Bob Dobbs
“FRANK VS. THE HIPPIES”
“Frank Zappa: LA’s Original Freak Is One Mean Mother”, by Michael Snyder & Blair Jackson, January 1978
Michael Snyder: WE’RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY derides San Francisco, Flower Power, and the so-called hippie movement on a number of cuts.
Do you think that attitude is a tired issue or still worth kicking around?
Frank Zappa: Whatever you like. You want to talk about tired issues? I’ll talk about ‘em. I’m here to entertain you.
M: You’re here to entertain everybody. If you’ve got it, entertain it.
FZ: OK, here it is: I believe that San Francisco and its citizens were used by the United States government for LSD experiments, psychological warfare experiments, and germ warfare experiments during that period of time. I think that the whole Haight-Ashbury phenomenon was manufactured, and I think that the people who were
victimized by those drugs during that time ought to sue the government. You’re looking at a place that was chosen as the home of the manufactured zombies.
M: All this stuff about the CIA drug houses has been coming to light. It might make sense.
FZ: It does. After the CIA discovers this potential weapon, where are they going to try it out on a large number of people? In an urban setting. Take a map. Stick a pin. San Francisco gets the vote. You know those funny camps they were opening during the ’60s?
M: The camps for dissidents?
FZ: The ones where they put the Japanese people during World War 2. They were sprucing them up in the 1960s.
M: Detention camps.
FZ: Yeah. Why were they opening them up?
M: The government feared that campus unrest would lead to widespread rioting?
FZ: I don’t think they feared the students or needed a place to lock them away. I think the camps were a safety valve, in case the chemical experiments failed and you had tens of thousands of uncontrolled potential murderers on the street. If they dosed ‘em too much and everything got out of hand, the only answer would have been to round them up and throw them in those camps.
