ALBUM OF THE MONTH

ZAPPA "We're Only..."

 

Album #73 isWe're Only In It For The Money by Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention.

Zappa's Sgt. Pepper parody cover is well known among people who like prog and 1960s pop. The cover actually caused the album release to be delayed at least six months. As the story goes Zappa called Paul McCartney on the phone and asked for permission to parody the cover. McCartney replied: "What? You talk business? You better talk to my lawyer."

McCartney may not necessarily have been trying to forbid Zappa to do the cover. The incident rather shows the differences between different pop music cultures. Zappa was an underground musician in Los Angeles and he was in the tradition of "do it yourself". McCartney was in a far more successful band, and already deeply connected with the music business.

The music of We're Only In It For The Money was recorded in the fall of 1967 just after the release of Sgt. Pepper but it was not released until March 1968. So we're actually celebrating the 40th anniversary of that album.

The album is filled with short pop songs linked together with tape collage pieces. Highlights are The Idiot Bastard Son and Mom & Dad, the latter one being one of the few honest songs about deep feelings that Zappa ever wrote.

The lyrics on the album is very much social commentary and makes fun of hippies and describes white middle class sexual frustration.

Some editions of the vinyl releases were partly censored. The record company edited out parts of lyrics that they thought were dirty. (The world still has to decide if they really were...)

The album was a hard to get item from the mid 1970's when Zappa was "at war" with Warner Bros. and they wouldn't let him have the master tapes. Zappa got the tapes back in the mid 80's and rereleased the album, but he had the bad taste to add new bass and drums since he thought that bad storage had affected the tapes. This made some fans mad but it wasn't until ten years later that Rykodisc released the original mix again, but with some of the censorship still left.

S.H.. - March 2008.