JOHN LENNON AND...THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION?!?

Yeah, that's right.

In an immortal and glorious moment back in 1971, John Lennon and Yoko Ono joined Frank Zappa and the Mothers on stage at the Filmore East in New York City. I've never really heard any of the music from that concert, even though it's been available for years so maybe I should pick it up sometime soon, but if the Youtube clip below is any indication, glorious is something of an understatement. That is, Zappa clearly had an understanding of what John and Yoko's weird rock/avant-garde fusion was all about, and managed to seamlessly incorporate the hippie duo into his overall aesthetic.

This particular song is an old standard, Walter Ward's "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)," that Lennon claims to have not played since he was with the Beatles before they were famous. He, with the Mothers improvisationally backing him up, gives it the standard Lennon sound from the period, bluesy, with some cool and classic primal screaming a la Plastic Ono Band, aided and abetted by Yoko's unfathomable banshee wails. Things really get going, however, during the last couple of minutes, when FZ and John trade conducting duties back and forth, while members of the Mothers begin to wail along with Yoko. Sure, it's for hardcore fans only, but it's fucking brilliant.

Unfortunately, the whole meeting-of-gods thing ended up being a bit tarnished. From a Wikipedia talk page:

Lennon released an album of a "live concert" entitled "Sometime in New York City" which apparently featured a guest performance by Zappa on a tune called "Scumbag".

However - this was not the true case, it was Lennon who was the guest - he performed with Zappa at the Fillmore East in June 1971, the tune being played was "King Kong" (by Zappa) and the band was the Mothers. Zappa simply gave Lennon a copy of the tape of the concert. The entire performance is available on the Zappa CD "Playground Psychotics" (track 25-26) and the band line-up is given, verifying whose concert it actually was. Zappa was furious at Lennon for releasing the recording under a different name, and also for giving himself a "writer" credit on a song that Zappa had written and released on an album in 1967.

This is absolutely true: I've listened to an FZ interview from '72 or '73 where he essentially tells the same story, that John and Yoko ripped him off. I guess you can blame it on the drugs or dumbfuck hippie attitudes about property and art--along those lines, it is interesting to note that Zappa never did drugs and often lampooned and otherwise rhetorically blasted hippies on a regular basis back in those days. The whole thing kind of makes me think that maybe Paul McCartney had a good point when he sued the other three Beatles over ownership and business issues in 1970.

But whatever. John and FZ have both passed on, and the dispute, I hope, is now meaningless, which is cool because this fucking rocks:



Did you catch that kickass Zappa guitar solo about a third of the way through? This is, to me, like finding an authentic lost book of the Bible.

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