Suzy Creamcheese (What’s Got Into You?)

Willy: Frank, who is Suzy Creamcheese?

FZ: Well, I'll have to answer you in the same tone of voice that you asked in.

(laughter)

Willy: Sound like Edward R. Murrow, heh . . .

FZ: Well, her real name is Pamela Lee Zarubica and she's living in Los Angeles right now, trying to grow her buns back.

Willy: I, I don't believe [...].

Other interviewer: We, we can't . . .

Willy: No touchy.

(laughs)

Other interviewer: Why, why "Suzy Creamcheese"?

FZ: Well, that's explanatory in the music, yeah.

Other interviewer: Is it? Great . . .

Willy: No, no, I don't think it is, I'm— Now, being the slowest person probably in this studio right now, I would like . . .

(someone snorks)

FZ: Oh, Willy, don't be so self-deprecating, come on, Willy.

Willy: Well, I'm not known for my modesty, alright. I admit it. Guilty. No, really. Really and seriously.

FZ: What's the deal, Willy? What are you trying to tell me?

Willy: (laughs) How, uh— You know, how, how did, uh, really, she acquire the name "Suzy Creamcheese"? You really get . . .

FZ: It's simple. It's really very simple. First of all, there was no Suzy Creamcheese to begin with.

Willy: And you thought we needed it? The world.

FZ: I'm sure the world needed one. I mean, that's self-evident, because now there are more than one Suzy Cream— they're all over the place.

Willy: Yeah . . .

FZ: A lot of people have adopted that concept. But the original Suzy Creamcheese was a figment of my imagination that occured during a two or three week stay in Hawaii when we were working at a horrible club there called Da Swamp.

Willy: (laughs)

Other interviewer: Da Swamp?

FZ: Spelled D-A Swamp.

Willy and other interviewer: (laughs)

FZ: There was a, was a . . .

Willy: What'd the owner look— was he a sterotype, you know, three feet, four feet wide, bald . . .

FZ: No, we never met the owner, you know, it was—. I don't . . .

Other interviewer: He didn't bother . . .

FZ: I shudder to think who actually owned Da Swamp, but our clientele was sailors of the world. The most exciting night that we had there, well, there were two exciting nights, one I can't tell you on the air, and the other one was the time we had some sailors from New Zealand come in, and they were really drunk and they were dancing with each other. It was really quite picturesque. These, like, New Zealand sailors dancing together, it was really good.

Willy: Hm.

FZ: And, um, there was nothing to do, Hawaii's a dull place.

Willy: You just look at it, you know, looks like a postcard with nothing to do.

FZ: It sure does look like a postcard, it was frightening. It looks so much like a postcard, you know. It made you feel two-dimensional just being there. So, I spent a lot of time in the, uh, motel room of this fantastic place right behind Da Swamp, it was called Da Surfboard Motel.

Willy and other interviewer: (laughs)

FZ: Green stucco, bugs everywhere, it was neat.

Willy: (laughs)

FZ: And I had this little typewriter there, so I cranked off the liner notes for the Freak Out! album and thinking of the packaging for the back of it, I came up with the idea of "Suzy Creamcheese," who would be a very pure sort of girl who would be ultimately offended by the presence in the music industry of a rancid group like the Mothers Of Invention. So she was conceived as a stereotype of the, the, uh, American perennial virgin type with the sort of white, pleated skirt and perhaps some rolled stockings going down into some loafer shoes and maybe a little sweater with a pin on it or something.

Other interviewer: A letter?

FZ: Yeah, a key of some sort. And, um . . .

Willy: Sorority pin . . .

FZ: Yeah

Some other person: Sounds like Virginia Beach.

FZ: So, um, I imagined this girl and how she would respond to an album such as Freak Out! So I composed the letter that's on the back, where the girl is making a complaint to her teacher about how rancid we were supposed to be. And everybody thought it was real, simply because it was printed in a typewriter script on the back. Nobody ever considered for a moment that it was just strictly imaginary. And the— where it says, "Sincerely forever, Suzy Creamcheese," I mean, that never occured to anybody that that was a little too weird to have on the back of an album. So a lot of people identified with Suzy Creamcheese and then when we were ready to go to Europe the first time, we discovered that people there were more interested in seeing Suzy Creamcheese than they were in seeing us. Not quite, but it was at a hysteria peak in certain areas. So we decided that it would be best to bring along a Suzy Creamcheese replica who would demonstrate once and for all the veracity of such a beast. So, I checked around to see who would be willing to go along with the gag and, uh, Pamela was willing and, uh, she was available and . . .

Willy: She did the voice on the album also?

FZ: No, no, that was another girl that did the voice on the album, her name was Jeannie Vassar, which we can't find her anymore, she disappeared, she went to Mexico or someplace.

Willy: Hm.

FZ: Anyway, there was no way to get a hold of Jeannie Vassar and, um, Pamela was available and was interested in the concept, so I said, "Okay, here's your ticket, come on." And so she did the tour with us in Europe and has maintained the title ever since.

Other interviewer: Of the Suzy Creamcheese?

FZ: Yeah.

Willy: Does, uh . . .

FZ: Such a distinction.

Willy: Has, uh, people as a crowd ever, uh, kind of ask for her anymore at a performance?

FZ: In Europe, sometimes, still they do. But you find that only in very retarded areas. We noticed, uh . . . You know, some areas are retarded, the— that certain information does not leak through, and a good example of that is, uh, there's some places in the south where network television does not come in. So, you're not going to receive anything on your television station other than Grand Ole Opry plus what the local politicos want you to hear. And so, same thing with radio stations, the format of certain radio stations does not permit certain types of information reaching that public. In a town that's sealed up, uh, if the electronic media is sealed up in a town, you can imagine what the print media must be like. And consequently, that reaches into commercial areas like record distribution and things like that where certain things just don't leak through in certain areas and they therefore become retarded.