Frank Zappa On Freedom

By Frank Zappa
Hit Parader, October 1967

I think the kids are ready for everything on our albums and much more. The kids are ready for anything. I don't think our stuff is offensive in any way.

You mentioned the Fugs in comparison to us. The Fugs are not in good taste. They have a few bugs in their plan. One of them appeared on the David Susskind Show. I suppose their basic premise is "You talk dirty on a rock and roll record and this will lead the way to freedom of speech." This guy is sitting there in his chair and he couldn't care less about freedom of speech. He wants to be as cool as possible saying things like, "Yeah man, sure. Yeah, we live in the Village." They don't care about the musical end of what they're doing. They're overcome with the sociopolitical aspects.

I think all this decadence is pretty disgusting. I wish it would stop. Although I've heard it's the same in major cities all over the world, I wouldn't want to comment on something I haven't seen. I'm up to my nose in the American variety.

It all stems from a system that was never designed to work. Our system is based on a lot of fallacies. Our moral code, for instance, from the Puritan era is basically wrong. No animal up to and including the human being was physically designed to live under that sort of a code. When these codes are strictly adhered to you come up with stunted, twisted fragments of society.

Sure they're building tall buildings. What else can they do? They're frustrated. So you have a system built on really faulty components. Then you've got a whole heritage of parent-to-child teaching. That is -- teaching by example. Parents always wanted to be good guys, live in the system and be straight. Some of them really couldn't handle it, they couldn't play the right games and they developed horrible guilt feelings. Then they started wasting themselves -- taking to drink and other things. Morally the society crippled itself.

By example of behavior, this whole tradition of nonsense was handed down from father to son as far back as the Pilgrims.

In junior college, which I was forced to attend, I read a book called "Democracy, An American Experiment". And it's true. No one has ever proved that it can work. I still think it's an experiment and someone has to prove to me that it works. This doesn't mean that it can't work.

But it sure needs to be re-designed and re-greased in an American sense. People have to stop being hypocritical about the way they live and think, and take their whole mind and body into consideration when they're designing flaws.