Frank Zappa’s two favourite pop songs – and how they shaped his warped mind
Absolutely nothing about Frank Zappa was meant for public consumption.
This was a man whose art was entirely his own, and if anyone else liked it, then that was…kind of a letdown in a strange way? It cheapens the genius that is Zappa to say that he was nothing but a contrarian who only wanted negative responses to his art, but he was a capital “A” artiste.
The idea of someone passively consuming his work and blindly giving it a thumbs up for the sake of it was probably the worst thing someone could do with his music. If someone was genuinely considering it, then deciding it was the worst thing they’d ever heard, then at least they were actually engaging with it.
That said, Zappa wasn’t entirely an experimental musician. We’re not talking about The Residents here, where their most accessible work would still make most music fans look at you like you’ve gone insane. The music that changed the lanky weirdo’s life was classical music, sure, and that was a muse he followed for the rest of his career. However, his musical awakening had as much to do with doo-wop artists like The Channels and The Velvets, along with R&B guitarists like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and Guitar Slim, as it did with Igor Stravinsky.
The best demonstration of this came from an interview Zappa gave to Castaway’s Choice, an American radio show with not a suspicious amount in common with the BBC’s Desert Island Disks. In it, Zappa chooses ten songs that he would want with him if he were stuck on a desert island. Again, not suspicious at all. The majority of Zappa’s list is classical music. However, there are a few nods towards the pop music that captured his imagination as a kid.
It may be all of two tracks, but hey, it still counts
What were the two favourite pop songs of Frank Zappa?
The first comes from the aforementioned Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, and much like most things with Zappa, there’s lore behind this one. Zappa used to get lunch in high school from a nearby chilli joint. In fact, he went so often that the owners began letting him put songs on their jukebox. One of the ones he picked was Watson’s ‘Three Hours Past Midnight’, a song that he listened to more or less every day for the next few decades.
The 1956 guitar classic shaped Zappa so much that in the mid-1970s, Zappa invited his hero to play on a number of his records. Considering the man was an infamous control freak who would have rather shaved off his moustache than desecrate a record of his with someone unworthy playing on it, that’s saying a hell of a lot.
However, it makes perfect sense when considering that Watson was essentially Zappa’s primary guitar influence. Thus, it also makes sense that the other pop on the list makes up his primary vocal influence, too.
The other pop song on the list is The Velours’ ‘Can I Come Over Tonight’, a slinky 1957 doo-wop jam that, on the surface, sounds like a perfect take on a standard doo-wop formula. Trust Frank Zappa to see the complexity in it. He told another interview that “any musicologist that can find that record and listen to the bass singer … he’s singing quintuplets and septulets… it was amazing.” So amazing that he cribbed the bass vocals almost exactly and used them on his track ‘Ruben and the Jets’.
It just goes to show that if Frank Zappa himself can find inspiration in pop music, anyone can.