FRANK ZAPPA: REVOLT AGAINST MEDIOCRITY
Lyons, Batya Friedman and Steve
THE PROGRESSIVE Interview Frank Zappa Revolt against mediocrity BY BATYA FRIEDMAN AND STEVE LYONS Frank Zappa is a rock musician who seems to defy categorization. He writes symphonic music,...
...One year later, Zappa and the Mothers of Invention released We're Only in It for the Money, which mocked the sacred Sergeant Pepper album and ridiculed nearly all aspects of the alternative youth culture, calling hippies phony and drugs stupid...
...Now that I'm in the stage where I can have the seemingly most impossible things performed exactly right, that's worth devoting some time to...
...I can do twelve hours and love it...
...To perform expressively on an instrument, I have respect for that...
...Are you a Yuppie...
...In the old days, if the king didn't like you or the church didn't like you or whatever, you didn't have a hit...
...And every time you're out being sociable and having other people be "nice" to you so that you don't feel "lonely," they're wasting your time...
...ZAPPA: I would say that my entire life has been one massive failure...
...If you have a nation of people who refuse to face reality about themselves, about the rest of the world, about anything, they want reinforcement for the fantasy that they're living in...
...That's why if you listen to Chinese classical music, everything sounds like it's being played on a kazoo and it's thin and weird, but to a Chinese person it's lush...
...censorship, he testified before a Senate committee and toured the country debating the issue on radio and television...
...I respect Kent...
...If society wanted to hear information of a specific nature in songs, about controversial topics, they would buy them...
...ZAPPA: It's simple...
...I don't know why a person would think that the tone quality of Chinese classical music was really a warming sensation...
...We will be told what is good and it will be mediocre...
...In fact, I despise it...
...Most Americans aren't excellent, they're only okay...
...Few people who do anything excellent are ever heard of...
...So music will continue to address those things that really matter to people who buy records: boy-girl relationships, boy-boy relationships, boy-car relationships, girl-car relationships, boy-girl-food relationships perhaps...
...Who needs those fuckers...
...I happen to not care for that...
...Q: Any plans for more of your own rock-'n'-roll...
...It's not a musical medium, it's an advertising medium...
...it makes me feel good...
...So the timbre is involved, too...
...Solitude...
...Q: Why...
...What I think of as the emotional content of music is probably a lot different than what you think of...
...People who could have achieved more won't because they know that all they have to do is be "that," and they too can sell millions and make millions and have people love them because they're merely mediocre...
...What do you think of that...
...And they've already taken your time...
...Well, that music played on an accordion is not the same as the exact same notes and the same melody played and the same rhythm played on six bagpipes...
...You pay somebody to play your record...
...And because they are making and selling millions they are stamped with the seal of approval, and it is the millions which make their work quality...
...Did you forget to put in a toilet, or are there enough windows on the second floor...
...they can run a way you can't run...
...You know why...
...ZAPPA: Today record companies don't even listen to your tape...
...In different cultures there are also different norms for how certain sound combinations are perceived...
...If you have an idea and you want that idea to be done a certain way and you can't do it, what do you have...
...I'm really interested in music and I always have been...
...So considering how firmly entrenched all that is right now, you think it's going to turn around...
...What do you mean...
...Q: What do you think art will be like in twenty years...
...ZAPPA: A little of both...
...Every once in a while somebody will say War Is Hell or Save the Whales or something bland...
...Few artists can match Zappa's productivity...
...Because I don't have the tools or wherewithal to accomplish what I want to accomplish...
...So who's the new king...
...ZAPPA: I don't know how to explain it...
...So when you're lonely and you're all by yourself, guess what you have...
...They can think a way you can't think...
...I hope you're not going to spend money trying to exclude these people...
...It's a buy and sell...
...Unfortunately, I have these ideas that are just too fucking expensive...
...Let's face it, Mozart had hits...
...So who needs that shit...
...You are talking about a record-buying audience which is interested in personal health and well-being, the ability to earn a living, the ability to stay young at all costs forever, and not much else...
...Let's look at the remnants of the American society...
...Q: You have a very prolific output...
...And if you've got the look, then it really doesn't make a fucking bit of difference what's on the tape—they can always hire somebody to fix that...
...That is the telling point about the society that is consuming the product...
...Q: Other people might say that there's something universal, some sort of consensus on what works and what doesn't...
...But then, hits shouldn't be the sum total of music history...
...Q: Those are examples of pragmatic considerations as opposed to aesthetic considerations...
...If you take a blank piece of paper and pencil and just start sketching, it doesn't necessarily have to be a house and a tree and a cow...
