by Neil Slaven
Two days before the event the management of the Aerospace Hall cancelled the booking; they'd received phone calls claiming that 'the monster junk sculpture' to be erected in their parking lot was part of a narcotics 'scene' and complaints from missile bases around the state that their hall was to be used for an orgy. In the end, the principal factor in the cancellation was that the hall couldn't accommodate the expected attendance. At short notice, the Danish Center agreed to stage the event. The groups would appear in the upstairs ballroom and rooms on the floor below would be used for 'happenings' and screenings of Gary Taylor's film of the Pleasure Faire and 'Teague's footage of the Canter bust'.
Jerry Hopkins reported on the evening in Freep's next issue, under the title, 'Guambo Is An Act Of Love'. "Flickering and flashing at both sides of the stage, strobe lights and op art patterns [were] projected on the ceiling and musicians." First on was "Clem Floyd's newly reorganised Sound Machine", followed by the Factory, led by Lowell George, a multi-instrumentalist who as a child had appeared on talent shows, played flute in the Hollywood High School orchestra and oboe and baritone sax on Frank Sinatra sessions. The rest of the band consisted of Warren Klein on lead guitar, Martin Kibbee on bass and Dallas Taylor on drums.
The dancing intensified when the Factory took the stage. "Vito and his acolytes are here," Hopkins notes. When the Mothers go on, "This is one of the truly wild scenes of the evening. Frank Zappa in his suit of flowers. His sidemen are garbed similarly, and behind them are five other musicians augmenting the group. Five short-haired American Federation of Musicians types in black suits, white shirts and black ties. Just sitting there, reading charts, blowing with the Mothers' sound. And the Mothers Auxiliary dancing, dancing, dancing . . ." Carl Franzoni led the pack. "He is wearing what looks like zebra-skinned longjohns with a pop art All-American Superman bib. Two nice ladies are dancing with him, alternating with some of Vito's group . . . and from the dance floor comes a man in a mummy suit to join in."23
With a legal capacity of 1,500 for the two floors, police and fire marshalls kept an anxious eye on things. Roads were blocked for miles around. Fire exits, too, were blocked and the ticket desk was closed, allowing some 500 people to gatecrash through an unsecured door. Police began to appear amongst the crowd, the amps were turned down and shortly before 1 am, a claim that illegal drinking was taking place was used as a pretext to end the evening. Hopkins concluded, "Guambo was an act of love and not every act of love is perfect." There were acts of larceny though, including the theft of some light show equipment and slides and "One brand new suit owned by Herb Cohen."24
Lenny Bruce died of a morphine overdose on Wednesday, August 3, at the apartment he shared with John Judnich. His funeral took place two days later, on the same day that Pamela Zarubica graduated from Pepperdine College. Frank didn't want to attend the funeral but Judnich, from whom the band rented their stage equipment, rang to request their presence. That day's issue of the Freep carried a four-stanza 'Tribute To Lenny' written by Animal J. Huxley (daughter of Aldous and girlfriend of soon-to-be Factory drummer, Richie Hayward). In his 'Making It' column in Freep, Hopkins quoted Frank's "ad-lib-pop-art-gut-eulogy" to Bruce: "They dug a hole in the ground and they put a box in it. Then a little dump truck filled in the hole and these cowboy-dudes started flattening the dirt with a trip-hammer. The grave is in the [San Fernando] Valley and the Valley is a lousy place for Lenny to sleep."
