Hot Rats is the second solo album by Frank Zappa. It was released in October 1969. The album consists of six tracks, five of which are instrumental (the song "Willie the Pimp" features a short vocal by Captain Beefheart). It was Zappa's first recording project after the dissolution of the original Mothers of Invention. In his original sleeve notes Zappa described the album as "a movie for your ears."
Because Hot Rats focuses on long instrumental jazz-like compositions with extensive soloing, the music sounds very different than earlier Zappa albums which featured short songs with satirical vocal performances with extensive use of musique concrete and editing techniques. The only member of the Mothers to appear on the album is multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood who was also the primary musical collaborator. Other featured instrumentalists were noted guitarist-songwriter Shuggie Otis (the son of renowned R&B musician and broadcaster Johnny Otis) on bass, drummers Aynsley Dunbar and John Guerin and violinists Don "Sugarcane" Harris and Jean-Luc Ponty.
This was the first Frank Zappa album recorded on 16-track equipment and one of the first 16-track rock recordings released to the public. Recording machines with 16 individual tracks allow for much more flexibility in multi-tracking and overdubbing than the 4 and 8-track tape recorders that were standard in 1969. While Zappa was recording Hot Rats in Los Angeles, The Beatles were working on their Abbey Road album at EMI's soon to be famous Abbey Road Studios in London. By comparison, The Beatles were limited to 8-track technology. Hot Rats still stands out as one of Zappa's greatest musical and technological achievements and remains one of his most popular albums.
Music
Zappa composed, arranged and produced the album himself. His primary instrument on the album is lead guitar. "Willie the Pimp", "Son of Mr. Green Genes", and "The Gumbo Variations" are showcases for his powerful and unconventional solo guitar performances. Four of the tracks have intricately arranged charts featuring multiple overdubs of performances by Ian Underwood. Underwood plays the parts of eight or ten musicians, playing complicated sections of piano and organ, as well as woodwind parts including multiple flutes, clarinets and saxophones.
The song "Peaches en Regalia" is widely recognized as a modern jazz-rock standard and is one of Zappa's best known tunes. Zappa plays a short octave-bass solo. Underwood contributes flute and multiple saxophone, clarinet and keyboard parts. Zappa later re-recorded the song several times in live performances. It has been re-interpreted by many other jazz and Rock artists.
"Willie the Pimp" is a heavy blues-rock tune. It has electric violin by Don "Sugarcane" Harris and guitar solos by Zappa in what appear to be loose jams. The tapes of these performances were later edited before release. This is the only song on the album that features vocals, with a performance by Zappa's longtime friend and collaborator Captain Beefheart. The title Hot Rats comes from the lyric of this song.
"Son of Mr. Green Genes" is an instrumental re-working of the tune Mr. Green Genes from the Mothers album Uncle Meat. The unusual title of this song led to rumors that Frank Zappa was somehow related to the character of Mr. Green Jeans from the children's television show Captain Kangaroo but this urban legend is false. This is the only song on the album to feature both intricate horn charts and extended guitar solo sections.
"Little Umbrellas" is similar in style to "Peaches", another short carefully arranged tune with numerous keyboard and wind overdubs by Underwood.
"The Gumbo Variations" also is a loose jam performance which was edited for the LP. In addition to the Zappa solo, it features a blazing tenor saxophone solo by Underwood.
"It Must Be a Camel" is also an intricately arranged tune with numerous wind and keyboard overdubs by Underwood. The tune contains a very unusual melody which often makes large melodic leaps. The title of the piece may come from the fact that these melodic leaps resemble "humps" when written on paper. The title also may refer to Zappa's brand of cigarettes. The recording contains an electric violin performance by Jean-Luc Ponty.
Another recording from the Hot Rats sessions titled "Bognor Regis" was set to be released on the B-side of an edited version of "Sharlena", a track from the 1970 Zappa album "Chunga's Revenge". The single release was canceled at the last minute. However test pressings were leaked to the public and the track has appeared on Zappa bootlegs. The song was named after Bognor Regis, a town on the south coast of England. Musically, "Bognor Regis" is a basic blues instrumental with electric violin solo by Don "Sugarcane" Harris.
Advanced recording techniques
Zappa used the most advanced recording equipment available to create an album of outstanding technical and musical quality for the time. The album was recorded on what Zappa described as a "homemade sixteen track" recorder which was custom built by the engineers at T.T.G. Studios in Hollywood in late 1968. The machine was also moved to Sunset Sound in Hollywood and Whitney Studios in Glendale, California as needed. It was not until early 1969 that Ampex Corporation completed their MM-1000 design and put the first 16 track audio recorder into mass-production. The 16-track technology was far more sophisticated than the usual 4 and 8-track productions of the era. The additional tracks made it possible for Zappa to add numerous horn and keyboard overdubs by Ian Underwood. Only a few musicians were required to create an especially rich instrumental texture which gives the sound of a large group.
