Criminally Underrated
(a
new series in which I highlight and discuss films, TV, music or games
worthy of your attention that don't get enough time in the limelight)
5. Frank Zappa - We're Only In It For The Money
So, I'm not sure if you have heard but The Beatles' seminal 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band turns 50 year this year. In between new retrospective interviews with McCartney and Starr, an overindulgent yet surprisingly empty anniversary box set and new articles looking back at its place in popular culture, many will still be debating whether it is the greatest album of all time. Its become cool to undermine the critical acclaim of this album by pointing out the low points and the overt influence of Paul McCartney. While Pepper's is not my favourite album by the Fab Four, the highs are just so high. The psychedelic dreamscape of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. The beautiful sentimentality of She's Leaving Home. The final haunting notes of A Day In The Life. In fact, Pepper's was one of the early albums I listened to during my nascent years as a music fan and it has always stuck with me. It still has the power to entertain and surprise.
However, another album released a few months after the effects of Summer '67 began to die down, also managed to capture the zeitgeist, just from a different perspective, and remains somewhat under appreciated. This is Frank Zappa's seminal fourth album, We're Only In It For The Money. Zappa, who had been working on the outskirts of popular music for a couple of years, used Pepper's as a catalyst to explore the society that birthed from that album's influence, mostly in the form of hippies and how the world reacted to that. Money offered a satirical take on 1960s popular culture by directly attacking both left and right politics, highlighting the artifice of fad, society and government. Thus, I'm approaching Money not as a cynical "this is what you should be listening to instead of Pepper's" mode of thinking. Rather, I view it as the dark, nightmarishly twisted counterpart to the Fab Four's masterpiece.
We're Only In It For The Money deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Pepper's as one of the greatest albums of all time. The two records are forever interlinked. Zappa felt that The Beatles were insincere with their "peace and love" message and were ultimately only in it for the money. Thus, Zappa set out to parody Sgt. Pepper's but the project would eventually morph into something even larger than he initially planned. "Sgt. Pepper was okay," Zappa remarked to critic Kurt Loder in 1988, "but the whole aroma of what The Beatles were was something that never caught my fancy. I got the impression from what was going on at the time that they were only in it for the money – and that was a pretty unpopular view to hold." To Zappa, flower power was just a passing fad, willfully blinding people to the truths of society. Over the course of 19 songs and 40 minutes of vinyl, Zappa set a course for an album that was paced by a mad man, contained cartoonishly-zany and inventive musical compositions that also managed to touched upon and explore very serious issues in society, that are arguably just as prescient today.
Frank Zappa is the very definition of a Criminally Underrated artist - an eclectic, underappreciated discography with fascinating lyrical obsessions that ride the line between high and low brow tastes, not to mention unmatched musicianship. Zappa has too many classic albums to count - the funk-pop trilogy of Over-nite Sensation, Apostrophe and One Size Fits All, the avant-garde double record Uncle Meat, the experimental composition of Lumpy Gravy, the gargantuan Joe's Garage, the sleek and dirty pop perfection of Sheik Yerbouti, the jazz-fusion influenced Hot Rats and the classic debut Freak Out!! and its brilliant follow up Absolutely Free. And this is naming just a tiny selection of his discography. Famously working non-stop on his art, Zappa produced 60 plus albums during his lifetime and another 40 or so have seen posthumous releases.
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| Frank Zappa - musical genius taken way too soon |
We're Only In It For The Money is an interesting entry as it is one of Frank's most overtly political albums, with a keen eye on the state of society. Zappa would later return to these themes in the late 70s with Joe's Garage but instead would use scatological and sexual humour to explore the dark ills of society. This change from politically charged lyrics to over-the-top tall tales is often misinterpreted by fans and critics. Many bemoan that Zappa never return to the political world of Money and instead concentrated on music and lyrics that seemingly celebrated the debauchery of society. In reality, Zappa just continued to to do what he always did - held a freakish mirror up to our own world. I also think fans became frustrated with Zappa's refusal to align with his politically left audience - he aligned himself in the centre, meaning any political movement or side was up for his take downs. And it is precisely this reason why Zappa is so interesting - there are no artists that would dare go to the areas that Zappa did and all in the name of satire. And it is this aspect of Zappa's work that remained unchanged and it is no more apparent than on Money.
