In conjunction with today’s release, a 14-minute video featuring newly restored 16mm film footage shot at Zappa’s historical Whisky show has been unearthed from The Vault and is available to view for the first time. The film, which was shot in increments throughout the night, has been painstakingly synched to music for the first time, marking the first time it’s ever been seen with audio (Zappa himself never had the opportunity to see the footage synched to the music). The video is an incredible document of the five-hour festivities and shows fans lined up around the block on Sunset Blvd., the late ‘60s free-spirited revelry of the packed audience and the musicians and never-before-seen performance footage of The Mothers along with scenes involving The Freaks and the debut of The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously). In the audience that night were Flo & Eddie (The Turtles), John Mayall, Elliot Ingber (The Fraternity Of Man), Alice Cooper and members of the Rolling Stones. Watch the video here: https://FrankZappa.lnk.to/LiveAtWhisky
Also available now are the first three episodes of the four-part Whisky A Go Go Series on YouTube, hosted by Travers and recorded inside the Whisky. In the first episode, Travers sits down with Sunset strip icon Pamela Des Barres who reflects about her own band, Girls Together Outrageously (the GTOs), making their world premiere at the wild five-hour show and what performing with Zappa meant to her. The second episode continues with Des Barres reminiscing fondly about the historic gig as she sees footage for the first time ever of herself and her friends performing that night culled from previously unreleased film discovered in The Vault. The third video sees Travers and Des Barres discussing the “freaks and fashion of 1968 and Zappa’s influence on the freak out culture.” Check out the series here: https://frankzappa.lnk.to/WhiskySeries Additionally, a new merch collection for Whisky a Go Go, 1968 is also available now. Visit the official Frank Zappa Store to see the new offerings: https://store.zappa.com/
The hand-scrawled ad in the L.A. Free Press — an open invitation to Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention’s all-night affair at one of their favorite venues, L.A.’s historic Whisky a Go Go — laid things out in black and white as to what Zappa and the band’s intentions were for that soon-to-be epic evening. It read: “The Mothers of Invention cordially invite you to join them on Tuesday, July 23, 1968, when they will be taking over the Whisky a Go Go for 5 full hours of unprecedented merriment, which will be secretly recorded for an upcoming record album. Dress optional. Starting sometime in the evening. R.S.V.D.T.” The show was billed on the Whisky marquee as “Mothers Of Invention – Recording Session,” and thus, Zappa had indeed recorded the entire evening’s aural festivities with the intention of releasing an album. That project never quite fully materialized — until now.
Early on during the Whisky proceedings — right after the quite gnarly eight-minute “Tiny Sick Tears Jam” — Zappa told the eclectic gathering of freaks and hippie-cum-hipster music geeks alike, “The purpose of this evening is supposedly to make some recordings of The Mothers live, in person.” Zappa’s core intention of live invention that night was to capture an entire Mothers performance on multi-track tape. The only other time this had occurred was two months earlier at the Miami Pop Festival on May 18, 1968, when Eddie Kramer had documented The Mothers’ set on 1” 8-track tape. For the Whisky engagement, Zappa had hired the Wally Heider remote truck, which itself had been outfitted with a 1” 8-track recorder that would be helmed by recording engineer Dick Kunc.
The choice of venue was no accident either. The Whisky had been very good to The Mothers over their formative years, and this showcase event was a way to give back to the place where manager Herb Cohen had persuaded producer Tom Wilson to witness Zappa and The Mothers perform in late 1965. That ultimately resulted in the band securing a record contract with MGM, not to mention planting the seeds of the fruitful relationship that developed between Zappa and Wilson. By the time The Mothers came back to the Whisky in July 1968, they had quite well established themselves as leaders of the underground.
Led by Zappa on guitar and vocals, The Mothers’ formidable lineup for this extravaganza included Ray Collins (vocals, percussion), Ian Underwood (alto sax), Bunk Gardner (tenor sax, flute), Don Preston (keyboards, gong), Motorhead Sherwood (baritone sax, percussion), Roy Estrada (bass, vocals), Art Tripp (drum set, percussion), and Jimmy Carl Black (drum set, percussion).
Along with the three individual sets The Mothers played that night, there were also performances by Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, The GTOs, and a still-mysterious guitar player from New Jersey named Joe Piresanti. The ensuing mayhem during these performances — “from time to time, there’ll be interesting events taking place here in the arena, to keep you occupied,” as Zappa put it — was duly captured on film as well. Vito, Szou, Carl and The Freaks writhed and contorted themselves in an orgy-like state on the floor in front of the stage, while The GTO’s danced, twirled, and screamed along for the entire evening, hands down the most raucous and most verbally reassuring cheerleading section in the house. Besides all their gyrating, whooping, and hollering, The GTOs also performed a pair of carefully hand-selected numbers onstage during “King Kong – Part 2.” Other notable scenesters in attendance that evening were The BTO’s, Kim Fowley (whom, at FZ’s insistence, joins in vocally early on in the set, a la his accompaniment on Freak Out!), The Turtles, John Mayall, Elliot Ingber (a former Mother now part of The Fraternity Of Man), and members of The Rolling Stones.
What attendees and participants alike witnessed that night at the Whisky — keeping in mind that some audience members had to be swapped in and out from set to set, since people were lined up around the block to get in (Thank you teenagers, one and all). Linchpin songs like “Memories of El Monte” and “Help, I’m A Rock” were there, and well known from the beginning days of The Mothers’ L.A. gigs. Improvisation was critical — “Just start playing something nice, in G minor. Make it up,” Zappa implores before The Mothers dive into “Improvisation: Episode II” — plus, there were doo-wop chops for days (“Valerie,” the soaring falsetto from Roy Estrada in “Oh, In The Sky”). As for Zappa himself, not only did he commence the first set by utilizing his trademark hand signals to direct the band in real time, he also got to deploy his then newly acquired Les Paul Gold Top guitar before the Bigsby tailpiece and other experimental modifications on the instrument had been implemented.
For his part, Alice Cooper remains thankful to this day for not only what Zappa saw in his fledgling group, but for giving them a cherished slot on that fateful Whisky night. “Nobody would touch us except Frank. He was the only one that even gave us the time of day,” as Cooper related to Ahmet Zappa in the liners. “He saw something specific in us that was pretty insane. All the record companies wanted the next Buffalo Springfield, and we were not that.” No, they were decidedly not that — and Alice Cooper collectively lit the Whisky ablaze with an incendiary performance of their own that set the table for a career that’s still in full swing.
“It truly was a night of nights,” as Travers oh-so-succinctly put it in the liners. “The Mothers performance wasn’t perfect, but very good. Frank was in good spirits, the band played well, and the sequence of songs did capture the group’s live repertoire of the time.” The Mothers were already poised for greater pastures and pastimes ahead by virtue of the music they would soon enough be creating for their next studio album, one that would arrive before the tail end of 1968 — the doo-wop-inspired concept piece, Cruising With Ruben & The Jets. But for five glorious hours on a hot mid-1968 summer night in L.A., the Whisky a Go Go was the most happening place to be. To best absorb the contents of Whisky a Go Go 1968, we should all follow the advice given by GTOs royalty Miss Pamela Des Barres, who implores us to “listen to all of this album in its entirety and try to envision the Whisky a Go Go that long ago night. It happened in a space and time that will never come again, so buckle up, baby, close your eyes, let your imagination soar, and set your freak free.” | 
