Artists whose image let them down, according to Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa was a complex character. He was, at once, one of the biggest supporters of the music world and one of its biggest haters. His adopted home of Laurel Canyon became the ultimate hangout for the scene, with musicians and artists dropping in and crashing there, getting sage wisdom and support from the artist. But, in the press, he was never shy about dishing out the critique.
Anyone who landed at Zappa’s pad found it a safe space. It was there that he encouraged Pamela Des Barres and her rag-tag bunch of groupie friends to become a band, crafting them into the cultishly beloved GTOs. It was there that the musician tried his best to get his local scene clean, having always been a vocal opponent of drugs, and where countless other artists found inspiration and advice that served them well.
There’s no denying that Zappa was an incredible force in music, both in personality and output. His own musical projects pushed genre boundaries at every turn, and he was dedicated to keeping that going. He was dedicated to the music, and music only, and so he generally seemed to hate anything else that distracted from that.
Drugs were definitely part of that, as Zappa has talked at length about his hatred for the drug scene, extending into his hatred for certain artists who he thought glorified substance abuse. But mostly, Zappa hated a poser. As someone so dedicated, he hated any act that he thought was hiding behind an image, or was all aesthetics over substance.
Some of the people he put in that category are laughable, though, like Prince, a man Zappa underestimated all because of his flamboyance. “I think that musically he’s good,” he said as a brush-off compliment for the virtuoso, but added, “I just don’t like the packaging. I think the packaging is glove stuff.”
Packaging was the issue, and, in particular, he seemed to really, really hate gloves. It represented a lot to him, frivolity, uselessness, too much focus on looks. I guess it makes sense; how practical is it to wear gloves, or even just a single glove, when you’re a musician trying to perform? Zappa seemed caught up on that because Michael Jackson got the same critique, brushed off as simply “more glove stuff”.
Boy George received a similar takedown as well, as Zappa once again couldn’t seem to digest the looks, stating, “I like Boy George’s voice, but the packaging I find repulsive”.
But his hatred for image wasn’t always about outfits and makeup. It was about the way an artist is presented to the public, the marketing around them and even the nitty gritty industry secrets behind the scenes. When it came to Bruce Springsteen, a man so often presented as the man of the people, Zappa took issue with that, too, in that he simply didn’t buy it.
“I don’t know anything about his music, but the thing that bothers me about Springsteen is the packaging and the merchandising, which started with the time he was on the cover of Time and Newsweek on the same week, and pronouncements by a rock critic named Jon Landau that this is the answer to everything that rock and roll always needed,” Zappa recalled. Watching an artist emerge so powerfully and have such thorough coverage in major press was a red flag for him. From that point on, it was hard for him to look past it when he felt like he’d seen the marketing so vividly and in action.
“Remember the line, ‘I have seen the future of rock and roll and it’s blah blah blah?’ Remember that one?” he said, before revealing, “And then the guy turns out to be his manager!” Always one eager to point out the rot and corruption in music, he put it plainly, suggesting something was afoot, “I mean, come on, do you smell something here?”
