]]?<br>
-Yeah. He came to one show very drunk. He saw me and picked me up and said, "I saw you in [[Egypt]] and you were great . . . and then you blew me!" Onstage I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's Halloween and we were going to have some important guests here tonight – like [[George Lincoln Rockwell]], head of the American Nazi Party – but unfortunately all we could get was John Wayne." He got up and made some drunken speech, and his bodyguards told me I'd better cool it.
+Yeah. He came to one show very drunk. He saw me and picked me up and said, "I saw you in [[Egypt]] and you were great . . . and then you blew me!" Onstage I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's Halloween and we were going to have some important guests here tonight – like [[Wikipedia:George Lincoln Rockwell|George Lincoln Rockwell]], head of the American Nazi Party – but unfortunately all we could get was John Wayne." He got up and made some drunken speech, and his bodyguards told me I'd better cool it.
 '''There were other characters – such as [[Cynthia Plaster-Caster]]. Tell us about her.<br>

@@ Line 83: / Line 83: @@
 '''Because of songs such as [[Dinah-Moe Humm]] ("I got a forty-dollar bill say you can't make me come"), [[He's So Gay]] and many others, you have been accused of being sexist, misogynistic and homophobic.<br>
-Some people miss the joke. In general, I was a convenient enemy and they could get exposure for their causes by coming after me. But I'm not antigay. When [[Ross Perot]] announced he was running for president, I wanted him to choose [[Barney Frank]] as a vice-presidential candidate. He is one of the most impressive guys in Congress. He is a great model for young gay men.
+Some people miss the joke. In general, I was a convenient enemy and they could get exposure for their causes by coming after me. But I'm not antigay. When [[Wikipedia:Ross Perot|Ross Perot]] announced he was running for president, I wanted him to choose [[Wikipedia:Barney Frank|Barney Frank]] as a vice-presidential candidate. He is one of the most impressive guys in Congress. He is a great model for young gay men.
 '''But you were criticized for [[Bobby Brown Goes Down]] and He's So Gay.<br>
@@ Line 146: / Line 146: @@
 '''Is there a lot of music in your house? What music do your kids listen to?<br>
-When Ahmet was in sixth grade, he liked [[Fiddler On The Roof]] and [[Oliver!]] Recently he discovered Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. Diva likes rap music of all languages. Moon likes dance-oriented stuff. Dweezil likes anything with a guitar in it.
+When Ahmet was in sixth grade, he liked [[Fiddler On The Roof]] and [[Wikipedia:Oliver!|Oliver!]] Recently he discovered Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. Diva likes rap music of all languages. Moon likes dance-oriented stuff. Dweezil likes anything with a guitar in it.
 '''How do you like his music?<br>
@@ Line 214: / Line 214: @@
 The worst part of it for me was that I really didn't like the smell of marijuana. I had to go into a place that had the purple haze and work for a couple of hours in that. They were entitled to do whatever they wanted, so long as they didn't drive into me under the influence of it.
-'''But you told people drugs were stupid, before [[Nancy Reagan]] did.<br>
+'''But you told people drugs were stupid, before [[Wikipedia:Nancy Reagan|Nancy Reagan]] did.<br>
 One of the reasons we weren't rabidly popular at that time was that I said what was on my mind about drugs.
@@ Line 221: / Line 221: @@
 '''Did any of the big acts of the time interest you? How about [[Bob Dylan|Dylan]], Hendrix, the Stones?<br>
-Some of the really good things that Hendrix did was the earliest stuff, when he was just ripping and brutal. "[[Manic Depression]]" was my favorite [[Jimi Hendrix]] song. The more experimental it got, the less interesting and the thinner it got. As for Dylan, "[[Highway 61 Revisited]]" was really good. Then we got "Blonde on Blonde" and it started to sound like cowboy music, and you know what I think of cowboy music. I liked [[The Rolling Stones]].
