Journalists and critics

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Frank Zappa in London, 1967. Photo credit: Tony Gale.

Frank Zappa often targeted journalists and critics during interviews and sometimes in his music too. Much of his contempt came from the fact that many lacked the musical knowledge and background to understand his work, giving him negative reviews, while often writing more about his personal life, politics, emphasis on comedy and sexuality. Some tried to depict him as a freak. Others gave him less attention than other, far more commercially succesful rock and pop stars. In general, Zappa's music was often ignored by journalists and critics both in the rock, jazz and classical music press because they he couldn't be pigeonholed in one of these genres.

In The Real Frank Zappa Book, Zappa explained that a bad review of Edgar Varèse's Complete Works Of Edgard Varèse, Volume 1 drove him to listen to the record. He loved it. This also proved to him that reviews are subjective, since a listener could like something that a critic reacted negatively too.

According to Tony Palmer, Zappa told him he made music not for critics, but for people to enjoy. Zappa repeated this statement in Zappa's Latest Box Of Tricks, Sounds, 27 November 1971.

Journalists and critics targeted in Zappa's music

Zappa about journalists and critics

Frank Zappa.

"You have to do a demographic breakdown of the whys and wherefores of rock-and-roll journalists all over the world, and see where they're coming from and make some statistics on that. A lot of them got into it for getting free records, getting next to groups so that they could get laid vicariously, or just trying to do something to further a writing career in some other direction. I'd say the largest percentage are ill-equipped to write about music or anything else, and a lot of them can't even type well. But gotta do something for a living." - Frank Zappa, Frank Zappa: a Mother Only a Face Could Love, interview by Michael Bourne, 23 October 1974.

""Some people get upset when you talk about things of a sexual nature because that's just something you don't talk about, and the people who get most upset about that are journalists-there's probably some deep-seated psychological reason for that – the audience just enjoys it." - Frank Zappa, interviewed by Paul Rambali, Stern Words In Knightsbridge, New Musical Express, 28 January 1978.

Rudi Dolezal interviewing Frank Zappa, 30 March 1978 during the infamous Cadillac incident.

"Bruce Springsteen (...) hits both covers of major magazines with rock journalists saying; "Yeah, this is it." It's all a hype. And then the next thing you know they call it punk rock and now those guys are gonna be writing about punk and how great it is. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are writing rock criticism today weren't around during the sixties or they'd already know that punk rock already happened folks. It was better already." - Frank Zappa, Phi Zappa Crappa Interview:, Dave Fass and Dave Street, Acid Rock, January 1978.

"All the people who write about me are the same people who write about the Sex Pistols and so forth ... So based on what they say about them, you can analyse how much accuracy there must be in what they say about me." - Zappa Digs Sabs Shock!, Sandy Robertson, Sounds, January 28, 1978.

"Sometimes the people hired on rock-'n'-roll publications are not qualified to operate a typewriter or any other tool of the trade. They write things that tell more about who and what they are than the people they interview. Most rock-'n'-roll journalists are either jealous of musicians or hate them. Or both. So that underlying attitude comes out in the labels and some of the other stuff they write. (...) Most of the reporters I've talked to don't know anything about music, politics, philosophy, mathematics, or anything. I don't know what they do know about, but you can't talk to them. You can't even answer the questions they ask. A lot of times, in order to make an answer I give accurate and complete, I have to draw on other sources that may be outside their understanding. And if they don't understand what I'm saying, they narrow it down, paraphrase it, change it. The net result is something that's not what I said, and doesn't make any sense. Or, later, if they can't decipher the tape they made or if I use an unfamiliar word they can't spell, rather than go look it up, they leave it out. It's less work for them." - Interview: Frank Zappa, Interview by Charlene Keel, Genesis, April 1979.

"There's no accounting for taste, you know. Like I said, do you believe what you read in the papers? Somebody told you that album was great? Big deal. That doesn't mean that it's great. If somebody told you it was shitty, it wouldn't mean that it was shitty. It is what it is, and the way in which people perceive it is generally a reflection of the temperament of the times." - Frank Zappa in Zappa, 79/8, Dan Forte, Musician, No. 19, August 1979.

