Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Frank Zappa's Legacy: Music Against Mainstream Norms [Episode 301]

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Frank Zappa's Legacy: Music Against Mainstream Norms [Episode 301] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: On this episode of Book Don Rock, a journey through
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Speaker 1: the revolutionary music from the man who is a master
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Speaker 1: at using his art to challenge the status quo, Frank Zappa,
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Speaker 1: who We're totally booked rock and roll.
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Speaker 2: I mean, I'll leave you you're reading.
0:15
Speaker 1: Little Hands says it's time.
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Speaker 2: To rock and roll.
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Speaker 1: Roll up. I totally booked, everybody. Welcome back to Book
0:26
Speaker 1: Don Rock. I'm Eric Senach Bradley Morgan. He has returned
0:30
Speaker 1: to the show. It's been a while since he's been here.
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Speaker 1: He was first gone back in December of twenty twenty
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Speaker 1: one for his book You Two's the Joshua Tree, Planting
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Speaker 1: Roots in Mythic America. He is back this time to
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Speaker 1: talk about his brand new book titled Frank Zappa's America.
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Speaker 1: Great to have you back, Bradley. How you doing.
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Speaker 2: I'm doing great, Eric, Thank you so much for having me.
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Speaker 2: It's an absolute pleasure.
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Speaker 1: As you say in the book, so many different opportunities
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Speaker 1: to approach Frank Zappa's music. He's had one of the
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Speaker 1: most expansive and dense catalogs in popular music, over sixty
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Speaker 1: albums during his life time dozens more after his death.
1:01
Speaker 1: So talk about your approach to his music in this book,
1:04
Speaker 1: and how exploring his least understood and represented work helped
1:08
Speaker 1: you to get a full understanding of his legacy.
1:10
Speaker 2: Well, it's no exaggeration to say that I didn't understand
1:13
Speaker 2: this book until the moment I finished it. Certainly, in
1:16
Speaker 2: some ways it's a bit of a spiritual successor to
1:18
Speaker 2: my previous book that you mentioned you Two's The Joshua Tree.
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Speaker 2: But I wanted to kind of wrestle with Frank as
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Speaker 2: for me, the embodiment of the musical and cultural figure
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Speaker 2: who risked the most for his communicating the ideas of
1:35
Speaker 2: participatory democracy or freedom of speech, freedom of expression. But
1:39
Speaker 2: he's also someone with a lot of major cultural baggage
1:41
Speaker 2: as well. And when I first was thinking about doing
1:45
Speaker 2: this book, I wanted to approach him as a political commentator,
1:50
Speaker 2: but I didn't quite have that narrative through line yet.
1:53
Speaker 2: And it was by really taking a look at this
1:58
Speaker 2: period in the eighties, or actually from seventy with the
2:00
Speaker 2: release of Joe's Garage to his death in ninety three,
2:04
Speaker 2: just exactly how he was kind of channeling his lyrics
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Speaker 2: to be at first very indirect about who is causing
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Speaker 2: a lot of the problems in American culture, and then
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Speaker 2: as the decade went on, more direct actually calling specific
2:17
Speaker 2: people out in songs. And when I was looking at
2:21
Speaker 2: the lyrics and the music that I'd grown up with,
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Speaker 2: it was really at odds with the reputation that he
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Speaker 2: had as someone who was He was a provocative figure,
2:30
Speaker 2: for sure, but there's lingering misunderstanding about his legacy that
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Speaker 2: lumpsom as being a racist, a homophobe, a sexist, and
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Speaker 2: I just didn't hear that. And through his lyrics and
2:44
Speaker 2: his commentary throughout that decade, he really exemplified a very
2:48
Speaker 2: progressive ideal I think at the heart of his music,
2:51
Speaker 2: and that's really what I wanted to get at, and
2:54
Speaker 2: that was a journey I didn't understand until literally the
2:57
Speaker 2: book was done, because of just the sheer volume of
3:00
Speaker 2: the work that he has and all of that baggage,
3:02
Speaker 2: and that this very complex, iconic musical figure was just
3:07
Speaker 2: reduced to a few different, you know, pastiches of just
3:11
Speaker 2: his his image, great guitar player, provocative lyrics, freedom of
3:15
Speaker 2: speech advocate, but he was like so much more. And
3:18
Speaker 2: I wanted to hone in on that.
3:20
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the Freedom Wall and how it
3:22
Speaker 1: relates to this book. Yeah.
3:24
Speaker 2: So the Freedom Wall is this art installation in Chicago
3:28
Speaker 2: that went up in the early nineties by an art
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Speaker 2: collective called Industry of the Ordinary, and one half of
3:33
Speaker 2: it is a man named Adam Brooks. He's a British
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Speaker 2: Man who was a professor at Columbia College at that
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Speaker 2: time in Chicago, and around the ninety two election, there's
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Speaker 2: a lot of rhetoric about I remember so well, being
3:44
Speaker 2: four years old at that time, but you know, around
3:47
Speaker 2: the ninety two election, from what I've read and come
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Speaker 2: to understand, is that there was a lot of rhetoric
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Speaker 2: around freedom, the concept of like fighting for freedom and
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Speaker 2: you know, what makes us free as Americans. This is
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Speaker 2: very amorphous idea, and so he wanted to take that
4:00
Speaker 2: idea and truly explore what freedom meant to different people.
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Speaker 2: So the Freedom Wall imagine a huge, like seventy two
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Speaker 2: foot tall, vertical black banner that runs on the outside
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Speaker 2: of an entire building and there's just a list of
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Speaker 2: names in white hell Veltica font just going down throughout
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Speaker 2: the entire thing. And these names were compiled through this
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Speaker 2: process where Adam was reaching out to various people, either
4:28
Speaker 2: like directly over phone calls or at that time early
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Speaker 2: iterations of message boards or email to ask people who
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Speaker 2: are figures that represent the idea of freedom to you,
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Speaker 2: whatever that may mean. And the list is based on
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Speaker 2: the number of times those people were responded. Higher up
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Speaker 2: the list you have figures like George Washington, Jesus, the
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Speaker 2: more universally accepted, you know, it may bee perhaps even
4:53
Speaker 2: if even a flawed figures down to the lower bottom,
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Speaker 2: figures that may not necessarily come up as often, but
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Speaker 2: we're very integral at that time. Elie Wizzell Will my
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Speaker 2: Man Killer is on that list. Angsang su Ki, who
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Speaker 2: was won the Nobel Peace Prize around that time but
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Speaker 2: has since been ousted for committing a genocide in Burma
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Speaker 2: after her house arrest.
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Speaker 1: So what's that?
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Speaker 2: And it's meant to be at that time to capture
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Speaker 2: this concept of freedom. And Frank Zappa is on that list.
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Speaker 2: And what makes this kind of list bizarre is that
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Speaker 2: it's just the list. There's no description of who these
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Speaker 2: people are, why they're on there. Some names are more
5:34
Speaker 2: familiar than others, but this, this list had always kind
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Speaker 2: of fascinated me, and I write about that piece of
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Speaker 2: art in the introduction It was actually the last thing
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Speaker 2: I wrote for the book when I was trying to
5:44
Speaker 2: figure out how to tie all this together, and it
5:48
Speaker 2: really spoke to me in a lot of ways. And
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Speaker 2: unfortunately you can no longer see that art installation in
5:54
Speaker 2: between where you could visibly see the work from like
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Speaker 2: the l train on this you know, on the side
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Speaker 2: of the building, a parking structure has gone up in
6:02
Speaker 2: its place. That happened over COVID, so it's covering the
6:06
Speaker 2: entire piece. There's only like a few inches in between
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Speaker 2: in the buildings, and part of it kind of sticks
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Speaker 2: out for a bit. But I wish I had known
6:14
Speaker 2: about this, because I probably would have added that detail.
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Speaker 1: In the book.
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Speaker 2: But I got to meet the artist when I gave
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Speaker 2: him a copy of this book to tell him how
6:20
Speaker 2: much that piece meant to me, And he'd showed me
6:22
Speaker 2: some photographs of the construction going up, and I asked him,
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Speaker 2: you know, did he ever think about taking it down
6:28
Speaker 2: or preserving it? And he goes, well, you know, it's
6:30
Speaker 2: hard to take down a seventy foot tall banner, and
6:35
Speaker 2: also you know it adds a depth of meaning to
6:39
Speaker 2: the piece. You know that here is a list of
6:42
Speaker 2: people who represent freedom in some way, but now it's
6:44
Speaker 2: being covered and it's kind of like he sees it now,
6:46
Speaker 2: it's an allegory to what's happening in the country right now.
