![]() ![]() There’s some great stuff on here, but that band didn’t last very long. The set was incredible, all mannequins and vegetables. We all had to wear dresses mine was $200, a fortune for a dress. I guess Frank was frustrated that he couldn’t write out parts for them, but he used their characters creatively.”ĭon Preston (keyboards): “I recall doing the LP cover. The band were ‘playing musicians’ as opposed to trained, sight-reading musicians. He started recording it at the Apostolic Studios in the Village, at the same time as recording Uncle Meat. The spirit of those chaotic shows spilled over into the LP. They were playing a residency at the Garrick, a tiny downstairs venue in the West Village which held maybe 150 people. I’d never heard of Zappa, but as soon as I saw his band I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Ian Underwood: “I joined the band in August ’67, while they were based in New York. Despite the satire, it also works as one of the finest psych-rock albums of the period. Hippies, freaks, peaceniks, druggies, folk-rockers and many more find themselves on the end of Zappa’s acerbic lyrics. The cover is a straight-up parody of Sgt Pepper and, fittingly, most of its songs poke fun at the commodification of pop counterculture. I think he even went back and replaced a lot of my organ parts!” He was into the new 16-track studios and was obsessive about overdubbing. Often Frank would write arrangements for me to play while we were in the studio – I mean physically write them out on manuscript and get me to play them – as we went along. ‘Peaches En Regalia’ has the most overdubs – I recorded 10 separate tracks. There are tracks where I’m playing about half a dozen parts, first on piano, then organ, then clarinet, flute and sax. We’d record live – often just a bass and drums – and then I’d overdub on top of that. But Hot Rats was more about over-dubbing than anything else. ![]() Jean Luc Ponty and Don Harris both play electric violin, Beefheart guests on vocals, Paul Humphrys plays drums. There’s lots of other big Cali session players on there. His son, Shuggie Otis, plays bass on one track. I’m not sure what his role was, but he was an old friend of Frank’s. “A guy called Johnny Otis, who was a big-band leader from the ’50s, he was around the studio while it was being recorded. It was a chance to use a few studio musicians and try other routines out. The album was kind of a turn from the way the earlier band had been. I think he was keen to record an album of instrumentals, and he wanted to work with very technically adept players who could play anything he put in front of them. By the time we got to Hot Rats, the standard line is that Frank didn’t want to be stereotyped as just a comedy rock performer, so he ditched the jokey lyrics and the experimental stuff for this album of instrumentals. That’s what I liked – complex music with bizarre humour. What attracted me to the band when I joined was a mixture of all the things I liked – a combination of Stockhausen, Ornette Coleman, corny jokes, blues, Stravinsky and so on. Ian Underwood (keyboards, woodwind, vocals): “This was a big change in direction for Frank. Largely instrumental, it features Zappa’s high-school buddy Captain Beefheart singing the only vocal on the album (“Willie The Pimp”). Newcomers begin here – this rocking, brilliantly ambitious follow-up to an album of 1950s doo-wop pastiches was Zappa’s biggest UK hit, and his first album after splitting up the first Mothers Of Invention. Nobody heard anything like that when it came out.” ‘Who Are The Brain Police?’ is about mind control. ‘Help, I’m A Rock’ is dedicated to Elvis Presley. ‘Trouble Every Day’ is about the Watts riots being presented on TV as a sports show. Frank told us, ‘If you will play our music, I will make you rich and famous.’ He relocated us from Pomona and took us about 27 miles west to Hollywood to get us signed. I recommended Frank to them – I had worked with him earlier. ![]() They wanted to sack their guitarist, Ray Hunt, so they got me to do it. There was me on vocals, Jimmy Carl Black on drums, Roy Estrada on bass and Davy Coronado on sax. Ray Collins (vocals): “We were initially an R’n’B covers band called The Soul Giants. It even ends with a 12-minute “unfinished ballet”, a portent of things to come… ![]() Most of the songs are short pop tracks, heavily influenced by blues and R’n’B, but there are Varèse-inspired electronics, early examples of musique concrète and strange spoken-word exchanges between Pamela ‘Suzy Creamcheese’ Zarubica and Kim Fowley. The first ever double album in rock history, reputedly pipping Blonde On Blonde to the honour, is a collection of dark, satirical rock music, acknowledged by Paul McCartney as a major influence on Sgt Pepper. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |