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Thought it was worth sharing courtesy of the Musicradar.com site.
(From Jeff Gold's upcoming book, 101 Essential Rock Records: The Golden Age Of Vinyl, From The Beatles To The Sex Pistols. Iggy Pop recalling his first exposure to FZ.)
"The first time I heard "Freak Out" by the Mothers of Invention was on headphones, smoking an early joint in my drug career, at the house of SRC, a Michigan band of the 60's. That night I kind of knew they were asking (Stooges guitarist) Ron (Asheton) to leave our group and join up with them, so I was hanging around to see what was going to happen. Rather than waste my time, I saw a copy of "Freak Out" and listened to it on the phones.
I thought it was very, very funny. I particularly loved "Help, I'm a Rock," "America Drinks and Goes Home," "Who Are The Brain Police" and the cameo of Suzie Creamcheese. I had already seen the Fugs live on stage, with Tuli Kupferberg changing costumes out of a large bag in a humorous way, so I was somewhat prepared. I liked the Mothers' conceptualism and humor, although the music didn't really do much for me. My own experiments were more influenced by Bob Ashley, Harry Partch, and Berlioz.
The first time I saw The Mothers I was opening for them; it was the second or third gig the Stooges had ever done, so I remembered us more than them. I think playing with them so early in our career pushed me to be weirder faster, and also to be stranger to look at, earlier than I would have been otherwise. That night I did my first stage dive. I knew the Mothers were on after us, and I didn't want people to forget about us.
Years later I got to know Frank a little bit, and he was very decent to me. We went out for a burger once in Berlin, to a bright lit cheap and greasy joint, with David Bowie. That was pretty funny and unusual. Frank was kind of a wry person, and as he made clear in his film "200 Motels," he had a certain ambivalence about English rock stars. I went along with Frank later that night and kept him company for a while at the Hilton hotel, until his Berlin girlfriend showed up.
For no exact reason, I remember feeling that Frank was a very lonely cat. He was all alone, and the suite was so dark and cold. The girl who came over later was kind of a troubled type, but I think he enjoyed the company and that was about it. Earlier that night at his show, Frank played one of his incredibly long guitar solos while his hired lead guitarist, Adrian Belew, had to wait his turn. That was the moment when David basically hired Adrian away for his own next projects, in a conversation behind the PA stack. I thought that was pretty funny.
Earlier in my life, when the Stooges went to LA in 1970 to record "Fun House," we were staying at the Tropicana Motel. I walked up the hill to (legendary Hollywood coffee shop) Ben Franks to get something to eat, and there, sitting at the counter expressionless, with his hair and mustache and weird beard, was Frank Zappa. What a vision. I might as well have seen Aristotle. I was very impressed."
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