Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Zappa, Frank
Label: Rykodisc Records
Released: 1969
Rating: 5/5
Frank Zappa, the legendary composer, guitarist, singer, director, satirist and later public enemy No. 1 of every two-faced guardian of American public morals, tossed hot rats into his bubbling cauldron of musical ingredients and spices in the late ’60s and cooked up an album that his fans still consider the man’s greatest masterpiece and one of the key albums in the history of jazz rock fusion. What is it that makes “Hot Rats” stand out among dozens of Frank’s albums, so that it lands right at the top so often when his devotees list his best work? There are several answers, but above all the album stands out in his huge discography for its accessibility, its melodicism, the beauty of the individual arrangements and an incredible rhythmic flow. At the same time, the arrangements are done in that characteristically humorous Frank way. The latter prove his unique genius, because nobody has turned up yet with the guts to combine rock with traditional serious music like classical and jazz in such a witty way and come out the other end with such perfection. Frank was not only a tireless musical innovator but also a pioneer of advanced production and innovative recording techniques. He deliberately sped up a lot of the rhythm sections on this album during recording, and he also leaned on overdubbing. Even though Frank loved parodying psychedelic music, the cover of this album, with its crimson tint and absurd motif, looks thoroughly psychedelic. The mysterious figure lurking in the underpass, who looks a bit like a clown, is a female model and not a heavily made-up Frank, which some of his followers commonly and mistakenly believe.
After hitting his creative peak in avant-garde rock with “Uncle Meat” (1969), which came out only a few months before “Hot Rats”, Frank disbanded the original lineup of his backing band The Mothers Of Invention and headed down a completely independent path, even though he’d had the strings firmly in his own hands from the very start of his career when it came to writing the music, lyrics, concepts and production. The Mothers Of Invention (later just The Mothers) did keep popping up as a backing band over the following years, right up to the mid-’70s, mostly at live shows, but they never again got the original role they’d had in the ’60s, when Frank counted himself as an equal member. Of the Mothers Of Invention members, Frank kept only his favorite musician, multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood, who was his main studio partner on “Hot Rats” and also played most of the instruments on the album (piano, organ, flute, clarinet, alto and tenor sax, for instance). Besides Frank’s guitar wizardry, it’s Ian’s keyboards and woodwinds that are the key sonic building blocks of this excellent album. It also features some extremely talented musicians who went on to work on a number of Frank’s later albums, such as the legendary French violin master Jean-Luc Ponty, the equally legendary singer and Frank’s high school friend Captain Beefheart (real name Don Van Vliet), bassist Shuggy Otis, who was barely 16 at the time, drummer John Guerin, and so on. Their contribution is anything but negligible and shows in the incredible rhythmic dynamics, which are on par with the best jazz bands of the day. Frank managed to squeeze a proper little orchestra out of their talents.
As mentioned, the musical style of “Hot Rats” is an exceptionally witty jazz rock fusion with some elements of classical music, which replaced Frank’s earlier recipe of absurdity, musique concrete, surf rock, psychedelia and rock’n’roll. 1969 was the birth year of jazz rock fusion, and the first to shine on this musical stage in all their glory were Frank and the legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis with his album “In a Silent Way”, which came out just a few months before “Hot Rats”. Frank had already shown on “Lumpy Gravy” (1968) that his musical interests were far from limited to rock and also took in classical and jazz, and by the time of “Uncle Meat” it was more than obvious what the next step in his musical career would be. This time, besides the influence of avant-garde composer Edgar Varese, you can also feel the influence of Igor Stravinsky in places, who is said to have been among Frank’s favorite classical composers.
From the first minute to the last, “Hot Rats” is packed with a super juicy and witty combination of rock, jazz and symphonic music, and every listen takes your breath away with its extremely high level of virtuosity and dynamism. The opener “Peaches En Regalia” is one of Frank’s best-known and best-loved instrumentals, if not the best known of all, and a downright dreamy way to start an album. With a gorgeous, almost romantic melody over the rattling drums and bass of the barely 16-year-old “wonder boy” Shuggy Otis, one of the many Frank discoveries he later indirectly helped to launch as solo artists, plus playful vibraphone, witty woodwind arrangements, fine layers of keyboards and razor-sharp guitar passages from Frank, it ranks among his most melodic treats. One of the special things about this gem is that the drums were pieced together from several different takes and deliberately sped up, which creates. “Willie The Pimp” is the only composition with vocals. They were handled by Frank’s old comrade and another renowned avant-garde solo musician, Captain Beefehart, whose hoarse, boozy, drunk’s voice and matching lyrics add a hefty dose of street grime to the track. The composition delights with an excellent mix of Frank’s incredibly playful bluesy guitar passages, with plenty of great soloing among them, and the use of percussion and bass, this time handled by Max Bennett, which next to the guitar is often one of the strongest elements of most of the compositions. In my opinion this is the album where Frank really made his mark for the first time as an outstanding guitarist, too. Dreamy rhythmic transitions keep the track nicely balanced on the line between blues rock and jazz. Meanwhile, besides playing harmonica, Beefheart lets out filthy, grotesque monkey hollers. The central motif, where the sharp woodwinds and violin stand out, comes back at the end too. The most avant-garde rock piece on the album and a fitting appetizer before the jazz rock fusion treats to come.
