Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Zappa, Frank
Label: Rykodisc Records
Release: 1968
Rating: 5/5
Frank’s third album, “We’re Only In It For The Money”, is without a doubt one of his most notorious works, ranking among the best and most provocative masterpieces by a sly artist who spent most of his music mocking the social reality of his time in a completely unique way. “We’re Only In It For The Money” is an uncompromising conceptual parody of the then-hugely-topical hippie movement and the “Summer of Love”, and at the same time it reflects Frank’s cynical take on the pop trends of the day, which his intellect of course saw through very quickly as hollow and two-faced. Frank originally planned to record an album called “Our Man In Nirvana”, combining the music of his band The Mothers Of Invention with sketches by comedian Lenny Bruce. But before he could pull it off, the release of The Beatles classic “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band” beat him to it. The media proclaimed the latter the first concept album. Frank, who by then had already put out two (not concept albums in the strict sense, since they didn’t have any overarching concepts or stories, but certainly at least when it comes to shared lyrical themes), decided to react accordingly. Especially after Paul McCartney said that it was Frank’s albums that had influenced the making of “Sgt. Pepper’s”. So he cooked up a fitting satirical answer in the form of an album that parodied every aspect of hippie culture, the “Sgt. Pepper’s” album, and American society (Frank’s traditional target). The music on the album is an effective mix of satire, absurdity, avant-garde orchestral arrangements, ’50s doo-wop, ’60s surf rock, psychedelia, musique concrète, jazzy rhythmic improvisation, and rock’n’ roll. As is typical for concept albums, most of the pieces flow into one another.
Frank didn’t really expect the hippie movement to fall apart as quickly as it did (in fact within a year or two, after the concert tragedy at the Rolling Stones show in Altamont, where bikers beat a concertgoer to death) or that it would keep shaping social trends for a while (which would have left him one of his easy targets for his satirical shenanigans a bit longer). The decadent movement, which wasn’t going anywhere, had been ripe for the chop for some time, and Frank once again used the musical style of some of the popular groups of the day more than effectively to parody it. With his cynical “hungry freaks” The Mothers Of Invention, Frank had been making people uneasy since the very moment he showed up on the popular music scene, both among the bands that sympathized with hippie trends and the teenage fantasies he laid bare to the bone, and among hypocritical politicians and all the fake moralists, of whom “God’s chosen land” has never had a shortage.
Later editions of the album were even censored in places because of “sexually explicit” lyrics and attacks on false social morality. Luckily, the latest CD edition doesn’t contain these prudish cuts, so you can hear some of Frank’s most provocative lyrics. The whole cover was conceived as a parody of the “Sgt. Pepper’s” cover. On the front, just like on that album, you can see a collage of various personalities (including Jimi Hendrix with a little girl with covered eyes in his arms) along with the band members dressed up in weird outfits. Inside is a grotesque photo of the band members, and the one who stands out for grotesqueness is Frank (who else) with girly pigtails.Frank asks in a speech bubble whether this is the first phase of “Lumpy Gravy” (the next album, released the same year, on which he asked whether it was the second phase of “We’re Only In It For The Money”). On the back is a photo where the band members, except for one guy who’s facing the camera holding a sheet of paper, have their backs turned. Out of fear of fierce reactions and possible copyright trouble, the label botched the whole thing at release, and instead of the excellent “Sgt. Pepper’s” parody, put the other half of the inside band photo on the cover. Later CD editions managed to fix this mistake. In the tradition of the “Sgt. Pepper’s” booklet, which had special drawn “gadgets” to cut out, here you find their grotesque versions, containing hair, a mustache and a beard (in Frank’s style), a nipple, a dollar bill (with a belly button instead of the president’s portrait and the words “united mutations”), and a police badge with a picture of sound engineer Gary Kellgren.
