Post by The Cap'n on Jan 28, 2019 19:25:21 GMT -5
Introduction
Introduction, Pt. II
The core of our disagreement about Zappa at this point appears to be his assessment of hippie counterculture. iluvleniloud said “I maintain his music is still incredibly even-handed in terms of satirizing the hippies and squares.” Before I continue, I do need to say that I agree with that: Zappa tore into most sides of most things. My position is that it wasn’t just a matter of trying to be fair in his criticisms, or that “he was more against the stupid parts of the hippie movement as opposed to its beginnings or core ideals” (as she said in the same post), but rather that he truly dismissed or even disdained hippie counterculture—not just misguided kids jumping on bandwagons (although certainly them, too), but the entirety of the movement.
Cohen: You know this cultural revolution they say happened at the end of the Sixties?
It’s a fair point iluvleniloud made about ‘60s artists saying after the fact that they themselves weren’t hippies and didn’t like hippies. What’s more, taking Frank Zappa specifically at face value about what he dislikes is a risky proposition. For example, he repeatedly claimed not to like doo-wop and jazz … but he sure used a lot of both in his music. Still, one can’t dismiss his statements out of hand. I think Zappa’s contemporaneous and subsequent statements against hippies, combined with his actual political and cultural positions, warrant serious consideration.
Q:You once told Davy Jones of The Monkees you liked Monkees music better than anything you’d heard from San Francisco. Were you serious?
A: I said most of what they recorded sounded better. People think San Francisco rock is supposed to be cosmic value and all that, but it is manufactured music and manufactured music is worthless. Monkees music is manufactured, too, of course, and I’d like to say at this point: they’re worth about the same, except the Monkees records sound better produced.
Mick Wall said in Classic Rock #178 (and now online at www.loudersound.com/features/frank-zappa-people-thought-the-beatles-were-god-that-s-not-correct ) that “Despite being briefly considered as a producer for The Doors, Zappa viewed fellow Angelino acts like The Doors and Love as glorified hippies, which he considered ‘a very conformist group, with an established uniform, vocabulary and lifestyle.’”
In general, I would argue that he believed hippies weren’t much more than another fashion trend, another expression of establishment commercial culture. Following on the above discussion of hippie bands, he discussed their impact on the music business in strongly negative terms in his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book. Zappa bemoans the addition of a younger generation, a “hip” generation, into the music business. “We were better off with that attitude [of “old cigar-cigar-chopper guys who listened to the tapes and said, “I dunno. Who knows what the fuck it is?”] than we are now.” He says things got worse when the record labels “hired the hippie bastard” who said ‘I know [what the kids want]—I got the same hair.’” Zappa goes on: “The new guys [the “hippie bastards”] don’t have that spirit [to take a chance on what they don’t understand]. They are forever looking over their shoulder. (Remember when they used to have the same hair? All that shit they stuck up their nose made it fall out a couple of years ago.)”
On to drug culture… I don’t want to oversimplify things and say, or even imply, that drugs equal hippies and no-drugs equals anti-hippie. But it’s worth noting that Zappa was pretty strongly anti-drug (though as a libertarian type, he also believed they should be legal).
In his autobiography, he talks about how at the time of the recording of their debut album, Freak Out!, he “had several arguments with the guys in the band who were into consciousness-altering entertainment products’. … The classic line of the meeting [with management and the band] was delivered by [singer] Ray Collins: ”You need to go to Big Sur and take acid with someone who believes in God.’ … Undaunted by this fascinating suggestion, I continued my duties as the ‘resident asshole.”
(All stylization such as bolding and italics is Zappa’s. He loved the stuff. Makes him a pain to quote.)
And lastly, the politics associated with hippies (such as they were conceptually, beyond dropping out).
I don’t want to oversimplify things either by saying or implying that left-leaning causes should be associated with hippies. But some general correlation seems legitimate. Hippies, of course, were known to form communes. Such a thing is—by definition, if not by formalized political philosophy—communism. Zappa’s thoughts on communism (as written in his autobiography)? “Communism doesn’t work. It’s against a basic law of nature: ‘PEOPLE WANT TO OWN STUFF.’ … Communism doesn’t work because it is out of phase with human nature.”