+Some of the really good things that Hendrix did was the earliest stuff, when he was just ripping and brutal. "[[Wikipedia:Manic Depression|Manic Depression]]" was my favorite [[Jimi Hendrix]] song. The more experimental it got, the less interesting and the thinner it got. As for Dylan, "[[Highway 61 Revisited]]" was really good. Then we got "Blonde on Blonde" and it started to sound like cowboy music, and you know what I think of cowboy music. I liked [[The Rolling Stones]].
 '''Did [[Mick Jagger]] once pull a splinter out of your toe?<br>
@@ Line 260: / Line 260: @@
 '''Audience punishment things?<br>
-The question became, How far would they go? What could we get an audience to do? The answer seemed to be anything. We'd bring someone up and go, "Take your shoes and socks off, put your socks on your hands and lick them while we play." Anything we could think of. So long as the person telling them to do it was onstage, they would do it. The rest of the people in the audience were laughing at the person who was doing the most ridiculous things but saying at the same time, I could do that! That could be me!" At a theater in New York, which had once been a porno theater or something, there was a projection booth at the far end of the stage. We ran a wire from there to the opposite side of the stage. We had pulleys on it. Our drummer, [[Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood|Motorhead]], was instructed to attach objects to the line at random times during the show and fly them down. When they would land onstage, whatever arrived, we would improvise on it. Once, he sent down a baby d4" a doggie-style position with its head removed. It flew over the audience, whizzing by like in apparition over their heads, and crashed into the post over us. It was followed shortly by a three-foot-long Genoa salami that sodomized the doll. It seemed to me that there was no reason to waste this perfectly good salami, so I invited this lovely girl with very long hair, wearing a kind of [[Little Miss Muffet]] costume, to come up onstage and eat the whole salami. We played and she ate the salami. She started to cry because she couldn't finish it. I told her it was OK, that we would save it for her and she could come back and eat the rest of it. She did.
+The question became, How far would they go? What could we get an audience to do? The answer seemed to be anything. We'd bring someone up and go, "Take your shoes and socks off, put your socks on your hands and lick them while we play." Anything we could think of. So long as the person telling them to do it was onstage, they would do it. The rest of the people in the audience were laughing at the person who was doing the most ridiculous things but saying at the same time, I could do that! That could be me!" At a theater in New York, which had once been a porno theater or something, there was a projection booth at the far end of the stage. We ran a wire from there to the opposite side of the stage. We had pulleys on it. Our drummer, [[Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood|Motorhead]], was instructed to attach objects to the line at random times during the show and fly them down. When they would land onstage, whatever arrived, we would improvise on it. Once, he sent down a baby d4" a doggie-style position with its head removed. It flew over the audience, whizzing by like in apparition over their heads, and crashed into the post over us. It was followed shortly by a three-foot-long Genoa salami that sodomized the doll. It seemed to me that there was no reason to waste this perfectly good salami, so I invited this lovely girl with very long hair, wearing a kind of [[Wikipedia:Little Miss Muffet|Little Miss Muffet]] costume, to come up onstage and eat the whole salami. We played and she ate the salami. She started to cry because she couldn't finish it. I told her it was OK, that we would save it for her and she could come back and eat the rest of it. She did.
 '''Do you keep up with popular music now?<br>
@@ Line 374: / Line 374: @@
 '''It must have been strange for you when [[Al Gore]] was nominated as vice president.<br>
-They felt it was a good way to counteract the [[Dan Quayle]]-family values nonsense. But why would anybody need to counteract Dan Quayle?
+They felt it was a good way to counteract the [[Wikipedia:Dan Quayle|Dan Quayle]]-family values nonsense. But why would anybody need to counteract Dan Quayle?
 '''They obviously didn't care about your vote – or the vote of the people concerned about Tipper's ratings campaign.<br>

@@ Line 229: / Line 229: @@
 I naively thought that if there was some venue for nonstandard material, the material would find a market. But it failed because it was independent and had in dependent distribution. We lost our butt on that one. So the only way you can really do an independent label is to distribute through a major that has some clout to collect from the retailers.