"If you base your life on what reviewers say about your work, then you're going to be in a sad state of affairs. I understand the motivation for writing the reviews‹usually economic. There are all kinds of possibilities, but the fact remains that what they write is their business and what I do is mine. The fact that they described an act that I have written or performed on a record in such a way does not alter the actual content or intent of the act. If you looked at a camera and told me it was an umbrella, you could be definitely convinced it was an umbrella but I might know different. You might be the guy who was writing it down and maybe a million people read your analysis of the umbrella and thought it was an umbrella because you said so, but it's not an umbrella." - Clark Peterson, He's Only 38 and He Knows How to Nasty, Relix, Vol. 6, No. 5, November 1979.

"The journalistic profession is a highly over-rated piece of fantasy. What I do respect is the fact that everyone is entitled to earn a living. The reason you're here is because this is your job, and the reason I'm here is because this is my job. Aside from that, the process of being interviewed is highly unnatural. I just told the interviewers who were here before you came, lit is probably more natural to perform sex with a sea urchin than to be interviewed,' because people don't ordinarily talk to each other this way. You get to dress up like an interviewer and I get to dress up like a guy sitting around the house answering questions. You have to act like a person asking questions, and I have to act like a person answering questions. It's totally fake. Then you've got to write it down." - Clark Peterson, He's Only 38 and He Knows How to Nasty, Relix, Vol. 6, No. 5, November 1979.

"The fact is, unless I've met them before or done an interview with them, every interviewer comes here basing their opinion of me and my work on things they've read by other people. Most of it is totally irrelevant to who and what I am. They walk in the door seeking a method by which they can reinforce conclusions they've already arrived at. That's usually what happens. I have to talk my way around things people already believe. The way human nature works, you're never going to be convinced of anything; nobody ever changes your mind. Everybody believes inside of themselves that they are right that they've got it wired. If you ever agree with someone, it's only because you already agreed with them before they opened their mouth ... So, bearing that in mind, much of the interviewing process is an exercise in futility." - Clark Peterson, He's Only 38 and He Knows How to Nasty, Relix, Vol. 6, No. 5, November 1979.

"I don't think writers respect me because if they did, they'd write down exactly what I said. I talk really good and I know what I'm talking about. If I don't know what I'm talking about, I keep my mouth shut. When I say something, I mean it. I say it as clearly as I can. There's two kinds of interviews: there's the kind of guy who tapes it and transcribes it and it's question and answer, and the errors occur either because of bad transcription or misspelled words or things like that that change meanings; the other guy comes in and tapes it and listens to the tape, but what he really wants to do is (in a phony, AM disc jockey voice) Write an Article with a capital W and a capital A, so the interview itself is just an excuse for the guy to become a writer. Most of the people in this business aren't qualified to own or operate a typewriter, and certainly shouldn't be allowed to enforce their emotional freight on the poor people who have to read this stuff. They're using my name to draw attention to an article which tells you little or nothing about me, but tells you an awful lot about the hang-ups of the writer..." - Clark Peterson, He's Only 38 and He Knows How to Nasty, Relix, Vol. 6, No. 5, November 1979.

"I just do whatever amuses me at the time. And I generally find critics uninformed musically and generally. I don't think there are too many people that I've talked to who are critics who have heard all the records that I've made. I don't think there are too many people anywhere who've heard all the records that I've made. So how can they say that I'm doing the same old stuff if they don't know what I've done. But it looks good in print. It gives the reader who reads that statement the impression that the person who made that statement is very wise." - Zappa Busy As Ever While Coming Out of Joe's Garage, Michael Davis, Record Review, February 1980.

"Well, there's a good reason why people will come to work for me. When they stop working for me, they have instantaneous recognition of working in a band that has a reputation for being one of the most difficult, which gives them a certain amount of professional esteem. Plus, any time they want to say something bad about me, they have a friendly ear from any journalist who thinks it's a good story. They always say that I'm an asshole. I don't give a fuck. " - Frank Zappa: America's Weirdest Rock Star Comes Clean, John Swenson, High Times #55, March 1980.

"(...)it was also discovered that if you wanted to do this and hear music, you had to be patronized – somebody had to pay the freight – this was either the church or a king. If the church didn't like what you wrote, they got out the red-hot tweezers and pulled out your toenails; if the king didn't like what you wrote he'd chop your head off. The kings all had syphilis and were crazy, and the church was, you know, the church. So, just because somebody is paying to have a composition done or is paying to support a composer doesn't necessarily mean that the music that is written to assuage the taste of the paying entity is good, but all the music that survives that we call classical music is based on the taste of either a clerical person or some crazy rich person with a crown on his head. Those norms are perpetuated by music critics who now stand in the shoes of the disgusting clerics and the crazy kings, and they keep judging the music based on these norms which shouldn't be applied, and it's unfortunate that the norms came into existence in the first place." - Frank Zappa on Edgar Varèse, John Diliberto and Kimberly Haas, Downbeat, 21 November 1981.

