疯掉了！ (1966)

Freak Out! is the debut studio album by the American rock band the Mothers of Invention, released on June 27, 1966, by Verve Records. Often cited as one of rock music's first concept albums, it is a satirical expression of guitarist/bandleader Frank Zappa's perception of American pop culture and the nascent Los Angeles freak scene's "freak-out" trend.

The album was produced by Tom Wilson, who signed the Mothers, formerly a bar band called the Soul Giants. Zappa said many years later that Wilson signed the band to a record deal under the impression that they were a white blues band. The album features Zappa on vocals and guitar, along with lead vocalist/tambourine player Ray Collins, bassist/vocalist Roy Estrada, drummer/vocalist Jimmy Carl Black and guitarist Elliot Ingber, along with appearances from several session musicians.

The band's original repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues covers, but after Zappa joined the band his original compositions came to the fore and their name was changed to the Mothers. The musical content of Freak Out! ranges from rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and standard blues-influenced rock to orchestral arrangements and avant-garde sound collages. Although the album was initially poorly received in the United States, it was a success in Europe. It gained a cult following in America, where it continued to sell in substantial quantities until it was discontinued in the early 1970s. The album was remixed in 1985, for the Old Masters Box One LP box set, and subsequent CD releases.

It is often incorrectly cited as the second rock music double album ever released, following the release of Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde just one week earlier. In fact, both were preceded by Jimmy Clanton's Jimmy's Happy/Jimmy's Blue, released in 1960, and by several double album compilations. However, Freak Out! was the first double debut album by a rock act.In Europe, the album was originally released as an abridged single album. In 1999, the album was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award, and in 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it among the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2006, The MOFO Project/Object, an audio documentary on the making of the album, was released in honor of its 40th anniversary.

Background

In the early 1960s, Frank Zappa met Ray Collins. Collins supported himself by working as a carpenter, and on weekends sang with a group known as the Soul Giants. In April 1965, Collins got into a fight with their guitar player, who quit. In need of a substitute, Zappa promptly filled in. The Soul Giants' repertoire originally consisted of R&B covers. After Zappa joined the band, he encouraged them to play his own original material. While most of the band members liked his ideas, then-leader and saxophone player Davy Coronado felt that performing original material would cost them bookings, and quit the band. Zappa took over leadership of the band, who officially changed their name to the Mothers on May 10, 1965.

The group moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1965 after Zappa got them a management contract with Herb Cohen. They gained steady work at clubs along the Sunset Strip. MGM staff producer Tom Wilson offered the band a record deal with the Verve Records division in early 1966. He had heard of their growing reputation but had seen them perform only one song, "Trouble Every Day", which concerned the Watts riots. According to Zappa, this led Wilson to believe that they were a "white blues band".

Recording

The first two songs recorded for the album were "Any Way the Wind Blows" and "Who Are the Brain Police?" When Tom Wilson heard the latter, he realized that the Mothers were not merely a blues band. Zappa remembered "I could see through the window that he was scrambling toward the phone to call his boss—probably saying: 'Well, uh, not exactly a 'white blues band', but ... sort of.'" In a 1968 article written for Hit Parader magazine, Zappa wrote that when Wilson heard these songs, "he was so impressed he got on the phone and called New York, and as a result I got a more or less unlimited budget to do this monstrosity." Freak Out! is an early example of the concept album, a sardonic farce about rock music and America. "All the songs on it were about something", Zappa wrote in The Real Frank Zappa Book. "It wasn't as if we had a hit single and we needed to build some filler around it. Each tune had a function within an overall satirical concept."

If you were to graphically analyze the different types of directions of all the songs in the Freak Out! album, there's a little something in there for everybody. At least one piece of material is slanted for every type of social orientation within our consumer group, which happens to be six to eighty. Because we got people that like what we do, from kids six years old screaming on us to play "Wowie Zowie". Like I meet executives doing this and that, and they say, "My kid's got the record, and 'Wowie Zowie''s their favorite song."