The band that signified how rock had become overblown, according to Frank Zappa
For many people during the counterculture age of the 1960s, Jim Morrison and The Doors represented the pinnacle of this revolutionary new movement. Pioneering psychedelic and acid rock, Morrison’s outfit came to define many of the characteristics that defined the period, from their inventive musical output to the controversial and outspoken personality of Jim Morrison himself. In spite of their legendary reputation, fellow counterculture icon Frank Zappa was never particularly convinced of their credentials.
Zappa emerged onto the American rock scene at roughly the same time as The Doors, playing with the Mothers of Invention during the mid-1960s, but he always seemed to be driven more by musical experimentation and skill rather than the adolescent rock of The Doors. Dedicating himself to pursuing genre exploration and musical experimentation, Zappa never tried to adhere to current trends or popular culture; throughout his life, he always worked to his own rhythm and want.
As a result of the fact that Zappa was always on the outside of this ‘in crowd’ that Jim Morrison and The Doors represented, with regard to the hippie movement, the revolutionary musician was able to see through a lot of the complacency and phoniness of that scene. The counterculture age started off as a legitimate rebellion against the state of US society during the 1960s, particularly the country’s involvement in the war in Vietnam. However, these admirable social and political aims were soon overshadowed by the commercialist fashion that hippies became.
This is hardly a rare occurrence – capitalism has always had a habit of destroying revolutions by watering down their aims and then profiting off the more gullible members of the movement. From the outside, looking in, Frank Zappa could see this happening first-hand, and he viewed The Doors as the peak of this move from social politics to commercial gain.
“I am pretty well-acquainted with the rise of Jim Morrison,” he said in a 1982 edition of Guitar World, “The type of merchandising that was originally associated with Doors music I thought was really distasteful and stretching the boundaries of what it actually was beyond the realm of credibility.”
Merchandising never seemed to wash with Zappa’s personal manifesto, which relied solely on the music itself. Admittedly, if you are as captivatingly talented as Frank Zappa, you don’t really need to flog any t-shirts to get your name out there. Nevertheless, virtually every band of the time sold some form of merchandising, so Zappa’s beef was not solely concerned with Morrison and company. “I’m not even picking on Jim Morrison,” he said “I am talking about the machinery that takes anything and exaggerates it to the point where it’s blown out of proportion and the public believes the inflated version of what the reality is.”
According to the musical messiah, the career and credibility of The Doors were indicative of wider trends within American rock music, representing how far the scene had fallen in a relatively short period. “I am a realistic kind of a guy. I just try and look at things the way they are, take them for what they are, deal with them the way they are, and go on to the next case,” Zappa shared, “But, Americans thrive on hype and bloated images and bloated everything, and anything that’s realistic they turn away from. They want the candy gloss version of whatever it is. And Jim Morrison is only one example of that.”
Morrison might have been an example of bloated corporate appeal in Frank Zappa’s eyes, but the Mothers of Creation songwriter himself never bowed down to such pressures. Across the entirety of his long and illustrious career, Zappa remained fiercely individualistic and dedicated to his own ethics and principles—a rare feat, particularly within the rock scene of the United States.
