Michael & Johnny...Zappa and Love
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 11:29 pm
If you missed some of my posts, in an interview from 1967, Frank name checks Love three times...much more than any other band of the day in any one interview I have seen by another artist.
LoVE seemed came up at various points, & at each point, involving a completely different thread.
KOFSKY: Love.... also have a saxophonist and are trying to combine jazz improvisation with rock.
ZAPPA: Actually, what they're trying to do is to imitate our band.
KOFSKY: I heard them first. Is it just coincidental that their album was released first?
ZAPPA: Well, let me tell you of a few interesting coincidences that I've noticed, that lead me to suspect that we're making more of an impact on the industry than the people in the industry would like to admit. I was mailed a picture of Paul McCartney many months ago, from a girl in Europe, with my mustache and my tie, with my earphones, conducting an orchestra. And this is about the time I was preparing an album for Capitol where I was conducting an orchestra [Lumpy Gravy].
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KOFSKY: Some of my students at Carnegie Tech turned me on to it [Absolutely Free] and the Andy Warhol album at the same time.
ZAPPA: I like that album. I think that Tom Wilson deserves a lot of credit for making that album, because it's folk music. It's electric folk music, in the sense that what they're saying comes right out of their environment.
KOFSKY: It's folk in the sense of relating to a milieu.
ZAPPA: Love is that kind of group too, because what they sing about is the folk music of the L.A. freak. What we sing about is the folk music of our environment from Pomona to L.A. You know, being kicked around in go-go bars, and like that.
So my question is: what influence did Frank Zappa have on Love's music, or did it colour your own approach in any way, either directly or through the natural process of exposure to such a unique and new music?
The radical number of changes in time signatures within a single song that Frank made a trademark, would seem to have influenced many artists of the day, and Forever Changes is rife with such creative compositions.
LoVE seemed came up at various points, & at each point, involving a completely different thread.
KOFSKY: Love.... also have a saxophonist and are trying to combine jazz improvisation with rock.
ZAPPA: Actually, what they're trying to do is to imitate our band.
KOFSKY: I heard them first. Is it just coincidental that their album was released first?
ZAPPA: Well, let me tell you of a few interesting coincidences that I've noticed, that lead me to suspect that we're making more of an impact on the industry than the people in the industry would like to admit. I was mailed a picture of Paul McCartney many months ago, from a girl in Europe, with my mustache and my tie, with my earphones, conducting an orchestra. And this is about the time I was preparing an album for Capitol where I was conducting an orchestra [Lumpy Gravy].
-----------------------------------------------
KOFSKY: Some of my students at Carnegie Tech turned me on to it [Absolutely Free] and the Andy Warhol album at the same time.
ZAPPA: I like that album. I think that Tom Wilson deserves a lot of credit for making that album, because it's folk music. It's electric folk music, in the sense that what they're saying comes right out of their environment.
KOFSKY: It's folk in the sense of relating to a milieu.
ZAPPA: Love is that kind of group too, because what they sing about is the folk music of the L.A. freak. What we sing about is the folk music of our environment from Pomona to L.A. You know, being kicked around in go-go bars, and like that.
So my question is: what influence did Frank Zappa have on Love's music, or did it colour your own approach in any way, either directly or through the natural process of exposure to such a unique and new music?
The radical number of changes in time signatures within a single song that Frank made a trademark, would seem to have influenced many artists of the day, and Forever Changes is rife with such creative compositions.