Listen to Frank Zappa’s bizarre cover of Cream song ‘Sunshine of Your Love’
The late Frank Zappa made his name as one of music’s resident nonconformists. From the moment he broke through with The Mothers of Invention in 1966 to his death in 1993, Zappa dodged conventions with panache and created a distinctive style that remains widely influential today. Drawing on rock, jazz, pop, orchestral and other more experimental forms such as musique concrète, Zappa cut up convention and created something new. It is partially thanks to him that the contemporary penchant for dynamic rock fuelled by acid jazz is so.
Although he might have had long locks and facial hair, Zappa made it clear throughout his time that he was no hippie. He hated the counterculture so much that he was never afraid to tear into it with his songs and during interviews. One of his most notable pieces analysing the apparent fallacy of hippiedom is ‘Who Needs the Peace Corps?’. Unrelentingly battering the flower power movement, the lyrics delivered stinging lines such as “I’m really just a phoney / But forgive me / ‘Cause I’m stoned” and the final handful, “I will join a rock & roll band / I’ll be their road manager / And I will stay there with them / And I will get the crabs / But I won’t care”.
Given Zappa’s disdain for the counterculture, many were surprised when the lauded 1991 live double album, The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life, included a cover of one of the songs tied closest to the movement, Cream’s 1967 hit, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. Famously, the track was written by vocalist and bassist Jack Bruce after attending a Jimi Hendrix concert, which brings into full focus how steeped in hippie lore it is.
As expected, the Frank Zappa version of ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ is particularly out there. Recorded at Linz, Austria’s Sporthalle on May 28th, 1988, it’s one of the more ominous renditions, courtesy of his unhinged delivery, slow soundsystem-like pace, dissonant trumpets and those strange choir-like keyboards. Zappa opens the piece by singing, “Isaac Hayes / Gabby Hayes, well / Willie Mays / Helen Hayes / Speakin’ of Helen”, which aptly sets the scene for all the ensuing weirdness.
A masterclass in undertaking a cover and pushing the raw materials to their limit, Zappa’s take on ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ is one of the highlights of The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life.
Check it out below.