16-track technology also made it possible to create a very realistic "full stereo" drum sound for the first time on a rock album. The standard in that period was to mix the entire drum set to a single (mono) track of an 8-track recorder, but on Hot Rats four of the 16 tracks were assigned to the drum kit alone, including individual tracks for the snare and bass drums, along with "left" and "right" tracks for other drums and cymbals. In this setup, the engineer had unprecedented control over the volume of each component in the drum set during the final mix. This recording technique did not become the norm on pop music recordings until 16-track and 24-track recorders became common in the early 1970s.
Zappa pioneered the use of tape speed manipulation as a technique for producing unusual timbres and tonal colors. On "Peaches en Regalia", "Son of Mr. Green Genes", and "It Must Be a Camel", Zappa plays "double-speed percussion." After completing basic tracks of drums, bass, guitar and piano, etc. recorded at the fast speed (30 inches per second) of the multi-track recorder, Zappa played additional drum overdubs while listening to the basic tracks at half speed (15 ips). On the finished recording, played at normal speed again, these overdubs are heard at twice the usual speed and pitch, making them sound like toy drums and giving them a surreal, comical quality. Zappa's earliest music lessons were in drum techniques, long before he decided to make the guitar his main instrument.
Other instruments were processed in a similar way, including keyboards, saxophones and bass. Zappa is also credited with "octave bass" (a bass guitar sped up to double speed)—the resulting sound is similar to that of a guitar. Additionally, a processed electronic organ was integrated as an orchestral voice within an ensemble of woodwinds and piano. "It Must Be a Camel" features the sound of a hard plastic comb being stroked, sounding almost like a jerky, audio slow-motion bell tree or wind chime. All of this was done with analog technology more than 10 years before modern digital sound processing equipment became available.
Artwork
The colourful, psychedelic aura of the late sixties is apparent in the graphic design and photography of Hot Rats, though Zappa himself actually disdained the psychedelic movement. At a time when foldouts were usually reserved for double-disc albums, this one-disc album had a foldout emphasizing the photography as well as the elaborate artwork of Cal Schenkel. The cover photo by Andee Cohen Nathanson, utilizes infrared photography and reflects Zappa's taste for a visually striking expression, combined with the absurdly humorous. The woman pictured on the cover is "Miss Christine" Frka of The GTOs. The inside of the original gatefold LP cover has a collage of color pictures, many of which were taken during the recording sessions. CD booklets have only some of these images and were reprinted only in black and white.
Track listing
All songs are written by Frank Zappa.
- LP version
-
- Side one
- "Peaches en Regalia" – 3:58
- "Willie the Pimp" – 9:25
- "Son of Mr. Green Genes" – 8:58
-
- Side two
- Little Umbrellas" – 3:09
- "The Gumbo Variations" – 12:55
- "It Must Be a Camel" – 5:15
- CD version
- "Peaches en Regalia" – 3:38
(song sample, 670Kb)
- "Willie the Pimp" – 9:16
- "Son of Mr. Green Genes" – 9:00
- "Little Umbrellas" – 3:04
- "The Gumbo Variations" – 16:56
- "It Must Be a Camel" – 5:15
Compact disc variations
In 1987 Zappa remixed Hot Rats for re-issue on compact disc. This drew criticism from fans who preferred the original 1969 mix on the LP versus those who preferred the remix version (as did Zappa's remixes of the original MOI albums and the Lumpy Gravy album, which controversially featured completely re-recorded bass and drum tracks). "Willie the Pimp" is edited differently during the introduction and guitar solo. "The Gumbo Variations" has 4 minutes of additional material including an introduction and guitar and saxophone solo sections which were cut from the vinyl. Other differences in the two mixes include added piano and flute on "Little Umbrellas" and significant changes to the overall ambience and dynamic range.
Personnel
also featuring
Production
- Producer: Frank Zappa
- Director of engineering: Dick Kunc
- Engineers: Cliff Goldstein, Jack Hunt, Brian Ingoldsby, Dick Kunc
- Arranger: Frank Zappa
- Cover design: Cal Schenkel
- Design: Cal Schenkel, John Williams
Charts
Album - Billboard (North America)
| Year |
Chart |
Position |
| 1969 |
Pop Albums |
173 |
References
External links
