The Frank Zappa album that influenced a young Michael Gira: “Utterly fantastic”
As Michael Gira has conjured some of the most pulsating, inaccessible music known to man, it makes sense that he should be a fan of at least some of Frank Zappa’s work. While their worldviews might have differed, when the moustachioed Mothers of Invention man burst onto the scene, the future Swans leader was a teenage hippie expanding his mind with the potent recipe of experimental music and narcotics. Naturally, this led him to the weird world of Zappa.
Although Swans’ music bears no real similarities to anything from the hippie era, bar the immensely transcendental nature of some of their later work, they have always been a deeply countercultural act. From the almost unlistenable no-wave of their first chapter to their experimental and traditional-defying compositional choices, their music has always been uncommercial art.
Gira openly talks about The Doors as the countercultural act that left the most significant mark on him. Whether it be listening to their self-titled debut album so many times that he would listen to it entirely in his mind when he was 16 locked up in an Israeli jail or ‘The End’ confirming that listening to music can be a full-bodied experience, their hallmarks can be found throughout his oeuvre if you look close enough.
Yet outside of the otherwordly music of The Doors, hanging out with hippies also led him to listen to Frank Zappa’s first major outfit, The Mothers of Invention. He can’t remember who showed him it, but as part of the common knowledge shared by the hippies, their debut album, 1966’s Freak Out! came to be one that he would also love.
When speaking to Reader’s Digest in 2019, he reflected on the record, how it resonated with him, and its anti-consumerist nature: “That’s a pivotal experimental psychedelic spit-in-your-face anti-consumer society record. It’s utterly fantastic. Some of it sounds a bit dated, but it employed sounds, tape loops, great rock grooves and really acerbic words.”
From the above comment, it’s easy to understand how Gira would start mentally formulating his own acerbic music. He also mentioned the likes of ‘Hungry Freaks, Daddy’, ‘Who are the Brain Police?’ and ‘Help, I’m a Rock’, as highlights, stating: “I think that this record was more punk rock than punk rock ever was.”
Freak Out! made such an impact on Gira that he’s mentioned it numerous times. During a chat with The Quietus in 2012, he recalled his obsession with the record and how he naturally gravitated towards it, as he was never a fan of the lightweight pop of the day, with the “unwholesome” aspect of The Mothers really appealing to him. Their outrageous style spat in the face of America’s conservatism, and the young substance-taking Gira loved it.
However, in true form, Gira did have something else to say about Zappa that wasn’t so positive. He noted that Freak Out! was such an accomplishment that it must have, in some way, influenced The Beatles to establish their own vivid world on the Sgt. Pepper’s double album in 1967. As is well known, this annoyed Zappa so much that it led him to respond with 1968’s widely influential We’re All In It For The Money. Yet, he states that after this storied third project, he does not care at all for the late rocker’s work. He said: “I like Zappa for the first three albums and then I don’t care one bit about him.”
While Gira didn’t expand on why he fell out of love with Zappa, I’d argue that it had something to do with what Dean Ween once said. The Ween guitarist mentioned that at points, Zappa’s music comes across as nothing more than showboating, with his sarcasm becoming too prominent and aware of itself. It’s certainly an argument that has legs.
Listen to Freak Out! below.
