The Beatles/Frank Zappa

[MontyBeaton]

Zappa´s (fantastic) Album "We´re Only In It For The Money" is not (really) a parody on The Beatles and their (fantastic) "Sgt. Pepper" Album.
It´s more a social report that inherits exactly the impressions that George Harrison got when he (with Patty Boyd and others) visited Haight Ashbury.
Here´s an interview excerpt between Frank Kofsky and Frank Zappa in "Jazz & Pop", September 1967:

KOFSKY: It seems to me very coincidental that the Beatles' new record Sgt. Pepper's . . . came out the same time Absolutely Free did. I find a great similarity. The Beatles seem to be rejecting the idea that you have to be enslaved to commodities; and that when you're sixty-four years old, all you have is two weeks summer in the Isle of Wight.

ZAPPA: I think it's probably more subjective than that. It sounds to me like, "What's going to happen when we're sixty-four? Are you still going to buy our shit?" It's a humorous treatment of what happens when a rock-and-roller gets old.

KOFSKY: I didn't get that impression. I juxtaposed that track with the George Harrison thing in front of it [Within You Without You], which was talking about, "We could change the world with our love." It seems that what they're saying, "On the one hand you can go off and be free if you want. On the other hand, you can enslave yourself to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy."

ZAPPA: I believe in what George Harrison says that you can change the world with love – if you really got it. If you really care, you can do it.

KOFSKY: Can you love in a society that only teaches hate?

ZAPPA: Why not? Just to be contrary, you can do it. If you really want to be a rebel, honestly try and love something. And if you really want to be gross about it, try and love the society that's shitty – try and love it enough to do something about it. If you can get enough zealots out there that believe in that sort of activity, you can't stop them, no matter what they look like and where they live, because those are the kind of people that move mountains and you can't do anything about it. They won't take no for an answer.

KOFSKY: Let's put in a note here when this thing is edited for the magazine not to take the word "f*ck" out and the word "shit" out, and so forth, because that would be contrary to the spirit of the interview.

ZAPPA: Well, like if they're going to substitute any words, substitute "do-do" for "shit," got that? And for "f..." we'll have "hunchy-punchy."