Lennon & Zappa - Baby Please Don't Go

I once heard Yoko's...err...contribution to this performance described as "The Death Yodel" for which she deservedly got the sack, as seen in the video of the show.

 

Not only that but using a defaced copy of the Filmore East, June 1971 LP for the inner-sleeve with most of the credits crossed out making it their album,
I'm sure Lennon never gave Zappa permission to use it. To add insult to injury, wiping the bass and having it re-dubbed by Klaus Voorman .

 

I used to pray that it would be remixed minus Yoko's contribution but someone stole Zappa's 16-track master from the vault.
It's too bad the Mothers didn't do what Elephant's Memory did by placing her at a unplugged piano with a dead mike (One To One Concert).

 

Not to the best of my knowledge. Only the @Vaultmeister knows for sure.

The performance of that piece on that night is nothing special. The STINYC mix and the various "unofficial" versions are sufficient documents of the performance. They just can't be edited well with the Zappa mix.

 

Presumably the Zappa mix is in the vault, but it hasn't leaked to collectors.

 

That sounds about right.

I always figured that the edit on Playground Psychotics was pretty much what he intended for the second record of Fillmore East, June 1971, while "Billy The Mountain" was sort of a pre-edit version that would need to have been cut down to fit on an LP side.

 

I'm hoping that Ahmet would release a 50th anniversary of the Fillmore East album with the entire show unedited, better yet the entire run.
Like I said earlier, somebody got into the vault and stolen Zappa's 16-track reel with the Lennon performance. There was a MTV interview video that was done in the vault in the mid-80's where FZ is showing Martha Quinn various things around the vault (while plugging the Old Masters box set) and he pulls out them empty box and talks about the stolen tape. "Billy" was from Pauley Pavillion taped August 7, 1971, Just Another Band From LA was supposed to be a double album:

Side One
1. "Call Any Vegetable" (Zappa) 7:22
2. "Eddie, Are You Kidding?" (Kaylan, Seiler, Volman, Zappa) 3:09
3. "Magdalena" (Kaylan, Zappa) 6:24
4. "Dog Breath" (Zappa) 3:37

Side Two
1. "Billy the Mountain" (Zappa) 19:41

Side Three
1. "Billy the Mountain" (cont.) 13:57
Studebacher Hoch
The Conclusion
2. "The Subcutaneous Peril" (Zappa) 5:19

Side Four
1. "An Easy Substitute For Eternity Itself" (Zappa, Preston, Underwood, Dunbar, Pons) 20:23
Don's Solo
Ian's Solo
Aynsley's Solo
Frank's Solo

There is a file at Zappateers which has sides 3 and 4.

 

Regardless of your opinion of Yoko's music, I can't believe you actually wrote that. Suggesting violence against women on International Women's Day. Wow, dude..talk about being politically tone deaf...

 

One of Zappa's best solos. But overall, the song was ruined by Yoko's horrible caterwauling. While I wouldn't go as far as wishing she was punched in the face, I do wish her mic would've been turned off. What she did was not "art", despite what her defenders might claim. It's just off-key screeching. Anyone could do that. Yoko fans, save your brickbats...I'm not changing my mind.

 

Call me crazy, but I like Yoko's contributions up until the end when they stopped playing, let the instruments feed back, and let her go.

I actually wasn't aware that the 16-track masters had been stolen. All the more reason that I believe the mixes and edits for the Fillmore material on Playground Psychotics were done in 1971.

"The Subcutaneous Peril" and all of side four are all available on Carnegie Hall, without all the futzing, as parts of "King Kong" and "A Pound For A Brown". They were edited down further to create "The Subcutaneous Peril" that appears on Finer Moments, which is the version of that material that I enjoy the most. (Zappa superfan Charles Ulrich's analysis has been posted here: Finer Moments: Notes & Comments ) The parts of "Billy The Mountain" that were edited out to make it fit on the release JABFLA have never been released. (We are probably boring all the Lennon fans at this point.)

Yes, both Fillmore East and Just Another Band From L.A. were supposed to be double albums. The way I understand it, Allen Klein gave Zappa the run around regarding the clearances for Lennon's and Ono's performances for Fillmore East, so Zappa just scrapped the second record, nuking "Billy The Mountain" in the process. Fortunately, it's all on Playground Psychotics. It's unclear whether Zappa decided to pare down JABFLA down to a single album himself or WB pressured him to.