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Speaker 1: June twenty seventh, nineteen sixty six, the debut album by
6:53
Speaker 1: Frank Zappa's band Mothers of Invention was released. You call
6:56
Speaker 1: it an intrepid and uncompromisingly artistic debut album. Who had
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Speaker 1: quote he uses the album as a platform to mock
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Speaker 1: American popular culture and the artificially pliable divisions in society
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Speaker 1: that define and shape it. I want to ask you
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Speaker 1: about the track, who are the brain Police? Who as
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Speaker 1: he referring to? And what did Frank have to say
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Speaker 1: about the song when asked about it?
7:17
Speaker 2: So the brain Police is this concept that Frank had
7:20
Speaker 2: had about people in society at that time. Who one
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Speaker 2: of the biggest criticisms against Zappa as a commentator, is
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Speaker 2: just a type of cynicism and callousness that he might
7:33
Speaker 2: have too for us, you know, for a certain member
7:36
Speaker 2: of the American populace, and for him he thought a
7:38
Speaker 2: lot of people who were victims of American culture self
7:41
Speaker 2: victimize themselves. And the brain police is that kind of
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Speaker 2: internal you know, self policing that we all do because
7:49
Speaker 2: we want to, you know, make sure that we are
7:53
Speaker 2: staying within the guidelines of what's socially acceptable, whether you
7:56
Speaker 2: know it's in a normal society rat or a fascistic society.
8:00
Speaker 2: And there's one way that a lot of fascism, elements
8:04
Speaker 2: of fascism are able to creep it is because we
8:05
Speaker 2: do police ourselves. And so at a time when it's
8:09
Speaker 2: during the Johnson administration several years after the Kennedy assassination,
8:12
Speaker 2: and that kind of future idealism that the early sixties
8:17
Speaker 2: had kind of inspired was making way for this something
8:22
Speaker 2: that was more paranoiic, more authoritarian, and that was his
8:26
Speaker 2: way of capturing it that a huge chunk of our
8:30
Speaker 2: path there is going to be driven by our own
8:35
Speaker 2: actions or limiting our own actions.
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Speaker 1: Zappa released eight studio albums between nineteen sixty six and
8:41
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. That's Amazing, Absolutely Free nineteen sixty seven.
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Speaker 1: Three albums in nineteen sixty eight were only in It
8:49
Speaker 1: for the Money, Lumpy Gravy, Cruising with Reuben and the Jets.
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Speaker 1: Another three in nineteen sixty nine, Mother Mania, Uncle Meat,
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Speaker 1: and Hot Rats. As you get into the late sixties
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Speaker 1: and the height of the count culture movement. Zappa, you say,
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Speaker 1: continue to release albums with varying degrees of conceptual themes
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Speaker 1: and ideas. What were those themes and ideas during that
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Speaker 1: time period.
9:09
Speaker 2: Well, the crux of the book mainly, and why my
9:12
Speaker 2: motivation for writing it was purely to focus on the
9:14
Speaker 2: year from seventy nine to ninety three. And the reason
9:17
Speaker 2: why was because albums and compositions released at that time
9:21
Speaker 2: were addressing the rise of evangelical Christianity's influence in American politics.
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Speaker 2: In seventy nine, you had Jerry Folwell and the foundering
9:29
Speaker 2: of the Moral Majority that mobilized this voting block to
9:33
Speaker 2: then elevate Ronald Reagan to the White House, and you know,
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Speaker 2: eight years two terms of you know, governing in the
9:39
Speaker 2: country with a televangelist at his ear. And the reason
9:44
Speaker 2: why I wanted to go in that direction was because
9:47
Speaker 2: his commentary is very relevant now as we see a
9:51
Speaker 2: major political party has been co opted by a far
9:54
Speaker 2: right evangelical movement. But I even just only covering that
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Speaker 2: it was going to paint an incomplete picture of Frank
10:03
Speaker 2: because by focusing on this period and wanting to highlight
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Speaker 2: the least known part of his career to elevate his relevancy.
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Speaker 2: One aspect of that was that I needed to demonstrate
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Speaker 2: that a lot of the values that he had had
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Speaker 2: been long held throughout his life. And while the book's
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Speaker 2: main focus is on seventy nine through ninety three, there
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Speaker 2: is that introductory chapter that goes into the first three
10:28
Speaker 2: Mothers of Invention albums from the sixties, and you know,
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Speaker 2: his kind of dip of doing largely socially conscious work
10:36
Speaker 2: in the seventies. You know, that's where he gets a
10:38
Speaker 2: lot of his reputation for his guitar work, even some
10:40
Speaker 2: of his lyrics. But those first three albums are really
10:44
Speaker 2: trying to address a conservative counter revolution that was the
10:49
Speaker 2: predecessor to what we see in the late seventies Will
10:51
Speaker 2: Fall Well and the rise of Reagan. And this one
10:53
Speaker 2: was very much that kind of resistance to Johnson's Great Society.
10:58
Speaker 2: A lot of the values that Ken had proposed in
11:01
Speaker 2: that kind of propelled progressive liberal ideas in America. These
11:04
Speaker 2: are the kind of ideas that formed out of Barry
11:07
Speaker 2: Goldwater and kind of just weren't original. They had roots
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Speaker 2: in a lot of early America. First movements in the
11:14
Speaker 2: early twentieth century. But those albums were meant to address
11:18
Speaker 2: that particular ideology and what feeds it, and oftentimes and
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Speaker 2: Franks view, what feeds it is a type of control
11:24
Speaker 2: on the culture. And by the end of the sixties,
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Speaker 2: you have Vietnam, you have a lot of other things.
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Speaker 2: You have a whole new decade that's coming on, and
11:33
Speaker 2: even Frank, I'm sure is wanting to move on. And
11:36
Speaker 2: so throughout the seventies you kind of had this dip
11:40
Speaker 2: in albums that had that a very large narrative that
11:43
Speaker 2: focused on that and instead just random compositions are songs
11:47
Speaker 2: peppered throughout and it's it's curiously also the one that
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Speaker 2: the decade that really cements his reputation. But in order
11:56
Speaker 2: to tell that story about his work in the late
11:58
Speaker 2: seventies throughout the eighties, I needed to show that this
12:01
Speaker 2: wasn't just a coming to Jesus moment for him, so
12:04
Speaker 2: to speak, that this was something that he felt there
12:07
Speaker 2: was a return of something he had recognized a decade before, and.
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Speaker 1: He was very active in the seventies, if my math
12:13
Speaker 1: is correct, twenty one studio albums and on his nineteen
12:18
Speaker 1: seventy four album Apostrophe, there's a track called Uncle Remus,
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Speaker 1: and on this track you write that it stands out
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Speaker 1: for showcasing how Zappa continued to observe the failures over
12:27
Speaker 1: America's struggle to absolve itself of its original sin. He's
12:31
Speaker 1: addressing civil rights.
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Speaker 2: Here, Yes, he's addressing civil rights and a lot of
12:35
Speaker 2: systemic racism that has underpinned a lot of American society.
12:39
Speaker 2: You know that track Uncle Remus is seventy four. I
12:41
Speaker 2: want to rewind it back because in sixty six, on
12:45
Speaker 2: the first Mother's album Freak Out, there's the track Trouble
12:48
Speaker 2: every Day, which is a kind of response to the
12:52
Speaker 2: media's handling of the Watts riots. At what happened, and
12:58
Speaker 2: for those who may not be familiar with what happened,
13:00
Speaker 2: it was that there were a couple of black men
13:02
Speaker 2: in the Watson neighborhood who were beaten by police and
13:05
Speaker 2: it had escalated to a very large situation, evolved millions
13:11
Speaker 2: of dollars in damage, a lot of injuries, a couple
13:14
Speaker 2: of deaths, and it was a major turning point in
13:18
Speaker 2: that movement, and it caused a lot of trauma, not
13:21
Speaker 2: only just that community, but in the song Zappa's recognition
13:24
Speaker 2: that there's a particular type of American, specifically a white American,
13:28
Speaker 2: who may see the media's handling of this and find
13:34
Speaker 2: doubt in progressive ideas or progressive policies that are meant
13:39
Speaker 2: to elevate everyone to a good standard of living. And
13:43
Speaker 2: we kind of, you know, see that, we've kind of
13:45
Speaker 2: seen that now over the last couple of years. I
13:47
Speaker 2: write about in the book how the Black Lives Matter
13:49
Speaker 2: protests and the protests surrounding the murder George Floyd kind
13:53
Speaker 2: of inspired the same kind of reaction, like, well, you know,
13:56
Speaker 2: look at these terrible liberal cities that are burning down.
