Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon (1913-1994) was President of the United States from 1969 to 1974.
Between 1953 and 1961, Nixon served as Vice President during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration. He challenged Democratic Candidate John F. Kennedy during the 1960 US presidential elections, but lost. Although he announced his departure from politics in 1962, he participated with the 1968 presidential elections and was elected, and re-elected in 1972. During his administration, Nixon was praised for opening up contacts with China in 1972 and meeting with chairman Mao, which helped improve US-Chinese diplomatic relations. He also signed the SALT I treaty with Russia against ballistic missiles and to ensure peaceful co-existence.
Nixon and his administration criticized for being unable to end the Vietnam War, with him and U.S. National Security Advisor (1969-1975) and Secretary of State (1973-1974) Henry Kissinger invading and secretly bombing Cambodia. Eventually, in 1973 peace between the US and Vietcong forces was finally achieved, but the US Army had to accept retreat, while Vietnam became a Communist state afterwards. In 1973, the Nixon administration also helped overthrowing the regime of democratically elected president Salvador Allende in Chile, installing the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
In 1972, Nixon slowly but surely got entangled in a political scandal involving a burglary in the headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate Hotel in Washington to secretly spy on them. As the case unfolded, it became clear that Nixon had active knowledge of these illegal activities and even more deliberate acts of sabotage and spying against his political opponents that he unsuccesfully tried to cover up. When the Watergate Committee forced him to release tape recordings of the White House conversations all the evidence came to light. Having lost all credibility, Nixon decided to resign from office, becoming the first US President to do so. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who in 1975 pardoned him for all his crimes in office.
Frank Zappa
A Frank Zappa/Mother of Invention T-shirt from the early 1970s featured a quote from Richard Nixon: "There is no undertaking more challenging, more rewarding than the responsibility of being a Mother.", with a quote from Zappa written underneath it: "Thanks a lot, Dick!" One of Zappa's interviewers is wearing this shirt in a interview for Finnish television from 1974 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYu3UsNIXMM&feature=related)
Mentioned on Roxy & Elsewhere in the song Son Of Orange County after the line "the words from your lips", where Zappa adds "I'm not a crook", the infamous defense of Nixon during the Watergate affair. Nixon was born in Orange County. During the intro to Be-Bop Tango Zappa talks about "the old days" and concludes: "Well those days are probably gone for ever, unless Nixon is gonna bring them back a little bit later."
In Titties 'n Beer The Devil mentions: "You should have seen some of the souls I've had. Well, there was Milhouse Nixon and Agnew too. And both of those suckers were worse than you!"
Nixon is also the main target in the songs Dickie's Such An Asshole and That Arrogant Dick Nixon.
Zappa owned a 1962 Billboard poster of Nixon for Governor of California, with an added speech balloon reading: Leather. In 2016, after Zappa's home on 7885 Woodrow Wilson Drive was sold, the poster was auctioned too. [1]
Zappa about Richard Nixon
"I do think that Richard Nixon's a criminal, though. He is not a crook. He is a criminal." (FZ in Frank Zappa's Got Brand New Shoes)
"Mount Rushmore should either be replaced or have a companion. Another part of the mountain, carved up with some heads that had the biggest influence on what America is today. His head should be there. J. Edgar Hoover's head should be there. Nixon's head should be there. And Reagan's head should be there. These people have done more damage to the idea of Democracy than anybody- from another country- could ever imagine." (FZ in The Lost Interview, part 1 of 7, 1990)
"Nixon was not a good guy. He was a creative guy. He was a very neurotic guy. A paranoid guy. And I think he did an awful lot of damage to the imagination or the way in which the American public imagines the government should be. They would like to be able to have some respect and some belief in the presidency and Nixon blew it (...) And then later on, comes Nixon doing these pitiful things that had some really grotesque implications for the future of democracy in this country. Setting up a Secret Police to spy on U.S. citizens. I mean, that's the core of Watergate. It's not that he broke in to find out what the Democrats were doing at election time. He sets up COINTELPRO to spy on U.S. citizens! With a slush fund. And it was relying on this network of very naughty people in the background who just thought it was the best thing that they could do. So you can see why I would be little bit disturbed that recently they had this inauguration for the Richard Nixon US Library in San Clemente, and I looked at it and said: "It's Richard Nixon. The final rants!" After all the bad things that this guy did , and what he has to come to represent in terms of the lowests ebb of U.S. politics- until Reagan of course, and maybe Bush will be able to exceed it in a few weeks - he gets this fantastic cleaning job: he's got the boy scouts and girl scouts parading in front of him, he's got the band from Disneyland playing for him and he's got this array of former Presidents giving him the big whoo-ha. It was pathetic. It was just such staged nonsense." (FZ in The Lost Interview, part 3 of 7, 1990).
