“Lowest common denominator”: The franchise Frank Zappa slammed as the very worst of American culture
OK, so what exactly does Frank Zappa have against the original Star Wars trilogy?
Too mainstream? It’s a reasonable take. On the face of it, popular culture couldn’t present two greater forces from the disparate ends of entertainment, George Lucas’ space opera series, a veritable global phenomenon, and already Hollywood’s most famous property before its 1977 debut year was even out. The Mothers of Invention’s frontman, however, enjoys a reputation as a denizen of the counterculture, doggedly eschewing commercial appeal in favour of his arch-subversive and multi-genred Zappaverse.
But Zappa was more than happy to hang out with The Monkees, sign Alice Cooper to his Straight Records label, and court a top 40 hit with 1982’s ‘Valley Girl’ – unwittingly popularising the ‘Valspeak’ trend in the process. He was no mainstream scoffer for the sake of it. Perhaps it’s the cultural context? Zappa was a well-known cynic who harboured a deep and unabiding distrust of politics and the establishment, whichever party was in charge.
After a decade or so of national ennui and post-Watergate pessimism, Star Wars’ triumphant blast of good guys vs bad guys and escapist fun was just the moral certainty an insecure America needed after years of political doubt.
No more healthy contempt for authority. In came Ronald Reagan, the neoliberal extravaganza, and a Stars and Striped optimistim for America’s renewed muscle both at home and on the international stage. Zappa may well have appreciated Reagan’s deregulation and dialling down public spending, being a lifelong freak libertarian who espoused DIY bootstraps over relying on the state in any capacity, but such cartoon patriotism indirectly unleashed by Star Wars’ confidence boost was anathema to his disavowal of leaning on the elites.
All said could be baked into Zappa’s psyche in some diluted fashion, but his spiky thoughts on Star Wars’ impact were in fact spurred by a discussion on orchestral music. Speaking about the demanding compositions on 1983’s London Symphony Orchestra album, in particular the flute sections on the three ‘Mo ‘n Herb’s Vacation’ movements, Zappa highlighted John Williams’ acclaimed score as a marker of “lowest common denominator of musical skill” he spent his entire career trying to avoid.
“Star Wars is nice music, you know – for Star Wars-type consumption, OK?” Zappa told Mix with a reluctant olive branch at the time. “But if you’re going for something else, you have to presume that out there, someplace, lurking is a maniac who can do the hard stuff. I’m offering the challenge for the guy who wants to play something rougher than Star Wars.”
He’s right, Star Wars is “nice music”. Williams was reflecting Lucas’ universal storytelling, a narrative archetype wrought from Jungian mythos, concerned with the age-old tales of a naive young boy’s maturation to hero as he overcomes evil. It’s basic stuff which honours embedded creative principles that are as old as stories themselves, so naturally, Williams weaves a rich, traditional score that honours such a broad channel of the human condition.
No avant-garde dissidence to be found among the Star Wars soundtrack. Zappa was smart enough and capable enough as a composer to understand exactly what Williams was gunning for with his Buck Rogers duties, but form and tradition were features he lived to subvert as much as he could. With Williams’ contemporary classical formula breathing life into a pop cinema behemoth plastered across every corner of the American landscape, all Zappa could see was the conveyor belt of mass consumption he loathed so deeply, a manufactured product his unwieldy Zappaverse acted as a bulwark against with maximum, elitist snark.