...If you go beyond that, you become a critic...
...ZAPPA: Perhaps...
...Q: What do you see as your greatest accomplishment and your greatest failure...
...ZAPPA: What can music address today...
...Q: You seem to admire the raw emotional energy of some music, yet you have little tolerance for emotional love songs...
...And they realize that the people are not listening, they're dancing, or they're driving, or something else...
...Come on, Milton, give yourself a break...
...And if that A-minor chord is very quiet and the Bs are just smoothly put in there, that's one attitude...
...There will always be people who will take a chance, but their numbers are dwindling...
...And I know that ultimately it doesn't mean a fucking thing that I did it...
...What is your opinion on that...
...I'm not talking solitary confinement...
...ZAPPA: You know, I'm so involved with the Synclavier [a computer-based synthesizer] and what it can do and being able to hear compositions played exactly, that I'm not even interested in writing any other kind of music...
...Live it...
...For example, do you consider jogging or playing ice hockey to be of equal value to, say, creating art, on some cosmic scale...
...they don't go...
...Take the pop-music business, for example...
...It's the same thing as what you leave on your coffee table for people to discover when they come to your apartment...
...But if you talk about pop music as a medium for expressing social attitudes, the medium expresses the social attitude perfectly by avoiding contact with things that are really there...
...Beethoven had hits...
...They are excellent...
...You celebrate mediocrity, you get mediocrity...
...If you want to join a committee and feel the warmth and reassurance that other people's opinions will provide to reinforce your own, then go for it...
...A station loses money when somebody turns it off the air...
...Q: Wait a second, ugly things survive too...
...ZAPPA: People are free to agree...
...But they don't...
...It's a good deal...
...And you're going to play a lot of Bs in the key of A minor and that's going to give you that little twinge...
...What are you going to do, have it legislated in Congress like those assholes who wanted to make it a law that you couldn't put anything backwards on a phonograph record...
...Q: What are the issues that the music of the 1980s can address...
...If you're sensitive to loneliness, you're going to be in trouble, because then the loneliness turns into something really painful, a horrible depression and then you die...
...Yet anyone can look at what is being done and say, "Jesus, I can do that...
...You have all of your own time...
...If you decide to become a composer, you seriously run the risk of becoming less than a human being...
...I think there are a lot of people afraid to work that way because they are afraid somebody will say they are workaholics...
...In the 1980s, with a repressive, Republican, Yuppie-oriented Administration installed and ready to perpetuate itself with Supreme Court appointments that will keep us in trouble for the next half century, the prognosis is not good for things which differ from the viewpoint of the conservative Right...
...ZAPPA: Just keep working, a little sleep, a lot of work...
...Just be glad that there aren't a bunch of people who want to use up your time...
...The average guy doesn't know how predictable or easy it is to do that stuff...
...If you walk down the street and ask anybody if a composer is of any use to any society, what kind of answer do you think you would get...
...They look at your zippers...
...It's the next best thing to solitude...
...Have you been to a modern music concert...
...There's ways to do it...
...It's called "payola...
...Not without a genetic mutation, it's not...
...It could be just some kind of a scribble but sometimes those scribbles work and they are the right thing for that blank piece of space and you can enjoy them...
...All the good music's already been written by people with wigs and stuff on...
...There's always the possibility that an anomaly will appear—some weird little twisted thing will happen and there will be somebody who's doing it...
...Let's look into the future...
...Who's the new church...
...As a matter of fact you might even be dead...
...It's useless...
...it's just a scribble...
...ZAPPA: What else do you have the right to say...
...And they don't expect you to be around for twenty years...
...He has released more than forty albums, including several double albums, and he has produced a score of records for other musicians...
...however, I think he takes a very optimistic and naive attitude toward what it takes to be a composer...
...That's probably one of the best-kept secrets in America...
...Batya Friedman and Steve Lyons are free-lance writers in Berkeley, California...
...It's smart labor relations...
...We talked with Zappa about art in America, the music industry, and his current work...
...Because along with all the love and admiration that's going to come from the people that would keep you from being lonely, there is the emotional freight you have to bear from people who are wasting your time, and you can't get that back...
...If I wanted to write something that would make you weep, I could do it...
...You see guys who are making millions of dollars and selling millions of units...
...Do you have any special methodologies for getting things done...
...Nobody makes a move without talking to an accountant first...
...It's not like the old days when families sat around and looked at it...
...The performers and composers don't necessarily believe in what they're saying or what they're doing, but they know that if you write a song about love, it's got a 3,000 per cent better chance of going on the radio than if you write a song about celery...
