A Tragical History Tour

Frank Zappa’s stuff is not everybody’s cup of tea. The same can be said of John Lennon’s stuff in the 70’s. Yoko Ono’s stuff is no one’s cup of tea, ever. So, sit back with a cup of tea and wonder at the three of them jamming together at the Filmore East Some Time In New York City…

In 1969 Zappa reconstituted The Mothers with, among other changes, no Lowell George, The Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan on vocals and Jim Pons on bass (Yes, the same Jim Pons that had a hit with The Leave on Hey Joe in 1966). For legal reason Volman and Kaylan had to change their names to The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, which later morphed into just Flo and Eddie. Jim Pons can be seen replacing Mother’s bassist Jeff Simmons as he quits the band in the middle of the 200 Motels movie.

Flo and Eddie and Pons started with Zappa on the Chunga’s Revenge album and stuck around for almost two years, when The Mother’s fell apart after Zappa hurt himself falling off the stage (or was he pushed…?).

For two nights in June of ’71 The Mothers played shows at Filmore East that they recorded for a live album. On one of the nights, John Lennon and Yoko Ono came out for the encore and jammed with the band for a little under a half hour.

It seems Village Voice writer Howard Smith was interviewing Lennon for a radio show and he had an interview with Zappa lined-up for later that same day and asked Lennon if he wanted to come along. He did. Reportedly, Lennon’s first words to Zappa were “you’re not as ugly as I thought you’d be”. Zappa invited Lennon to join him at that night’s show at the Filmore.

They started the encore with a cover of The Olympics B-Side Well (Baby Please Don’t Go) and then three improvisational numbers, King Kong (from Uncle Meat), Scumbag (Featuring Yoko ‘singing’ from inside a bag) and Aaawk. For a jam session, it sounded pretty good, except for Yoko’s incessant caterwauling over the songs. You can hear a great screaming match between Volman, Kaylan and Yoko about nine minutes in when the band can’t figure out how to end Well (Baby Please Don’t Go) and the whole thing dissolves.

The Zappa and Lennon camps agreed that they would both have access to the tapes and they would both release their own mixes. Lennon’s mix came as a bonus disc with Some Time In New York City and Zappa’s was released in 1992, just before his death, on Playground Psychotics. Of course, on Lennon’s release King Kong was renamed Jamrag and Lennon/Ono were credited as the writers, cutting Zappa out of the royalties (the copyrights were claimed by Ono Music Ltd.). Flo and Eddies vocals were stripped off the tapes and Lennon’s camp sought legal injunctions to keep Zappa from releasing his version of the songs, but that’s not a surprise as John Lennon was a dick.

Lennon also oddly lies when he introduces Well (Baby Please Don’t Go) at the show. He says it’s a song he hasn’t played since his Cavern Days in Liverpool, but he just record it four months before the Filmore concert as part of the Imagine sessions (February 19th to be exact, Yoko’s 38th birthday).

If you’ve never heard before, give it a listen, but just once. The Yoko vocals will make you lose your tea.

And where is Jim Pons now? Well, he was football's The Jets video director for 27 years before leaving to work on charitable endeavors, and in 2005 started doing game day video for the Jags. Oh yeah, and he’s kind of a Jesus freak. Now you know the rest of the story

Maybe next time we’ll talk about the time Mike Nesmith conducted Zappa as he ‘played’ a car…