The album holds quite a few of Frank’s better-known pieces, tying together this sonic collage of absurdity and biting satire of hippie culture and American social hypocrisy. Apart from the closing piece, which runs over six minutes, it’s dominated by short, mostly sub-three-minute, interlinked numbers. The opener “Are You Hang Up?” is a combination of absurd dialogues and musique concrète. Among other things, it features the stoned-silly hippie monologue of Eric Clapton, the famous guitarist of Cream (incidentally one of the many popular musicians Frank took satirical shots at throughout his career), the hysterical “chopped-up” commentary of engineer Gary Kellgren, who was bothered by the dominant energy Frank radiated in the recording room, a grotesque guitar twang, a sudden stomach rumble, and a monologue by drummer Jimmy Carl Black, who claimed to be the band’s “Indian”. “Who Needs The Peace Corps?” is Frank’s satire of hippies and everyone who follows hippie trends (i.e. smoking assorted intoxicating substances, flowers in the hair, leather hair bands, esoteric pendants, scruffy beards, greasy long hair, etc.) without caring about the social and political concept of the movement. It also has a monologue by a typical “wannabe” hippie who wants to become a rock band manager and a mention of the hippie “capital”, San Francisco. Sonically, it’s a bizarre mix of psychedelic rock and jazz. “Concretation Mon” is yet another biting satire of the American social system and of cops who sympathized with hippies and acted their way, with a merciless abomination of folk, psychedelia, and surf rock elements.
“Mom & Dad”, on the other hand, in sharp contrast, deals with social repression and the “guardians of the law” coming down on “different” youth (as if Frank already knew that two years later the National Guard in Ohio would fire on student protesters). A melancholic psychedelic folk ballad that, despite its grotesque, mockingly sympathetic lyrics, manages to show a certain sympathy on Frank’s part for the socially and politically critical side of the movement he’d been mocking all along, and he had long known full well that the hippie fairy tale wasn’t leading anywhere. “Telephone Conversation” features a phone chat between the groupie and occasional singer Suzy Creamcheese (who showed up as a beloved “mascot” on the previous two albums, and here you can spot her on the cover too, right by Frank’s shoulder) and her friend, who warns her about her father. “Bow Tie Daddy” is a half-minute country grotesque about a dysfunctional dad. “Harry, You’re a Beast”, the only “survivor” of the pieces they’d planned to record with Lenny Bruce, is one of the most grotesque creations on the album, with plenty of musique concrète elements, symphonic piano arrangements, psychedelia, and lyrics that were censored several times in earlier editions (a more than graphic description of oral sex starring Harry and Madge). “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body” starts out as a doo-wop (incidentally a popular style Frank loved to satirize after playing it heavily with bands in the ’50s) grotesque with deliberately Lennon-esque vocals in the intro, then morphs into an energetic psychedelic rocker with Frank’s satire of the general decadence of American youth.
“Absolutely Free” could be called the central piece of the album, since it sums up its core concept most completely. This is a thoroughly devastating critique of hippie culture, and above all of those who follow it just to be socially accepted, get some benefit out of it, and don’t understand the movement’s social message, as well as of the corporate exploitation and manipulation of the “flower” movement. After the opening orchestral piano arrangement comes one of Frank’s most mocking lyrics ever, including the line “flower power sucks”. It’s all greased over with wobbly psychedelic folk from acoustic guitar strings and grotesque multi-part vocals. “Flower Punk” is a perfect psychedelic romp with countless absurd effects, “trippy” guitar, stoned, “through the nose” vocals, and plenty of musique concrète elements. Through guitar distortion it spills into absurd dialogues, where a voice quite similar to Joe Pesci’s chimes in. “Hot Pop” and “Nasal Retentive Calliope Music” feature, among other things, the whispering of one of the band members, vocal decompression, the sound of a “drain”, the giggling of “mice”, and “melodious” belching. A very vivid sonic collage presenting the leisure activities of some of Frank’s acquaintances. “Let’s Make The Water Turn Black”, about a typical American dysfunctional family, is a mocking pop/rock’n’roller with a playful guitar melody and burlesque vocals, closed out by the grumbling of a “bear with a cold”. “The Idiot Bastard Son” is a devastating satire of American politicians, especially their dim-witted sons (I can’t imagine how much Frank would be enjoying himself today, in the age of “lizard” American presidential dynasties) with plenty of musique concrète elements (belching, rumbling, and whining) and brilliant lyrics (“The Father’s a Nazi In Congress Today, The Mother Is a Hooker Somewhere in L.A.”).
