“I have a healthy resentment for him”: John Cale’s brutal dismantling of Frank Zappa’s music
As the creative impetus behind The Velvet Underground, John Cale had an eye for talent.
After co-founding the New York rock band with Lou Reed and Angus MacLise, Cale went on to produce a variety of acts like Happy Mondays, Patti Smith, and The Stooges, but there’s one guy whose music and misanthropy he just couldn’t swallow.
Above all else, Cale loathes a lack of genuine creativity. With that in mind, provided that you tick the invention box, he’s willing to give you a pass if you added to culture in a meaningful way, even if he disagrees with the contribution on a personal level. That’s just the type of guy he is.
So, being a person of contradictions, the Welshman went and chose the satirist who “never did anything that made me want to love music” to be included in one of his ‘nine pieces of music worthy of a new society’ in an Uncut interview in 2010.
Frank Zappa’s 1984 album Thing-Fish made the cut alongside Martha Reeves and The Beach Boys, although Cale’s own self-inclusion with his 1979 Sabotage/Live somewhat calls into question the seriousness of his objectivity in this selection process.
When discussing the work of the controversial voice behind ‘Titties and Beer’, Cale kept his distaste civilised. He said, “I have a healthy resentment for him. He had a great, acid sense of humour, but this guy, with all his technique and ability, never did anything that made me want to love music.“ For Cale, the vital emotive ingredient was missing.
As he added, “I think he trained himself in his expertise to spite his parents; he had contempt for the rock music he played. And self-contempt. Fear, loathing and self-hatred. Thing-Fish just postured at nihilism.” According to the Velvet Underground man, Zappa’s was an interesting but ultimately hollow pursuit.
For someone who’s written some of rock’s best-loved lyrics, the OBE mentee of Andy Warhol knows how to put two words together to assemble a well-thought criticism. It’s at the very least ironic to hear such propriety when describing someone who once thought the use of “ram it up yer poop chute” as proper lyrical play.
Frank Zappa was not an easy man to admire, with his music often seen as wry cynicism more so than an addition to the canon that actually did much good for music or the masses. Never at a loss for a community to antagonise, the composer, guitarist, filmmaker, and activist is often considered to have inhibited a merely provocative musical persona by some of his more critical peers, as though Zappa was a proto-edge lord. Yet to others, in a world of safe pop, that satirical edge was vital in itself.
With all of his delicate taste, Zappa’s work was a playful test of the industry’s boundaries, and Thing-Fish was no different. The theatrical album follows a racist, eugenics-obsessed theatre critic who engineers a disease to eradicate African Americans and homosexuals. Decorating the inner sleeve of the album is a warning written by Zappa, stating it contained elements ”which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress”. In his view, it was clearly a joke and the susceptibility for it to be taken seriously exposed society’s sickness.
Zappa’s rigorous disrespect for social norms left many confused about whether he was a cowardly man making fantastic music or a curious character making nasty songs, but one thing that is unarguable is that he was bold, and that his music left a mark on many, including John Cale… even if it is unclear whether he flat-out hated his music or begrudgingly admired Zappa.
