The song Frank Zappa called one of the “most important musical statements”
Frank Zappa is no stranger to making statements with his music, and whether or not these statements landed was of zero importance to him, as his primary mission in his art was to challenge audiences rather than give them something safe.
From the word go, his music was out there and outlandish in ways that either enamoured listeners or completely rubbed them up the wrong way. To choose to release an album like We’re Only In It For The Money as his second studio album with the Mothers of Invention was a bold decision, considering its deep levels of satire and perceived lack of seriousness.
It never really slowed down at all later on in his career either, with albums like Joe’s Garage and Sheik Yerbouti proving that he wasn’t willing to let his oddball sensibilities slide in order to make himself more commercially successful. By the end of the 1970s, he’d already established a sizable following, so why would he feel the need to necessarily become more palatable when the people he was making music for actively wanted him to continue being as strange as he was?
You could say that his style was arguably centred around jazz, or at the very least, a bastardised version of jazz-fusion that had a tendency to lose itself in complex ideas and arrangements, but it wasn’t just jazz that provided a solid backbone for Zappa’s musical identity.
There were plenty of elements of blues in his guitar playing, and he’d often find himself dipping into this territory at various points in his career, and he often found himself working with artists who shared this same philosophy and admiration for blues music.
However, in spite of trying to add to the blues canon with his unusual take on the format, one of the songs that ignited his love for the sound of blues music in the first place was as simple as they come, and made no fuss in how it presented itself as a raucous early example of blues fusing with rock and roll.
During a 1988 interview, he revealed that one of the first songs that turned him on to playing guitar in the first place came courtesy of a stalwart of the genre who was praised for his electrifying and often showy style. “It was when I first heard the guitar solo in ‘Three Hours Past Midnight’, by Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson,” Zappa attested. “That’s probably one of the most important musical statements I ever heard in my life.”
There are a multitude of reasons as to why someone might be attracted to a song like this, but the frankly over-the-top yet impassioned soloing on the track was unique for its time, and you can certainly hear elements of what Zappa would go on to do in his own work coursing through every note.
While he also acknowledged his love for songs like ‘I Got Something For You’ and ‘The Story of My Blues’ by Guitar Slim, and ‘Lover Man’ by Wes Montgomery, there’s something about what Watson did on ‘Three Hours Past Midnight’ that makes it a truly era-defining blues rock anthem, and the sort of track that could probably persuade anyone to pick up the instrument.
