First Impressions: Frank Zappa - The Mothers 1971
Some loose thoughts on an upcoming Frank Zappa box set that covers familiar ground, but with some new wrinkles
News broke the other day of an upcoming Frank Zappa box set: The Mothers 1971. Over eight CDs, this set will feature Zappa and the Mothers two-day, four-gig stand at the Fillmore East, a complete show from December 1971 and some other odds and ends. As someone who’s spent too much of my life listening to and thinking about this music, I have some loose thoughts about a set I haven’t heard yet.
In early 1970, Frank Zappa met Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, two vocalists fresh out of The Turtles, and they hit it off. The two joined Zappa on a tour as his featured vocalists, billing themselves as Flo and Eddie for contractual reasons. This was the start of a year-and-a-half stretch where they’d tour as the Mothers, with a band that generally stayed pretty stable. It had Aynsley Dunbar on drums, Ian Underwood on reeds and keyboards, Zappa on guitar and occasional vocals and Flo and Eddie. Other people would drift in and out of this lineup: Jeff Simmons, George Duke, Jon Pons and others.
This was obviously a group Zappa felt pretty good about. He recorded and toured constantly, somehow finding time to squeeze a movie shoot (200 Motels) into early 1971. The first part of this band’s existence was documented in detail on The Mothers 1970, a four-CD set that came out in 2020. It was an interesting, if slightly overstuffed, set that combined studio outtakes and on-the-road verite recordings with live material. It was followed last year by the expanded reissue of 200 Motels soundtrack, a six-CD set that probably has every remaining outtake and alternate cut from those sessions. I’ll admit, I was supposed to write a feature on this, but it didn’t pan out.
Now there’s eight-CDs of Zappa and company’s summer/fall 1971 tour. And you might ask yourself: is this overkill? Things are not only growing at an exponential rate, but this is a period Zappa covered somewhat in detail: Fillmore East - June 1971, Just Another Band from LA and Playground Psychotics were all released in Zappa’s lifetime, plus there’s the posthumous Carnegie Hall box set, too. Add to this the tracks included on the You Can’t Do This on Stage Anymore series and you’ve got a lot of this ground covered already.
But there aren’t many collectors who demand as much detail as Zappa collectors do (maybe Deadheads take the cake), and I’ve already seen people justify this because it includes a long out-of-print B-side. Thankfully, though, it includes much more. Let’s dig into the tracklist shall we?
First you get four complete shows from Zappa’s June stand at the Fillmore East. These are pretty famous in some circles because John Lennon and Yoko Ono sat in on one of them and joined in on some jamming and improvisations. Lennon released a mix of these back in the 70s, Zappa did his own mix in the early 90s, this ground is pretty well covered. What would’ve been interesting for fans back in 1971 would have been a) the speed this record came out (a little over two months after it was recorded!) and b) the material, which was something of a preview for 200 Motels.
But viewed now, a good 50-plus years later, the record doesn’t hold either of those appeals anymore. So it’s got to be viewed in context of Zappa’s long career. And I’ll admit, I’m a little skeptical.
In spring 1971, Zappa had to replace both Duke and Simmons with a new bassist and keyboardist. Enter Jim Pons and Bob Harris. This lineup had only been on the road a few weeks when they came to the Fillmore and they sound like it. When the band plays less complicated stuff like “Willie the Pimp” they’re alright, but when it comes to longer and more complex stuff (like “Billy the Mountain” as included on Playground Psychotics) they sound a little ragged, with soloing that’s uninspired. And let’s be honest: the on-stage skits about groupies are very of their time and have aged poorly. Maybe you had to be there.
At the same time, there’s some pretty bright moments: side two of Fillmore East has a killer Don Preston moog solo (excerpted from a performance of “King Kong”), a blast through “Peaches En Regalia” and concludes with “Tears Began to Fall,” which was probably one of the most mainstream rock tracks Zappa would record in this period. It was released as a single, and as you might have guessed, flopped.
One’s not surprised that these performances are finally getting the deluxe treatment, but the setlists show how limited this group was: the setlists don’t vary too much and there’s only a couple of treats. For instance, they performed “Billy the Mountain” at every show, so you’ve got four performances of something that typically ran a good half-hour. Disc four has a version of “Chunga’s Revenge” which was only played once during this run, so that’s a nice treat. But by and large, it looks like the same four sets played different times. But to be fair, Zappa was recording a record, so he probably focused on what he wanted to be on it.
But! The stray cuts on six and seven, taken from shows in Harrisburg and Scranton on June 1, 1971 offer more of the same. More “Billy the Mountain,” “Call Any Vegetable” and “Peaches En Regalia.” So maybe the band was trying to get stuff down pat for the Fillmore sets,or maybe their songbook wasn’t too big?
The really interesting stuff is at the very end of this set: the full concert of the band’s gig in London on Dec. 10, 1971. This European tour was a disaster in every sense of the word: just a few days earlier, someone shot off a flare gun during “King Kong” and burned down the Casino in Montreux. And during this show, a crazed fan tackled Zappa on stage and knocked him into the Rainbow Theatre’s orchestra pit, breaking Zappa’s leg, arm and larynx. “I thought I was dead,” wrote Zappa in his autobiography.
It’s an interesting choice to include this attack on a box set, but then again, Zappa was an interesting guy. He had this show professionally recorded (EMI’s remote eight-track recorder was used), maybe with an eye to a record, and did release parts of it on Playground Psychotics. And the “King Kong” solos were included on a volume of YCDTOSA in 1988, and Zappa shared some thoughts on this show:
“The 1971 Rainbow Theatre show was a disaster. The week before all our equipment was destroyed in a fire… as a result, everybody in the band had new equipment at the Rainbow and half of it didn’t work. This was the last solo I played in 1971 - a few moments later some guy knocked me off the stage… The tape ran out before my crash landing, otherwise I would have included it here.” (You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 3 liner notes, 1988)
Note that last bit: “The tape ran out,” he wrote. But apparently not? This alone is enough to make any Zappa head salivate: what else is on this tape that hasn’t been heard before? And by this point, the group was road-tested, had stuff down pat and was more engaging than the Fillmore East shows - as shown on the Carnegie Hall box set, which features some tremendous jamming from Zappa and company. Which could make this set a pretty good listen. I know I’m curious.
A final note: absent from this box set is anything from Zappa’s Aug. 7, 1971 show at UCLA. It’s worthy of note because that set was also recorded and released in 1972 in part as Just Another Band From LA. I personally think the band was red-hot during that show, but perhaps Zappa disagreed? He only released a couple of stray performances from it on the You Can’t… series, and one gets the feeling it was more of a stop-gap release because of his injury. This was, after all, the early 70s, when artists were releasing new records every year- or, as in Zappa’s case, more often. One wonders if that whole show will get it’s own 50th anniversary release, or if there’s some other reason (damaged/missing tapes?) why it’s not included here.