The Entrepreneur: ’73 – ‘74

In 1973 Zappa, Herb Cohen and Zach Glickman founded DiscReet Records and, once again, signed a distribution deal with Warners.

They began making significant income from releasing records and Herb began to sign artists, which Zappa didn’t believe in, just to make a profit. Talk about ‘only in it for the money.’ The label released two albums by Ted Nugent before he became a star and also released Zappa’s Over-Nite Sensation, which reached No. 32 on the charts and was his first ever gold album. This proved that “you can never dumb down enough to satisfy the American public” [Miles, p.238].

Apostrophe (‘) followed a year later and this time Zappa used a full-fledged marketing campaign to promote it. Thirty second TV ads were run regularly and the album reached No.18 on the Cashbox Top 20. It also went gold.

The Composer: ’73 – ‘74

Zappa always seemed to encourage ideas from his band members, collect them and mould them together into his own pieces. Many of the musicians who worked with him became angry, and perhaps a bit bitter, and accused him of stealing their ideas. As Motorhead explained: “Frank’s special talent was for taking bits and pieces from all over the place and incorporating them into his work.” Tom Fowler continued: “He gets too much credit for the things the guys around him contributed.” Kaylan pointed out “his ability to take the best from his musicians and recycle it and put it out again ... as ‘Frank Zappa music’” [Miles p. 230]. As Miles explains, “He saw himself in part as a journalist, reporting on life as he saw it and he believed that anything the band said or did in the privacy of the dressing room could – and should – be shouted from the rooftops” [p.234]. However, the one constant was that he always made sure to use a third person narrative or make someone else sing the songs because as much as he loved talking about the experiences of others he couldn’t directly speak of his.

In 1973 the newest incarnation of The Mothers recorded with Tina Turner and The Ikettes. Zappa’s compositions were becoming less social commentary and more explicit, dumbed down humor. And the more faith he lost in ‘freaking out’ the less revelatory were his lyrics.

For his album Over-Nite Sensation (1973) Zappa wrote two songs that really stand out as a turning point. Dinah-Moe Hum, which is about a woman who bets Zappa $40 that he can’t make her come, and Dirty Love, which is about a narrator who treats a groupie solely as a sex object and she ends up having sex with a poodle. Other than trying to appeal to a wider audience with his raw humor the fact was that ever since the jail time he served in ’65 for the ‘suggestive tapes’ he made it his mission in life to exercise his freedom of speech to the fullest extent.

However, the album did feature I’m the Slime, along the lines of Trouble Every Day's social commentary, where Zappa comments on television brainwashing the country into a group of zombies who simply do as they’re told.

The tour which followed, once again with a new lineup (largely instrumental this time), was not as pleasing to Zappa as he had hoped. He found the musicians to be extremely boring and his constant problem would become that "he wanted skilled musicians, but he wanted them to behave like a teenage rock n’ roll band so that he could have more vicarious experiences to write about” [p.273]. With music that wasn’t very rock and his stringent policy on drugs he was unlikely to ever find any candidates who fit the bill.

Apostrophe(‘) came in ’74 and unfortunately for Zappa it became evident that thanks to “the combination of dumbed-down humor with extremely sophisticated playing ... the music was often overlooked” [p. 239].

The Man: ’73 – ‘74

In April ’73 Zappa’s father died and although they had had a cold relationship Zappa never ceased to respect him. They were also more similar then perhaps they ever thought. Although Zappa brought up his kids encouraging freedom (the 'opposite' of what his parents had done), the house always revolved around Zappa’s needs and the only thing his children were ever scared of was disturbing him.

On May 15, 1974 Zappa’s second son was born - Ahmet Emuukha Rodan Zappa.

The Man / The Composer / The Performer: The Grand Wazoo

December 1971 brought about an event which turned Zappa’s world upside-down and which would influence his life and career to his last day.

Zappa and the new Mothers had just finished playing a show at the Montreaux Casino in Switzerland when the venue was set on fire and the entire thing burnt down with all of their equipment conveniently left inside. Forced to play with rented instruments and gear they chose to shorten their tour and headed off to London to play their last shows. That’s when it happened. A young man jumped on stage and pushed Zappa off into the orchestra pit ten feet below.
Greatly injured, Zappa was rushed to the hospital where he stayed for a month. The following four weren't much better as they were spent in a plaster cast up to his hip. As we know by now, Zappa loved control and this period of ‘helplessness’ drove him mad.

Although everyone was always complaining about how unsentimental Zappa was, the guy who pushed him even claimed that he had done it because he was sick of Zappa treating the audience like dirt, everyone immediately came to visit him in hospital. The Mothers line-up showed up as soon as they could to check in on Zappa and Gail flew in to stay by his side – although on her arrival she had to push away two rival girlfriends! (Other girls were always around and once they were back in the U.S. and Zappa was still recovering, Nigey Lennon moved into his basement studio and almost tore his marriage apart with her presence.)

However, the accident also had a positive effect on his creativity and songwriting. He listened to jazz fusion excessively while in hospital and was inspired to make his own band: The Grand Wazoo Orchestra. The band was comprised of George Duke and Aynsley Dunbar from The Mothers and Alex Dmochowski from one of Aynsley’s old bands. They were joined by L.A. session musicians (6 woodwind, 4 brass, 2 percussion, Sal Marquez on trumpet and Tony Duran on slide guitar.)

The band released Waka/Jawaka followed by The Grand Wazoo in 1972.