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Speaker 2: You know, we can't have that, you know. And that's
14:02
Speaker 2: that's the attitude that's being adopted by people who aren't there,
14:06
Speaker 2: who are only seeing a particular one sided view in
14:10
Speaker 2: the media. That was in sixty six and then with
14:14
Speaker 2: Uncle Remus, the song was the lyrics were written by Zappa,
14:17
Speaker 2: but the music was written by George Duke, who was
14:20
Speaker 2: a very influential and amazing black keyboardist who was in
14:24
Speaker 2: Zappa's touring band at that time. And it's a song
14:28
Speaker 2: that recognizes, albeit from Zappa's perspective as a white man,
14:33
Speaker 2: the particular failures of the civil rights movement, kind of
14:39
Speaker 2: chewing real progress, for capitalism, for fashion, for commodities. And
14:45
Speaker 2: it's a very striking song and somber in some ways,
14:48
Speaker 2: and it ends with just Zappa going to, you know,
14:52
Speaker 2: a rich person's house and knocking the lawn jockeys off
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Speaker 2: the lawns. This symbol of this kind of ugliness in
15:00
Speaker 2: America's past. And that's one of his more well known tracks,
15:04
Speaker 2: certainly one of his more well known tracks in the seventies,
15:06
Speaker 2: but it's one that stands out that kind of highlights
15:09
Speaker 2: a social consciousness in his thinking and in his lyrics
15:13
Speaker 2: that I think has really been overlooked.
15:17
Speaker 1: Booked on rock podcasts will be back after this.
15:20
Speaker 2: During our brief information, let's take a flying trip from
15:22
Speaker 2: Milanda fantasy to everyday life.
15:26
Speaker 1: zapA railed against the media throughout his career, and there's
15:30
Speaker 1: a song released as a single in nineteen seventy three.
15:34
Speaker 1: It's from his album Overnight Sensation. I'm the Slime. Talk
15:39
Speaker 1: about the song and the clues that he drops at
15:41
Speaker 1: the open.
15:41
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so's a song where lyrically Zappa is trying
15:44
Speaker 2: to play a guessing game with the listener. You know,
15:47
Speaker 2: he says things like I'm gross and I'm perverted, I'm
15:50
Speaker 2: obsessed and deranged. And by this time Zappa kind of
15:53
Speaker 2: had earned a bit of a reputation with some with
15:56
Speaker 2: some people as being this kind of weird, gross out guy.
15:58
Speaker 2: So you might think that he's talking about himself, but
16:01
Speaker 2: what he's ultimately talking about is the media that we
16:04
Speaker 2: consume at that time on our television sets that really,
16:10
Speaker 2: in his mind, played an influential role in how people
16:16
Speaker 2: think and go about their lives. And you know, you know,
16:19
Speaker 2: you know, you are what you watch in essence, and
16:23
Speaker 2: I think that's a very It was something that really
16:26
Speaker 2: stuck in his craw for a long time, because there
16:28
Speaker 2: was a lot of other songs that he kept recording
16:30
Speaker 2: that specifically addressed how media as an institutions, as a
16:34
Speaker 2: as a cultural institution, arm of society, of government can
16:39
Speaker 2: be used as as propaganda or to influence, you know,
16:43
Speaker 2: a particular way of thinking. And for him at that
16:46
Speaker 2: time in the seventies, it was to address mass consumerism,
16:50
Speaker 2: mass commercialization, this weakening of American culture and infrastructure. Not
16:56
Speaker 2: quite yet. There are some lyrics about the role that
17:00
Speaker 2: government plays in media, but he hadn't quite robustly developed
17:05
Speaker 2: that more thoroughly until later on, you know, as we
17:10
Speaker 2: as the you know, the seventies makeway to the eighties
17:12
Speaker 2: and you have the arrival of MTV and the impact
17:15
Speaker 2: that had on radio airplay, as well as the deregulation
17:19
Speaker 2: of the Telecomunications Act that oversaw, you know, consolidation of
17:23
Speaker 2: media companies and the lessening of diverse voices in media.
17:27
Speaker 1: He approaches sex with humor in some songs. Others he
17:31
Speaker 1: broaches the topic in difficult and uncomfortable ways. Can you
17:34
Speaker 1: talk about that?
17:35
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, sometimes, I mean some of the songs when
17:38
Speaker 2: he does approach sex, there is a type of commentary
17:41
Speaker 2: that is there. Certainly when the rival of MTV happened
17:46
Speaker 2: and you had music videos that, in his mind exploited
17:50
Speaker 2: women or you know, if you think about the eighties
17:52
Speaker 2: hair metal videos and how women were dressed, and he
17:56
Speaker 2: really didn't like that, so he had he did write
17:58
Speaker 2: some songs that kind of addressed that music video culture.
18:02
Speaker 2: One of them is sex and it makes fun of
18:04
Speaker 2: a lot of those tropes. There's also other songs that
18:09
Speaker 2: touch upon that. But in yeah, in more uncomfortable ways,
18:15
Speaker 2: you know, such as he has a track called He's
18:17
Speaker 2: So Gay from the album Thingfish and Was. It was
18:21
Speaker 2: issued as a single, and the whole song is kind
18:24
Speaker 2: of makes fun of a gay character at the center
18:27
Speaker 2: of it, who is, in Zappa's mind, creating this homosexual
18:33
Speaker 2: character in order to be seen as viable in music
18:36
Speaker 2: video culture. And even at the end of the song
18:38
Speaker 2: it ends with a reference to the culture clubs do
18:41
Speaker 2: you really want to hurt me? That Zappa is saying, well,
18:44
Speaker 2: the only way to get, you know, your music played
18:46
Speaker 2: at MTV is to dress really gay and do this.
18:50
Speaker 2: And that's you know, a very you know, I'm sure
18:53
Speaker 2: at that time a very outdated idea, and he was
18:56
Speaker 2: a complex man in that regard, trying to balance some
19:01
Speaker 2: of those bad ideas. But it didn't come from a
19:03
Speaker 2: bad place, and that was really at the heart what
19:05
Speaker 2: I found a lot of his lyrics is that even
19:07
Speaker 2: if what he was communicating was abrasive or not the
19:10
Speaker 2: most politically correct, that at the heart there wasn't a
19:14
Speaker 2: meanness in what he was trying to say. And that
19:20
Speaker 2: can sometimes be very hard to get from his music
19:23
Speaker 2: because it is so layered and a lot of humor
19:25
Speaker 2: and a lot of in jokes and references. But also
19:28
Speaker 2: I can understand why someone would not want to listen
19:31
Speaker 2: to that and have to go through so many recordings.
19:34
Speaker 2: But it was necessary for me to address those instances
19:40
Speaker 2: where Zappa failed as a commentator in order to highlight
19:43
Speaker 2: where he succeeded.
19:45
Speaker 1: How did he handle criticism from the media.
19:47
Speaker 2: Oh not well. I mean he hated journalist a lot,
19:50
Speaker 2: and he addressed that and sometimes even directly in his music.
19:54
Speaker 2: Packard goose from Joe's Garage, which Joe's Garage is a
19:58
Speaker 2: rock opera about a world where music is criminalized systemically
20:03
Speaker 2: through the constitution, and he had written that album as
20:06
Speaker 2: a response to the Iranian Revolution and the Iotola banning music.
20:11
Speaker 2: And there's a track on there called Packard Goosewood which
20:14
Speaker 2: the main character Joe who who is trying to survive,
20:17
Speaker 2: who's a musician trying to survive in this world that
20:20
Speaker 2: where music is being made illegal. That he sees music
20:24
Speaker 2: journalists as as government whore's And there's even lyrics that
20:29
Speaker 2: I write about in the book where he states that
20:33
Speaker 2: they filate their masters for shekels, And that's a really
20:37
Speaker 2: hard line to accept and it was one I had
20:40
Speaker 2: to criticize because the media, you know, media is something
20:45
Speaker 2: that for a lot of conspiracy theorists, you know, is
20:47
Speaker 2: is derided as being controlled by Jews, and that's that's
20:51
Speaker 2: a very dangerous stereotype and it's worth not only addressing
20:56
Speaker 2: in his music in that song on itself, but in
20:59
Speaker 2: that year in seventy nine, he also released the song
21:02
Speaker 2: Jewish Princess from the album Shaker Booty, which was under
21:08
Speaker 2: fire by the Anti Defamation League for being anti Semitic.