It wasn’t just the radical philosophies Zappa disliked. He also hated labor unions, which to be fair aren’t a core hippie belief and indeed were a part of the establishment culture of the postwar, pre-Reagan era. But they’re associated with left-leaning ideology, which is associated with hippies, I’d say. In his book, he said: “Unions, through their PR firms, perpetuate the myth that America is a unionized country, and that all the unions are there to fight for the working man and woman. … [W]hat they have turned into is a network of organizations that take money from working-class people to finance a banking scheme which often benefits organized crime. In the case of the arts, I have experienced situations in which union stagehands were paid astonishing amounts of money for doing nothing. … I realize that a lot of people feel that speaking out against unions is almost ’Un-American.’ I remind them: not all of America is unionized—in fact, the vast majority of Americans are not—and glad about it.”
Zappa is quoted about a few political positions in various San Diego Tribune interviews compiled here (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-music-zappa-quotes-20170429-story.html )
I think this evidence does demonstrate that Zappa wasn’t a fan of hippie counterculture. Or of hippies in general. He considered himself a sort of independent auditor, or a third party of sorts, free to criticize everyone—not equally, but as much as he saw fit. Mostly that criticism was for establishment stupidity, big government overreach, a brain-dead citizenry, and religious fundamentalists trying to force their values on other people. But sometimes it was aimed squarely at the hippies with whom he was often confused, and that criticism was deep, broad, and meant seriously.
Long, long ago, in a thread far, far away, iluvleniloud and I took a few tangential steps outside of the topic at hand to discuss—we can even say debate—two of my three favorite American musicians in rock history, Lou Reed and Frank Zappa. My rebuttal of sorts on Reed has already been posted in its own thread; here’s the one on Zappa.
While this post is a (probably overlong) summation of my points from that discussion, once it’s done, it’s done, and people can feel free to take the thread off into All Things Zappa.
Without further ado…
Introduction, Pt. II
The core of our disagreement about Zappa at this point appears to be his assessment of hippie counterculture. iluvleniloud said “I maintain his music is still incredibly even-handed in terms of satirizing the hippies and squares.” Before I continue, I do need to say that I agree with that: Zappa tore into most sides of most things. My position is that it wasn’t just a matter of trying to be fair in his criticisms, or that “he was more against the stupid parts of the hippie movement as opposed to its beginnings or core ideals” (as she said in the same post), but rather that he truly dismissed or even disdained hippie counterculture—not just misguided kids jumping on bandwagons (although certainly them, too), but the entirety of the movement.
That said, I am not arguing and would not argue he was against peace, for example. Or love. He wasn’t, nor is any right-minded human being. But if valuing peace and love makes one pro-hippie, then even many conservative Republicans are pro-hippie.
Finally, the Points
We need to define hippie counterculture, to some extent. While I may not go so far as to provide a real definition, I think I can reasonably identify a few key aspects of it. There is the idea that because “the establishment” or “the man” was so off base, was making a mess of the world, the appropriate response was to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Disengage from “square” establishment culture and be a part of a largely communal, pro-drug, free-love counterculture instead. And participate in that culture’s art, fashion, music, and the like.Zappa absolutely and unquestionably did not believe in “dropping out” of mainstream culture. He was politically active—not in a partisan way, by any means—but in terms of pure political activism. He strongly promoted the Motor Voter Act (which eventually became law) to simplify voter registration, and held registration drives at his concerts at least through the ‘80s, if not before. He famously spoke before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee to oppose the PMRC’s censorious efforts. He became a regular on CNN and other networks to discuss public issues. And late in life, he considered a run for president before becoming too ill to continue. Dropping out was not an option.
What about a more active, radical approach? Here is an excerpt from a 1967 interview with Frank Kofsky in Jazz & Pop magazine, found at www.afka.net/Articles/1967-09_Jazz_Pop.htm
KOFSKY: Are [hippies] the people you want to appeal to, or is that what you want people to do then – destroy the system?