Zappa then put together a twenty piece orchestra, billed them as The Mothers and hit the road. In fact the only Mothers left were the Underwoods and the rest were session musicians. This time around Gail was sure to accompany him and keep an eye on things, and Zappa made sure to bring along a bodyguard. His paranoia after the attack in London was so great that a bodyguard would become a permanent fixture.
Twenty people soon proved too hard to keep on the road so he came up with a stripped down version, Petit Wazoo, which only required ten.

The Flo & Eddie Mothers were never officially broken up, but as Zappa was keeping busy with other projects the two went on to start their own musical endeavors.

As far as performances went, the Wazoo was an “electric symphony orchestra ... we’re not going to have people jumping around on stage or falling down with tambourines and saying zany stuff – we’re not supplying that this season,” explained Zappa [Miles p.227].

The Entrepreneur: Post Mothers Breakup

Although he had split The Mothers up, Zappa had a lot of extra material recorded and stored. The smart business man that he was he didn’t just let the music sit around gathering dust rather, he continued releasing albums recorded by the original Mothers lineup sort of ‘posthumously,’ hoping to cash in on the fan base they had built without actually having to do any extra work or pay anyone to rehearse, record or tour.


June ’69 saw the release of Hot Rats, what’s been called the first jazz-rock album, and December welcomed Burnt Weeny Sandwich which is a “musical history of Zappa’s life, framed by Doo Wop, followed by a homage to Igor Stravinsky and some of the most beautiful compositions Zappa ever wrote.” [Miles p. 196].





Then, in August of 1970, Zappa put out Weasels Ripped My Flesh, another album with tracks by the original Mothers, but simultaneously began to tour with a new group using the same name. By this point, everyone was confused. Why hadn’t he just reunited the original band? The most likely explanation is that he regretted his decision but was too set in his way to admit he had changed his mind. His Sicilian pride was shining through.


However, in business as in music, Zappa did have his slip-ups as well. One example is when John Lennon and Yoko Ono joined The Mothers on stage one night in 1971 at the Fillmore East and both parties walked away from the performance with a recording of the entire thing. John and Frank personally agreed to each use the tape in whichever manner they pleased, but refusing to take the time and effort required to go through Lennon’s representatives Zappa was pushed out of the deal. John and Yoko soon released the recording and claimed copyrights on it, making it exclusively their own. Perhaps his original feelings toward The Beatles were spot-on.

The Musician/Performer: Post Mothers Breakup

In the 70s, with the Flo and Eddie lineup, a new invention came about. Zappa began writing 'playlets', thirty minute sketches which were improvised upon, for his live shows. For example, ‘What Kind of Girl do You Think We Are?’ was always a fan favorite. Flo and Eddie pretended to be groupies who only slept with bands with records in the charts and the band improvised most of the set. These playlets were perhaps based on a similar technique implied by one of his classical idols; Stravinsky’s ever-changing operetta, The Soldier’s Tale, adapted to the city it was performed in by changing the names of the personalities and places to match those of local favorites and national landmarks.

In May 1970 Zappa was joined by the LA Philharmonic who played his orchestral piece entitled 200 Motels. “All I’m interested in doing is hearing what the music sounds like that I wrote in those motels. If I can hear it, then I can write some more,” said Zappa of the performance [p.198]. It was always believed that the only reason why Zappa ever required a band was to actually be able to hear what he was writing as he couldn't play it all by himself. If he could have it is likely that he would have taken the option and avoided taking the chance that someone might play it incorrectly or not as he expected.

For this particular performance, in addition to the Philharmonic, he also needed a nine piece electric band and that’s when he decided to reassemble a line-up similar to the original Mothers. (They even put on a mini reunion tour shortly after.) Zappa was joined by Ray Collins, Don Preston, Ian Underwood, Motorhead, Jeff Simmons, Billy Mundi and Aynsley Dunbar to interpret the piece – it’s clear to see Zappa didn’t trust his new, young 'Vaudeville band' to take on the challenges of this composition.

The Composer: Post Mothers Breakup

Once the original Mothers were disbanded it wasn’t long before Zappa began assembling a new group of musicians. In 1970 he gathered a new reincarnation of the group with Ian Underwood (keyboards and alto sax), Aynsley Dunbar (drums), Jeff Simmons (bass and vocals), George Duke (keyboards and trombone) and Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, of The Turtles fame, on vocals. Seeing as latter two could not use their real names without breaching their contract with their prior record label they decided to go under the moniker of Flo (Howard) and Eddie (Mark).

Although Zappa's new music remained complex and challenging to play, as Volman once said: “It wasn’t just taking a song and singing a verse ... It demanded learning notes, and singing those exact notes, or they wouldn’t fit” [p. 202], the lyrics started becoming ‘compromised.’ Flo and Eddie brought on a younger, dumbed down humour. With the ‘Vaudeville lineup’ (as they were dubbed by their fans) gone were the days of deep, politically-charged, thought-provoking lyrics. They were now replaced with negative, explicitly sexual themes. Healthy sex seemed to no longer take females into consideration, it was now only about guys getting what they wanted. This new ‘style’ began to alienate fans who thought that Zappa dumbed down for the money.
The first official release was Chunga’s Revenge in October of 1970 and it included new Mothers material mixed with Hot Rats group tracks.

The next release, Just Another Band from LA, was recorded live during a performance in 1971 on the UCLA campus and was seen as misogynistic and shallow, especially since feminism was booming at the time of its release.