21:12
Speaker 2: And those are the type of moments where his commentary
21:17
Speaker 2: on media is somehow blurring with his own personal grievances
21:22
Speaker 2: as an artist, as a person, and sometimes does not
21:25
Speaker 2: come out well.
21:27
Speaker 1: Disco became so much part of pop culture as the
21:29
Speaker 1: decade moved into the second half, and while some artists
21:32
Speaker 1: embraced it, Zappa critiqued it. Talk about that and the
21:35
Speaker 1: musical caricatures that he explores, like on the song dance in.
21:38
Speaker 2: Full Oh Yeah, he had several songs that were meant
21:42
Speaker 2: to address disco as a as a cultural nuisance, as
21:49
Speaker 2: this type of fad that was overtaking. I guess what
21:52
Speaker 2: he more saw his serious music, because for him, he
21:56
Speaker 2: was seeing the culture of disco as being filled with
21:59
Speaker 2: the same kind of vapid, self absorbed people that he
22:03
Speaker 2: was criticizing in the hippie culture with the mothers of
22:06
Speaker 2: invention in the sixties, that this is how they had
22:09
Speaker 2: just moved on from being hippies to being dancing in
22:11
Speaker 2: the discos, to invention in the eighties become the yuppies.
22:14
Speaker 2: To him, it was all the same. I do have
22:17
Speaker 2: to say that, as someone who lives in Chicago and
22:20
Speaker 2: is very well versed in disco demolition, that and I
22:24
Speaker 2: don't go this into the book, but you know, it's
22:26
Speaker 2: worth noting that at that time, a lot of criticism
22:29
Speaker 2: against disco was a critical response to gay and black subculture,
22:35
Speaker 2: you know, because certainly by the time, because we disco
22:39
Speaker 2: had already had been around for a couple of years
22:42
Speaker 2: at that time in the underground with artists such as
22:44
Speaker 2: Grace Jones. By the late seventies, as it became more
22:48
Speaker 2: of a fad, you know, with things like disco duck,
22:51
Speaker 2: any kind of criticism really was just a kind of
22:54
Speaker 2: response that oversaturation him. For Zappa, I don't think the
22:58
Speaker 2: criticism against disco was born out of the same sexism
23:02
Speaker 2: or racism or homophobia that led to things like disco demolition,
23:06
Speaker 2: which I mentioned. That's the second time you mentioned it.
23:08
Speaker 2: For people who aren't familiar. Disco Demolition was a day
23:11
Speaker 2: in the White Sox Stadium where people brought disco records
23:15
Speaker 2: to burn and it became this huge mess and throng
23:19
Speaker 2: of violence and everything, And it was all started by
23:22
Speaker 2: this really tacky local DJ at that time. But for Zappa,
23:27
Speaker 2: specifically on songs like Dancing Full and Disco Boy, it's
23:30
Speaker 2: addressing the people who make up that culture. At the time,
23:36
Speaker 2: that became a fad, this vapid nature of it.
23:39
Speaker 1: He largely withdrew from making albums with over political commentary
23:42
Speaker 1: in the seventies, but that would start to change by
23:44
Speaker 1: the end of the decade. Can you talk about the
23:46
Speaker 1: conservative counter revolution that was starting to take shape again
23:49
Speaker 1: and how that would inspire Zappa to return to political commentary.
23:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Zappa was very you know. I last year
23:58
Speaker 2: I went to a concert where I saw a couple
24:01
Speaker 2: of Zappa alumni performing at a local club here in Chicago,
24:04
Speaker 2: Bobby Martin and Ray White, and Ray I got to
24:09
Speaker 2: talk to him after the show, and Ray was was
24:12
Speaker 2: telling me that, you know, he was somebody who grew
24:13
Speaker 2: up as the son of a preacher in rural Illinois.
24:16
Speaker 2: And he talked about we're talking about the book and
24:19
Speaker 2: that because I was working on at the time, as
24:22
Speaker 2: well as some of Frank's opinions on religion. And Ray
24:27
Speaker 2: had told me a story where there was a point
24:30
Speaker 2: where he was getting kind of uncomfortable saying some of
24:32
Speaker 2: these lyrics because for him, he came from a religious
24:36
Speaker 2: background and he had expressed his concern to Frank about that,
24:39
Speaker 2: and Frank's you know, I don't hate religion. I just
24:41
Speaker 2: I don't like the people who exploit it for profit.
24:43
Speaker 2: And that's for him really was the driving force. You know.
24:47
Speaker 2: He didn't care what you did, or what you believed,
24:50
Speaker 2: or who you wanted to pray to, as long as
24:52
Speaker 2: it didn't interfere with the rights of anyone else, especially
24:55
Speaker 2: through violence. That was you know, that was it was
24:59
Speaker 2: fine by him. But wh I seventy nine, well before that,
25:03
Speaker 2: So back in seventy sixty then when he had Ford
25:05
Speaker 2: beat Reagan in the primary for the Republican National Convention
25:08
Speaker 2: and going up against Carter, there was at that time
25:13
Speaker 2: this burgeoning evangelical movement that was disappointed that someone like
25:18
Speaker 2: Carter could become president. And by the time eight ye
25:21
Speaker 2: rolled around and Carter was having these difficulties with the economy,
25:25
Speaker 2: with the conflict in Iran. Also that Reagan was then
25:31
Speaker 2: ascended the ranks as being, you know, the one who
25:34
Speaker 2: will carry this evangelical mission forward and legitimize it in
25:40
Speaker 2: a way that it hadn't been before, bringing it from
25:42
Speaker 2: the fringes to the mainstream part of this political party.
25:47
Speaker 2: And for him that was incredibly dangerous because the people
25:49
Speaker 2: who were leading this were televangelists, were people who like
25:52
Speaker 2: Jerry Folwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, who were building media
25:57
Speaker 2: empires that were exploiting financially, people who had real, deep
26:04
Speaker 2: fears and concerns, you know, who were looking for answers,
26:08
Speaker 2: and for them it was to send money to some
26:10
Speaker 2: guy on TV. And that really really bothered him, and
26:13
Speaker 2: especially as their chosen candidate was so successful in the presidency,
26:19
Speaker 2: and so as he was seeing this and as he
26:21
Speaker 2: was seeing what was happening in Iran, he saw ways
26:26
Speaker 2: in which systematically America could become this fascist theocracy like
26:32
Speaker 2: he was witnessing.
26:33
Speaker 1: Bradley Morgan is the author of Frank Zappa's America. Zappa
26:37
Speaker 1: he took his shots at pop culture in the eighties
26:40
Speaker 1: and found himself on the pop charts with a top
26:42
Speaker 1: forty single, Valley Girl in nineteen eighty three. His daughter
26:45
Speaker 1: Moon Unit sings lead vocals, and he's addressing the vapidness
26:48
Speaker 1: of youth culture. And I wonder what Frank was thinking
26:52
Speaker 1: if he were to see teenagers dancing to this song
26:54
Speaker 1: at clubs. Do you think he found pleasure in the
26:58
Speaker 1: fact that the very people he's taking shot a loving
27:00
Speaker 1: this song, having no idea that really they're the punchline
27:04
Speaker 1: of the joke.
27:04
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Frank was somebody who really from my impression,
27:09
Speaker 2: and I can't speak for him because he has been
27:11
Speaker 2: dead for over thirty years, and I do make it
27:13
Speaker 2: in a point in my book to not speak for
27:15
Speaker 2: him or not to hypothesize on what he would think,
27:17
Speaker 2: but my impression of him, you know, in terms of
27:21
Speaker 2: how he viewed his music in the culture and his legacy,
27:24
Speaker 2: he was very dismissive of it. You know, you know,
27:27
Speaker 2: I'm just going to make music. It's going to be
27:28
Speaker 2: here and it's going to be gone. But you know,
27:31
Speaker 2: last night I was at, you know, I mentioned this
27:33
Speaker 2: show I was at last year with Ray White and
27:36
Speaker 2: Bobby Martin. They came again last night at the same club,
27:39
Speaker 2: and it was in both times when I saw them.
