Yellow
Yellow is one of the stars in the "One Size Fits All" (1975) universe, on the back cover of the album. It refers to the "Yellow" line of the New York subway system, whose stars 125th, Lenox, Houston and Canal are all closeby on the map.
In the article Mother Of Two Runs Off With Uncle Meat (Song Hits, September 1967), Zappa named Naples yellow his favorite color. During the Data For Sensitive or Critical-sensitive Position (1968), Zappa named Naples yellow his "favorite color" and "favorite smell". In Let's Talk Clothes (1973), Zappa was asked whether Naples yellow was truly his favorite. He replied: "Naples yellow is a very nice color, But I seldom have clothes in that color – they just don't make them. (...) Naples yellow is a kind of paint color that they have in a lot of kitchens. (...) All kinds of kitchens. It starts white, then it gets greasy and becomes vellow." However, in The Last Days of Frank Zappa (1993), Zappa said that Naples yellow used to be his favorite colour, but he now changed to purple.
Other references to yellow in Frank Zappa's work
- Soft-Sell Conclusion": ""You and your new little green & yellow buddies... grooving together!"
- Absolutely Free (The Track): "The dreams as they live them are all mellow yellow" (a reference to Donovan's song Mellow Yellow)
- Don't Eat The Yellow Snow
- Man With The Woman Head": "A coil of ashes collected on the white-on-yellow dacs"
- The Blue Light: "That has the ugly, waxey, fake yellow kind"
- Mudd Club": "And all the rest of whom for which to when-so-never of partially indeterminate, biochemical degradation seek "the Path" to the sudsy, yellow nozzle of their foaming, nocturnal, parametric-digital, whole-wheat, inter-faith, geo-thermal, terpsichorean, Ejectamenta in Serious Leather... in Serious Chains..."
- We're Turning Again": "They were mellow, they were yellow"
- Uncle Meat Film Excerpt: "I got the belt with the little yellow holes!"
- The Yellow Shark