Scroll back to the top of the article and consider the brilliant album artwork, beautifully satirising Pepper's famous cover. The perfect blue skies have been replaced by a sickly purple horizon struck by lightning. The famous line-up of old musicians, actors and contemporary stars have been replaced by murderers, criminals and counter-cultural icons. The Beatles' name was spelled out in red flowers, while the Mothers is written in rotting vegetables. Instead of The Beatles adorned in psychedelic takes on military uniforms (in its a striking image for the 1960s), Zappa and the rest of The Mothers are dressed up as women, a sign of the subversive nature of the album. You get the picture. The image below was the replacement for the original cover for the album on its initial release (after talks with The Beatles' management fell through). However, all future releases restored the original cover - in all its subversive glory - and moved this image to the inner cover.
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| The replacement cover, now restored to its rightful place as the inner cover. The Mothers were announcing their motives against traditional modes of conservative thought - a stirring image for the mid-1960s! |
Part of what makes Money so timeless is its exploration of artifice. Artifice in fads. Artifice in politics. Artifice in society. While the hippie movement is long dead, its themes exploring who society chooses to follow remains just as prescient now than ever. The hippie movement, birthed from a counter-culture desire to oppose the "man" and its eventual conversion into mainstream, essentially finds its modern day equivalent with the hipster movement. The ultimate message of Money is that everything that is once concerned counter-cultutal becomes mainstream, while people in general are blind to the truths of society. Instead, they pursue passing crazes perpetrated by corporate greed. As Zappa saw it, hippiedom and fads in general are another form of conformity and urges the listener to think for themselves.
Right from the bizarre instrumental opening, Are You Hung Up?, you get the sense that Zappa is playing with this idea of artifice, whispering over the clunks and the clanks that he is talking from the control room. The piece that is a complete studio creation. This segues into true album opener Who Needs The Peace Corp. The song is a perfect introduction to the satirical world Zappa is establishing. The song follows a young person drifting down to California with the intention of becoming a hippie. The songs goes into great detail on what is required and how to act like a hippie, over the incredible rolling drums of Jimmy Carl Black. "Every town must have a place where phony hippies meet", the song states, with "psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street" almost like an infestation of Starbucks coffee shops. The song details the experience of dressing up, contracting sexually transmitted diseases, meeting other hippies, taking drugs, enduring police brutality, before giving up and going back home.
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| Hard at work with Tom Wilson, producer of the early Dylan albums, including the song Like A Rolling Stone |
Concentration Moon
highlights the flip side to on how the people in charge attempt to suppress the
hippie movement, by sending them to rehabilitation camps. The song is filled
with beautiful harmonies and instrumentation, interspersed with silly lyrics
that also also begin to hint at the dark underbelly of the album. All the
hippies want to do is hang out and let hair grow out of every hole. But they
are stuck in this terrible place where they are told they are immoral for their
way of thinking. It almost sounds like a camp fire song... The serious parts of
the song recall images of the contemporary (and future) police brutality - "American
way / how did it start / thousands of creeps killed in the park / try and
explain / scab of a nation driven insane". This naturally leads into Mom
& Dad, which is a lot slower and more mournful. This is the most
politically charged song on the album and one of the more thematically complex.
Returning to that idea of police brutality hinted at on the last song, now the
"cops have shot some girls and boys". The mom and dad of the song
just "sit [at] home and drink all night" judging the young people
shot as serving them right for looking too weird. Here, Zappa recalls the
emotionally sapping nature of modern society and keeping youth uninformed of
the truth - "Never take a moment to show a real emotion / ... never tell
yours kids that you're glad that they can think / People wonder why your
daughter looks so sad / it's such a shame to have a plastic mom and dad".