ZAPPA: No, not exactly destroy it. I want it modified to the point where it works properly. A lot of people think that a new political movement, the ideal new political movement, is to bust it all up and start all over again with tribes and feathers in your hair and everybody loves everybody else. That's a lie. Those kids don't love each other, they're in that because it's like another club – it's like the modern-day equivalent of a street gang. It's clean pachucos, a little hairier perhaps. But it's not right.
First of all, the idea of busting it all down and starting all over again is stupid.
From the same interview:
KOFSKY: Don't you think that this emphasis on love that we see among hippies really reflects not so much their ability to love at the moment, but their desire to create the kind of society where it will be possible to love?
KOFSKY: Ralph Gleason tells me that this is happening to kids in the Haight-Ashbury in particular, by simply turning their back on big-corporation society and going out and creating a parallel society of their own.
ZAPPA: No, I think that what they do is a definite indication of their inability to love, because the whole hippie scene is wishful thinking. They wish they could love but they're full of shit, and they're kidding themselves into saying, "I love! I love! I love!" And the more times they say it, the more times they think they love. But like it doesn't work, and most of them don't have the guts to admit to themselves that it's a lie.
KOFSKY: Do you think that this is because it's an early phase of the thing?
ZAPPA: Oh yeah, I see it growing into something that really works. I'm glad the kids are pretending they're dropping out, because when they find out that that doesn't work they'll be ready for some sort of action.
KOFSKY: Revolutionary action?
ZAPPA: Sure. I think a revolution – not the sloppy kind, but the kind that really works – you know, it's about time for that.
KOFSKY: Do you want to distinguish between the sloppy kind and . . . ?
ZAPPA: The sloppy kind is blood-in-the-street and all that bullshit. Today, a revolution can be accomplished by means of mass media, with technical advances that Madison Avenue is using to sell you washing machines and a loaf of bread and everything else. This can be used to change the whole country around – painlessly.
KOFSKY: How so?
ZAPPA: Because all those facilities are available, and facilities that the people are using now on Madison Avenue – there are techniques above and beyond that which they aren't aware of and which I think I've come into – things that they're not ready to believe exist yet. Because they have a tendency to get into a formula, like they get into their bag with their motivational researchers with their degrees, who have only scratched the surface of what the youth movement is about. They don't know youth from shit. And that's the market. You know, they're still selling products to the youth on a glandular level. There are ways to move the youth to action through their brains and not through their glands. You have to start off part of the thing on the glandular level just to get their interest.
[…]KOFSKY: Ralph Gleason tells me that this is happening to kids in the Haight-Ashbury in particular, by simply turning their back on big-corporation society and going out and creating a parallel society of their own.
ZAPPA: That doesn't work. They can't survive. That's like saying, "We're going to secede from the union; we'll have our town secede from the union." That's stupid.
Almost a decade later, in a 1975 interview with Scott Cohen in Circus Raves and found online at www.afka.net/Articles/1975-12_Circus_Raves.htm , Zappa spoke quite negatively about the entire concept of the so-called cultural revolution.
Cohen: You know this cultural revolution they say happened at the end of the Sixties?
Zappa: What revolution:
Cohen: This cultural revolution – you know, dope, long hair .
Zappa: What about it?
Cohen: Do you think it ever happened?
Zappa: Well, I guess the hair actually did grow and the dope actually was sold and bought and people did use it...
Cohen: Don't you think those years were qualitatively different from the previous and following years?
Zappa: Well, I'd say the action really started around 1964 and petered out and plummeted to its lowest ebb by the time you got to Woodstock, because by that point all the hippies were so impressed with themselves they didn't know which end was up. They got to the point where they were taking themselves so seriously that they thought they were going to rule the world.
Cohen: There were good vibrations in the '67-'70 period, and you were particularly cynical then.
