Miles: Can you please tell me what sort of musical activities you were involved in before you formed The Mothers?

FZ: I had a recording studio in Cucamonga, California.

Miles: Was this a sort of private thing?

FZ: No, it was supposed to be, you know, open to the public and I would sell studio time, but there were nobody out there who wanted to make records.

Miles: So you never made any masters out there?

FZ: Well, I made a lot of masters, but I didn't make masters of other people, you know, like people coming in off the street to use it as a commercial studio. Most of the masters that came out of it were either of overdubbed things that I made myself, or tracks involving Ray Collins who was the original lead singer for the group. Before we actually had a group, I was working with him—I produced some stuff on him.

Miles: Yeah, none that was ever issued?

FZ: Well, no. I took the masters to town, and shopped them around, and nobody picked up on them. However, before I owned the studio— The guy who had it before me was a guy named Paul Buff, and he had made masters of both Ray Collins and myself, and some of those were issued.

Miles: Yeah, I think Bob Keane put out some on Del-Fi.

FZ: Yeah, there's one called "How's Your Bird," and "The World's Greatest Sinner" was on the other side. And also I made some tracks and wrote some material for a couple of other acts at that time. One of them was released on Del-Fi with a group called The Heartbreakers. It was two fourteen year old Mexican kids who sang one side that was called "Cradle Rock," and the other side was "Everytime I See You" (sorry I can't remember what the name was). And we also leased a couple of masters to Art Laboe at Original Sound.

Miles: Who was in there?

FZ: One of them was called "Mr. Clean" by Mr. Clean, and the other one was "Grunion Run," which was released under the name of The Hollywood Persuaders. The A-side of "Grunion Run" was "Tijuana Surf" which became a number one record in Mexico for about ten months straight. It sold volumes down there.

Miles: That was yourself and Ray?

FZ: No that was, uh . . . "Grunion Run" was me and Paul Buff. And then Ray and I wrote a song called "Memories Of El Monte" which was recorded by The Penguins, and that was released on Original Sound.

Miles: There was nothing else before then?

FZ: There were a couple of releases on an extremely low-budget label.

GZ: Can I take this plate? This is cream.

FZ: Thanks, yeah, ok.. The label was called Vigah!, V-I-G-A-H, and there is several things out on that. One of them, the first record I ever made, was called "Breaktime," by a group called The Masters, which was me and Paul Buff and Ronnie Williams, who was playing drums and bass on the thing. It was an overdub deal. And then the next . . .

Miles: What date was it, about?

FZ: Ah, that was '62 or '63. See what else we have . . . We made a record with a local disc jockey from San Bernardino, named Brian Lord, who could do a Kennedy imitation. And we recorded a record called "The Big Surfer," which had a very strange punch line to it. And we took it in—we released it on Vigah!, and it was getting a lot of play in San Bernardino because the guy was a disc jockey. So we took it in to Capitol, and offered it to them. And they bought the master right away. They gave us 800 dollars up front for it.

Miles: Who was that who bought it?

FZ: Jim Economides. And they never released it, because one of the lines in there had something about— for winning our dance contest you get to be the first members of the peace corps to be sent to Alabama. About a week after they bought the master, Medgar Evers got shot. So, it was just too hot to release, you know.

Miles: Where was this Vigah! label based? In San Bernardino?

FZ: No, Vigah! was just a name that we cooked up for the stuff that was made there, in Cucamonga.

Miles: And as it was your label, you . . .

FZ: No, it was Paul Buff's label, you know, because he owned the studio at that time. I was just a creep that used to hang around there. And we also recorded a parody of Paul & Paula, called Ned & Nelda, which was— One side was "Ned & Nelda," and the other side was "Surf Along With Ned & Nelda."

Miles: So you made mostly comedy and satiricals?

FZ: Yeah.

Miles: [...]

FZ: Yeah, well even before that, because prior to the time I had access to a recording studio, I would rent tape recorders from a local hi-fi shop on the weekends. And, for about five bucks for a weekend, I'd have all my friends over to the house, and we improvised plays and stuff. I still have a lot of those tapes.

Miles: You should put them out, yes . . .

FZ: I wish I could. I don't know whether there's really a market for some of that kind of humor. I also did research, where I would interview people. Get their life stories. Some of the most grotesque events of the century.

Miles: Right, what sort of . . .

FZ: Well, the story of Ronnie and Kenny . . . Like Kenny saved his piss in these mason jars out at the back of his house until black things started growing in it and increased in size and swam around in the jars, and [...] knew what it was. And his brother Ronnie who saved his snot on the window of his room. I have them telling about these things. And . . .

Miles: What, were these locals . . .

FZ: They were kids who lived in Ontario. Ronnie was the guitar player on the first record. You know, they're just— If I met somebody and they looked like they had a story to tell, I would just say, hear it!

