|
 1989
January 27
Volume 15 Number 2
Issue 222 Frank Zappa: Moving On To
Phase Three.
Interview by William Ruhlmann, 8 pp
Frank Zappa U.S. Discography And Price Guide
By Neal Umphred, 3 pp
...
Goldmine: Let's jump ahead and go immediately up to
talking about Verve. I suppose the unusual thing to me is that the
Mothers of Invention would be signed to a label
like Verve, which I associate with Norman Granz and jazz recordings,
so I'm curious about how that happened.
Frank Zappa: It happened because of Tom Wilson, who was the
staff producer for – they called it "blue" Verve. The regular Verve
label was black and silver, but blue Verve was for the rock 'n' roll
and / or underground stuff. And Wilson was an interesting guy. He's
dead now, but he would take a chance on just about anything. I
remember one day he came in and announced that he had just signed a
Japanese psychedelic artist named Harumi, and Harumi was making some
kind of a flower-power album. I never heard the album, I don't know
if it was in Japanese or what. But it was the idea that, "Okay,
today we're gonna record a Japanese psychedelic record." A lot of
the credit for the odd stuff that went on the label has to go to him
because he was the one who would stand up to the people that wrote
the paychecks and say, "Yeah, I wanna record and / or produce these
things." Without Wilson, we never would have got a contract. (read
more @
Goldmine:
January 27, 1989 ) Another version of this interview was
published in Relix, April 1989. |