Zappa: Look, let me put it to you this way: I wasn't particularly cynical, I remained to be as cynical as I ever was. The fact of the matter was everyone else was going around kissing everybody else's ass, and if you didn't have two fingers up in the air, some beads around your neck, a song tied on your head and a couple of flowers in your pocket, then you didn't have any peer-group status. But that whole thing was an immense pile of shit. Now I said so, so what did that make me, weird? That put me on the outside of what was going on. I was like a villain to everybody because I dared to say flower power sucked. I suppose you were into flower power? A lot of people were really into it. They thought it was the end-all. They really thought they were going to rule the world with a flower in their hand. It was nuts. They were believing in all these Yippie leaders and whatever else these assholes were telling them. They were just so full of dope that they were going blindly their own way, not thinking for a moment that the origin of LSD was in the CIA and a lot of them probably don't like to think about that now. By taking LSD they were helping the CIA in one of their favorite experiments. After they got done taking volunteers from the army, they actually made a profit selling it to people on the street, and seeing what actually happened to a civilian population. They got it in the ass so bad from the CIA that they don't even know. So to sit on the outside of that and say it was stupid will not make you any friends in the group of people who really believe in it, and since there were more of them than of me, it sort of set me up in a negative light for all the years to come.
Cohen: But you liked playing that role, didn't you?
Zappa: What, saying flower power sucked? Look, I'm not a villain. I'm an honest person and I'll say what I believe, and if that's what it takes to be a villain, I'll put on the black cape any day.
Then, in the late ‘70s, he said this to Dave Fass and Dave Street in Acid Rock magazine, as found online at wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Phi_Zappa_Crappa_Interview:
Street: How did you see yourself fit into the acid rock scene of the sixties, in terms of the philosophy that was going around and the lifestyle that was going down?
Zappa: I was laughing at it.
Street: You didn't think it was very worthwhile or meaningful?
Zappa: I never was too fond of hippies.
Street: You're not a hippie, then?
Zappa: No.
Street: What do you think a hippie is?
Zappa: A hippie is somebody who puts a leather band around his head and gets stoned and dresses like the guy next to him. There was so much conformity that the people become servants
Street: And you're opposed to this conformity?
Zappa: I think it's good for the people who like to conform and not good for me.
I think it’s safe to say there are usually more than two sides, and opposing one doesn’t mean one favors the other. Zappa clearly isn’t pro-establishment in the slightest. But that didn’t make him pro-hippie, or make him identify with the aspects of the counterculture that hippies represented.
It’s a fair point iluvleniloud made about ‘60s artists saying after the fact that they themselves weren’t hippies and didn’t like hippies. What’s more, taking Frank Zappa specifically at face value about what he dislikes is a risky proposition. For example, he repeatedly claimed not to like doo-wop and jazz … but he sure used a lot of both in his music. Still, one can’t dismiss his statements out of hand. I think Zappa’s contemporaneous and subsequent statements against hippies, combined with his actual political and cultural positions, warrant serious consideration.
What about his views on the San Francisco and Los Angeles bands associated with the hippies? Well he told Rolling Stone this in an interview with Jerry Hopkins in July 1968:
Q:You once told Davy Jones of The Monkees you liked Monkees music better than anything you’d heard from San Francisco. Were you serious?
A: I said most of what they recorded sounded better. People think San Francisco rock is supposed to be cosmic value and all that, but it is manufactured music and manufactured music is worthless. Monkees music is manufactured, too, of course, and I’d like to say at this point: they’re worth about the same, except the Monkees records sound better produced.
Mick Wall said in Classic Rock #178 (and now online at www.loudersound.com/features/frank-zappa-people-thought-the-beatles-were-god-that-s-not-correct ) that “Despite being briefly considered as a producer for The Doors, Zappa viewed fellow Angelino acts like The Doors and Love as glorified hippies, which he considered ‘a very conformist group, with an established uniform, vocabulary and lifestyle.’”
In general, I would argue that he believed hippies weren’t much more than another fashion trend, another expression of establishment commercial culture. Following on the above discussion of hippie bands, he discussed their impact on the music business in strongly negative terms in his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book. Zappa bemoans the addition of a younger generation, a “hip” generation, into the music business. “We were better off with that attitude [of “old cigar-cigar-chopper guys who listened to the tapes and said, “I dunno. Who knows what the fuck it is?”] than we are now.” He says things got worse when the record labels “hired the hippie bastard” who said ‘I know [what the kids want]—I got the same hair.’” Zappa goes on: “The new guys [the “hippie bastards”] don’t have that spirit [to take a chance on what they don’t understand]. They are forever looking over their shoulder. (Remember when they used to have the same hair? All that shit they stuck up their nose made it fall out a couple of years ago.)”