"Freak Out! Son of Guambo", the next Mothers' gig, would take place at Santa Monica's Shrine Exposition Hall on Saturday, August 13, where once again Factory were part of the supporting bill. The next Freep noted Carl Franzoni had been spotted distributing leaflets for the gig on Venice Beach. Once again, the gig drew widely varying responses. Hopkins reported that Frank was unhappy about nearly everything, the sound system was terrible and no one paid any attention to the music. "He is at least partially wrong," he wrote, "because a lot of us heard what he was laying down and it was some of the grooviest music ever splashed across the consciousness of man."25
Stan Bernstein of the Los Angeles Times was less cosmically impressed: "P.T. Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute and about 500 wandered into the Shrine and found boredom. The show lacked direction and there was little or no supervision. What was supposed to be entertaining happened to be monotonous." After likening the audience to domestic animals just mooing and bleating, Bernstein lashed into the band, the light show and the lack of ventilation before ending, "After an hour of having the eardrums punctured beyond repair, it was time to fight off ennui. A guard warned at the exit that re-admittance was not possible. It was the most welcome news of the night."26
There was no mention of the Factory's performance in either review but Frank and Herb Cohen were taking an interest in the group. On August 18, the band recorded three demos with Cary Slavin on drums. 'Hey Girl!', 'Changes' and 'Candy Corn Madness' were frantic and disjointed with an uneasy juxtaposition of ideas that didn't really jell. Nevertheless, it was arranged that Frank would produce a single with them.
'Lightnin' Rod Man', with Lowell strumming a dulcimer and Frank contributing slowed-down Pachuco doo-wops, almost emulates Don Vliet's ramshackle blues. Frank's slowed-down voice is heard on the fade asking, "Why didn't you sing on the last bridge?" George told Andy Childs he thought Frank had done a fantastic job. "It's a cross between 'They're Coming To Take Me Away' and 'Ian & Sylvia' somewhere in the middle there."27 'The Loved One' resembles Jagger's and Richards' songs of the era, a twochord vamp with a psychedelic chorus and lyrics about butterflies and 'a big black helicopter'.
The tracks weren't legally released until 1993, although 'Lightnin' Rod Man' turned up on Zappa bootlegs over the years. The band got a deal with UNI Records and a single, UNI 55005, was released, coupling 'Smile, Let Your Life Begin' and 'When I Was An Apple'. These and four other titles were produced by Marshall Lieb, who in 1958 had been a Teddy Bear, recording 'To Know Him Is To Love Him' with Phil Spector and Annette Kleinbard. Lieb also produced Timi Yuro and others before moving into films.
There was a memorial 'Freak In' for Lenny Bruce on Sunday, August 21, at the Eden Memorial Park on Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills. The notice in Freep added, "Those planning to come should bring box lunches and noise makers." Frank, in flowered bell-bottoms and sneakers, was one of the 200-strong crowd that attended and of a smaller group that walked to KDAY disc jockey Tom Clay's house, where Phil Spector and Dennis Hopper spoke their eulogies.
The Mothers returned to the Fillmore on the weekend of September 9/10, sharing the bill with Oxford Circle. Because of a ceremony at the synagogue next door, the venue was changed to the Scottish Rites Temple across town. That week's Freep carried advance notice of the band's next LA gig: "Pat Morgan, Dallas producer, is presenting one of the wildest light shows and dance freak-out performances at the Shrine Exposition Hall, Saturday night, September 17. The show will feature the Mothers Of Invention, Little Gary Ferguson (seven years old and a star!), along with the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Count Five, Kenny Dino, and the Factory."28 Another 'Freak Out' was scheduled for October 15 at the Earl Warren Showground in Santa Barbera.
The next two issues carried several pages of Mothers advertising ("Published when we can afford it. Mostly for fun.") along with a hectoring letter from Suzy Creamcheese/Frank Zappa:
This is about the Mothers of Invention. We have watched them grow, and with their growth, we hopefully have grown. Their honesty has offended some and been provocative to many, but in any case, their performances have had a real effect on their audiences.
The Mothers' music is very new, and as their music is new, so is the intention of their music. As much as the Mothers put into their music, we must bring to it. The Mothers and what they represent as a group has attracted all of the outcasts, the pariahs, the people who are angry and afraid and contemptuous of the existing social structure. The danger lies in the 'Freak Out' becoming an excuse instead of a reason. An excuse implies an end, a reason a
beginning. Being that the easiest way is consistently more attractive than the harder way, the essential thing that makes the 'Freak Out' audiences different constitutes their sameness. A freak is not a freak if ALL are freaks. 'Freaking Out' should presuppose an active freedom, freedom meaning a liberation from the control of some other person or persons. Unfortunately, reaction seems to have taken place of action. We SHOULD be as satisfied listening to the Mothers perform from a concert stage. If we could channel the energy expended in 'Freaking Out' physically into 'Freaking Out' intellectually, we might possibly be able to create something concrete out of the ideological twilight of bizarre costumes and being seen being bizarre. Do we really listen? And if we really listen, do we really think? Freedom of thought, conversely, brings an awesome responsibility. Looking and acting eccentric IS NOT ENOUGH.
