Nobody might accuse Frank Zappa of missing ambition. His first album with The Mothers Of Invention, 1966’s Freak Out!, was a sprawling double that took purpose on the ills of recent US society as Zappa perceived them – consumerism, racism, censorship, you identify it – and set his ideas to a cutting-edge and mischievous mixture of rock, blues, trendy classical, doo-wop, and avant-garde sounds.
For his subsequent trick – the next yr’s Absolutely Free – Zappa upped the ante. The composer conceived of the album as two lengthy items, one on both sides of the unique vinyl launch. Zappa took inspiration from opera. Interviewed by Don Paulsen in December 1966, Zappa revealed that his upcoming work can be “rock’n’roll music… but it’s an oratorio… What it is is maybe eight songs that are edited together – wham! – like that, like one continuous piece of music… a panorama of American life today.”
Listen to Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention’s Absolutely Free now.
Traditionally, oratorios are of a spiritual and devotional nature. Zappa’s devilish twist was to double down on the criticisms of American life he aired on Freak Out! The lyrics of Absolutely Free have been grittier, weirder, and extra outspoken than his debut. Zappa was railing in opposition to each facet of society. “My theory is that, in America, they purposely avoid teaching you to evaluate… They don’t want everybody evaluating every piece of the world they live in,” mentioned Zappa in a 1967 Melody Maker interview. “The whole machinery in the States would collapse because everybody would suss the rotten society they are forced to live in and will continue to live in unless they get up and start changing things.”
The passivity of the American public was a favourite theme of Zappa’s on Absolutely Free. The cartoonish psych-rock of “Call Any Vegetable” carried a severe message, as Zappa informed Barry Miles of The International Times: “People who are inactive in a society… people who do not live up to their responsibilities are vegetables. I feel that these people, even if they are inactive, apathetic, or unconcerned at this point, can be motivated toward a more useful sort of existence. I believe that if you call any vegetable, then it will respond to you.”
Zappa’s ire wasn’t simply aimed on the Average Joe. Despite being hailed as a voice of the counterculture, Zappa had few type phrases for hippies on “Plastic People.” The tune referenced riots that happened in Los Angeles in late 1966, wherein roughly 1,000 demonstrators protested on the Sunset Strip after a interval of enforced curfews, mass arrests, and raids on hip music golf equipment. Police misjudged the scenario, issues turned nasty, and over 300 tie-dyed protestors discovered themselves within the West Hollywood sheriff station. Buffalo Springfield’s Steven Stills witnessed the scenes firsthand and wrote “For What It’s Worth,” an era-defining name for compassion and understanding. Zappa’s “Plastic People” demonized the police, but additionally criticized the protestors for permitting themselves to be manipulated by these in cost within the first place.
Still, Zappa reserved his most scathing lyrics for “the men who make your laws.” “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” pointed the finger at authorities corruption, with the character City Hall Fred embodying all that’s sleazy and perverted. Zappa’s unflinching description of Fred’s actions may be uncomfortable, however the listener is in little question as to the morals of the character. Zappa spoke about it with The International Times: “‘Brown Shoes Don’t Make It’ is a song about the people who run the government, the people who make the laws that keep you from living the kind of life you know you should lead. These unfortunate people manufacture inequitable laws and ordinances, perhaps unaware of the fact that the restrictions they place on the young people in a society are a result of their own hidden sexual frustrations. Dirty old men have no business running your country.”
“Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” additionally emphasizes Zappa’s fast evolution as a composer and arranger. It’s a unprecedented piece of music, hurtling via 22 distinct sections in seven-and-a-half minutes with astonishing dexterity. Bluesy psychedelia, Sprechstimme, foley sound making, chamber music, storage rock, classical, music corridor, a Beach Boys homage, doo-wop… it’s all there, and extra, earlier than Zappa brings the curtain down with a riveting and chaotic orchestral part. It actually confirmed the extent of what the composer was able to.
Absolutely Free nonetheless stands up as an exciting and audacious assertion, that includes a few of Zappa’s finest early work. Of course, he was solely simply getting began…
Listen to Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention’s Absolutely Free now.