“My head was bent on my shoulder and my neck bent, as if broken. I had a gash in my chin, a hole in the back of my head, a cracked rib and a broken leg. One arm was paralyzed. » In the booklet of the 8-CD set The Mothers 1971, This memory of Frank Zappa (1940-1993) is taken from his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, published in 1989 (Poseidon Press).
On December 10, 1971, at the Rainbow Theater in London, Zappa and his band, The Mothers of Invention, performed an encore I Want to Hold Your Hand of the Beatles during the first of two planned concerts. Zappa puts down his guitar when a young man, arriving on the stage by a side staircase, rushes towards him and pushes him violently. The American guitarist, singer, bandleader and songwriter fell several meters into the pit. The assailant, condemned to a prison sentence, will explain his gesture by, at your choice, two imbecilities: disappointed by the concert, he “didn’t get what he paid for” ; it seemed to him that Zappa had winked at his girlfriend.
The attack ends the European tour – on December 4, it had already been disturbed by the fire at the Casino de Montreux during the concert of Zappa and the Mothers, which will inspire the song Smoke on the Water to the group Deep Purple – and Zappa will move around in a wheelchair for almost a year. His larynx was also injured and his voice deepened – “not unpleasant in itself, but I would have preferred another method”. Excerpts from the concert had been published in archival albums produced by Zappa during his lifetime. It is in this box in its entirety. Including the final brouhaha after the attack on Zappa.
Delusions and improvisations
Another integral, that of four concerts, on June 5 and 6, 1971 at the Fillmore East, in New York, shortly before its closing on June 27. There too, only extracts were officially known, in particular in Fillmore – June 1971. During the encore of the second concert on June 6, Zappa invites John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono. For twenty-five minutes, mostly improvised, Lennon sings old rock, Well, by Walter Ward, Zappa slides bars of his composition King Kong, Ono launches various cries almost from start to finish, the public is invited to sing « Scumbag » (“shit bag”, “bastard”). Part of this happening will be found on Some Time in New York City, by Lennon, in 1972, with a draft mix and the highlighting of the cries of Yoko Ono. Zappa will publish a montage of the performance, which promotes the music, in Playground Psychotics, in 1992. Here it is complete.
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