The album Frank Zappa forcibly removed his own name from
Having Frank Zappa‘s name featured in the credits of your album is surely a badge you’d wear with pride, but only if you’re aiming to be acknowledged by a certain demographic.
As much as Zappa was always a celebrated artist, composer and producer, his work was divisive and often considered to be too challenging for mainstream audiences, not that he ever cared much. Even the most accessible albums in his catalogue, such as his jazz fusion masterpiece, Hot Rats, were far too outlandish and experimental to have ever achieved chart success, and there was little to no chance of his work being picked up for airplay on commercial radio stations.
Zappa was well aware of this fact and laughed in the face of those who demanded that he bow down to demands that he make his work more conventional. The entire point of his work was to challenge the listener and open their mind to the possibility of rock composition, and for him to dumb things down because audiences weren’t able to wrap their heads around it would be to accept defeat in his pursuits.
However, that didn’t stop him from contributing to the works of others who were making slightly more accessible records, and when his Mothers of Invention bandmate Jeff Simmons set out to record his first solo studio album in 1969, Zappa was asked to come and produce the record. The only issue was that having Zappa’s name on the album would have been detrimental to any of Simmons’ ideas of achieving radio play or mainstream success, and may have warded off any potential fans because of the associations that they might have made with it being partially made by him.
They couldn’t simply erase the fact that Zappa played a prominent role in helping Simmons make Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up, but there was an alternative solution to getting over the possibility of damaging his mainstream potential. While many artists wouldn’t have been comfortable with the idea of making their input less visible, Zappa had high hopes for Simmons as an artist and wanted to make sure that his music was being marketed in a way that would benefit him.
Speaking to Collage in 1977, Zappa reflected on the decision that he and his Straight Records associates came to make it less obvious that Zappa had worked on the record. “I changed my name to La Marr Bruister for the record jacket,” he explained. “The reason I changed my name was because he was doing something that, well, maybe it had some radio potential. It wasn’t commercial, but it had potential to go into radio. Everybody felt that if my name wasn’t on it – even though I did the work – he’d have a better chance.”
Unfortunately for both Simmons and Zappa, the album was met with a lukewarm commercial reception. While hardcore fans of Zappa’s work perceive it as being one of his finest contributions, it was unable to grab the attention of a wider audience and help propel Simmons into the spotlight, and he wouldn’t go on to make another solo record for 35 years.
