It begins like a Beethoven piece would if he had been born on a distant moon in a far-off nebula. The orchestral flushes mix with the extraterrestrial tambour of the instruments, lifting us into another world. A journey is about to begin.
Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats takes the listener up into the stars to another planet only to find that life is not too different in space. The album is predominantly instrumental. Long solos abound but constantly rest upon an incredibly composed base. In the sleeve notes Zappa describes Hot Rats as a “movie for your ears,” but this is no delicate French New Wave piece of cinema. Oh no, Hot Rats belongs in the realm of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. It takes place in a world of violent conflict where war is waged through shredding harder and more brilliantly than the opposing side.
If the first song, “Peaces En RegaliaÛ, takes us into another world, the second song “Willy the Pimp” grounds us there. In much the same way as showing Luke’s life on Tatooine shows the viewer that life isn’t too different across the galaxy, “Willy the Pimp” empowers us while making us feel at home. For the sole vocal track on the album, the legendary Captain Beefheart makes an appearance lending his grating blues-snarl to the song.
And then the solos begin.åÊAnd they continue, their ebb and flow tossing us like waves on a windy day.åÊWe discover something.åÊSomething unknown
On the third song, “Son of Mr. Green GenesÛ, Aaron Copland and Charles Mingus fall in love, take a trip to the local scrap yard and make love like lizards. Their reptilian thrusting both transcends and embodies us. After they are finished, they share a cigarette and crash into each other’s arms, Mingus’ head resting on Copland’s bosom.
But then Mingus leaves Copland for Bela Bartok on “Little UmbrellasÛ. My understanding of the story grows hazy here. But deception and mischief haunt their world. The plot deepens and the conflict is about to explode.
As if he knew that at this point we would be getting far too sucked into the imaginary world of the album Zappa starts the fifth song “The Gumbo Variations” by allowing us hear him instructing the musicians before their second take. We realize that this is an album. It has a history. People made it. And then these people begin to play.
“The Gumbo Variations” is a 17-minutes epic containing three expansive solos over a constantly morphing and changing rock groove. Sax flows into violin that in turn flows into guitar. Like in the Judgment of Paris, these three godly beauties compete for the affections of the worldly band. In the end, the band cannot seem to choose, and the godly soloists collapse in anger.
The last song, “It Must Be A Camel” returns us to earth. We leave the world of conflict we were so recently introduced to. But what turmoil it has spawned in us! Our reflections on our experience propel us past stars and millennia back into our own world and our own time. However, we cannot help but notice it is not too different from that world so far and long ago.
Hot Rats can sustain many interpretations. All of them can only be models for understanding. But the knowledge we gain from using them seems universal. This “movie for our ears” holds a key of sorts. We have only to reach out and grab it. The beauty of the album, however, is that once we’ve grasped it there’s so many doors who can know which one to unlock?