“My Pet Theory”

FZ: The '60s was really stupid.

Interviewer: Okay, can you expand on that a little bit more, why you think the 60s were really stupid?

FZ: Well, it was a type of merchandising. Americans have this hideous weakness, you know, they have this desire to be okay, fun guys and gals. And they haven't come to terms with the reality of the situation—we were not created equal. Some people can do carpentry, some people can do mathematics, some people are brain surgeons and some people are winos, and that's the way it is. And we're not all the same. And this concept of one-worldism, everything blended and smoothed out to this mediocre norm that everybody downgrades themselves to be is stupid. And the '60s was merchandised to the public at large. My pet theory about the '60s is that there's a sinister plot behind it, but I don't wanna dwell upon that.

Interviewer: Okay.

FZ: Okay? It's just the lessons learned in the '60s about merchandising stupidity to the American public on a large scale have been used over and over again since that time.

Interviewer: Freak Out! and Absolutely Free influenced a generation.

FZ: Did they? They didn't sell that much. How'd they influence a generation? Come on, tell me.

Interviewer: That's what my question says.

FZ: Well, that wasn't a question. That was a statement.

Interviewer: That was my statement. Looking back over all these years and those records, how do you feel about them now? Any differently?

FZ: What, Freak Out! and Absolutely Free? They're okay for something that was done as a 4-track recording twenty years ago. I mean, I wouldn't sit around and listen to 'em.

Interviewer: You don't think that they had any influence on people?

FZ: Well, I know that a lot of people were vastly influenced by them. I've heard horror stories about that. But, so what? They weren't released to be influences; they were released as a form of entertainment for people who didn't have that type of entertainment before.

Interviewer: You once said, "Listen now that I'm thirty years old, now that I'm over the hill, I don't really give a shit, I don't care." Now that you're over forty, any comments?

FZ: Said it once, do I need to say it again?