Suzy Creamcheese (What's Got Into You?)

Lyrics

Interviewer 1: Frank, who is Suzy Creamcheese?
FZ: Well, I'll have to answer you in the same tone of voice that you asked …
[laughter]
Interviewer 2: Sound like [?] I heard [?] heh!
FZ: Ah, her real name is Pamela Lee Zarubica. And she's living in Los Angeles right now, trying to grow her buns back.
Interviewer 1: I, I don't …
Interviewer 2: We … we can't …
Interviewer 1: No, touchy. [laughter]
Interviewer 2: Why, why Suzy Creamcheese?
FZ: Well, that's explanatory in the music. Yeah, is it not great.
Interviewer 1: No, no I don't think it is, huh? Now I had been the slowest person probably in this studio right now, I would like …
FZ: Oh well, don't be so self-deprecating …
Interviewer 2: [makes snoring noises]
FZ: … come on, Billie.
Interviewer 1: Well, I'm not known for my modesty, all right, I admit I'm guilty. No, really, right on seriously.
FZ: What's the deal, Billie, what're you tryin' to tell me?
Interviewer 1: Hahaha, how, uh, no, how did you really, she acquire the name Suzy Cremcheese, did she really get …
FZ: It's very simple, it's really very simple. First of all there was no Suzy Creamcheese to begin with …
Interviewer 1: … and you thought we needed, the world needed one …
FZ: I'm sure the world needed one. I mean that's self-evident, because now there are more than one Suzy Cream… they're are all over the place …
Interviewer 1: [laughs]
Interviewer 2: Yeah!
FZ: … other people have adopted that concept. But the original Suzy Creamcheese was a figment of my imagination that occurred during a tour, a three weeks stay in Hawaii, when we're working in a horrible club there called Da Swamp.
Interviewer 1: [laughs]
Interviewer 2: The Swamp?
FZ: Spelled "D, a, Swamp" …
[laughter]
Interviewer 1: Was the owner like, was he a stereotype, y'know three feet, four feet wide, …
FZ: No, no, we never met the owner, y'know, it's … I don't …
Interviewer 2: He didn't bother to …
FZ: I shuddered to think who actually owned "Da Swamp" but our clientel was sailors of the world. One of … the most exciting night that we had there, oh, there were two exciting nights, one I can't tell you on the air, and the other one was the time we had some sailors from New Zealand come in. And they're really drunk and were dancing with each other, it was really quite picturesque.
[laughter]
FZ: It's like New Zealand sailors dancing together, it was real good …
Interviewer 1: Uhuh …
FZ: … and, uh, there … was nothing to do, Hawaii is a dull place.
Interviewer 1: Just look at it, y'know looks like a post card with nothing to do.
FZ: It sure does look like a post card. It was frightening, it looks so much like a post card, y'know, it made you feel two-dimensional just being there.
So, I spend a lot of time in the, uh, motel room of this phantastic place right behind "Da Swamp", that was called "Da Surfboard Motel". [laughter]
Green stucco, bugs everywhere, [tape glitch] and I had this typewriter there, so I cranked off the liner notes for the Freak Out! album and thinking of the packaging for the back, but I came over the idea of Suzy Creamcheese, who would be a very pure sort of girl, who would be ultimatedly offended by the presence in the music industry of a ranced group like the Mothers Of Invention. And so she was conveived as a stereotype of the, the, uh, American perennial virgin type with the sort of white pleaded skirt, and perhaps some rolled stockings going down to some loafer shoes, and maybe a little sweater with a pin on it or something …
Interviewer 1+2: [unintelligible]
FZ: … a key of some sort. And, uhm, …
Interviewer 1: Sorority pin.
FZ: Yeah.
Interviewer 2: Sounds like a Virginia bitch …
[laughing]
FZ: And so, uh, I imagined this girl, how she would respond to an album such as "Freak Out!" so I composed the letter that's on the back. Where the girl was making a complaint to her teacher about how rancid we were supposed to be. And everybody thought it was real, simply because it was printed in a typewriter script on the back. Nobody ever considered for … a moment that it was … now … just strictly imaginary, and the words say, "Sincerely forever, Suzy Creamcheese," I mean, that never [?] anybody that it was a little too weird to have on the back of an album. So other people identify with Suzy Creamcheese and then we were ready to go to Europe the first time, we discovered that people there more interested in seeing Suzy Creamcheese and they weren't seeing us.
Not quite, but it was a sorta history of peak in certain areas, so we decided it'll be best to bring along a Suzy Creamcheese replica, and demonstrate once and for all the voracity of such a beast. So I [laughter] checked around the scene who'd be willing to go along with the gig, and, uh, Pamela was willing and, uh, she was available, and …
Interviewer 1: She did the voice on the album also?
FZ: No, no. There was another one that did the voice on the album. Her name was Jeannie Vassoir and she … you can't find her anymore, she disappeared, she went to Mexico, someplace. Anyway, there was no way to get ahold of Jeannie Vassoir, and, uh, Pamela was available, and as it stood in the concept, so we said, 'Ok, here is your ticket. Come on!'
So she did the tour with us in Europe and has maintained the title ever since.
Interviewer 2: The Suzy Creamcheese?
FZ: Yeah.
Interviewer 1: There's a … there's a …
FZ: Such a distinction, mmm!
Interviewer 1: … devoted crowd ever after, the kind of asked for anymore at the performance?
FZ: In Europe sometimes still they do, but you find that only in very retarded areas. We noticed that, uh, …
Interviewer 1: [laughs]
FZ: … y'know, some areas are retarded. Some information does not leak through. And, a good example of that is, uh, there are some places in the South, where network television does not come in, so you're not going to receive anything on your television station other than 'Grand Ol' Opery" plus what the local politic does want you to hear. And so same thing with radio stations as the format of the radio stations [tape glitch] does not permit certain types of information reaching that public.
And in a town that's sealed up, uh, if electronic media is sealed up in a town, you can imagine what the print media must be like. And consequently that reaches in the commercial areas like record distribution and things like that or certain things just don't leak through in certain areas and they therefore become retarded.

Players On This Song

FZ and interviewers

Records On Which This Song Has Appeared

The MOFO Project/Object (Deluxe Edition)

Notes About This Song

Excerpt from an interview at KBEY-FM Kansas City, MO, 22October 1971