Jim Jones
Jim Jones (May 13, 1931 - November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader.
In 1954, Jones established his own cult, the Community Unity Church (1954). It mostly held faith healing sessions, while he got rich and had many adulterous affairs with his cult members. In 1973, he was caught trying to having sex with another man in the toilet of a movie theater in Los Angeles. The arrest made him anxious to leave the US and take his cult to a place where they would free from outside interference. By 1977, he was allowed to set up his own agricultural commune in Guyana, which he called Jonestown. Now able to do what he wanted and often high under the influences of amphetamines , he became more authoritarian, punishing his hundreds of followers over the slightest offenses or traces of disobedience.
In 1978, California congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown with a delegation, but wasn't allowed to leave afterwards. They managed to escape, but were still murdered at the airstrip by some of Jones' loyal followers. Realizing it wouldn't take long before the police would arrive, Jones ordered his entire cult to commit mass suicide with him by drinking a cyanide cocktail. Those who refused were forced, or simply shot. In total 909 people died in Jonestown, including many families with children.
Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa wrote the haunting instrumental Jonestown, recorded on Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger about the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, describing it in the liner notes as: "A boring, ugly dance evoking the essential nature of all religions. A person pretending to be a messenger from God bangs on the side of the communal beverage tub with the skull of a former child, silently mouthing the words, "Come and get it!"
In Frank's Wild Years, 87-3, interviewed by Steve Lyons and Batya Friedman, Option, March/April 1987, Zappa said that German journalist Petra Schnitt once misinterpreted his song Jones Crusher as being a criticism of Jim Jones: "Petra Schnitt who is one of the top reporters for Stern or Der Spiegel ... can't remember which. She came to our show in Hamburg. She liked the show. She'd heard the album. And she came backstage to do an interview after the show. She said, [in quiet German accent] "I see that you have a song on your album about Jones and crushing him." I almost fell on the floor. No. This song is not about Jim Jones and crushing him. This is a song about a girl that has incredibly strong vaginal muscles. And she went, "Oh, that's very different."
