Why did Frank Zappa hate drug culture?
The word iconoclast is undoubtedly overused but finds more value than most regarding Frank Zappa. The avante-garde musician rose to prominence as his generation’s most unconventional artist, fusing a generally misanthropic outlook with a will to be remembered as a great composer in the mould of those from days gone by.
The counterculture flocked to his weird and wonderful work when Zappa first burst onto the scene in 1966 with The Mothers of Invention’s debut album, Freak Out. Although he was musically unorthodox, Zappa’s personality was where this contrarian nature shone through most. Yet, unlike those who packed out rooms to watch him and his group, Zappa was not a hippie, and like another man closely linked to the time, Hunter S. Thompson, he was deeply sceptical of the movement.
Zappa’s bizarre music might have been the perfect soundtrack for the madcap LSD journeys of those railing against the man and those happy to kick back in a fog of smoke courtesy of the sweet leaf, but he was not one for such behaviour. Famously, he prohibited all of his band from taking drugs, which was so stringent that they were also forbidden from hanging out with the era’s most prominent drug takers: the Grateful Dead.
Of course, this is all tremendously ironic. Yet, Zappa, who would describe himself openly as a “conservative” during a 1986 debate which left fans unsure of the tongue-in-cheek nature, was on record as detesting his generation’s acid culture and drugs in general.
Although many of his age took LSD proponent Timothy Leary’s instructions “turn on, tune in, and drop out” so literally to the point they eventually became social outcasts, Zappa found this hedonistic message extremely troubling. In a testament to the foresight underpinning his broader message, it wouldn’t be long before his generation, who were unschooled in the dangers of such feckless narcotic abandon, started to learn first-hand its dark side.
By the time one of his finest solo albums, 1974’s Apostrophe (‘), arrived, many of those who were once hailed as the most culturally significant musicians had been taken by heavy drug use, whether this be the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison or the mental health catastrophes incurred by the likes of Syd Barrett and Peter Green. Furthermore, the acid-heavy terror of the Manson Family murders were still a recent memory, which had all but ended the promise of the flower-power movement.
Why did Frank Zappa hate drugs?
When asked to clarify his unwavering anti-drug stance, Zappa once said: “Well, it’s not just that drugs kill you. It’s that when you take them they turn you into a type of person that I don’t like to hang around with. I mean, people…their personalities just mutate, their value systems change, and generally – this is not a hard and fast rule all over the world – but it has been my observation that when Americans consume drugs they are instantly transformed from regular, normal human beings into raging assholes.”
Elsewhere, when speaking to CBS in 1971, the year that saw Hendrix, Morrison and Janis Joplin all die of drug-related issues, Zappa espoused another conservative take on drugs. When asked how he thought LSD affected young Americans, he asserted: “I think it’s taken away a lot of their ambition. I think we have yet to reap the benefits of the so-called ‘Acid Generation’ as the burnouts begin to turn up more frequently”.
Expanding on his views towards drugs, he told Gallery in 1989: “According to libertarian philosophy – that part of libertarianism I adhere to – I own myself. The government doesn’t own me. The government exists at my leisure because I, as an individual, give it the right to exist. The policeman has the right to carry a gun and enforce laws because you and I give him that right. If you decide to fuck up your life with drugs, you have that right. But you don’t have the right to fuck up someone else’s life. If an individual decides to participate in any kind of chemical alteration – whether it be drinking too much alcohol, smoking marijuana or a regular cigarette, or taking some other kind of chemical substance – he has the right to do it without the government getting on his fucking back. Where I draw the line is when the individual’s actions impinge on the safety and lifestyle of another person. There are people in occupations that are critical to the life and safety of others. So they cannot engage in those practices while on duty.”
Did Frank Zappa ever take drugs?
Unsurprisingly, Frank Zappa had dabbled in drugs, and by his own admission, that was it. When asked by Gallery if the narcotic-heavy image that most people have of him is real, he replied definitively.
He said: “No, not at all. I don’t drink or do hard drugs. I’ve smoked less than ten marijuana cigarettes in my life. When I’m working on music with other musicians, like, say, practicing for a tour, I keep very strict standards: no drugs. They can do what they want on their own free time.”