Miles: And this guy had these black things?

FZ: Yeah, you want to hear him tell about it?

Miles: Yeah, that's pretty weird . . .

FZ: Hold on.

Miles: [...]

FZ: I don't know, but at one time we delivered to Bob Keane masters for— You know the album Lumpy Gravy? You know the last tune on Lumpy Gravy goes da-ta-daa, da-ta-ta da-ta-taa, and a little bongo fill, da-da-dada-dada-dada-diddy-diddy . . . it's called "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance," and it's in the We're Only In It For The Money album . . . We took that very same master that's on Lumpy Gravy, because it was recorded in '62 or '63, and took it to him. And he sat on it and never released it. And we got it back.

4:10

[...]

38:48

FZ: The only thing [...] things that he had cut was some tapes where I'd [condem him to] conned him into doing a parody of a rhythm & blues vocal in one of the classrooms of at the junior college. [...] We borrowed a tape recorder from the school and recorded a song called "Lost In A Whirlpool," about a guy who's been flushed down the toilet by his girlfriend, and is confronted with a blind brown fish. And uh . . .

Miles: What was that a parody of?

FZ: Oh, well it's just a parody of the idiom, not a any particular song. And we also did a parody on, at the same date, we did a parody of "The Search For Bridey Murphy." Do you know that?

Miles: No.

FZ: It's a The story about the girl who gets hypnotised and taken back, and she supposedly remembers a life before the life that she's living now, and documents it all here. Yeah, and goes through all these scenes, and so we did a parody on that where this guy is being hypnotised, and his voice—while he's being hypnotised the voice is played by one of the school teachers named Jerry Ullberg, who has a very nice white suburban sort of voice.

Miles: Yeah.

FZ: And as he goes further and further farther and farther back, he becomes Tom Dooley. As And it turns up, out that Tom Dooley is a very uh, a sort of jivey negro [...] negroid shoeshine boy or something, I don't know what kind of rendition this boy Vliet is giving to it, but it's a funny concept, that and it tells about how Tom Dooley gets home [...]hung because he was fucking some pie.

40:25

Herbie knew Tom Wilson, and sort of dragged him away from fun and merriment at this— He was at this club down the street from the Whisky A-Go-Go, he was at the Trip. And we were working a replacement job or something at the Whisky A-Go-Go. And Herbie got Wilson to come down and listen to us.

Prior to that, we had made some demos at Original Sound, had sent them to MGM and a bunch of other companies. And we had been turned down by everybody in the business. And so MGM was sort of like a last resort. And we hadn't received any word as to the acceptance of our demos from MGM. So Herbie knew that Wilson was the guy to talk to, saw Wilson in this club, and made him come down and listen to us at the Whisky A-Go-Go.

And we [the Soul Giants, still including Davy Coronado] practiced in what was left of the studio for about a week before I abandoned it completely.

I finished two new books of scores just before the tour. One is called 'What's the Name of Your Group?' and the other is called 'Shove It Right In'. 'What's the Name of Your Group?' is really funny because it is the melody line of the finale from the Festival Hall show which is going to be inter-cut with the bridge and the ostinato of 'A Pound for a Brown', all with lyrics. You know the bass line? Well, the bass singers are going to be singing 'Far out, far fuckin' out, far fuckin' out and groovy' because it is a scene with this chick who is doing her first rock and roll interview. I'm sitting on stage, handcuffed to a chair, and I don't answer any of her questions and she's really obnoxious. She has a Polaroid camera with flashbulbs; all the dancers and the chorus have cameras with flashbulbs and they all shoot them on cue in their score. So that from time to time, there's these constellation barrages of bulbs going off, and all of a sudden they'll all go 'Yyyeeenntzzzt', and pull the tab on the camera, and it's all scored. So one of her lines is 'I bet your goup name is real weird because you look weird yourself' and 'I've got this lens here for my camera that'll make you look like some sort of depraved troll or something, because the kids who read our rock n roll magazine like to see famous musicians who look real far out and groovy'. Then the chorus sings 'Far out, far fuckin' out' and she's got a few 'far fuckin' out's in there. Then there's the bridge to 'Pound for a Brown' when it gets to the bit where it's like the Lone Ranger music; the chorus is singing 'How do they like your music over there?' because she just said 'How long have you been growing your hair and have you been to England and how do they like your music over there?' The chorus sing 'Over there, over there, how do they like your music over there . . . ' It builds up and then they shoot flash bulbs, then the soprano stops and says 'I just want to verify a rumour. Is it true that you did this show at the Festival Hall?' Then it cuts to the rehearsal at the Festival Hall which is pixilated footage that was out at this pub on Seven Sisters Road when we were rehearsing. It was great. We had fifteen members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Mothers in the back room of this pub—it was the only place we could find to rehearse. We wheeled in a baby grand piano. Really great.