A mad tea party is valid only as satire, commenting ironically, and ending in its beginning, in that it is only a trick of interpretation. It is not creation, and it IS NOT ENOUGH.
What WE must try to do, then, is not only comment satirically on what's wrong, but try to CHANGE what's wrong. The Mothers are trying.
Very trying indeed. Whatever the cost of a whole page ad in the Freep, of which this letter formed a small island in the centre, what did Frank expect to achieve? Did he really believe that audiences, already required to listen to his music rather than dance to it, would also think about his message and act upon it? There's no mistaking the earnestness in his sentences or the sententiousness in his call to arms. Not for the first time, he was preaching to deaf and distracted ears. But someone was taking note: McCarthyism had faded but Richard Nixon's America was just around the corner and bridging the gap, J. Edgar Hoover, who also wore the odd floral number, had his brain police on alert.
There were sound problems for all the acts that performed at the Shrine on September 17. They were bad enough for the Mothers to announce later in Freep that the October 15 gig had been cancelled "due to a critical acoustic problem & virtually non-existent PA. faculties." Even so, "the multitude roared their bliss to those upon the platform," as Sean McGregor reported in his Tinsel Town column. "A horny hand of sound laid its black shadow over the evening," he went on, "and this would seem to be a problem that just can not be beat by producer Morgan and Company."
McGregor's comments were not published until the October 21 issue, by which time the Mothers and the Factory had played the Whisky on September 27 and October 2. Most of McGregor's column was devoted to a rare attack on the Mothers in the pages of Freep. His prime target was Herb Cohen, "a buddha-framed male attired in his bushy black face-piece and running mouth". Applying his sarcasm like stucco, he went on: "It is understood throughout Tinseled City that Mr C is of the total 'in' and lays artistic claim to a monstrous hate. He and his 'Mothers' shun the limelight like clean tubwater. During the night, Mr C barred film-makers from shooting his 'Mothers', though he found heart later on, after all acts had retired, to having his group painted on 16mm film.
"So great is Mr C's anger at any who'd impose upon real Freaks that he and his 'Mothers' shelled out their hard-earned coin for two full Free Press pages and condemned those who'd take out full pages expounding their own virtues."29 McGregor's tortuous grammar hammered out a few more insults but there seemed to be a basis for his 'freakier-than-thou' criticism.
Frank's reply, in Freep, was swift and scathing. It seemed that McGregor was in the employ of Pat Morgan, promoter of the ill-fated Shrine gig, and his column's invective stemmed from an argument between Morgan and Cohen which had ended in a scuffle outside the offices of the Hollywood Reporter. Frank's densely worded rebuttal strained for effect: "SEAN McGREGOR took it upon himself to SUBVERT a QUASI-LEGITIMATE VEHICLE (his little column) in order to hurl a few cardboard thunderbolts at a quiet & peace-loving group of local lads whose only offence was having HERB COHEN for a MANAGER."30 About a quarter of the page was devoted to an ad for the rescheduled gig at the Earl Warren Show Grounds on October 29, with the headline "Legalize Therapeutic Abortion with The Mothers". It was a conjunction of commercialism and controversy that epitomised Frank's complex thought processes.
UNDERGROUND ORATORIOS
The volatile situation between the police and the kids on the Strip, which had already led to a 10 pm curfew imposed on under-18s, boiled over during November. A near-riot took place on November 12, when a demonstration got out of hand, street signs were torn up, buses attacked and dozens of young people clubbed and arrested outside Pandora's Box, a popular alternative to Canters located on Sunset at Crescent Heights Boulevard. A picket fence was placed around the coffee house and the two sides glowered at one another across it. Eventually, the police attacked and the 'hot-bed of insurrection' was razed to the ground. Stephen Stills wrote 'For What It's Worth' for Buffalo Springfield, Frank Zappa wrote 'Plastic People'.
