Frank Zappa on Why You Can’t Stand Your Kids’ Music

When I came here,” Frank Zappa said, pointing to an amplifier, “I had to explain to them that kids don’t want pretty notes — that’s for the flabby, martini-drinking generation. Kids want sound. And if your ears hear it as a whine, a whistle, fuzz — the feedback scream that NBC pays engineers millions to get rid of? That’s music to us today. And the kids love it if you hate it. You go to one of their concerts. You want to find out what your daughter is up to. So you go, and you walk in, and you say, ‘That damn amp is up so loud I can’t make out the words.’ The kids love that, because they already know the words, and they know you don’t. The amplifier is their weapon of destruction.”

—”Does This Mother Know Best?” by W.H. Manville, January 13, 1968

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Read “Does This Mother Know Best?” by Frank Zappa. Published January 13, 1968 in the Post.

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