Billy The Mountain (CC)

Billy The Mountain is a recurring character in Zappa's work.

Character

Billy is a living and talking mountain. He has two big caves for eyes and a cliff for a jaw. Whenever he opens his mouth he puffs out dust and hacks up boulders. He has a female tree growing off of his shoulder called Ethell.

Appearances in Zappa's work

In Billy The Mountain Billy and Ethell are visited by a man who delivers an envelope with Billy's royalty check to them. Billy and Ethel decide to go on a vacation to New York causing fear and destruction wherever they go. They are then tracked down by Studebaker Hoch for draft evasion, but he eats Studebaker, concluding the tale.

Billy is mentioned again in Dental Hygiene Dilemma: "That was Billy the Mountain dressed up as Donovan."

He also makes a brief cameo near the end of The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary. While trying to escape from the evil hunchmen (and hunchwomen) Greggery Peccary flees to to Billy The Mountain and hides himself in its mouth. When Billy starts laughing the rocks and boulders start rolling down its side. The "new brown clouds" that appear excite Greggery Peccary enough that he is willing to contact Quentin Robert DeNameland to find out who is "making these new brown clouds?"

Co de Kloet asked Zappa in a 1990 interview, available on The Supplement Tape whatever happened to Billy the Mountain? Zappa answered that since the world of today was in such a bad shape, "Billy and Ethell probably got a bad case of acid rain right now. Billy is probably a lot smaller now about the size of a nub."

See also

• Ethell the tree