Memoirs of a Zappatista (cont.)

Another encounter with FZ, this time as a Sears-poncho faux hippie slouching down Tejon Street in scenic downtown Bibleburg. Head shops were everywhere in the Seventies, even here. Tejon also served as home to an office of the John Birch Society, two or three dirty bookstores and a clean one, Dick and Judy Noyes’ Chinook, felled some years back by Amazon.com. One dirty bookstore survives, which tells you much of what you need to know about this place.

But as I said, I was slouching down Tejon and in the window of this head shop I saw a poster that stopped me in my tracks — the now-legendary Phi Zappa Krappa poster, depicting FZ squatting on a toilet. I was eagerly doing my lame-o best to offend as many people as possible through cartoons like “For Sure God Gets High” and “The Adventures of Loadedman,” and so found it delightful.

But FZ apparently found it less so, according to Kill Ugly Radio. The picture was originally intended to illustrate a British magazine article and promote The Mothers’ first concert in 1967, but took on a life of its own as a widely bootlegged poster from which FZ derived no royalties, though he did authorize at least one version, according to a 1975 story written by Steve Weitzman:

“Well, I don’t see anything wrong about sitting on a toilet and having your picture taken, but when somebody takes that picture and uses it to make money on your name. … Then you compound that with the public’s attitude toward excretory processes pictured in a poster like that … more people knew me for that poster than for my music. I said, ‘Well, that’s not fair.’ So I said, ‘I’m either going to do something drastic about it or just let it go’ and I figured, ‘Well, kiss it off.’ You can’t really change the public’s attitude about that.”

Ironic that FZ himself was probably the person most offended by that poster, no?