Frank Zappa’s Farewell To The Mothers Of Invention
This book was published on August 10, 1970. My Flesh was ripped by weasels This was the last album featuring the original lineup of The Mothers Of Invention. Frank Zappa They had disbanded the previous years. Zappa assembled it from recordings between 1967-1969. Zappa painstakingly edited the album into an original, vital album that shows what Mothers could do.
Zappa later claimed that he started to think about breaking the Mothers up after they’d appeared at the Charlotte Jazz Festival, at the Coliseum, Charlotte, North Carolina on June 28, 1969. The Mothers were playing on the same bill as Zappa. Duke EllingtonAmong others. In The Frank Zappa Book (1989), Zappa said, “Before we went on, I saw Duke Ellington begging, pleading for a 10-dollar advance. It was really depressing.” Reasoning that if a colossus of jazz such as Ellington had to lower himself with such a request, it was unbecoming of him to appear with a 10-piece band, Zappa told the Mothers, “That’s it, we’re breaking the band up.” They would have their last gig a few months later.
Listen to Weasels Ripped My Flesh now.
This is a provocative claim by Zappa, especially given the high status Ellington enjoyed at that time. It’s also likely that, for Zappa, the Mothers had run their course. He’d complained in a Downbeat interview shortly before the break-up that the audiences at their shows didn’t appreciate the music, saying, “The best responses we get from an audience are when we do our worst material.”
Zappa soon began planning an archival set, telling Rolling Stone in August 1969 that it’d be a 10LP set called There is no commercial potential. It had grown to 12LPs by October. He was calling it “The Twelve-LP Set”. The Mothers Of Invention Record Club. The logistics of such a large release were overwhelming, to put it mildly. So, he released a single album with outtakes. As he explained, Jazz & Pop in August 1970, “What I wanted to do is put out a 12-record set. Then we did a cost breakdown on doing that, and in order to press 10,000 each of the 12 records, plus coverage – it would have come to about a quarter of a million dollars… We just tossed it in the trash can.
“What I’ve been doing is ripping up the 12 albums, which were already edited – I had them ready to go. I cut them up and put together a new album. My Flesh was ripped by weasels.”
The September 1956 issue of Popular Mechanics contained the cover story for the title. Man’s Life magazine. The article featured the strapline, “Many claws tore at my skin, putting razor sharp teeth in easy reach of my flesh. The furry animals came from all directions – chewing, gnarling, turning the water red with my blood.” It was sensational stuff and illustrated by an equally out-there cover by Will Husley, featuring a muscle-bound hunk waist-high in water, writhing in agony as he’s set upon by a multitude of weasels. It’s easy to see why it stuck in Zappa’s memory. He showed artist Neon Park the magazine and asked, “What can you do that’s worse than this?”
Neon Park produced a pop art-inspired illustration based on a Schick razor advertisement. The advertisement appeared in the Saturday Evening Post back in 1953. A weasel was replacing the razor by one that drags its claws across a face of an all-American male.
It’s just as funny and uncompromising as the music, making it an ideal entry point into the unhinged and imaginative world of Mothers. Opening track “Didja Get Any Onya?” plunges the listener straight into the deep end with a cacophony of wailing horns and sinister organ over shifting time signatures before Lowell George (later the creative dynamo behind Little Feat) takes the mic to deliver a rambling and fictional monologue about his childhood in Germany in a thick accent. So far, so Zappa.
“Directly From My Heart To You” shows another side of the Mothers, a cover of the 1953 Little Richard track that the Mothers recorded during the Hot Rats Sessions held in July 1969. Don “Sugarcane” Harris delivers a heartfelt vocal and adds violin to a slow and simmering blues groove. “Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask” meanwhile, is comprised of disparate performances, expertly edited by Zappa to create a unique and unsettling sound collage.
The first section of “Toads Of The Short Forest” is another offcut from the Hot Rats Sessions with Zappa playing acoustic guitarist through a pedal wah-wah on a slow, light music. The mood changes to one of chaos and discordance at the minute mark when Zappa informs everyone of the time signatures each member of his band is in. “Get A Little” changes the mood again, the Mothers laying down a slow and luxuriant cosmic funk groove.
Side Two kicked off with “The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue,” an exploratory marvel steered by Art Tripp’s masterful percussion, which nimbly steers the ship as the Mothers’ improvisations take the track to ever-more wild places. “Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula” begins as a piece of electric chamber music before shifting into a piece of distorted glitch.
“My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama” is one of the few conventional songs here, a soulful, riff-heavy rock track with a lyric that speaks of teenage rebellion delivered deadpan by Zappa. “Oh No” follows, sung brilliantly by Ray Collins. It’s a revamp of a theme from Lumpy Gravy given lyrics that could read as a rebuttal of The Beatles’ “Within You, Without You” and “All You Need Is Love” (“Oh no, I don’t believe it/You say that you think you know, the meaning of love/You say love is all we need/You say with your love you can change/All of the fools, all of the hate”). It segues brilliantly into “The Orange County Lumber Truck,” a showcase for Zappa’s dazzling, questing guitar playing. The title track closes proceedings with a minute-and-a-half of coruscating feedback before a “Good night, boys and girls” from Zappa and applause.
It’s a typically contrary way to end an album that sums up what made the first line-up of the Mothers so special – a musically dextrous and adventurous unit who gave life to Zappa’s early ideas, however out-there and ambitious they may have been.
Listen to Weasels Ripped My Flesh now.
Check out this site for the most recent music news and exclusive features uDiscover Music.
Universal Music Group (UMG) operates uDiscover Music. UMG has some artists mentioned in uDiscover Music.