27:41
Speaker 2: Last year and this year, they had a music school
27:44
Speaker 2: that was opened up for them that involved middle schools
27:46
Speaker 2: and teenagers all performing Zappa's music and just, you know,
27:50
Speaker 2: there's like the craziest, like ten year old kid just
27:52
Speaker 2: shredding on the guitar and it just was really fascinating
27:55
Speaker 2: and doing a lot of deep cuts, and it really
28:00
Speaker 2: that was a moment where I did think, you know,
28:02
Speaker 2: I think he would absolutely love to see, you know,
28:04
Speaker 2: the youth taking on his music and really giving it
28:08
Speaker 2: the serious consideration that it deserved. Now with something like
28:13
Speaker 2: Valley Girl, the success of that as a pop single
28:18
Speaker 2: became a way for him to continue financing, you know,
28:21
Speaker 2: doing the more serious music that he wanted to do.
28:23
Speaker 2: I think part of him was a little bit bothered
28:24
Speaker 2: that his biggest hit was kind of considered to be
28:29
Speaker 2: a novelty song and even part of his legacy with
28:32
Speaker 2: a lot of even serious music critics, they still see
28:35
Speaker 2: him as just a novelty artist. I'm part of The
28:37
Speaker 2: reason why I wrote that book is to push against that.
28:39
Speaker 2: I don't think he was a novelty artist. I think
28:41
Speaker 2: he was a very sincere man in his work. But
28:45
Speaker 2: that song is also a bit complicated as well, because
28:48
Speaker 2: his daughter Moon had released her memoir Earth to Moon
28:53
Speaker 2: last summer at the time when I was copy editing
28:56
Speaker 2: this book, and in that she tells the story about
29:00
Speaker 2: how that song came together, and she was doing she
29:03
Speaker 2: did this impression of just other students that she went
29:05
Speaker 2: to school with, and she was desperately trying to get
29:09
Speaker 2: the attention of her father, who worked a lot, who
29:13
Speaker 2: toured a lot, was gone many months out of the year,
29:15
Speaker 2: and when he was home, he was in his studio,
29:18
Speaker 2: just working. He was the boomer absent father that you
29:21
Speaker 2: could have found in any kind of other industry. He
29:24
Speaker 2: could have been in a VP and insurance company, going
29:26
Speaker 2: back to his study and nursing, you know, a couple
29:28
Speaker 2: of high balls on his own, you know, after work,
29:31
Speaker 2: and that's unfortunate. But she tells the story about how
29:35
Speaker 2: that song came together, and he had already kind of
29:37
Speaker 2: had this backing track made and he said, you know,
29:40
Speaker 2: just coming in the you know, the studio, and just
29:43
Speaker 2: go off, and she did it and just like a
29:45
Speaker 2: take or two, and he had a lot of fun
29:47
Speaker 2: with it, and it was a very special moment for her,
29:49
Speaker 2: you know, a bit of a sad moment as well,
29:52
Speaker 2: because it's one of the very few times that she
29:53
Speaker 2: could connect with her father, and the song then became
29:56
Speaker 2: this cultural juggernaut, but also major burden for her as well.
30:02
Speaker 2: I think with that song, though, I think any commentary,
30:05
Speaker 2: a lot of it really goes to Moon in that regard.
30:10
Speaker 1: Book on Rock podcast will be back after this.
30:14
Speaker 2: Hold On.
30:17
Speaker 1: He wasn't afraid to tackle difficult subjects. We know that
30:20
Speaker 1: sensitive subjects too. There was his nineteen eighty four album Thingfish,
30:24
Speaker 1: and this was his response to Ronald Reagan's mishandling of
30:27
Speaker 1: the AIDS epidemic. You say this is a much beligned
30:30
Speaker 1: entry in his catalog. Why is that? And what are
30:31
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this album?
30:34
Speaker 2: So I wrote this book out of order because as
30:37
Speaker 2: I mentioned, I wasn't sure I understood it until it
30:40
Speaker 2: was finished. And how I started was I identified all
30:44
Speaker 2: the recordings and all the albums that had some kind
30:47
Speaker 2: of political commentary, and Thingfish is a difficult record. He
30:53
Speaker 2: had plans for a Broadway show, and this album is
30:57
Speaker 2: kind of the original Broadway cast recording that it never
31:00
Speaker 2: got made. And so the story goes that there's a
31:06
Speaker 2: part time theater critic who works with the government to
31:10
Speaker 2: create a potion that is designed to kill gay and
31:16
Speaker 2: black people. And part of that is because those people
31:19
Speaker 2: are threats to white hegemony, but they are also specific
31:24
Speaker 2: threats to Broadway, and this theater critic who wanted, you
31:28
Speaker 2: know who, wants to keep, as he says in the lyrics,
31:31
Speaker 2: queers and natives out of Broadway and just keep it
31:35
Speaker 2: just white. And so to test this potion, they put
31:38
Speaker 2: in the mashed potatoes at San Quentin and it kills
31:41
Speaker 2: off a lot of gay inmates, it kills off a
31:43
Speaker 2: lot of black inmates, but also turns some inmates into
31:46
Speaker 2: these potated headed, duck lipped creatures. And there's a train
31:53
Speaker 2: wreck of a story that follows out of that. But
31:57
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, it was a response to Reagan's handling
31:59
Speaker 2: of the AIDS crisis, and Zappa had a particularly conspiratorial
32:04
Speaker 2: view of the AIDS crisis. He was open to the
32:07
Speaker 2: idea that it was manufactured to hurt black and gay people,
32:12
Speaker 2: you know, the people who could be voting in elections
32:15
Speaker 2: and wasn't really buying into official stories that it had
32:21
Speaker 2: found its way over from a sub Saharan primate. And
32:24
Speaker 2: his basis for that historically was he used the album
32:30
Speaker 2: in the AIDS crisis to connect to the Tuskegee Syphilist
32:34
Speaker 2: study that happened just a few decades earlier, which for
32:37
Speaker 2: listeners who may not be familiar, Tuskegee University had invited
32:41
Speaker 2: a lot of black men, typically poor, typically sharecroppers, to
32:44
Speaker 2: do studies where many of them were infected with syphilis,
32:48
Speaker 2: and the idea was to see how syphilis would have
32:52
Speaker 2: impacted them. And these men had no idea that they
32:55
Speaker 2: were going to be infected with syphlists. They thought they
32:57
Speaker 2: were being treated for a variety of different diseases, one
33:00
Speaker 2: being just a general term called bad blood. And that
33:03
Speaker 2: went on for several decades until a journalist had found
33:07
Speaker 2: out about it and the study was shut down. And
33:10
Speaker 2: so for Zappa, America had already proven how it will
33:16
Speaker 2: treat its most marginalized communities, and so now you have
33:19
Speaker 2: this disease that's supposedly only targeting certain populations. For him,
33:25
Speaker 2: there was a lot of skepticism on just the validity
33:29
Speaker 2: of the official reports that were coming in. And it's
33:32
Speaker 2: a difficult work because not only of the subject matter,
33:37
Speaker 2: and it's also just a confusing story, like there's a
33:40
Speaker 2: lot of exposition that you have to go into a
33:43
Speaker 2: lot of knowledge. Even though that's what it's about, it's
33:45
Speaker 2: not very clear that's the response to the AIDS crisis,
33:47
Speaker 2: because it's just this evil prince is putting this potion
33:50
Speaker 2: in mashed potatoes. But the main character, who was played
33:53
Speaker 2: by Ike willis a black man who was in Zappa's
33:56
Speaker 2: band at that time. The main character the thing is
34:00
Speaker 2: essentially the Kingfish character from Amos Andy, and he speaks
34:03
Speaker 2: in that very stereotypical slave dialect throughout the entire piece.
34:08
Speaker 2: And it's a whole album that really takes the tropes
34:13
Speaker 2: of American racism and turns it up to eleven to
34:17
Speaker 2: highlight the absurdity of it and how that absurdity still
34:20
Speaker 2: kind of infiltrates our society now. And it was one
34:25
Speaker 2: of the last chapters I wrote for the book because
34:27
Speaker 2: just so it was just so difficult and I needed
34:29
Speaker 2: to learn how to kind of approach that. But it
34:33
Speaker 2: was one I could not leave out because of the
34:36
Speaker 2: commentary that is communicated on the album. If I had
34:39
Speaker 2: left it out, I felt like I would have been
34:41
Speaker 2: whitewashing Zappa's legacy. It gave me an opportunity to kind
34:44
Speaker 2: of say, there is something he's trying to accomplish here.
34:48
Speaker 2: It may not be successful, but it's not rooted in
34:52
Speaker 2: racism or these other factors that are contributing to systemic racism.