"I mean if you want to write a fugue, fine, but to use all of those norms to judge the quality of what's being done ... that's a bad thing because there're people working in other fields of music looking to do other things, and as long as the music critics judge their work by those other standards, they're always going to come up losers. And with the public only being told negative things about new music, this image being perpetuated of this music being something for the few, is bad; it keeps you dumb; it keeps you mediocre. America should take pride in things that have been produced here that are exceptional, that are different, that are daring, not things that pretend to be artistic, things that pretend to be different, or things that pretend to be daring. America should opt for the real shit. But they don't because they never get exposed to it. The really dangerous stuff never gets on the radio, and you never hear about it. Because everything you hear about the so-called musical life in the United States is told to you in newspapers and magazines by people who are not qualified to speak of it, because they can't tell a good composition from a bad one, and they can't tell the difference between a great composition that has been badly performed or a mediocre composition that got the big MOLTO VIBRATO treatment by a major American orchestra. There's no taste involved there." - Frank Zappa on Edgar Varèse, John Diliberto and Kimberly Haas, Downbeat, 21 November 1981.

"(...) People who deal in rock 'n' roll criticism are all part of the machinery that thrives on the idea that the largest number of units sold equals the best music. And if somebody does something without wanting to sell billions of platinum units, then this is incomprehensible to the average rock 'n' roll critic, because they believe that anybody who doesn't play the same game is crazy or dangerous or both. So they can't compute the idea that maybe the concept of the song that they perceive as a perfectly acceptable, viable, nice little rock 'n' roll ditty that they think was sabotaged – maybe the sabotage is the actual information in the song, and the rest of the stuff surrounding it is something that will attract the attention of the people who need to hear that other information. It's the carrot on the end of the stick to make you experience that other information. The part in the song that turns out to be weird to those particular critics is the part that's important, and the other stuff is just something to set you up for that little twist that's in there. Without the setup, the twist doesn't work, and oftentimes the compositions are designed to lead you right down the primrose path until you hit the brick wall." - Frank Zappa, interviewed by Dan Forte, Zappa, 82/4, Musician #42, April 1982

Frank Zappa on Andy Warhol's TV, 1982. From left to right: Andy Warhol, Richard Berlin and Frank Zappa.

"In certain countries the power of a journalist to destroy a group within a matter of moments is there. If you're getting bad reviews or somebody says your show is boring, then in times of economic stress, why would anybody buy a f*¢#in' ticket to go see your show when they could see this band that plays a mass of two-minute songs? It's disgusting to me, because if a society lets itself be led around by arbiters of taste like that, when you have to go by somebody else's word of what is good and what is bad, and you don't get to decide for yourself, and you're willing to give up your freedom of choice, then you're a fool. It's a sad state, but that's the way it is, and you have to deal with things as they are, not the way you wish they were." - Frank Zappa, Frank Zappa: Guitar Player, Bill Milkowski, Down Beat, February 1983.

"I'm not in the mood right now to generate a bunch of fun-time songs, and it seems like every time I do, all the music critics who have absolutely no sense of humor despise it so much that whatever else in the album is of a sturdier musical merit gets ignored, while these guys go on rampages about the text of my songs. (...) It's easy to focus in on that stuff, particularly if it offends you. Well, the thing is that a guy who writes usually is a word-oriented guy, and the chances of his knowing about music, especially if he's a rock music critic, are nil. None of the people who have reviewed my albums, with maybe two or three exceptions in the last 20 years, had a broad enough knowledge to know that what they were listening to was more outrageous, in terms of how it was flying in the face of music history, than any lyric or any individual story idea in the song could ever be. They weren't historically equipped to understand what the references were and to see why the music that was being done based on those references was either utterly hilarious or completely outrageous. You've got to know a certain amount of stuff in order to derive the maximum impact from those albums. That's just the way it works. I hate to be a guy sitting around saying, "I'm misunderstood," but it's not even a matter of being misunderstood. It's a matter of being uncomprehended." - Jim Aikin, Bob Doerschuk, Sample This!, Keyboard, February 1987.

