Bootlegs
Bootlegs were understandably a phenomenon Frank Zappa often expressed his annoyance with.
During a 1970 TV interview, Zappa commented on Dieter Boé's bootleg album cover for Weasels Ripped My Flesh.
In 1978, when Zappa was sueing Warner Brothers over their unauthorized release of four of his albums (Zappa In New York, Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt, Orchestral Favorites), he went to a radio station, where he played his entire Läther album so fans and bootleggers could tape it from the radio, for free (see also: Tape It!). It was only released on CD in 1996.
In 1981, Zappa discussed bootlegs during a radio interview with B. Mitchel Reed. This excerpt was later included as the track That Makes Me Mad on the album As An Am (BTB).
On Sandwich Song, Zappa calls it "the ultimate bootleg record".
In 1989, to let money flow into his own pocket, he released several popular bootleg albums on the label Foo-Eee (a subsidiary of Rhino Records), under the title Category:Beat The Boots. However, Zappa left the production of his engineer Tom Brown, while not remastering the sound at all, leading to poor audio quality on some.
Quotes
"Most people who do Zappa bootlegs do so because they like Zappa. They don't do it for the money. I can imagine people making money off a lot of other bootlegs, but not Zappa['s]." - Richard, owner of Bizarre (bootleg label).
Frank Zappa about bootlegs
"I don't think they're doing anybody a favour except themselves. You don't think for instance, that unreleased tapes by people like Dylan and so forth have any value for the listener? I would say this – if those tapes were intended for release, then I'm sure that Dylan or whoever would have put them out. I wouldn't appreciate somebody taking something I didn't want released and putting it out. That's not doing a favour to anybody, except the bootlegger who's going to trade in on the name of the artist. - Frank Zappa, Frank Zappa: Portrait of the Artist as a Businessman, interviewed by Rob Partridge/Paul Phillips, Cream, January 1972.
"I've got one major problem in life, which is the bootleg situation: every time I step out the door, somebody is bootlegging what I do. I'm finding discs of interviews that I've done that have been bootlegged. CDs of interviews going years back! And concerts all over the place are bootlegged. So rather than just give up and let the bootleggers handle my musical output, I feel I should release something. Hardcore fans are already buying these bad-quality recordings of the live concert material. The best thing I can do right now is give them the best versions and the best recording quality I can provide."- Frank Zappa in Dynamo Frank, interviewed by Alan di Perna for Guitar World, 1988.
" I don't mind the grapevine. What I mind is guys who actually take the stuff, and try to rip me off, and make a profit from it. They're also ripping off the fans, because they're getting sub-standard versions. (...) Co de Kloet (...) recently came back from Czechoslovakia, and he went to record stores there, and none of my albums have been officially released, but if you go in the back room, every album is available on tape. They're all bootleg taped, just hand-inscribed, and so, the music has been there for years. And when I went into Russia, I was introduced to a guy who works in the Ministry of Culture, a total member of the Communist Party, with the red card, and the whole thing, a young guy, about thirty years old, who said he was pleased to meet me, because he earned his way through school by importing my tapes from Yugoslavia, and selling them in Russia, and now he works in the Ministry of Culture, and he got through school bootleggin' my stuff." - Frank Zappa in They're Doing the Interview of the Century, Part 2, by Don Menn, Den Simms and Eric Buxton, Society Pages, June 1990.
"When I was in Russia, I met one young guy who had worked his way through college by getting my LPs from Yugoslavia and making tapes and selling them. That didn't bother me so much – bringing a musical artifact into an authoritarian society is understandable. But in the free world there are laws that supposedly exist to protect artists. The problem is, nobody enforces them, and the subtext is, 'Who needs you guys anyway? Your business and livelihood don't matter." - Frank Zappa, Make A Zappa Noise Here, Alistair Sutherland, Music Express, January 1992. [1]
