Interviewer: Is it possible to say where you get your musical influences from?
Frank Zappa: Sometimes you get it from chicken. Sometimes from coffee.
Many are ready to assume that Zappa followed the lead of the herd of fellow ‘60s musicians in consuming a rich spectrum of drugs. His often trippy 1966 album Freak Out! was released a good year before the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band set the industry standard for psychedelic rock. The bizarre lyrics and sometimes grotesque instrumental features on Freak Out! and subsequent albums led many a listener to believe that Zappa’s influences were chemical. However, Zappa’s eccentricities were not born of narcotic drugs; a Zappa feature in a 1976 ‘Suosikki’ Magazine article says it all:
Q: Do you have a drug problem?
A: Yes, with coffee.
Q: With coffee???
A: I'm an absolutely sober person. I don't consume alcohol. I don't smoke weed. But I drink gallons of coffee.
Zappa's love for coffee was not bound to the rehearsal room, as he drank it on stage as well. Coffee even made it into the recording studio, often home to noise creations by Zappa that challenged conventional definitions of 'music'.
http://www.ineedcoffee.com/00/zappa/
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