"Well, I don't know whether doing emotional music is a mark of excellence. That's been one of my downfalls with rock critics, 'cause they all seem to have this feeling that the more emotional it is, the better it is. And that's not my aesthetic at all. A little of each, you know? I like skill in music." Frank Zappa in Rolling Stone Interview, 1988.

"When journalists who know better don't bust their butts searching out the best music to report on instead of settling for the most "happenin' thing on the block," then it's their own damned fault if there's nothing left worth writing about. If the only people who can truly make it are those who sing their hearts out for the likes of Pepsi-Cola, what the hell's gonna happen to music." - Zappa 89-7, Interview by Deborah Parisi, Rhythm, July 1989.

Front cover of "Congress Shall Make No Law . . .".

"The average person doesn't sit around thinking about the "iconographic problems of a gultar solo." You're talking about a sociological, emotional phenomenon associated with the need of a writer to earn a living by describing something which is very difficult to write about: music. And the hardest thing to write about is that kind of music, when it's really personal, when a guy is really trying to do something, which I think Allan Holdsworth is. He's a brilliant musician. And when you start digging the thesaurus out and delving into things like "iconographic" and tacking shit like that onto stories about guitar solos, well, [laughs] then the problems begin! A guy might listen to it and go "I like it" or "I don't like it," but to have it explained to him by a writer that "we now have an iconographic problem," that's another can of worms, wouldn't you say? (...) A guy's writing in a magazine which some insecure record company executive has been told is hip by his secretary that he's trying to get to blow him. She says, "This is a hip magazine," so in order to get that blow job, he's gotta read a few paragraphs. And in this magazine he'll read this: "There's an iconographic problem with Allan Holdsworth's guitar solos." And a trend is set in motion where the next person who bears these dangerous iconographic tendencies comes to get a record contract from this guy and might be refused. In the hands of insecure record company executives, A&R men and pootheads, the writer's article can be a dangerous force in shunting off certain types of expression, just because it is no longer hot since it would seem so from this fountain of information, this special hip magazine – and we know how many hip magazines there are that determine these things. The minute somebody says, "Iconographic-No Longer Hot," you're dead. Because you're dealing with real mental pygmies in these record companies. Not to cast aspersions on any pygmies in the audience, [laughter] but these guys do not have musical priorities. Their priority is, "Keep my job, keep my job." They get up in the morning, look in the mirror, spray their hair, say, "I'm going to keep my job. And I don't care whose dick I have to suck, I don't care how many Milli Vanillis I gotta sign, I'm keepin' my job." - Frank Zappa, interviewed by Matt Resnicoff, Poetic Justice, Musician, November 1991.

"But to reinforce the negative side of the activities of the press: I lived as an entertainer through one era of rock 'n' roll where the rock press was absolutely the blowboy of the industry. In the '70s, when corporate rock really blossomed into this stinking apparition it became, companies were giving cocaine, girls, money, junkets and all this stuff to famous rock writers, just greasing them from one end to the other so they would write nonstop, wonderful glowing articles about groups that needed to be promoted. It was pure grease, okay?" - Frank Zappa, interviewed by Matt Resnicoff, Poetic Justice, Musician, November 1991.

"Because most interviews you do, people are just talking about ... nothing. No-thing! I put up with that for too long. And it wasn't until 1985, when I went to Washington to testify in front of the Congress, that I started having the chance to talk to people in the press who were not from rock 'n' roll, just regular writers, who were intelligent, normal human beings. I started doing fewer rock interviews, and my attitude toward the press changed at the moment where I didn't have to do so many conversations with the people who determined whether or not you were hot. The world of hot – I don't give a fuck about the world of hot. And that's all they care about in that world, okay? So I wouldn't be too quick to defend the rock press because of its rather ... checkered past. And it may have evolved, and it may have matured, might have even been perfected by now, who knows? I don't read it any more. But if you're any example of what's out there in terms of rock interviewers, I'm gratified." - Frank Zappa, interviewed by Matt Resnicoff, Poetic Justice, Musician, November 1991.

"The problem with doing a rock interview in the first place is that the person coming to talk to you (a) doesn't know anything about what you do (b) doesn't know about music in general and (c) has already made up his mind in advance before he comes to you what the answer ought to be to his precious little question. There's no reason to collude. I'm not there to make his life miserable, but you know, by the same token, if you want facts I'll give them to you – you want something else, go someplace else. I still think it's one of the smartest things I ever said, "Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk in order to provide articles for people who can't read"." - Ben Watson, The Last Days of Frank Zappa, Mojo Magazine, October 1993, March 1994.

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