34:57
Speaker 2: There's something here that he's trying to communicate, even if
35:00
Speaker 2: it may be wrong, even it may be difficult. I
35:03
Speaker 2: couldn't let it go for my own convenience. It was
35:06
Speaker 2: an opportunity for me to really address Zappa's whiteness as
35:10
Speaker 2: a musician, my whiteness as an author, and use it
35:13
Speaker 2: as an opportunity to hopefully create more dialogue about not
35:18
Speaker 2: only that record, but Zappa's attitudes when it came to
35:21
Speaker 2: how America handled its history of racism.
35:24
Speaker 1: Chapter five, titled Porn Wars the clips of Zappa defending
35:28
Speaker 1: the arts, especially rock and roll artists. I always love
35:31
Speaker 1: his appearance on CNN's Crossfire in nineteen eighty six is classic.
35:36
Speaker 1: The PMRC talk about the Parents Music Resource Center, What
35:41
Speaker 1: was their mission and how did Frank Zappa respond.
35:43
Speaker 2: So the Parents Music Resource Center were a collection of
35:48
Speaker 2: the wives of affluent leaders in Washington. They were the
35:52
Speaker 2: wives of senators, of congressmen, of business leaders who were
35:57
Speaker 2: having issues with the MTV generations exposure to sex and
36:05
Speaker 2: things that they felt were inappropriate for children. They're you know,
36:08
Speaker 2: Tipper Gore has written about how she came in on
36:10
Speaker 2: her daughter listening to Darling Nikky by Prince and was
36:13
Speaker 2: being very and was very disturbed by the lyrics mentioning
36:17
Speaker 2: masturbating with a magazine. And so they had took their
36:21
Speaker 2: Christmas card list and just collectively put it together to
36:24
Speaker 2: create this mailing list of people they could contact who
36:28
Speaker 2: might be sympathetic to their goals in limiting the access
36:34
Speaker 2: that children could have to content that they deemed to
36:36
Speaker 2: be not acceptable. And they kind of positioned themselves to say, well,
36:41
Speaker 2: we just want to have a we want to have
36:43
Speaker 2: a rating system for music that you know, movies have.
36:48
Speaker 2: You know, if movies have ratings, why can't music have ratings.
36:51
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of issue with that. First, there's
36:55
Speaker 2: a commercial response that as albums were being targeted for
36:58
Speaker 2: potential labeling, there were threats to companies that sold those albums.
37:03
Speaker 2: There's a report that I talked about in the book
37:05
Speaker 2: how Camelot Music had received a letter from the owner
37:09
Speaker 2: of the mall that they were in that if you
37:11
Speaker 2: sell these records, you know, we're gonna cut your lease.
37:13
Speaker 2: So there was that impact that had on the commercial aspect,
37:16
Speaker 2: but also on the artistic aspect, was that it creating
37:18
Speaker 2: a freezing effect for artists and the ideas that they
37:22
Speaker 2: wanted to communicate. And Frank and his testimony says, you
37:27
Speaker 2: know effectively that you know, an actor is not judged
37:30
Speaker 2: really by the role that they take. No one thinks
37:32
Speaker 2: that someone that they're seeing on the movie screen, they're
37:35
Speaker 2: not thinking that's that person. But when they're listening to
37:37
Speaker 2: the album, there's kind of a different thing that's happening.
37:41
Speaker 2: You know. We tend to think that the person singing
37:44
Speaker 2: to us is somehow endorsing certain ideas, or they're saying
37:48
Speaker 2: that what they believe. There's not a lot of room
37:51
Speaker 2: for irony in that or a kind of allegory in that.
37:55
Speaker 2: So Zappa's response to this was to address potential censorship
38:02
Speaker 2: issues with the impact that that could have on artists,
38:05
Speaker 2: which is been the largest aspect of his legacy regarding
38:09
Speaker 2: the PMRC. But he was also very clever in how
38:12
Speaker 2: he communicated the business element of this, because what the
38:16
Speaker 2: PMRC was doing and how they were able to accelerate
38:18
Speaker 2: so quickly with their mission was that they talked about
38:21
Speaker 2: all the sex and all the bad content in the music.
38:25
Speaker 2: But they wanted to wrap this legislation in a tax
38:29
Speaker 2: bill that was going to put a tax on blank
38:32
Speaker 2: tapes that the music industry wanted as a mitigation effort
38:35
Speaker 2: to fight piracy. That was a huge deal in the eighties,
38:39
Speaker 2: and Zappa had seen the culture war issue as being
38:43
Speaker 2: that poison pill that would get people to kind of
38:46
Speaker 2: swallow taking on a private tax that he felt that
38:49
Speaker 2: the industry should have paid themselves. I mean, if we
38:52
Speaker 2: think about today, with a lot of the tariffs that
38:53
Speaker 2: are happening, you know who is paying for those tariffs.
38:56
Speaker 2: It's you as consumers. You know, you're paying more for
39:00
Speaker 2: those products because these companies don't want to bear that
39:02
Speaker 2: re kind of responsibility. And so he recognized that there
39:05
Speaker 2: was this kind of private tax being levied on American
39:09
Speaker 2: citizens without their consent, without their voting for it, and
39:13
Speaker 2: that was really at the heart of what his argument
39:17
Speaker 2: was and he was right to do it because the
39:20
Speaker 2: PMRC was very limited in their scope and focus. They
39:24
Speaker 2: were only targeting rock and pop music. In the book,
39:27
Speaker 2: I talk about how a lot of representatives in the
39:30
Speaker 2: music industry and Zappa identified that no one in country
39:33
Speaker 2: music was being targeted. And it was no coincidence that
39:37
Speaker 2: one of the Senate leaders who was at the PMRC
39:40
Speaker 2: was Al Gore, who was the Senator of Tennessee and
39:44
Speaker 2: whose wife, Tipper Gore, was one of the leaders of
39:46
Speaker 2: the PMRC.
39:48
Speaker 1: The Book on Rock Podcasts will be back after this.
39:51
Speaker 2: I mean, there's like no way that we can just
39:53
Speaker 2: pause for a minute. You guys just go home and
39:54
Speaker 2: do your stuff, and then tomorrow we can just like continue.
40:00
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for checking out the Booked on Rock podcast.
40:02
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40:06
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40:27
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Speaker 1: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
40:33
Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
40:36
Speaker 1: to the show. I wonder how much these politicians were
40:41
Speaker 1: aware of how intelligent Frank Zapple was. I wonder if
40:45
Speaker 1: they even realized what they were going up against.
40:47
Speaker 2: You know, they I don't think they had any clue.
40:51
Speaker 2: I think they had in their mind that Frank was
40:53
Speaker 2: this big, wild haired guy. By this time he had
40:56
Speaker 2: short haired, He addressed in a suit. A lot they
41:00
Speaker 2: their own projections. The other two figures who had testified
41:04
Speaker 2: at that hearing were d Snyder of Twisted Sister and
41:06
Speaker 2: Twisted Sister was a band that was targeted by the PMRC,
41:09
Speaker 2: but also John Denver, and I had read quotes from
41:14
Speaker 2: d Snyder that him and Frank weren't sure where John
41:18
Speaker 2: was going to be on this issue. You know, he's
41:21
Speaker 2: kind of the all American, you know, kind of just
41:25
Speaker 2: good guy, and there's a lot of projected onto him
41:28
Speaker 2: that like, well, you know he's going to support you know,
41:30
Speaker 2: the PMRC because he is this wholesome guy, and he
41:33
Speaker 2: absolutely didn't his statement is actually probably the most fiery
41:37
Speaker 2: of them all, because he equates the motives of the
41:40
Speaker 2: pm RC to be like the book burnings in the
41:43
Speaker 2: Third Reich. And what's kind of fascinating about this is,
41:47
Speaker 2: not only did that surprise a lot of people that
41:50
Speaker 2: John Denver was going to have that view, but there's
41:53
Speaker 2: a great oral history that a writer name, I think
41:55
Speaker 2: his name was zach Schanfeld that did for the pmr
41:59
Speaker 2: c's alreadyeth anniversary in twenty fifteen, and he interviewed a
42:03
Speaker 2: lot of the people who were there. He interviewed Candy Stroud,
42:06
Speaker 2: who was a public relations expert who supported the pm RCY.
