Released - October 1969
Genre - Jazz Fusion
Producer - Frank Zappa
Selected Personnel - Frank Zappa (Guitar/Bass/Percussion); Ian Underwood (Piano/Organ/Clarinet/Flute/Saxophone); Max Bennett (Bass); Captain Beefheart (Vocals); John Guerin (Drums); Don Harris (Violin)
Standout Track - Willie The Pimp
I've a theory that for Frank Zappa, the Mothers of Invention were less a conventional band per se and more an ideological representation of a particular way of working. As I mentioned in my review of the Mothers' ridiculous 1968 album We're Only In It For The Money, it's rare listening to a Mothers album that the listener feels compelled to pay much attention to the individual contributions of the band members rather than just being swept along with the bizarre explosion of creativity that Zappa's brain had indulged itself in. The music he produced with the Mothers tended towards fairly simple tunes, some of which tended towards very basic song structures like nursery rhymes or 50s doo-wop style tunes, and the bulk of what really made their output interesting were Zappa's pioneering editing techniques and use of sound collages. The only occasions where things began to get really musically challenging were in musique concrete pieces like "The Chrome-Plated Megaphone Of Destiny," which consisted of tuneless clatters and scrapes and noises. By 1969, it seemed that this particular style of working was something he was no longer as interested in, and as such, the Mothers may as well be consigned to the past. By '69, Zappa had started composing lengthy, complicated jazz fusion instrumental pieces which he would make the Mothers of Invention play in concert, causing great confusion amongst their fans who couldn't reconcile what they heard live with what they heard on record. As such, with the Mothers not proving commercially successful and acting as a big drain on his funds, Zappa broke up the band and set about working on solo material. (The "Mothers being a way of working rather than a band" theory is largely based on the fact that, over subsequent years, he would still release certain albums under the name "Frank Zappa and the Mothers," even if it was a new lineup that bore little resemblance to the old band, and I think often the name just offered him a route towards doing certain things, while other projects felt more like the kind of thing he wanted to do under his own name).
Freed from the constraints of being the frontman of the Mothers of Invention, Zappa was able to make an album in which he could fully indulge his new musical ideas without having to worry about putting off an audience who expected a particular thing. So we get Hot Rats, an album of six (mostly) instrumental jazz fusion pieces. Zappa is very much the lead creative figure here, having composed and arranged everything, playing lead guitar and producing the album, but he certainly didn't turn his hand to solo work purely to showboat and show off, as the importance of his collaborator Ian Underwood on Hot Rats can't be understated. Underwood was the only former Mother who Zappa retained, and here he plays more instruments even than his former bandleader, principally saxophones, clarinets, flutes and other woodwinds, but also piano and organ. Of course, the tight, complex arrangements come from Zappa, but the sheer volume of stuff Underwood gamely turns his hand to is enormously impressive.
Thanks to Zappa's pioneering recording techniques, on several tracks Underwood is able to record multiple tracks of the same instrument - "Peaches En Regalia" and "Son Of Mr Green Genes," for instance, feature multitracked woodwinds performing intricate, dizzying horn charts, all enabled by one of the earliest uses of 16-track recording techniques that allowed many more separate parts to be recorded than ever before. The clarity of sound on every single instrument is vastly improved as a result, with even the drums recorded onto four separate tracks to allow stereo sound in the rhythm section for the first time ever in music history. Zappa's other production experiments include the varying of recording speeds - several of the instruments, including the bass and organ on "Peaches En Regalia," are recorded at half-speed and then sped up, giving them a strange, alien quality. It's the same kind of audio tampering that Brian Eno would follow up on years later to treat the sound of pre-recorded instrumental parts to create entirely new instruments like the "snake guitar" - here, Zappa's half-speed bass solo is christened the "octave bass."
But, while he finds plenty of time to indulge on studio tinkering here, there is much less of a sense of the studio editing and production tricks actively obscuring the content as on We're Only In It For The Money, and instead the music is allowed to really occupy the space by itself, with the complexity and weirdness of Zappa's composition taking centre stage rather than his eccentric production decisions. "Peaches En Regalia" kicks things off, a fast, jazzy, almost militaristic overture almost entirely given over to Underwood's buzzy horn charts, with only the brief octave bass solo serving to give Zappa himself much attention. It's become one of his most enduring pieces of music, and even became a live staple of his son Dweezil Zappa's (to whom Hot Rats was dedicated) touring tribute project Zappa Plays Zappa. It's followed up by the album's standout moment, the incredible, explosive nine-minute onslaught of "Willie The Pimp." Here, Don "Sugarcane" Harris contributes a loping, sinewy electric violin part that loops throughout the whole thing, and none other than Captain Beefheart gives one of his best ever vocal performances (earlier in '69, Zappa had produced Beefheart's landmark album Trout Mask Replica after setting up his own record label with his manager Herb Cohen - it's a hilarious album, and endlessly imaginative, but sadly totally unlistenable, such is its devil-may-care attitude). Beefheart, sounding more than ever before like a prototype Tom Waits, roars and bellows and snarls his way through Zappa's nonsense lyrics ("Man in a suit with the bowtie neck!") before Zappa's own fiery guitar solo simply explodes all over the rest of the song. It's to his eternal credit that Zappa didn't just slop massive guitar solos over every single song he ever wrote but chose only to indulge in them when they really served a purpose, because when he really goes for it they're among the most incendiary, surprising and impactful guitar solos anywhere on record.
The rest of Hot Rats has a tough time following on from the onslaught of "Willie The Pimp" - "Son Of Mr Green Genes" feels a bit like a retread of similar territory to "Peaches En Regalia" and "Little Umbrellas" is fun and sprightly but feels a little lightweight in the context of the rest of the album. Then there's the sprawling, 16-minute jazz fusion epic of "The Gumbo Variations," propelled by Zappa's driving, chugging guitar riff which underpins a vast soundscape for Underwood to solo all over with squawking, squealing sax. Later, Harris returns on electric violin in another blistering solo. It's also the one song where John Guerin's drums are really given a chance to shine - he smashes and pounds his way through the whole epic. Finally, "It Must Be A Camel," a showcase for Underwood's piano, almost comes close to having a conventional lounge jazz vibe to it but its stuttering rhythms and clattering percussion keep reminding us that this is Zappa playing with musical conventions rather than conceding to writing a traditional piece of jazz music.
Hot Rats was enormously acclaimed upon its release - Zappa's longer, jazzier, more complicated musical ideas no longer confounded his fans by going against what they had come to be familiar with from the Mothers of Invention, but, rebranded under his own name, showed him for what he really was - not just the irreverent, chaotic absurdist of those earlier albums, but a genuinely innovative and virtuosic progressive rock musician. It would be another few years before Zappa's solo career really hit its stride again. During 1970 he recorded a few things with a brand new version of the Mothers while also indulging in making some arthouse films, turning his hand to whatever he felt like rather than feeling any pressing need to make a direct followup to Hot Rats. It was only a serious accident in 1971 that prompted him fully back into music-making. The intervening years saw some collections of unreleased earlier Mothers material see the light of day in the form of albums like Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh, but it wouldn't be until 1972 that Zappa released another essential solo record.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Frank Zappa
1. Peaches En Regalia
2. Willie The Pimp
3. Son Of Mr Green Genes
4. Little Umbrellas
5. The Gumbo Variations
6. It Must Be A Camel
No comments:
Post a Comment