This album is probably most recognizable for its cover, a direct parody of Sgt. Pepper inside and out. Literally, even—the yellow-backed panorama of the current band (in dresses) served as the outside, while the gatefold included the lyrics-on-red and crowd scene inside the gatefold. (Frank got around the likeness permission by putting black bars over the eyes of half of the people.)
However, the music on We’re Only In It For The Money doesn’t parody the Beatles directly. Rather, it takes on the Summer Of Love in general. Frank hated hippies almost as much as he hated the “establishment”, but mostly he saw the Flower Power scene as supplanting his beloved freaks by making California so trendy, thereby ruining a good thing. (And remember, this was a guy whose drug intake was limited to coffee and tobacco.)
The album takes another step from away from the standard “song” format of the modern rock album, with several tracks existing as sound collages or spoken interludes. The very first thing we hear is Eric Clapton asking “Are You Hung Up?” while the engineer whispers and drummer Jimmy Carl Black introduces himself. “Who Needs The Peace Corps?” directly mocks lazy hippies, envisioning them being imprisoned in “Concentration Moon” and, in an about-face, lamenting those unfortunate ones who were killed by the police after being abandoned by “Mom & Dad”. A mysterious “Telephone Conversation” leads into the vaudeville-style “Bow Tie Daddy”. (We’re not even halfway through side one yet.) A gorgeous piano flourish introduces “Harry, You’re A Beast”, which manages to insult feminists and guys who shoot too quick in less than a minute. In a harbinger of things to come, “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?” fuses a doo-wop arrangement to a rant against “ignorance”. Another lovely piano flourish introduces “Absolutely Free” (yes, the title of his last album), which uses big words and silly references to deflate the “poetry” of psychedelic music, taken to a further extreme on “Flower Punk”, based around the music of “Hey Joe” with references to “Wild Thing” and the suspended A-chord from several Byrds songs. The liner notes helpfully explain that the “STP ingested by the Flower Punk” coalesce in his head in the form of two conversations in each speaker and a party in the middle.
The wonderfully titled “Nasal Retentive Calliope Music” combines sped-up tape with more Clapton and a brief trip to the beach, suggesting nostalgia for the eccentric high school buddies depicted in “Let’s Make The Water Turn Black” and “The Idiot Bastard Son”. “Lonely Little Girl” is about as straight rock as we get here; in fact, an earlier mix edited with “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance” (which follows on the album) was issued as a single. There’s a further throwback in a reprise of “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?” which quickly degenerates into chaos. “Mother People” (which arguably got its widest exposure on the penultimate episode of The Monkees) pits a few time signatures against each other under something of a theme song, then a record scratches to take us to an orchestral scene from another album. Here it serves to set up the finale in “The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny”, a musique concrète depiction of a Kafka short story.
We’re Only In It For The Money was allegedly edited by the record label against his wishes prior to release, excising some language and reinserting it backwards elsewhere. The sonic result doesn’t seem all that out of place, but Zappa was furious at the intrusion (although the edits sound much too expert to be by anyone but him). He presented the album in its original unexpurgated state when it appeared on CD—as a two-fer with Lumpy Gravy—but with another twist. Claiming that the original tapes had deteriorated, he “had to” re-dub new bass and drum parts, making for a tinny, odd-sounding program that more often sounds like a rhythm machine than actual people playing, and obliterating its “vintage” sound. (While he was one of the first musicians to embrace digital technology, he wasn’t around for the backlash that insisted that analog sounded better.)
When Rykodisc relaunched the Zappa catalog in 1995, the album was made available on its own in the original albeit censored 1968 stereo mix. Even hardcore Zappaphiles will begrudgingly concede that given the choice, this is the preferred way to hear the album. As one might surmise, it’s very chaotic, its plusses revealing themselves with repeated listening.
Its importance in the pantheon is further represented by The Lumpy Money Project/Object triple-CD package, which includes the 1968 mono mix, the 1984 rerecorded mix and a whole pile of backing tracks and alternate takes, alongside artifacts involved with the Lumpy Gravy album (which we’ll discuss soon enough). The instrumentals are extremely illuminating, exposing the excellent compositions hidden underneath the sped-up vocals and tape effects.
The Mothers Of Invention We’re Only In It For The Money (1968)—3½
1986 Rykodisc CD: “same” as 1968, plus Lumpy Gravy album
1995 Rykodisc CD: same as 1968
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