...Did you ever look in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians...
...ZAPPA: Much of the creative work I find interesting and amusing has no basis in economic reality...
...Realize that you're in isolation...
...They've got 7,000 years behind them...
...Most decisions about what gets produced and distributed are made strictly on a bottom-line basis...
...It's not as bad as having somebody call you a "communist," but if you are in a jogging suit, you don't want to have that label attached to you...
...And if it works you don't even have to know why it works...
...It's a different story...
...The spirit of adventurousness at any level of American society has been pretty much legislated away...
...maybe you've got too much salt over here...
...It's more like, how did it turn out...
...ZAPPA: No...
...It can address anything that it wants to, but it will only address those topics that will sell...
...And so to keep them happy as a labor force, you say, "Let's take this mediocre chump and we say, 'He is terrific!' " All the other mediocre chumps say, "Yeah, that's right and that gives me hope, because one day as mediocre and chumpish as I am, I can...
...They look at your hair...
...Milton Babbitt, an electronic music composer, has advocated the virtual exclusion of the general public from modern music concerts...
...So the stations are formated to provide a certain texture and ambience that will be consumed by people who view themselves in a certain way...
...Is it determined by the taste of the listener or does the public listen to whatever the industry feeds it...
...That doesn't mean it is bad music...
...Once you realize what your limitations are and realize that even if you "achieve" something it doesn't make a fucking bit of difference anyway, then you can be "okay...
...Opposing this attempt at...
...What is that...
...It either works or it doesn't work...
...In the dark ages there was art, but who knew...
...You don't concentrate on the radio, you turn it on while you're working, you turn it on while you're driving...
...Q: Is your view truly as subjective as you are painting it to be...
...They're wonderful for people who like to listen to them...
...So now you can have a hit if you are willing to pay...
...ZAPPA: What is it that survives from an ancient civilization that characterizes that civilization...
...For example, you've got the key...
...ZAPPA: I don't think a composer has any function in society at all, especially in an industrial society, unless it is writing movie scores, advertising jingles, or stuff that is consumed in industry...
...He has written thirty-two compositions for choral and orchestral groups, four ballets, two feature-length films, and two television specials...
...Q: What about the relative merit of various human pursuits...
...I think they're wonderful for people who want them...
...if you just look at it scientifically, you can do it...
...In a way, the real business of government is the business of controlling the labor force...
...He writes symphonic music, deplores drug use, and champions individual rights...
...Hits are okay...
...Q: Would you say it's sentimental...
...And these consulting services that format the station know that...
...That's what will survive the American society...
...There's no reason why I should inflict my point of view on somebody who really enjoys being part of a group consensus...
...Then the Mothers played their selection for the evening: a demented version of Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll," complete with pig noises...
...Enjoy it...
...ZAPPA: That's unnecessary, they're already excluded...
...That is the orientation of most entertainment, politics, and religion...
...I don't get a charge out of even thinking about it...
...Musicians will not address topics that are controversial if they want to have a hit...
...It's not something that I aspire to, nor do I want to live my life in accordance with that ideal...
...I'm talking about art in terms of valued, beautiful stuff that is done not because of your ego but just because it is beautiful, just because it is the right thing to do...
...Or you can say, "That's not a house, that's not a cow, that's not a tree, and so I don't like it...
...Loneliness, once you've come to deal with it so that it is not an uncomfortable sensation, so it doesn't feel like drowning or something, is not a bad deal...
...I mean, nobody gives a shit...
...ZAPPA: Try to imagine what the opposite of loneliness is...
...It's a cheap shot...
...I live with failure every day because I can't do the things that I really want to do...
...What do you find...
...they can dance a way you can't dance...
...I tend to view the whole thing as a conspiracy...
...But safe...
...it's A minor, right...
...Q: If the public doesn't need composers, do composers need a public...
...Look at the stereotypes held up by the media as examples of great accomplishment...
...The beautiful things that the societies do is what survives...
...ZAPPA: None of the above...
...Maybe after 7,000 years we're going to think that stuff sounds pretty good, too...
...Who the fuck needs you...
...ZAPPA: It's not just sentimental...
...I can do whatever my budget will allow me to do...
...Q: As you compose, are you primarily guided by how you want the music to affect a listener's spiritual, emotional, intellectual, or physical state, or by the musical structure—melody, harmony, and rhythm...
...ZAPPA: Yep...
...Not their jogging...
...Because after they're done being nice to you, then they want something from you...