A strong candidate for the tastiest of them, in my opinion, is “Son Of Mr. Green Genes”, which, in a completely different symphonic-jazz outfit, contains the main motif from “Mr. Green Genes” off “Uncle Meat”. This composition is pretty much the perfect blend of witty orchestral arrangements, jazzy rhythmic dynamics and rock’n’roll rowdiness, and in my view it’s practically the centerpiece of the album, even though every single one of them is excellent. A composition that never stops impressing with its perfection, the fruit of incredible dynamics between the individual musicians, who change time signatures and motifs from second to second with unbelievable efficiency. After the opening orchestral, Latin-flavored motif on woodwinds and keyboards, which could easily belong in some cowboy movie, come stunning rhythmic transitions on bass and drums, seasoned with incredible dreamy guitar passages that get wittier by the minute and eventually bring back the main “western” motif. It would be hard for me to decide what thrills me most about this composition: the wonderful orchestral arrangements on woodwinds and piano, the incredible rhythmic dynamics of bass, drums and percussion, or the playful passages on Frank’s guitar – everything is placed so perfectly that I can’t find the right words. Without a doubt one of the best compositions in Frank’s career. “Little Umbrellas”, with its somewhat darker, somewhat more mysterious mood, has an even more pronounced jazz component through its extensive use of saxophones, clarinet, piano and percussion, among which the vibraphone, as usual, stands out the most. The slick flute adds its bit too, giving it the right amount of wit. Some of the arrangements could easily live in a psychedelic cartoon or video game.
At more than 16 minutes, “The Gumbo Variations” is the longest composition and another contender for the best piece on the album. As its name suggests, it contains numerous jazz variations of a kind only Frank and his musicians were capable of. It starts out as a sort of jazz improvisation and then morphs into an extremely energetic section, where a sea of woodwinds, sharpened guitar passages and the use of Hammond organ in the background come in. Frank’s guitar often fights real epic solo battles with Ian’s saxophone, and together the two are the main source of the humorous mood that otherwise runs through this wonderful jazz-symphonic treat. The rhythmic interplay and the speed of the transitions still take your breath away today, and the arguments for it are all superlatives. Describing individual sections one by one would be pretty pointless, since every motif holds so many different complex musical elements that most rock bands of the time would have been happy to have just one of them in a single complex track that would count among their artistic highlights. For a genius of Frank’s caliber, though, this approach was almost a mere trifle, and he went on to create quite a few more complex jazz fusion compositions in the future. “It Must Be a Camel”, featuring the artful violin of the master Jean-Luc Ponty, stunning arrangements on woodwinds and piano, and excellent rhythmic transitions from drummer John Guerin, is the closing jazz treat, with a fairly psychedelic mood. Slick woodwind arrangements, dreamy piano, incredible percussion work and rattling bass create an unforgettable atmosphere and flow into one another at stunning speed. The individual transitions on woodwinds, piano and drums sound truly dramatic. And all of this is only the overture to a section where Frank’s scattered guitar passages come into their own, ranging from free improvisation to real hard rock shredding. Another masterful composition that could just as easily end up in a movie as a cartoon. A brilliant ending to the album, almost just like its beginning.
“Hot Rats” is a timeless masterpiece of early jazz rock fusion, rightfully sitting at the very top of Frank’s creative output, and no demanding fan of complex, highly experimental music should be able to stay cold to it. This is the album with which Frank (at least temporarily) managed to get himself noticed and win over even those listeners who weren’t too keen on his early avant-garde albums, where they were bothered by his absurd, often toilet humor, the wacky musique concrete elements, the parodying of some rock’n’roll “heroes” and the social and political allusions, of which there was always plenty with him. There are quite a few people who only started taking Frank seriously as a musician and composer after the release of “Hot Rats”, and not just as a satirist who uses music merely as a tool for his sarcastic views on society, even though most of the arrangements on the album, as already said, are no less sharp in their wit than those avant-garde works with the absurd dialogues he so loved to use to make fun of American society. The decisive ingredient that (temporarily) brought Frank closer to a wider audience is that on “Hot Rats” he gave plenty of room to the melodicism of the individual pieces. At the same time, Frank proved once again that he was one hell of a guy by writing most of the arrangements so that they could play just as well in a philharmonic hall as in a circus. For everyone who’d like to start somewhere but doesn’t know where, “Hot Rats” is the ideal entry point into Frank’s incredibly rich legacy, and for some it will also be a first encounter with the wonderful world of jazz rock fusion. “Hot Rats” is definitely one of those albums that belong in every decent music collection in every household, from the land on the sunny side of the Alps to an Inuit igloo settlement where some residents struggle with the problem of yellow snow.
Lineup
Frank Zappa – guitar, bass guitar, percussion
Ian Underwood – organ, piano, saxophone, clarinet, flute
Max Bennett – bass guitar
Captain Beefheart – vocals, harmonica (2)
Don “Sugarcane” Harris – violin (2,5)
Jean-Luc Ponty – violin (6)
John Guerin – drums (2,4,6)
Paul Humphrey – drums (3,5)
Ron Selico – drums (1)
Shuggy Otis – bass guitar (1)
Production
Frank Zappa
Track list
1. Peaches en Regalia (3:37)
2. Willie the Pimp (9:16)
3. Son of Mr. Green Genes (8:58)
4. Little Umbrelllas (3:04)
5. The Gumbo Variations (16:55)
6. It Must Be A Camel (5:15)
Running time: 47:05
