Frank Zappa 50 years ago today, on March 4th, 1968, Frank Zappa debuted We’re Only In It For The Money, his fourth-ever album release and the third official LP with his band, the Mothers of Invention. A concept album like the two Mothers albums that preceded it, We’re Only In It For The Money took a satirical look at the hippie subculture that had already begun to implode.
The album is thoroughly unapologetic, using snippets of experimental and orchestral music mixed with the same psychedelic rock he’s lampooning as the backdrop for a funhouse-like parody of the hippie culture and mindset. Its cover art, of course, is a parody of the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, reasserting the album’s satirical stance.
“Who Needs The Peace Corps?” helps set the tone for the album, as Zappa recites what amount to the tenets of the hippie oath (i.e.“I will ask the Chamber of Commerce how to get to Haight Street … I will wander around barefoot … I will smoke an awful lot of dope”). The track goes on to highlight the apathetic cliche of the “tune in, turn on, drop out” narrative, a charade which was cyclically glorified and perpetuated throughout the Summer of Love:
I will sleep . . .
I will, I will go to a house
That’s, that’s what I will do
I will go to a house
Where there’s a rock & roll band
‘Cause the groups all live together
And I will join a rock & roll band
I will be their road manager
And I will stay there with them
And I will get the crabs
But I won’t care
Because . . .
We’re Only In It For The Money saw Zappa continue to dig into his experimentation with chronological continuity, which would become a trends throughout his prodigiously prolific career. The album was one of four albums distilled from sessions in New York for a project called No Commercial Potential. Pieces of the No Commercial Potential sessions ended up being used for several albums, including the orchestral portions of We’re Only In It For The Money, a revised version of Zappa’s debut solo record, Lumpy Gravy, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, Uncle Meat and, finally 1994’s Civilization Phaze III.
As Zappa stated in Barry Miles’ 2004 biography, Zappa, “It’s all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definitely related.”
The album also saw Zappa continue to push into musique concrète territory, another early thread that would run through his entire career. While recording We’re Only in It for the Money, Zappa discovered that the strings of Apostolic Studios’ grand piano would resonate if a person spoke close to them. Frank proceeded to invite a slew of notable guests (including Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, and Tim Buckley) into the studio to serve as “piano people,” improvising dialogue about topics he provided. These recordings were then used to add psychedelic depth to the album’s various abstract interludes.
Celebrate the 50th birthday of Frank Zappa/The Mothers’ third album by giving it a spin below:
Frank Zappa, The Mothers – We’re Only In It For The Money (Full Album)
[Audio: Spotify]