...There are certain notes of a scale that you can play within a harmonic climate to "wreak pathos," and it's very predictable...
...It's not going to happen...
...Q: It seems that for most people that kind of isolation would lead to loneliness...
...Q: How do unknown music groups attract the attention of record companies...
...And the amplitude is involved...
...That's because merchandising is so tied to "visuals" now...
...Writing a song about why somebody left you, that's stupid...
...But it's okay for other people...
...It is no accident that the public schools in the United States are pure shit...
...If it's being played by a high-school marching band and it's being jammed in your face, it's sad all right, but it's not that kind of sad...
...Or you could apply it to a recipe...
...The business is more geared toward expandability today...
...Since I write music I know what the techniques are...
...One way or another, you just die...
...Or you could apply it to the design of a building...
...Q: Do you think anything can be done to reverse the trend...
...Something you couldn't buy any place else...
...Plenty of room, isn't there...
...It is no accident that masses of drugs are available and openly used at all levels of society...
...They want that fast buck because they realize that next week there's going to be another hairdo and another zipper...
...The Chinese are different though...
...An executive at Columbia Records made this assessment: "no commercial potential...
...So, if I look at an image and it appeals to me, then all I can say is that it works for me and I can't say any more about it...
...That's okay...
...It's not based on any academic regulations...
...I can do some other stuff...
...Because excellence, pure excellence, terrifies the fuck out of Americans, who've been bred to appreciate the success of the mediocre...
...Well, you're going to listen to a certain texture because that reinforces the viewpoint you have of yourself and the viewpoint you want to project to other people of who and what you are...
...An MBA decision...
...The music doesn't survive, but things that are related to art do...
...Instead of easy harmonies and sappy love songs, the group came out with such titles as "Wowie Zowie," "Who Are the Brain Police...
...Last year, almost alone among musicians, he stood up against the Parents' Music Resource Center, a group of prominent Washington women who objected to the sexual content of popular music and demanded that records be rated just like movies...
...You have failure...
...Not here...
...They look at your publicity photo...
...Those who are crazy enough to spend money on some unusual object or event are an endangered species...
...Q: You have said that "art is dying in this country...
...ZAPPA: It's quite a challenge to reach somebody emotionally without using words that have literal connections...
...Social pressure is placed on people to become a certain type of individual, and then rewards are heaped on people who conform to that stereotype...
...There are thousands of names of people who wrote music throughout history, yet we haven't heard one line they ever wrote...
...The business is not interested in developing artists...
...I enjoy sitting down here [in the studio] all by myself typing on the Synclavier...
...Maybe there are too many fingers on one hand, and a foot is too short over there...
...and "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet...
...There are certain harmonic climates that you can build...
...Market research will show you that...
...What are you getting for it...
...Which is not to say a composer should write what the public already wants to hear, but rather that the public is employing the composer to lead them, to show them a direction...
...That's a pretty good fucking deal...
...Q: How about the role of music in society...
...And so the value system builds up from that...
...What's the scale...
...ZAPPA: I don't think anything that a reasonable person would describe as art is going to be around...
...People don't wish to be reminded that lurking somewhere there are people who can do some shit you can't do...
...I have no fantasies about what the odds are that I'll be able to do what I want to do...
...Think of it...
...I just do it...
...To get to the level of performance where you are no longer thinking about operating a piece of machinery and can just project something emotional through the machinery, that is worthy of respect...
...In realistic terms, you're looking at a genuine daily failure syndrome...
...So as long as your station sounds like the kind of swill that the Yuppie needs to consume, you got it...
...It's like drawing a picture...
...It depends on what your viewpoint is...
...Does it work...
...And when Zappa was honored in 1968 with an invitation to perform before all the big-wigs of the music industry at the Grammy Awards, he didn't mince his words: This must be the least enjoyable night of the year for you because you have to sit there and endure the crap you perpetrate on the American public the rest of the year...
...Radio is consumed like wallpaper is consumed...
...In 1966, he and the Mothers of Invention released their first album, Freak Out...
...You aren't excellent...
...Everyone in the world loves you...
...How gay do you look...
...The interview took place in his studio from 11:00 one night until sunrise the next morning...
...Zappa, a self-taught musician, has always followed his own set of rules...
...Q: How is music selected to be heard on pop radio...
...Obviously you want to deliver to the public things that will reinforce that...
...But who's going to know...
...Q: How does a record become a hit...
...For example, Kent Nagano, who conducted the Berkeley symphony, said, "A composer has a job to do within a culture...
...it just means they didn't have hits...
Vol. 50 • November 1986 • No. 11