I'd love to have the ZFT release all the Fillmore and Pauley Pavilion performances in their entirety, but that may be a tall order.

 

FZ could have gotten the master back somehow when he prepared PP (or asked Yoko to lend/return the copy she and John used), or he may have taken an old mix and edited it. Of course, if he didn't like Yoko's vocal solo at the end he could have just faded the set out before that, but instead he released it with a wisecrack title.

 

FZ may have edited his solo out of "Billy." (There is a boot around of the second half of "Billy" with FZ playing the only solo, that might be the same performance as PP with a different edit/mix.)

 

Indeed he did. He knew it was Frank's song, and was being as crooked as a 3 dollar bill. As if nobody would notice? Hmm...

I'm not a Yoko fan, so I can respectfully say that her "voicings" do nothing for me.

 

Do you you have any proof that he knew it was Zappa's song?

 

Zappa had 'incorrigible irony'? Pretty much everyone in Liverpool has 'incorrigible irony'.

 

I've never owned the Lennon album, so this is the first time I'm seeing the inner sleeve. Is this for real? If so, what an arrogant thing to do.

 

Zappa never complained about the sleeve, did he? I think it only comes across as arrogant if you are thin-skinned. Lennon's intent is humorous rather than arrogant here.

 

I will mention that it is a bit touching in the video when Zappa conducts the band and then has Lennon do it. For Zappa it was something routine he did throughout 20+ years of touring but Lennon seems amazed to have that power, even if he doesn't do much other than having the band shriek a few times.

 

I imagine (no pun intended) it was John’s humorous way of getting his own back on Frank for the “Only Money” Pepper parody.

 

Well, yes, hats off to the good people of Liverpool, of course.
Maybe Lennon and Zappa would have shared a more simpatico vibe if Lennon had stayed in Liverpool...

The wee point I was making, for some reason I now forget, is that Lennon's public persona, in this era, was all "give me some truth," which is to say: Lennon feels like truth exists and is a paramount value he espouses for himself and urges for the world. Now, listeners might see some irony there (how much truth can you really handle there, Mr Lennon 1971?), but I don't see any indication that John himself was being anything less than sincere in his earnest pronouncements of the period. I even think it's a special strength of Lennon as a vocalist and one that he never lost: his is the voice of sincerity and commitment. Even if Lennon was maybe wrong and would mercurially flake on any commitment, his vocals give the impression of absolute sincerity. That's his gift. With a bonus gift: teaching us the difference between truth and sincerity!

Zappa's lyrics and vocal persona, by contrast, are constantly saying, Hey, don't take yourself so seriously -- or, Hey, your self-seriousness and your devotion to your own pain and trauma, is self-absorbed and distorts your vision. Broken Hearts are for A-holes, for example, a few years after this period. Zappa was more inclined to look at love and pain and truth and instead see how they expose the sometimes ridiculous foibles and sometimes exquisite inconveniences of people who wave those banners.

That's all. Not saying that Lennon was incapable of irony and not denying the possibility that it was a more prominent feature of his persona at other periods of his life.

 

Frank's solo is fantastic as usual. Better band than Elephant's Memory

 

Oh, come on! He was no dummy. And if he didn't know, he could've checked.

 

If he thought they were jamming, why would he happen to check? Everytime musicians jam, do they have a meeting afterwards where they ask each other "hey, did you incorporate any pre-existing music you'd written into that jam, or was it 100% improvised?"

It's possible he knew and deliberately screwed Zappa over. Or it's possible he didn't know and acted out of ignorance. To my knowledge, Lennon isn't a Paul Simon type with a reputation for screwing over fellow musicians. My main point is that you cannot say with certainty that he definitely knew and definitely acted deliberately to rip off Zappa.

 

I wouldn't rule out that the music was so far out of Lennon's zone that he didn't notice they were playing a composed tune. Also, they did co-credit Zappa for "Scumbag" so they weren't trying to block him from making any publishing money from that side. It was thoughtless though.

 

Exactly. Lennon wasn't a trained musician... he couldn't read music, and I doubt he had an encyclopedic knowledge of Zappa's work. The fact that they co-credited Zappa suggests he truly thought it was an improvised jam. If it was a screwjob why credit him at all?