“Lonely Little Girl” is an energetic rocker with mocking vocals run through an effect and
lyrics about a frustrated teenage girl, with the obligatory absurd ending. “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance” is another devastatingly burlesque satirization of hippies, mocking their fairy tale about “times when everyone who’s lonely will be free and people will be able to dance around naked”. It’s all laid over psychedelic folk, absurd “la-la-la” vocals, and mocking “yodeling”. This piece also showed up, under a shortened title and as an instrumental, on Frank’s next album, “Lumpy Gravy”. “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body (reprise)” is a repeat of the doo-wop burlesque motif from the first half of the album, this time offering the thought that “the ugliest part of the body is the mind”. At the end, the rumbling and the whining of the “mice” chime in again. “Mother People” is one of the best burlesques on the album, satirizing some of the leading lights of psychedelia and their “flower” philosophy. Fittingly, you can once again hear Lennon-esque vocals. An extremely witty mix of psychedelic pop and satire with an interesting orchestral arrangement in the middle section. The closing “The Chrom Plated Megaphone Of Destiny”, at over six minutes, is the longest piece on the album and also one of the weirdest and most grotesque experiments of Frank’s early period, with motifs as absurd as only Frank could pull off. It’s packed with psychedelic improvisations, absurd musique concrète sounds, and a few orchestral arrangements too. A veritable avant-garde orgasm of musique concrète with the giggling of “evil little gnomes” and other bizarre sounds.
“We’re Only In It For The Money” is definitely one of Frank’s best albums, and even today, despite a rather anachronistic concept (since the hippie movement fell apart just a few years after the album came out, he performed material from it pretty rarely live), it’s considered a masterpiece of avant-garde rock and social satire. As social satire, it’s surely among Frank’s five best albums. Musically, it was likewise one of the most innovative albums of its day, with a big influence on the development and shaping of progressive rock (and the emergence of some much more “cynical” bands than most of those from the ’60s). In the following years Frank would go off into completely different sonic experiments, and The Mothers Of Invention would increasingly become just one of many backing musicians helping him bring his compositions to life rather than a homogeneous band (with numerous lineup changes). In terms of the collaboration between Frank and the early incarnation of The Mothers Of Invention, I can certainly single out “We’re Only In It For The Money” as the peak of their avant-garde experiments with the popular music of the day and with more “serious” musical genres, and of delivering convincing social satire, even though Frank would later create quite a few more advanced and more exciting works. ”We’re Only In It For The Money” remains a classic and the visionary album that hammered one of the first nails into the coffin of the hippie fairy tale and heralded the start of a far more down-to-earth, unpredictable, and chaotic era.
Lineup
Frank Zappa – vocals, guitar, piano, voices
Roy Estrada – bass guitar, vocals
Don Preston – keyboards
Jimmy Carl Black – drums, trumpet, vocals
Ian Underwood – woodwinds, keyboards, voices
Euclid James `Motorhead` Sherwood – woodwinds, voices
Billy Mundi – drums
Bunk Gardner – woodwinds
Dick Barber – vocals
Pamela Zarubica – vocals
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Eric Clapton – speech (1)
Gary Kellgren – speech (1)
Spider Barbour – vocals
Dick Kunc – vocals
Vicki Kellgren – speech over the phone
Sid Sharp – orchestral arrangements on “Absolutely Free”, “Mother People” and “The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny”
Production
Frank Zappa
Tracklist
1. Are You Hung Up? (1:24)
2. Who Needs The Peace Corps? (2:34)
3. Concentration Moon (2:22)
4. Mom & Dad (2:16)
5. Telephone Conversation (0:48)
6. Bow Tie Daddy (0:33)
7. Harry, You’re A Beast (1:21)
8. What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (1:03)
9. Absolutley Free (3:24)
10. Flower Punk (3:03)
11. Hot Poop (0:23)
12. Nasal Retentive Calliope Music (2:02)
13. Let’s Make The Water Turn Black (2:01)
14. The Idiot Bastard Son (3:18)
15. Lonely Little Girl (1:09)
16. Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance(1:32)
17. What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (Reprise) (1:02)
18. Mother People (2:26)
19. The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny (6:25)
Album length: 39:06
