Even before he cut his hair and started wearing suits in the mid-1980s, he was a businessman whose viewpoints were as rational as they were radical. Zappa thought of drugs and alcohol as stupidity enhancers, fueling instead with black coffee, peanut butter, and cigarettes. M any uninformed observers saw - and perhaps still see - Zappa as a far-out liberal drug-crazed hippie and strictly zany mustachioed madman. “Mister America, try to hide the product of your savage pride / The useful minds that it denied…” –Frank Zappa, “ Hungry Freaks, Daddy” (1966) If you don’t like it, there’s all those other on the list.” “I have no desire to inflict on people who don’t want to consume it,” he said. But he would likely defend controversial speech now with the same philosophy he applied to consumption of his music then: Take it or leave it, but allow it to exist freely. His cultural caricatures of presidential buffoonery, homosexual sadomasochism, golden showers, and jewish princesses may offend and outrage people just as much - if not more - in today’s eggshell-treading politically correct society. When Zappa Records’ distributor Phonogram refused to release the Carter administration-protesting single “I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted,” the musician reclaimed control by establishing Barking Pumpkin Records and withdrawing into his Laurel Canyon cabin’s built-in studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen.Īn uncompromising workaholic until his death in 1993, Zappa released 62 albums in his lifetime. Record executives forbade him from naming the Mothers of Invention just “The Mothers” due to the latter’s supposed insinuation of a more impolite “motherfuckers.” Executives regularly extracted from the Mothers’ early records any lyrics that vexed or baffled them. Since the release of his first album Freak Out! almost two decades prior, Zappa had had a routinely chopped and censored musical history. In his statement to Congress, the musician likened the regulations to “treating dandruff by decapitation.” (Though no rating system was ultimately established, parental advisory warnings were.)
Zappa argued that it was these proposed regulations, not rock lyrics, that would debase young brains. The group wanted to stick rating labels on rock records to beware parents of the satanic themes, drug references, and sexual innuendo contained therein. O n September 19, 1985, Zappa defended the First Amendment before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation opposite the “Washington Wives” who founded the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC).
“Who are the brain police?” –Frank Zappa, “ Who are the Brain Police?” (1966)
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