25 years later... the impact on music, and the world, by both John Lennon and FZ
Hoodoo
December 2, 2005
By ANTHONY DAVIS
Texarkana Gazette
http://www.texarkanagazette.com/articles/2005/12/02/local_news/features/features05.txt
John Lennon wasn’t the only rock and roll music legend and pop culture
icon whose death deserves recalling as a source of reflection and
musical stock-taking in the month of December.
While John, Paul, George and Ringo were brewing up a British batch of
Chuck Berry-inspired tunes in the flats of Liverpool and London, Frank
Zappa was unleashing a mix of sounds and sound bites gleaned from
classical compositions, 50s and 60s pop music and a muse imbued with
wit and grandiosity with his Mothers of Invention crew.
Both were war babies who developed suspicious attitudes and healthy
doses of cynicism toward governmental bodies.
Zappa grew up in Southern California listening to odd, sometimes
atonal, avant-garde classical and free jazz compositions that
motivated him to compose music employing heavy instrumentation, spoken
word, defiant musical arrangements and socio-political caustic lyrics.
Lennon’s childhood was marked by his father’s abandonment when John
was 5, eventually resulting in his placement with an aunt and uncle
who supervised his young adulthood. Lennon’s fascination with early
American roots-rock pioneers Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Howlin’ Wolf
and a host of other pop and rockabilly influences.
But Liverpool, England and Lancaster, Calif., are separated by more
than a land mass and the Atlantic Ocean. While Zappa careened about
sunny California, Lennon and his bandmates could be found scrounging
in Soho bars and underground German beer-drinking clubs, eeking out a
living as an English rocker singing about love and simple pleasures.
But enough background.
The meat of the matter is that these two men, employing totally
dissimilar musical styles made a lasting impact on the music industry
and its relationship to artists with a social or political “message.”
Lennon and his primary songwriting partner Paul McCartney rejuvenated
the popular music love song and proceeded to take the United States
and the world by storm from about 1962 to the end of the decade. The
pair, writing separately and together, moved the Beatles from holding
hands music to psychedelia and progressive rock stylings with Sgt.
Pepper and the “White Album” before deciding to “Let It Be” and moving
in separate directions musically and in their friendship.
Lennon, bolstered by Transcendental Meditation and a penchant for drug
experimentation, went from “Working Class Hero” to peace activist with
“Give Peace A Chance” sung from various bed scenarios with his last
love Yoko Ono.
Mark David Chapman, an inadequate personality with a fixation for
Holden Caulfield’s antics in “Catcher In The Rye,” verbalized his
motive after gunning down Lennon outside his New York residence on
Dec. 8, 1980. Chapman revealed quite plaintively that he “just wanted
to be remembered for something,” or some similar twisted variation on
the theme.
It was almost enough to totally shut up the Howard “The Mouth” Cosell
as he broke the news to myself and millions of Americans watching
Monday Night Football that John Lennon had been assassinated.
The world, not just the music world, mourned the loss of this sage
commentator, a “canary in a coalmine” of chaos, religion, war and
peace with the simple round eyeglass frames and look of cosmic sadness
in his eye.
Frank Zappa was no John Lennon when it came to pacification, but he
set a new standard for experimental rock composition and droll social
observation without ever notching the public and commercial success of
Lennon.
“Dancing Fool,” which details a nerdy young man’s social suicide on
the dance floor, and “Valley Girl,” a cultural commentary on life in
privileged Southern California featuring his daughter Moon Unit’s
valley-speak. Like, uh, really, ya’ know? But let’s not forget Zappa’s
other near-pop hit of 1974, “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow.”
So how did this tounge-in-cheek absurdist aid the cause for rock and
roll?
Surprisingly enough to many observers, Zappa became one of the
stoutest and most articulate spokesmen for musicians’ freedom of
speech rights during the Tipper and Al Gore Senate hearing circus
calling for banning certain lyrics from use by musicians.
Zappa was an expert on extrapolating from the ridiculous to the
sublime and taking music and social commentary to its most absurd
extremes. Nonconformity was his credo.
Oddly enough, Zappa had already conjured up a precursor for what was
to come in 1979’s “Joe’s Garage” wherin he posed the musical question,
“What if music were to be made illegal?” Kinda makes ya wanna go hmmm.
And it also makes one wonder why Zappa was twice rejected by the Rock
& Roll Hall of Fame. Perhaps they didn’t like his comment about
journalists.
It may be a quantum leap from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to “Weasels
Ripped My Flesh,” but the Lennons and the Zappas are who we global
citizens and music lovers count on to keep the ravages of living from
destroying that which makes us uniquely human.
Out of room for a scene update this week, but “Best Bets” has some
good listings to make note of for what shapes up to be a great music
weekend in Texarkana. Diddley Squat, King Hat, Charlotte Taylor and
Gypsy Rain, the TBS Blues Jam, the Voodoo Cowboys...
Find time to check out your own brand of entertainment.
And always, whenever possible, support live music in T-Town.