The exact moment Frank Zappa and Jefferson Airplane produced magic: “Spellbound”
There is something inherently impressive about artists who can tap into something special no matter the circumstances, and Tom Petty was always a good example of this.
Petty had previously admitted that when he wrote music, he didn’t do so consciously; instead, he would often tap into some kind of flow state, and in doing so, was able to write songs in a very specific moment. He admitted that a lot of the tracks he wrote, even ones which were considered classics by his fans, came to him naturally once he had fully tapped into the truly creative side of his brain.
“I just took a deep breath and it came out. The whole song. Stream of consciousness: words, music, chords. Finished it,” he said when discussing the song ‘Wildflowers’, “I mean, I just played it into a tape recorder and I played the whole song and I never played it again. I actually only spent three and a half minutes on that whole song. So I’d come back for days playing that tape, thinking there must be something wrong here because this just came too easy. And then I realised that there’s probably nothing wrong at all.”
Of course, it’s one thing to be able to tap into a flow state when writing on your own, but something entirely else to be able to do that when you work with others. A lot of truly exceptional artists can create with others whose sound may not directly align with their own, but they are so authentic in their approach to creativity that the collaboration can develop into something truly wonderful.
This is what happened when Frank Zappa and Jefferson Airplane teamed up to work on the song ‘Would You Like A Snack?’ The two acts are quite different, as Zappa has always leaned into a chaotic sound which blended hard rock, jazz and other genres to expand the boundaries of what people called prog; meanwhile, Jefferson Airplane was very much a part of the hippy movement and was able to create relatively chilled out music that you could imagine floating to.
Despite the differing approaches to music, there is no escaping the fact that they were able to come together and bounce off each other when they combined their talents to write music. The original plan was for Zappa to help produce one of the band’s albums, but thanks to scheduling issues, he only had time to write with them for a short period. We are left wondering what a Zappa/Airplane album would sound like, but we have ‘Would You Like A Snack?’ as a slight window into it.
The writing session the two acts had is the stuff of legend. Allegedly, with no friction or awkwardness, Zappa came up with the song idea, and the rest of the band started steadily playing, which culminated in everything merging incredibly naturally. This is the collaborative equivalent of magic, as Zappa’s former secretary, Pauline Butcher, remembered the recording session and how everything came together.
“I watched spellbound while the beautiful piece he’d written that afternoon gradually metamorphosed into something else,” she said, “After Ian [Underwood] and Art [Tripp III] had laid down piano, vibes and drum tracks, Spence Dryden, drummer with Jefferson Airplane, added extra drum rolls. And then Grace Slick wailed and half-spoke her part with a clarinet accompaniment.”
Despite being a song with relatively silly lyricism, ‘Would You Like A Snack?’ remains a moment of musical magic.