This is a direct call back to an earlier Zappa song Plastic People - a
brilliant treatise on a comatose society and is an early indicator of how Frank
saw his collection of albums as part of a wider body of work (which Zappa
termed 'Conceptual Continuity', in that any piece of work can be enjoyed as
part of a wider tapestry through reoccurring pieces of music or phrases).
Ultimately, while Money does mock hippie culture, it's the human tragedy
of conformity that Zappa wants to explore. The album contains a hidden respect
and sympathy, I think, for youth-led counter cultural movements, even if it is
ripe for parody. At the end of the song, we learn that Momma's child was
killed in the park "by the cops as she quietly lay". This song
came a full two years before the student shootings at Kent State, so it is a
weirdly prophetic and tragic song. The production of the song is incredible,
everything is very stripped down, with a gorgeous back beat littered with
phased guitar work.
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| The 1960s were a politically turbulent time as traditional values were truly questioned for the first time, giving rise to the hippie movement - into this arena stepped Zappa's world view |
After the bizarre interlude of Telephone Conversation and Bow Tie Daddy, our next song proper is Harry, You're a Beast. In this song, things aren't much better for those living in confirmed suburbia, as we follow a couple stuck in a sexually frustrating situation. The song hammers home the idea of 'plastic people', doped up on advertising and years of societal brainwashing, which leads to miscommunication and lack of sex drive (which perhaps leads to the older people on Mom & Dad, unfeeling as they learn that their daughter has died). Ultimately, Zappa's view is that enlightentment and true happiness cannot be found either in the counter-cultural fads or in the constraints of established society. After all, the first lyric of the album is "what's there to live for?". Hippiedom is not particularly fulfilling for the characters and the couple in Harry are devoid of emotions and communicative skills. A nation stuck in a malaise.
This is crucial to the next song, What's the Ugliest Part of your Body, which is a clear dig at John Lennon-style vocals, complete with Beatles-like background do-wop singing. The ugliest part of your body is not your toes or your nose but rather your mind. Interspersed in the song, with a change to a faster tempo, is Zappa's mission statement for the album and the wisest, most depressing, lyrics ever committed to a record - "all your children are poor unfortunate victims of systems beyond their control / a plague upon your ignorance to the great despair of your ugly life / All your children are victims of lies you believe / a plague upon your ignorance that keeps the young from the truth that they deserve". Words that are as relevant in 2017 as they were in 1968. It's important to mention at this point that, while the lyrical themes are very heady, the music and delivery is incredibly playful. The songs on Side One are short, concise and packed with brilliant musical ideas and moments that come together to form an incredible suite. This saves Money from being a dry, self-important statement to a bright, fast and rich experience. Zappa doesn't offer answers in a preachy way (a la John Lennon and Imagine) but is rather holding a mirror up to our world and pointing out what a crazy place it is and how difficult it is a achieve any kind of semblance to fulfillment.
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| Consistently challenging, mostly brilliant, Frank Zappa is one my favourite artists of all time |
Flower Punk highlights the album's excellent use of vocal distortion. The 'flower punk' is questioned on where they are going and what they are getting up to. The answer all being fairly mundane - my favourite being "I'll play my bongos in the dirt" and "get some action and go home to bed". The whole song is a rewrite of Hey Joe, only the famous gun has been replaced by a flower and violence replaced by mundaitiy. The track begins to break down into incredibly distorted vocals, with multiple tracks at various levels of comprehensiblty. One track in left ear is clear though, as an interviewee discusses how to sell hippiedom to the young, which equates to corporate rubbish buzz words. The distortion continues over the short track Hot Poop, which then links into Nasal Retentive Calliope Music, marking the halfway point of the album and end of the first suite. The breakdown at the end of Flower Punk gives way to madness and incomprehensibility. Nasal Retentive is a strange industrial avant garde instrumental piece, that would recall the challenging works on Uncle Meat.