42:10
Speaker 2: Susan Baker. Gail Zappa speaks in this oral history project
42:14
Speaker 2: in lieu of Frank, who had passed away by then,
42:18
Speaker 2: and there's a quote from I think that maybe Susan
42:22
Speaker 2: Baker or someone from the PMRC who even though John
42:26
Speaker 2: Denver had made these comments, they still thought of him as, Oh,
42:30
Speaker 2: he was just such a sweet, nice guy. But Frank,
42:32
Speaker 2: he was just so mean and just so awful. I
42:34
Speaker 2: don't have the direct quote, but they still even thought
42:37
Speaker 2: of him as very offensive, even though his position was,
42:42
Speaker 2: you know, I'm okay with printing lyrics, and I'm okay
42:45
Speaker 2: with giving parents more consumer information to make informed decisions
42:49
Speaker 2: about what they exposed their children to. But we need
42:52
Speaker 2: to find a way to pay for it that is
42:54
Speaker 2: not a burden to American taxpayers. And thirty years later,
43:00
Speaker 2: we're still kind of seen as the provocateur, the one,
43:04
Speaker 2: you know, the one you had to watch out for,
43:06
Speaker 2: when really no, not at all.
43:08
Speaker 1: When Frank Zappa passed away, there was a powerful tribute
43:11
Speaker 1: published in The New Yorker on December twentieth, nineteen ninety three.
43:14
Speaker 1: You cover in the book it was just over two
43:16
Speaker 1: weeks after Zappa died. It was written by the Czechoslovakian
43:20
Speaker 1: activist and writer Vatslav Hovel. He served as the last
43:24
Speaker 1: president of Czechoslovakia from nineteen eighty nine until nineteen ninety two.
43:28
Speaker 1: He and Zappa met in January of nineteen ninety First,
43:31
Speaker 1: can you talk about that meeting, their relationship and what
43:35
Speaker 1: Hovell says in that tribute.
43:36
Speaker 2: So, Hovell was president of Czecholovakia until nineteen ninety two,
43:39
Speaker 2: then it became the Czech Republic, and he was an
43:42
Speaker 2: activist in the Soviet Union. In Czechoslovakia, who was who
43:45
Speaker 2: helped draft this thing called Charter seventy seven, which was
43:48
Speaker 2: kind of a charter document of like how we democratize
43:53
Speaker 2: and make things more free. That's a very oversimplified way
43:56
Speaker 2: to describe that, So there's any historianslosmuries, sorry, but it
44:00
Speaker 2: was their kind of blueprint to make Czechoislovakia and by
44:04
Speaker 2: I guess the rest of the Soviet Union to be
44:06
Speaker 2: more democratic. And Zappa's music was really inspirational to a
44:11
Speaker 2: lot of those people at that time because of the
44:13
Speaker 2: messaging in his music conveying ideas of freedom. And I
44:18
Speaker 2: find that so fascinating because at that time he's being
44:21
Speaker 2: criticized in America for juvenile lyrics, for being a novelty musician,
44:25
Speaker 2: for not really having anything intelligent to say. I've heard
44:29
Speaker 2: many times of the years, I like Frank Zappa's music,
44:32
Speaker 2: but not his lyrics. And here is a country of
44:34
Speaker 2: people who are actively being repressed.
44:37
Speaker 1: Really admiring him for that.
44:39
Speaker 2: And him and Jimmy Carter were actually seen as the
44:42
Speaker 2: two biggest enemies of the state in Checholislovakia because of
44:46
Speaker 2: what they were saying, and as the Iron Curtain was
44:49
Speaker 2: falling and Frank was kind of getting more respectable. By
44:53
Speaker 2: the late eighties, he was shifting away from rock music.
44:56
Speaker 2: His final tour was in nineteen eighty eight. He put
44:58
Speaker 2: out his final rock album in eighty eight, called Broadway
45:00
Speaker 2: the hard Way. While shifting away from that, he's getting
45:05
Speaker 2: very interested in politics, having come up with the heels
45:07
Speaker 2: of the PMRC, and he's toured around Eastern Europe in
45:11
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union doing interviews on financial matters. You know,
45:15
Speaker 2: he was in talks to have a talk show for
45:17
Speaker 2: the Financial News Network and he had met Hovell as
45:21
Speaker 2: kind of an effort in that, and he found that
45:24
Speaker 2: when he did visit Chechoislovakia, and there's great footage of
45:27
Speaker 2: it in the Alex Winter documentary where he arrives and
45:30
Speaker 2: there's five thousand people at the airport and they're all
45:33
Speaker 2: just cheering for him, and he never had that kind
45:35
Speaker 2: of welcome by any other audience, and it really had
45:38
Speaker 2: an effect on him. Just to be in an environment
45:41
Speaker 2: where you're appreciated, of course, you know you're going to
45:43
Speaker 2: want to try to be involved. And so he had
45:46
Speaker 2: meetings with Hovell and another of Hobble's administration to be
45:49
Speaker 2: kind of a cultural emissary to talk about, you know,
45:52
Speaker 2: not only how you can stimulate economic development in Czechoislovakia,
45:57
Speaker 2: but how can this economic development also so elevate the culture.
46:02
Speaker 2: He was all on board to do that until a
46:04
Speaker 2: Secretary of State, James Baker the Third, whose wife Susan
46:09
Speaker 2: was on the PMRC, sent a letter saying, no, can't
46:13
Speaker 2: have Zappa do this. There will be consequences. I don't
46:15
Speaker 2: know exactly what that letter said or what exactly was communicated,
46:18
Speaker 2: but they dropped the idea of Zappa being a cultural
46:20
Speaker 2: emissary for Czechoslovakia. But when he did die of pancreatic cancer,
46:26
Speaker 2: Hovell did write this beautiful obituary about just how much
46:29
Speaker 2: of a hero Frank was to so many in Czechoslovakia
46:34
Speaker 2: and how important he was in that transition in maintaining
46:39
Speaker 2: dignity for people who are looking to have the same
46:43
Speaker 2: freedoms and rights that a lot of Americans were taking
46:45
Speaker 2: for granted. Back home.
46:47
Speaker 1: Book down Rock podcast will be back after this.
46:50
Speaker 2: Can we go now?
46:51
Speaker 1: Please?
46:52
Speaker 2: People?
46:52
Speaker 1: A good plan today is better than the perfect plan tomorrow.
46:56
Speaker 1: Find the bookdown Rock website at bookdown Rock dot com.
47:00
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47:02
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47:05
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47:07
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47:16
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47:19
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47:24
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47:29
Speaker 1: Europe would play a significant role in Zappa's life after
47:32
Speaker 1: the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it culminated in
47:35
Speaker 1: the last album he released while he was alive, which
47:37
Speaker 1: is nineteen ninety three's The Yellow Shark, an album of
47:39
Speaker 1: orchestral music. Two tracks that you say stand out as
47:43
Speaker 1: distinctly stark and bleak statements about the United States and
47:47
Speaker 1: the direction in which Zappa believed the country was heading.
47:50
Speaker 1: What are those two songs?
47:51
Speaker 2: So The Yellow Shark was a series of concerts that
47:56
Speaker 2: he did in Europe in his final two years. I mean,
47:59
Speaker 2: he knew he was going to die, and he worked diligently.
48:04
Speaker 2: It was an opportunity for him to hear the music
48:08
Speaker 2: that he made the way he had intended it for
48:10
Speaker 2: audiences who would absolutely respect it. And these concerts were
48:14
Speaker 2: held in Berlin, Vienna, and then one more three European country.
48:19
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I blanked out on what those cities were,
48:22
Speaker 2: but the orchestra was called the Ensemble Moderen just avant
48:25
Speaker 2: garde musical work and did orchestral versions of it. And
48:28
Speaker 2: there's a lot of older compositions that got that kind
48:31
Speaker 2: of work. And they even did one of Zappa's sinclavier pieces,
48:35
Speaker 2: G Spot Tornado, and turned it into a orchestral work
48:39
Speaker 2: that capped the whole concert, because it was one of
48:42
Speaker 2: those pieces that Zappa believed could not actually be played
48:45
Speaker 2: by humans. So if you go on YouTube and look
48:47
Speaker 2: at G Spot Tornado, it's an incredible performance because not
48:50
Speaker 2: only are the musicians really adept, but there's two performers
48:54
Speaker 2: dancing on stage and it's just incredible. But there were
48:58
Speaker 2: some tracks on that that did have lyrics, despite that
49:02
Speaker 2: the album is largely orchestral instrumental music. The first is
49:07
Speaker 2: a reading called Food Gathering and Post Industrial America in
49:10
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, and it's a reading by a woman
49:14
Speaker 2: named Hillary Sturt, who I think played viola or violin
49:17
Speaker 2: in the ensemble, and she's talking about a post industrial
49:23
Speaker 2: wasteland where just just toxic goop is everywhere because all
49:28
Speaker 2: these factories have just dumped all their sludge and everything,
49:31
Speaker 2: and people are just eating foam packing pellets. But by
49:36
Speaker 2: the end of it, there are lines that there are
49:39
Speaker 2: wild abandoned children who are feasting on each other because
49:43
Speaker 2: of abortion being banned several years ago. And that's rather
49:47
Speaker 2: striking because it's a whole piece that talks about this environmental, capitalist,
49:52
Speaker 2: post industrial nightmare, and it's an awful setting to be in.
