Necessity Is...: The Early Years of Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention

by Billy James

"Billy James’s book about Frank Zappa and his early entourage is flat-out wonderful."— Booklist "What makes James’s book such a delight is, this time the story gets told by the original group members, who give a clearer insight into the natural history of The Mothers, their music, their hidden talents, and Zappa’s tightly disciplined, drug-free working methods and demands. To give away too many of the truly freaky anecdotes sprinkled throughout the text would spoil the fun."— The Wire

Genres: Music

223 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2001

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

To many Frank Zappa fans there is only one phase of his career that counts, and that's the early Mothers of Invention era (1966-1972). Once Frank got pushed off The Rainbow Theater stage he changed all for the worst, not unlike Bob Dylan changing after his motorcycle accident.
Yes, there are many books out there about Frank Zappa, but how many books are there about the actual Mothers of Invention? Virtually none, and their story is fascinating, to say the least. The Mothers of Invention were a melting pot of blue collar bar band musicians who were led to play the most anarchistic music in rock at the time.
Conservative guys that didn't indulge in anything harder than beer and tobacco, this tale of working class dudes from the Mojave Desert suddenly performing in the arena of acid dropping hippies and the psychedelic scene is a marvelous story. Billy James does a better job on this bio than he did on the Zoot Horn Rollo and Michael Bruce books because he gets several perspectives on the Mothers history, all thankfully without the interference of Frank Zappa.

[David Melbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very insightful read and full of all stuff 'Zappa!'

I am always quite admiring of British and European enthusiasm for Zappa/Mothers, but I am irked by some of their ideas on editing: fire your editor(s)!

For instance, at the end of the book in the section, 'Where Are They Now?,' Lowell George is listed as dying in 1977! Little Feat toured heavily in 1978-79, recorded Down On The Farm in 1979, etc., during which Lowell died of a drug overdose. . . fire your editor(s)!
--From A Reader's Journal, by d r melbie.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at the early days of the Mothers of Invention from the perspective of the band members, recording engineers, producers, & the like. Given that the 1st Mothers will always be my favorite version of the group, this stuff facinates me. How they all managed to pull it off is pretty good stuff.

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fairly entertaining read about the early years of Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Overall this was a fun, quick read but it would probably only interest you if you were into Zappa.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells the story of the early years of the Mothers, not from Frank's perspective, but from that of many of his early band mates. There's perhaps not a ton of new information, although there are some fun little stories and interesting angles on events in Mothers/Zappa history that differ from Frank's.

One example that stands out is a story from the legendary "Pigs & Repugnants" residency at the Garrick in NY. Frank tells a story of how one night he called some Marines on-stage and had them destroy a toy baby. Frank always used the story as an example of how f'd up American military culture was: the Marines had been turned into bloodthirsty animals who got off on recreating the violent atrocities they committed in Vietnam.

As it is told here, however, the Marines did not want to go to Vietnam, and their performance was an act of protest: this is what they are making us do to babies in Vietnam, and we don't want to do it.

In this case, I think that the more sympathetic version is probably the truer one. I think Frank revised the story in his memory to match his general cynicism -- and he's not wrong when it comes to his cynicism. But in this case, I think he turned the story into an example to support his disdain for American militarism.

Back to the book: the biggest insight is perhaps the importance of the other Mothers to Frank's early musical output. Frank liked to downplay the contributions of others -- and to some extent, there's a little bit of boasting and exaggeration on the part of some of the band members here -- but Frank would not have developed the Zappa sound without the contributions of the original band members, and more because of the amateur quality of some of them as musicians, rather than despite it. I still prefer his 1970s fusion-esque stuff a bit to the early Mothers, but there's no denying that the early Mothers were a band apart, and no matter how awesome the later musicians in Frank's bands were, I don't think they every matched the chaotic creativity (with all its rough edges) of the first few years. I know that if I could ever have been in one of Frank's bands, these years definitely would have been the most fun.

[Scott Radway · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this for the anecdotes in the first half, and there was a ton of information about the early days. Then in the later bits it suddenly kicks into hyperspeed and seems to zip through the years (and myriad of albums) in the blink of an eye. I would have liked to have seen some better editing and proofreading throughout, and as a biography it lacks a certain something, but I enjoyed the stories throughout.

[Googoogjoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful mine of information, though nothing in it is truly revelatory. James directly interviewed Mothers Jimmy Carl Black, Roy Estrada, Don Preston, both Gardners (Bunk and Buzz), Motorhead Sherwood, and engineer Dick Kunc. He did not personally interview Ray Collins, or Mark Volman or Howard Kaylan, but he cites interviews with them done by others.

James's angle is pretty unambiguously that of a dedicated fan. He's a Zappa fan, though his fandom seems to wane after the early 70s. He's a fan of these individual musicians who Zappa played with in the late 60s and early 70s, and who he's played with himself. He wants information on these guys' lives, and on their experiences as recording and touring musicians. He lets them trash talk Zappa some, but he doesn't seem to have really gone digging for dirt or anything- this is basically an edited collection of softball interviews with the author's friends. He's prone to making little errors, and to letting errors made by his interview subjects pass unchallenged- and apparently no editor caught any of them. In the long run, probably the greatest use of this book will be as a quote-mine for better-rounded books written about Zappa's career.

[Brian]

Necessity Is...: The Early Years of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention by Billy James (2001)

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's ok. It's not entirely accurate in its history and seemed to be poorly researched. It does include lots of MOI quotes/reminiscent memories from back in the day, so there was so value there.