On to drug culture… I don’t want to oversimplify things and say, or even imply, that drugs equal hippies and no-drugs equals anti-hippie. But it’s worth noting that Zappa was pretty strongly anti-drug (though as a libertarian type, he also believed they should be legal).
In his autobiography, he talks about how at the time of the recording of their debut album, Freak Out!, he “had several arguments with the guys in the band who were into consciousness-altering entertainment products’. … The classic line of the meeting [with management and the band] was delivered by [singer] Ray Collins: ”You need to go to Big Sur and take acid with someone who believes in God.’ … Undaunted by this fascinating suggestion, I continued my duties as the ‘resident asshole.”
(All stylization such as bolding and italics is Zappa’s. He loved the stuff. Makes him a pain to quote.)
And lastly, the politics associated with hippies (such as they were conceptually, beyond dropping out).
I don’t want to oversimplify things either by saying or implying that left-leaning causes should be associated with hippies. But some general correlation seems legitimate. Hippies, of course, were known to form communes. Such a thing is—by definition, if not by formalized political philosophy—communism. Zappa’s thoughts on communism (as written in his autobiography)? “Communism doesn’t work. It’s against a basic law of nature: ‘PEOPLE WANT TO OWN STUFF.’ … Communism doesn’t work because it is out of phase with human nature.”
It wasn’t just the radical philosophies Zappa disliked. He also hated labor unions, which to be fair aren’t a core hippie belief and indeed were a part of the establishment culture of the postwar, pre-Reagan era. But they’re associated with left-leaning ideology, which is associated with hippies, I’d say. In his book, he said: “Unions, through their PR firms, perpetuate the myth that America is a unionized country, and that all the unions are there to fight for the working man and woman. … [W]hat they have turned into is a network of organizations that take money from working-class people to finance a banking scheme which often benefits organized crime. In the case of the arts, I have experienced situations in which union stagehands were paid astonishing amounts of money for doing nothing. … I realize that a lot of people feel that speaking out against unions is almost ’Un-American.’ I remind them: not all of America is unionized—in fact, the vast majority of Americans are not—and glad about it.”
Zappa is quoted about a few political positions in various San Diego Tribune interviews compiled here (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-music-zappa-quotes-20170429-story.html )
The state of the union — "I would say today's political situation is so abysmal that, well, C-SPAN TV re-ran a speech by Spiro Agnew at the (1968) Republican convention, when he was nominated, and he looked terrific. Agnew looked terrific. Give me a break! What do you do when Agnew looks terrific?”
His political leanings: “I consider myself to be a a full-time, hard-core conservative, which means you want a small government and lower taxes. But, beyond that, I don't want to know about their (Republican) platform. Because this abortion business, prayers in school and the rest of that — forget it. But I am right there for a smaller government and lower taxes.”
His possible 1992 presidential bid: “My main qualifications are that I don't play golf, I don't take vacations and I do think the U.S. constitution is one hell of a document and that this country would work better if people adhered to it more closely,”
That’s right, he said he’s a conservative. And his statement wasn’t a one-off, either. He included a chapter in his autobiography titled “Practical Conservatism” in which he again called himself a conservative—this was in 1988—and went on to describe his positions, which we’d call libertarian, more or less. (It’s somewhat ironic that so-called movement conservatives have at least given lip service to this same type of conservatism in the past couple of decades, though in reality many have continued to back the cultural conservatism that often contradicts this.)
I think this evidence does demonstrate that Zappa wasn’t a fan of hippie counterculture. Or of hippies in general. He considered himself a sort of independent auditor, or a third party of sorts, free to criticize everyone—not equally, but as much as he saw fit. Mostly that criticism was for establishment stupidity, big government overreach, a brain-dead citizenry, and religious fundamentalists trying to force their values on other people. But sometimes it was aimed squarely at the hippies with whom he was often confused, and that criticism was deep, broad, and meant seriously.