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| As further proof of Conceptual Continuity, Zappa stated that Money and Lumpy Gravy are actually Phase One and Phase Two of each other, respectively. What the connection is, I can't say! |
The album returns to a 'normal song' (I can't put enough apostrophes around that) with Let's Make The Water Turn Black, a portrait of a traditional household and suburb. The song swaps between different characters to eventually explore the strange people in the neighbourhood, highlighting the darkness underneath. Writer Doyle Green compares the song to Lovely Rita and other similar songs from the era that concentrated on whimsical characters and locations (1). Think Penny Lane mixed with David Lynch. The two main characters end up in army or on pills - an apt end to the characters trying to find solace elsewhere. The Idiot Bastard Son (God, Frank had great names for his songs), whose father is a Nazi in Congress (again, not too far from 2017) and mother who is a hooker in L.A., follows the unfortunate exploits of an individual abandoned by society. Frank then postulates, after a stream of bizarre wordplay, that the Bastard Son is thrown back into society to live amongst those who think they know what this song is about. It's a great fourth wall breaking moment, with Frank stating that the band is listening to us! Lonely Little Girl feels like something from Freak Out!!, due to its more poppy structure, which again deals with disenfranchised parents not paying attention to or understanding their child's feelings. The vocals harmonies are great on this one, as Frank harmonies with himself as one vocal track is sped up to resemble the Chipmunks. The song also refrains the classic "all your children are..." line from What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?
Take Your Clothes Off and Dance is another upbeat song, which reminds the listener that all lonely people will eventually be free to do what they want and we all become free from societal expectations one day (against expectations of gender, body type etc.). Pretty progressive words even in 2017. Ugliest Part is reprised (an answer to Sgt Pepper's refrain before A Day In The Life perhaps) before breaking down completely into pair of songs that form the incredible conclusion to the album. Mother People directly tackles stereotypical questions faced by members of the counter-culture and reminds us that they are just people too. The song then concludes with a piece of classical music, showing Zappa's love for this genre. The album ends with the uneasy Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny, a difficult 6 minute avant-garde piece that takes Igor Stravinsky to the extreme. Zappa, inspired by Franz Kafka's In The Penal Colony, urged listeners to read the book that influenced the song. It's a great piece and ends the album on an uncertain note. While I don't think Side Two quite has the propulsive power of Side One, it does succeed in reminding the listener that amongst all the fads, notions of counter-cultural ideals and societal conformity, that ultimately we are all just people trying to work out our place in the world. At the end of the day, we all become subjected to this madness.
We're Only In It For The Money was released on March 4th 1968 to great praise and a number 30 slot on the Billboard 200 chart. Zappa would use this album as part of a mini-project called No Commercial Potential, which also includes Lumpy Gravy, Cruising With Ruben & The Jets and Uncle Meat. Decades later the album found itself on Rolling Stones' Top 500 Albums of All Time, finishing at 297. It also appears in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, alongside the only other Zappa entry Freak Out!! Finally, in 2005, the album was selected by the National Recording Preservation Board to be included in the National Recalling Registry, calling it "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant ... a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reaction to it". Clearly, people in the know love this album. The fact is is that Money is still subversive today, even if hippies are long dead, and this maybe why it doesn't attract mainstream attention in the same way that the more socially acceptable Pepper's does. Money is a brilliantly cartoony exploration of Zappa's thoughts on society at large. His music is uncompromising, running the gauntlet between different genres and levels of musical complexity. He was a figure who always remained on the outside. Money represents Zappa's political thoughts at their most concise and direct. Packed with amazing songs, bizarre experimental interludes and prescient, funny lyrics that still relevant today, Money is an underrated classic that needs to be shown more love, especially as its 50th anniversary dawns. So slip into your granny suit and take in this master's great work.
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| Frank Zappa - poet, guitar god, philosopher, comedian, insane. |
References
(1) Green, Doyle, Rock, Counter-Culture and the Avant-Garde, 1966-1970: How the Beatles, Frank Zappa and the Velvet Underground Defined an Era (McFarland & co., 2016), p. 107.