-'''How are your current labels, [[Barking Pumpkin]] and Zappa Records, doing?<br>
+'''How are your current labels, [[Barking Pumpkin Records|Barking Pumpkin]] and Zappa Records, doing?<br>
 We have a very loyal fan base in several countries. Although the sales figures worldwide aren't anywhere near what the big rock stars would do if they released an album, the people who like what we do are very enthusiastic about it. That gives you a certain amount of leverage with record companies. You hook up with a major distributor but still control what you do. Since I have a record company of my own that controls the masters, the amount I make per unit – as the record company as opposed to the artist – is substantially more. I can sell three units and stay in business.
-'''What inspired you to form your first band, [[The Black-Outs]]?<br>
+'''What inspired you to form your first band, [[The Blackouts|The Black-Outs]]?<br>
 In Lancaster there wasn't any rock and roll, unless you listened to it on a record. Most of the people who liked R&B were not the white sons and daughters of the alfalfa farmers or defense workers who lived there. There were a number of Mexicans and a lot of black kids, and they liked that kind of stuff. So I put together this racially mixed ensemble that liked to play that kind of music. We banged our heads against the wall just like every other garage band, trying to figure out how to play, it. There's no guidebook.

@@ Line 206: / Line 206: @@
 '''Were you tempted by drugs?<br>
-All you'd have to do was look at the people who used them and that was enough. People would do frightening things and think it was fantastic. Then they would discuss it endlessly with the next guy, who had taken the same drug. I tried marijuana and waited for something to happen. I got a sore throat and it made me sleepy. I'd look at them and go, "Why?" I'm not going to be [[wikipedia:Bill Clinton|Bill Clinton]] and say I never inhaled. I did inhale. I couldn't understand what the big attraction was. I liked tobacco a lot better.
+All you'd have to do was look at the people who used them and that was enough. People would do frightening things and think it was fantastic. Then they would discuss it endlessly with the next guy, who had taken the same drug. I tried marijuana and waited for something to happen. I got a sore throat and it made me sleepy. I'd look at them and go, "Why?" I'm not going to be [[wikipedia:Bill Clinton|Bill Clinton]]<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/the-bill-clinton-we-knew-at-oxford-apart-from-smoking-dope-and-not-inhaling-what-else-did-he-learn-over-here-college-friends-share-their-memories-with-matthew-hoffman-1556769.html When asked about his dope smoking at university Clinton claimed that he did not inhale.]</ref> and say I never inhaled. I did inhale. I couldn't understand what the big attraction was. I liked tobacco a lot better.
 '''Were you involved in other aspects of the counterculture?<br>
@@ Line 411: / Line 411: @@
 '''Was it helping,<br>
 I don't want to dwell on all the morbid details of what happened to me, but I'll summarize it. When I went into the hospital, the cancer had grown to where I could no longer take a piss. In order for me just to survive, they had no poke a hole in my bladder. I spent more than a year with a hose coming out of my bladder and a bag tied to my leg. That'll keep you from traveling. The result of the radiation was that the tumor was shrunken to the point where I could get rid of the bag and could piss again, but there were bad side effects. I don't want to talk about it. It's not a picnic.
 '''It seems that you can still do a lot of the things you care about – composing, at least.<br>
@@ Line 435: / Line 436: @@
 '''But hasn't it affected the mood of the music?<br>
 No, I haven't started writing sad music. Time is the thing. Time is everything. How to spend time. We all want something to do with our minds. The choices are a major human preoccupation. The people who find the easiest solutions, like beer and football, might be happier if they had just a little dimension to their lives. But most people, once they achieve a certain level of gratification for time disposal, don't go beyond it. They already know how good they're going to feel when a football game comes on, and they have their beer. They don't want to know beyond that. They build a life around it. It's been the same for me since I got cancer as it was before. I have to look way beyond the football game and the can of beer. Once I've gone out there and dabbled on that fringe, I feel as if I may as well bring some artefacts back, in case anybody else is interested. That's what I do. I come back and go, "Here it is. This is what happened after the football game."
 [[Category:Interviews with Zappa]]