Al Mitchell, owner of the Fifth Estate Coffee House, set up the Right of Assembly and Movement Committee the day after the first protest and took a leading role in setting up further protests on November 26 and December 10. Another group, which included Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, set up Community Action for Facts and Freedom. Interviewed by Raymond Gruenther in Freep, Mitchell didn't mince words: "It was in part the frank and open use of police power on the part of one Strip economic group to suppress another economic group the heavy real estate people against the places which cater to the young.
"The real estate people told the police, 'We don't care how you get them off the Strip . . . just get them off' And the kids began to experience the same kind of police fascism which was in the past directed against minority groups in Watts and East Los Angeles. . . They may be stopped at any time, searched at any time, arrested at any time and slapped around during interrogation."31
Two issues earlier, Frank had said much the same thing in an interview: "The problem is not the police, 'cos they're only taking orders," he said. "The problem is the merchants and the money interests who are influencing the people who give orders to the cops. If it's as simple as money, the way to take over would be to have a few of the kids who are making bread from having long hair pay their own cops off.
"The people in LA haven't realised yet that this is where it's going to happen, the whole major breakthrough from a society controlled by the youth will occur here. It looks like a revolution, it's got all the hallmarks of a popular revolt, but it's so small that it can't succeed and it's just like they've almost shot their wad. Leadership? I think any leadership that announced itself from that mass would be swiftly shot secretly someplace in these streets.
"I think that if there were ever one rallying point, something real that the kids could identify with, that they could focus their patriotism on and you know, really go for, you'd have a force in the United States that nobody would believe — it would really come back to life. Right now it's pretty hard to even walk in the woods and say, 'Hey, this is nature and it's beautiful and I dig it,' without remembering everything else that surrounds you that is nothing but a big lie. The whole system has unfortunately got down to a state where you can't believe anything anymore."32
The conversation touched upon the clubs and the quality of music presented in them. By his answers, Frank indicated that he was ready to move on to the next stage of his master plan. When asked if he thought light shows and 'freakouts' would die out, he replied, "Yeah. I hope it does, dies tomorrow."33
It was against this background that the Mothers returned to TT&G during November to record their second album.
ABSOLUTELY FREE
The band had changed during the summer. Elliott Ingber had gone off to form the Fraternity of Man with Richie Hayward. He was replaced for a short period by Jim Fielder, before he left to join Buffalo Springfield. Given his love of percussion, it was no surprise when Frank added a second drummer; Billy Mundi had been in a San Francisco band, Lamp of Childhood, and would leave in January 1968 to join the Elektra band, Rhinoceros. The other new members, Don Preston and Bunk Gardner, stayed until
Frank disbanded the Mothers in 1969. "I'd known Don and Bunk several years before I met the other guys," Frank said in 1968, "we used to play experimental music a long time ago we got together in garages and went through some very abstract charts."34
Preston and Gardner added a dimension that had been lacking in Freak Out! Frank could now add fresh tonal colours to his musical palette: "When we became an eight-piece, we finally had a very workable ensemble."35 One element was the insertion of classical quotes in certain of the tunes that made up Absolutely Free. "I think that the Stravinskian influence probably popped up on the second album," he told Nigel Leigh (in 'Amnesia Vivace' and a musical interlude in 'Status Back Baby' that reproduces 'The Shrovetide Fair' introduction from Petrushka). "But I'd say there's a certain Varesian aroma to the introduction of 'Who Are The Brain Police?' "36 And this time, each side of the album was edited into a continuous performance that reflected the group's live appearances.
Frank was also compounding the rhythmic complexity of his music, as he explained to Frank Kofsky that it had taken a year to learn to play 'Call Any Vegetable': "Can you tell why? The time, the time it's fantastic. It's four bars of 4/4, one bar of 8/8, one bar of 9/8 OK? And then it goes 8/8, 9/8, 8/8, 9/8, 8/8, 9/8 and then it goes 8/8, 4/8, 5/8, 6/8 and back into 4/4 again." When Kofsky asked him about the significance of the symbolism in 'Call Any Vegetable' and 'Duke Of Prunes', Frank's reply was succinct: "Dada dynamite."37