The only Beatles songs Frank Zappa liked: “I don’t like the rest”
Frank Zappa once proclaimed that “without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible”. In the years following the long-drawn explosion of The Beatles, they have been widely lauded for their progressive ways. From hand-holding beginnings, they quickly shepherded the mainstream towards postmodernist collisions of art and technological studio advancements, crafting Promethean masterpieces like Revolver.
However, Zappa – as an eternal outsider – saw this as merely the mainstream engine of progress, some ergonomic tweak on a standard hatchback, whereas he was deviating away from the norm in a clown car that could lap the racetrack rabbit at Le Mans. In fact, he saw the Liverpudlian’s parade of ‘out there’ peace and love as such a pastiche of faux liberation that he mockingly parodied the Fab Four and their “movement” with his album art for We’re Only In It For The Money.
He even took the subtlety out of it in a public statement and simply said: “Everybody else thought they were God! I think that was not correct. They were just a good commercial group.” And seeing as though he once stated: “Art is moving closer to commercialism and never the twain shall meet,” his disdain is no surprise. However, let it be noted (as a huge caveat) that Zappa was a man who once worked in advertising before becoming a rockstar and came to the conclusion in the mid-1960s – long before many others – that modern music was now 50% to do with image.
He knew the game that The Beatles were playing, and much of his diatribe can be seen not as earnest disapproval on the whole but as a game of his own. ‘If you can’t beat them, join them, and if you can’t join them, bash them’, so to speak.
This adds credence to what his PA, Pauline Butcher, would later say. “He worked out he wasn’t a pretty boy like The Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” she explained. “He didn’t play their kind of music, he didn’t even like it, and if he was going to get himself heard he was going to have to do something radically different. He went out of his way to have outrageous photographs taken: the one on the toilet, the one with his pigtails sticking out like a spaniel, dressing up in women’s clothes. All these things were calculated because he had to get himself attention.”
His open aversion was also part of this constructed image of absurdity and indifference. You see, he might have claimed that he loathed the commercial side of pop culture, but he also felt that if his music was going to be worthwhile, then it would have to capture a large audience — that, by virtue, meant he had to cosy up to commercialism to some extent. Thus, when you strip away the effacing nature of his Beatles bashing, you are left with a softer image — one of respect and critique.
This is added to by the fact that he clearly liked three of their tracks. It might not be many, but it’s enough to hint at a slither of affection for a man who was never very forthcoming with praise. When The Beatles’ storm softened in 1980, he let this mask slip and played ‘I Am the Walrus’ during his BBC Star Special radio broadcast, a show that gave guests the chance to spin their all-time favourite tunes.
“Now, wasn’t that wonderful?” he said after spinning the classic Magical Mystery Tour exhibition of madness. “Just sitting here today, so sophisticated as we all are, in this modern age that we call The Eighties, and to be able to hear something like that with thousands of people in the background on that record saying ‘everybody smoke pot’. It makes you want to tighten your headband and stick a flower in the end of somebody’s gun.”
Seeing as though Zappa loathed drugs and thought the political side of the counterculture was a mere empty “fad”, you get a sense that his praise for the pioneering avant-rock classic is a touch begrudging and laced with sarcasm, but it is praise all the same. This much became clear eight years later when he even went on to cover the Beatles track, one that he clearly considered to be a diamond in the rough.
The other gleaming gem is also one that is very much in Zappa’s wheelhouse: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. The tune was a certified favourite of famed fifth Beatle, producer George Martin, who, like Zappa, was a classical man ushered into the draw of rock. Martin described it as “a complete tone poem, like a modern Debussy”. And what’s more, it really was pushing the boundary of stereo-sound and how it entwined with the music, essentially making rock baroque.
Thus, it’s hardly surprising that Zappa told author John Corcelli: “The best Beatles songs were ’Paperback Writer’, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘I Am the Walrus’. I don’t like the rest too much.”
This, of course, brings us to the last track that Zappa loved: ‘Paperback Writer’. It is a little more unusual than the others for which Zappa openly expressed admiration, as the tune was somewhat more traditional. Perhaps it was the narrative story that he liked? Or the little flourishing reference to Shakespeare? Lord knows, but unlike the other two, which he covered himself, he suggested that The Flying Lizards would do a cracking version of ‘Paperback Writer’ in the style of ‘Summertime Blues’.
They did not heed his advice. However, you can check out Zappa’s covers of The Beatles tracks he admired below. Musically, they are somewhat interesting, but as illuminations of his complex character, they really are truly fascinating. It is a symbol of his artistry that he even extracted value from facets of culture that he figured were pitted with potholes and problems.
The avant-garde Afghan Hound of rock was, I suppose, a man with prejudice levied by his own unique and unfathomable set of principles, as he said himself: “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.”
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