49:56
Speaker 2: But by that final line and the delivery and the
50:00
Speaker 2: that Hillary delivers that line about the total ban on abortion,
50:05
Speaker 2: you know exactly who is responsible for these conditions for
50:10
Speaker 2: this environment. It may not be explicitly said, but it's
50:13
Speaker 2: there as an incredibly powerful piece. And the other one
50:17
Speaker 2: is powerful in different ways. It's a piece called Welcome
50:21
Speaker 2: to the United States, and it's a musical reading of
50:24
Speaker 2: an immigration form and there's and it starts off with
50:27
Speaker 2: this German fanfare, and one of the German Men in
50:31
Speaker 2: the ensemble is reading questions from this form, did you
50:36
Speaker 2: come by land? Did you come by sea? Have you
50:38
Speaker 2: been convicted of these crimes? And as a response to
50:41
Speaker 2: each of these questions, there's some type of like musical
50:46
Speaker 2: motif that the ensemble performs. So when there's a comment
50:49
Speaker 2: I think about espionage, there's a brief orchestral point where
50:53
Speaker 2: they play Louis Louis by the Kingsman. I can't remember
50:56
Speaker 2: exactly where that comes in, but it's kind of funny.
50:58
Speaker 2: But at a certain point there's questions about between nineteen
51:03
Speaker 2: thirty nine and nineteen forty five, where you involved in
51:07
Speaker 2: this and that? And it's very dark, and it's very
51:11
Speaker 2: and the music starts just turning, creating something that sounds
51:15
Speaker 2: very awful. And as he reads these questions about you know,
51:19
Speaker 2: were you involved in you know, essentially you know, the
51:22
Speaker 2: Third Reich and and the Nazis tirade through Europe, one
51:26
Speaker 2: single solitary man at the end of this piece says yes.
51:29
Speaker 2: Then the leader of the German ensemble, so, you know,
51:31
Speaker 2: welcome to the United States. So it's a it's a
51:34
Speaker 2: weird kind of interpretation of a document form that with
51:38
Speaker 2: its musical cues and the German leader is meant to
51:43
Speaker 2: kind of create this idea of this type of authoritarianism
51:47
Speaker 2: that we had seen in Nazi Germany start to creep
51:51
Speaker 2: its way into America.
51:53
Speaker 1: Frank Zappa one of the most fascinating figures in music history,
51:57
Speaker 1: rock history, in this country's history legacy. How are is
52:01
Speaker 1: ideals still relevant today? Well, so a.
52:04
Speaker 2: Lot of what he was addressing, and what my book
52:07
Speaker 2: does is to talk about how he saw the rise
52:11
Speaker 2: of white Christian nationalism in our politics. And since his
52:15
Speaker 2: death in ninety three, I mean, we do see a
52:19
Speaker 2: major political party having it largely adopted that in their platform,
52:22
Speaker 2: and that the barriers are breaking down. I just saw
52:26
Speaker 2: in the news today that I don't know if it's
52:28
Speaker 2: a Supreme Court, some court is ruling that churches can
52:31
Speaker 2: be able to make political demonstrations and endorse political candidates.
52:36
Speaker 2: And this is something that for seven decades was, you know,
52:39
Speaker 2: against the law because that would be a violation of
52:41
Speaker 2: their tax exempt status. But now we have an administration
52:45
Speaker 2: and people in these various departments say, you know what,
52:49
Speaker 2: it's okay, Yeah, we don't have to have that anymore.
52:52
Speaker 2: And you see that increasingly, more and more these policies
52:58
Speaker 2: and these actions are being driven by a type of
53:02
Speaker 2: evangelical Christianity that is specifically meant to elevate non white
53:09
Speaker 2: and non male people. And when I looked at Zappa's
53:13
Speaker 2: lyrics in the eighties, I saw that exact same kind
53:16
Speaker 2: of commentary. There's a great track from Broadway the hard
53:19
Speaker 2: Way called Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk that I think
53:22
Speaker 2: is this masterpiece. And then this is nineteen eighty eight
53:25
Speaker 2: and there's lines that go with a ku klux moumo
53:27
Speaker 2: in the back of a truck. If you ain't born again,
53:29
Speaker 2: they're going to mess you up, screaming no abortion, no surrey.
53:33
Speaker 2: Life's too precious. Can't you see? Well, what's that hanging
53:36
Speaker 2: in a neighbor's tree while it looks like colored folks
53:38
Speaker 2: to me? And for over forty years he was saying
53:42
Speaker 2: that these people who are gaining more and more power,
53:46
Speaker 2: it's going to be the expense of these marginalized groups.
53:49
Speaker 2: And to me, that is where I had this realization
53:53
Speaker 2: that Zappa was a very progressive minded figure and you know,
53:58
Speaker 2: was not this conservative that you know, just because he
54:01
Speaker 2: has like one clip on you know, Crossfire says well,
54:04
Speaker 2: I'm a conservative. You may not believe that his values
54:09
Speaker 2: were at odds with conservative ideology at that time and
54:12
Speaker 2: especially would be now.
54:13
Speaker 1: And there's so much more to explore about this topic
54:16
Speaker 1: in your book, Frank Zappa's America, which is out now
54:19
Speaker 1: and you can find it wherever books are sold. You
54:21
Speaker 1: could also look forward at your nearest bookstore. Booked on
54:24
Speaker 1: rock dot com. You could find your nearest independent bookstore.
54:27
Speaker 1: And where could people find you online? Bradley, I'm on
54:30
Speaker 1: Blue Sky.
54:30
Speaker 2: I think it's at Bradley Morgan. I also have a
54:33
Speaker 2: Instagram where I sometimes I post stuff there for the book,
54:37
Speaker 2: but mainly a lot of my author stuff is on
54:38
Speaker 2: Blue Sky. I also have my website Bradley Dashmorgan dot com.
54:43
Speaker 1: And yeah, the book's been out since June. Second, what
54:46
Speaker 1: type of response have you gotten?
54:48
Speaker 2: What I have seen has been positive. I've been very
54:53
Speaker 2: curious about what the Zappa fan community is going to say,
54:55
Speaker 2: because I had some issues with them even while writing
54:59
Speaker 2: the book that while there's a large majority of Zappa
55:04
Speaker 2: fans who recognize a lot of the characteristics that I
55:08
Speaker 2: identify in the book, there's still that, like like every fandom,
55:12
Speaker 2: there's still that kind of purest subset that says that
55:15
Speaker 2: you know, well, we disagree with this for whatever type
55:18
Speaker 2: of reason they may be projecting. And when I was
55:21
Speaker 2: writing the book, I had went to a I went
55:24
Speaker 2: to a couple forums, and I'd asked if there was
55:26
Speaker 2: any writings about Zappa from women or people of color,
55:30
Speaker 2: because I wanted to try to get as much of
55:32
Speaker 2: a non white and non male perspective into this book
55:35
Speaker 2: as I possibly could. And you know, there are a
55:38
Speaker 2: lot of people were helpful, like, oh, there's people who
55:40
Speaker 2: worked with him or played in his band. You can
55:42
Speaker 2: see clips. I wanted something that was very critical or analytical,
55:46
Speaker 2: but I did have people kind of chime in and going,
55:49
Speaker 2: why why do you need that flor huh blah blah blah.
55:51
Speaker 2: Did you know he was conservative? You know, taking labels
55:54
Speaker 2: out of context to project what they feel, but it's inaccurate.
56:01
Speaker 1: Bradley Morgan, thank you so much for another amazing book.
56:05
Speaker 1: Now this is the people got to get this book
56:06
Speaker 1: in your book on YouTube, which is another fascinating read.
56:10
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on and look forward
56:11
Speaker 1: to having you back on.
56:13
Speaker 2: Thank you, Eric, It's been a pleasure.
56:22
Speaker 1: That's it.
56:23
Speaker 2: It's in the books.