Frank Zappa. Interview in Playboy - Revision history

Jason.Kreitzer at 14:56, 11 September 2021

2021-09-11T14:56:41Z

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

Duncan at 11:07, 24 July 2021

2021-07-24T11:07:57Z

Duncan at 09:12, 24 July 2021

2021-07-24T09:12:58Z

Duncan: WP link

2021-07-24T08:01:04Z

WP link

Duncan: Link Penelope to concert page

2021-07-24T07:46:45Z

Link Penelope to concert page

Jason.Kreitzer at 02:54, 22 July 2021

2021-07-22T02:54:32Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 01:57, 21 July 2021

2021-07-21T01:57:36Z

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 '''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>

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 '''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>
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 '''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>
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 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.
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 '''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>
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 '''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>
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 '''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>

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 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.

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 '''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>
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 '''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>
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 '''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]]

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 '''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 [[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]] 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>

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 Over the course of his career, few were left unscathed by Zappa's wicked satire set to music. A [[wikipedia:Randy Newman|Randy Newman]] with fangs, Zappa went after fashion, hypocrisy and stereotypes, managing to offend an amazing array of people. Women were incensed over the song "[[Titties 'n Beer]]," parents were horrified by such lyrics as "Watch out where the huskies go/and don't you eat that yellow snow" and gays were furious over "[[He's So Gay]]." The Anti-Defamation League of the [[wikipedia:B'nai B'rith|B'nai B'rith]] denounced "[[Jewish Princess]]" ("with overworked gums, she squeaks when she comes") and demanded an apology. As always, Zappa refused.
-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 [[Jesse Jackson]], former Surgeon General [[C. Everett Koop]], rednecks and televangelists.
+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.
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 I still eat burnt weeny sandwiches. It's one of the great things in life. At least it's a great lunch. You take a [[wikipedia:Hebrew National|Hebrew National]], put it on a fork, burn it on the stove, wrap two pieces of bread around it, squirt some mustard on it, eat it and you're back to work.
-'''You've also used your songs to level political attacks. You wrote [[Rhymin' Man]] about [[Jesse Jackson]]. What made you so angry?<br>
+'''You've also used your songs to level political attacks. You wrote [[Rhymin' Man]] about [[Rhymin'_Man#Notes_About_This_Song|Jesse Jackson]]. What made you so angry?<br>
 An article raised some questions about whether or not Martin Luther King actually died in Jesse's arms. There were reports that Jackson dipped his hands into King's blood or even used chicken blood and rubbed it on his shirt, which he wore for a few days afterward as he met the media. So I did this song about the idea of communicating through nursery rhymes, as Jackson is prone to do. It rubs me the wrong way. I'm not saying that all of Jesse's ideas are bad; I agree with some of them. But I'm not confident that Jesse Jackson would be the person I would look to to implement any of them. I don't want to see any religious people in public office because they're working for another boss.

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 '''For example, [[Burnt Weeny Sandwich]]?<br>
-I still eat burnt weeny sandwiches. It's one of the great things in life. At least it's a great lunch. You take a Hebrew National, put it on a fork, burn it on the stove, wrap two pieces of bread around it, squirt some mustard on it, eat it and you're back to work.
+I still eat burnt weeny sandwiches. It's one of the great things in life. At least it's a great lunch. You take a [[wikipedia:Hebrew National|Hebrew National]], put it on a fork, burn it on the stove, wrap two pieces of bread around it, squirt some mustard on it, eat it and you're back to work.
 '''You've also used your songs to level political attacks. You wrote [[Rhymin' Man]] about [[Jesse Jackson]]. What made you so angry?<br>

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 '''During those years, the Mothers were famous for being a hardworking band. You were on the road all the time.<br>
-We played everywhere. Like the time we spent in Montreal, when we played a club called the New Penelope and it was twenty degrees below zero. We walked from our hotel to the club, and the snot had literally frozen in our noses by the time we got to work. The wind instruments got so cold that if you tried to play them, your lips and fingers would freeze to them. The instruments couldn't even be played until they were warmed up. It was pretty primitive. If we hadn't experienced that, we probably wouldn't have come up with some of the more deranged types of audience participation and audience punishment things that we were doing at the time.
+We played everywhere. Like the time we spent in Montreal, when we played a club called [[67/01/07-21 Montreal Quebec Canada New Penelope|The New Penelope]] and it was twenty degrees below zero. We walked from our hotel to the club, and the snot had literally frozen in our noses by the time we got to work. The wind instruments got so cold that if you tried to play them, your lips and fingers would freeze to them. The instruments couldn't even be played until they were warmed up. It was pretty primitive. If we hadn't experienced that, we probably wouldn't have come up with some of the more deranged types of audience participation and audience punishment things that we were doing at the time.
 '''Audience punishment things?<br>

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 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 [[Edgar Varèse|Edgard Varese]] and [[Anton Webern]].
+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]].
 In Lancaster, Zappa formed his first garage band, the Black-Outs (so named after the night some of his bandmates drank too much peppermint schnapps and blacked out). He later joined the Soul Giants, which became the Mothers of Invention. With Zappa as their guitar-wielding leader, the Mothers were known for their excellent and innovative music – "[[Uncle Meat]]," "[[Weasels Ripped My Flesh]]" and "[[The Grand Wazoo]]" are classic albums – and for their antics. One of the more colorful rock legends maintains that Zappa and [[Alice Cooper]] had a gross-out contest onstage: After Cooper allegedly squashed some live baby chicks, Zappa supposedly picked up a plastic spoon and ate a plate of steaming feces. Although Zappa denies it, he's been haunted by the story for years.

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 A candid conversation with the most original mind in rock music about world affairs, jewish princesses, fighting cancer and life beyond the fringe.
-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: [[Frank Zappa]]. "Who else?" wondered Groening. "I listened to the music, I dissected the lyrics and it transformed me."
+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.