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We're Only in It For the Money is a rock 'n' roll album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. Displaying snippets of styles as diverse as 1950s doo-wop to 1960s surf music to avant-garde orchestral doodlings, the album peaked at
First released in 1968 on Verve Records (see 1968 in music), it was rereleased by Rykodisc in 1986 with newly recorded bass and percussion tracks. Parts censored from the original release were also restored. However, subsequent fan demand for the original Verve recording led to its restoration on Rykodisc's releases from 1995 onwards. •
The album was included in Q magazine's list of the "Best Psychedelic Albums of All Time." •
The song "Flower Punk" is based upon "Hey Joe", famously performed by Jimi Hendrix, who is himself featured in the cover art.
We're Only in It for the Money
History
Censorship
Cover art
Track listing
Personnel
Production
Charts
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History
In 1967, Zappa conceived an album, Our Man in Nirvana, which would combine the music of his band The Mothers of Invention with comedy routines by Lenny Bruce (who had performed with Zappa at The Fillmore in 1966). • However, when Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released and hugely touted as the first concept album, Zappa, who already had released two (which Paul McCartney later admitted had influenced Sgt. Pepper •) felt compelled to respond. Also, Zappa noticed its cultural effect, and felt that the then-popular flower power scene had and would continue to have a major influence on popular culture. Consequently, he decided to produce instead a satirical album that parodied every cynical aspect of the fad, Sgt. Pepper, and 1960s US society. • The only vestige of the original album idea in We're Only in It... is the phrase "Don't come in me, in me, in me..." in the song "Harry, You're A Beast", a reference to a Lenny Bruce routine about ejaculation. •
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Censorship
Initial releases of the album had certain sections of songs edited or removed due to perceived offensiveness. These two sets of edits are often distinguished by the monikers "censored" and "heavily censored." However, these set of edits were sometimes applied inconsistently, so these two categories are inexhaustive. •
Tracks affected by censor edits include:
"Who Needs the Peace Corps?": a spoken line "I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me" was cut out of the heavily censored version.
"Concentration Moon": Gary Kellgren's whispered statement describing The Velvet Underground and The Mothers of Invention as 'shitty' was cut. In one of the more interesting cases of album censorship, three different variations of the cut exist: the most common version (and the one that made it to the '95 reissue) has the line completely cut, while Canadian LP issues seem to include the line intact.
"Absolutely Free": The spoken word lines "I don't do publicity balling for you any more" and remark "Flower power sucks!" were removed on the heavily-censored version.
"Let's Make the Water Turn Black": Several lines of the song are removed from the heavily-censored version, most notably the line about booger-smearing teenage friends Ronnie and Kenny Williams' mother ("and I still remember Mama with her Apron and her pad, feeding all the boys at Ed's Cafe") was removed due to a record company executive who thought the line referred to a sanitary pad. •
"Mother People": a verse containing the expletives 'fucking' and 'shitty' was replaced with another; the original was backmasked and appended to the track "Hot Poop" (even there, however, "fucking" is absent, and the heavily-censored version omits the backwards verse entirely). (The line is: "Better look around before you say you don't care/Shut your fucking mouth 'bout the length of my hair/how would you survive/if you were alive/shitty little person?")
"Harry You're a Beast": The "Don't come in me, in me" verse was edited in order to hide the offending lyric by re-editing parts of the verse in the wrong way, and reversing parts of the song. This phrase is from Lenny Bruce's "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb" routine.
The 1986 release with new drum and bass tracks reinstated these sections, while the 1995 release with the original musical parts reverted to the "standard" set of US censorship.
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Cover art
The front cover Zappa originally intended to use for the album mimics the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The double Sgt. Pepper cover had a collage of famous people by Peter Blake on the outside and a portrait of the band on the inside. Zappa's record company demurred and put the Sgt. Pepper parody on the inside and the picture of the band on the outside; a later Rykodisc release on CD featured the original photo restored to the front cover. Next to Zappa's head, a speech bubble has him questioning, "Is this phase one of Lumpy Gravy?"
One section of the CD liner art features a series of badge, banknote, and facial hair cut-outs, satirising those of Sgt. Pepper, with some differences; one badge features a small photograph of recording engineer Gary Kellgren and the other is a nipple.The banknote had a picture of a belly button in the middle.
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Track listing
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All tracks by Frank Zappa.
"Are You Hung Up?" – 1:25
"Who Needs the Peace Corps?" – 2:34
"Concentration Moon" – 2:22
"Telephone Conversation" – 0:49
"Harry, You're a Beast" – 1:21
"What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body?" – 1:03
"Nasal Retentive Calliope Music" – 2:02
"Let's Make the Water Turn Black" – 2:01
"The Idiot Bastard Son" – 3:18
"Lonely Little Girl" – 1:09
"Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" – 1:32
"What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body? (Reprise)" – 1:02
"The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny" – 6:26
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Personnel
Billy Mundi – drums, vocals
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Production
Executive producer: Tom Wilson
Engineers: Gary Kellgren, Dick Kunc
Editing: Dick Kunc, Frank Zappa
Art direction: Cal Schenkel
Photography: Jerry Schatzberg
Fashion advisor: Tiger Morse
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Charts
Album - Billboard (North America)
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