Billy the Mountain
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"Billy the Mountain" is a Frank Zappa song, first made available on the album Just Another Band from L.A. in 1972. The original recording of this song, which took a complete half-hour to perform, was from a live tour performance on October 7, 1971 in Los Angeles during the Flo & Eddie days of Frank Zappa's band. The album recording had to be reduced to 24 minutes and 37 seconds in order to fit on one side. An alternate recording of the song was featured on the 1992 album Playground Psychotics.
Though the song does have solo breaks and points of repetition, the lead source of its extravagant length is the intricate and absurd story its lyrics encompass, that of a mountain named Billy and his wife Ethell, a tree. The epic treatment of the story and its development is considered to parody the Rock opera style, which had recently emerged with the release of Tommy by The Who three years earlier. The lyrics are a satirical myriad of imagery of popular culture, the city of Los Angeles, the demise of urban America, and overall absurd juxtapositions of situations. Though many lines were improvised from city to city as the band toured, the story remains relatively the same.
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[edit] Story
Billy the Mountain, a rather typical mountain which poses for postcards, lives between the cities of Rosamond, California and Gorman, California with his wife Ethell, a tree. The main features on his mountain edifice are two large caves, resembling eyes, and a cliff for a jaw, which lifts up and down, puffing up dust, brown clouds, and boulders.
The story begins when a man in a checkered double-knit suit drives up in a Cadillac Eldorado, or a Lincoln Continental depending on the recording, leased from the Bob Spreene car dealership in Downey to deliver Billy's royalty check, a payment for the postcards. Billy the Mountain becomes very excited, and Billy's jaw, again, made of a cliff, drops thirty feet, allowing a boulder to fly out and crushing the car (which the lyrics mistakenly call a Lincoln). The man in the suit then goes looking for a ride back to the San Fernando Valley.
When Billy breaks the news to Ethell, she also becomes excited, and they immediately plan on taking a well deserved vacation to New York City, first stopping in Las Vegas. They set off, moving across the Mojave Desert, however, while Ethell searches for a Howard Johnson's to eat at, Billy begins to leave a trail of destruction, due to his massive size. The first noteworthy piece of destruction, however, is Billy and Ethell's consumption of a rocket sled at Edwards Air Force Base.
The media quickly alerts the public of the phenomenon and starts generating false tabloid story about Billy the Mountain and Ethell's past lives, claiming them to be involved in a San Joaquin Valley smut ring. Meanwhile, Jerry Lewis is provoked to host a telethon to raise funds for the newly injured and homeless in Glendale (or Denver, again depending on the recording) after Billy flattens while passing through. This leads to further disaster, when Billy causes an "Oh mein papa" (a reference to the song by Eddie Fisher[1]) in the earth's crust over a secret underground dump next to the Jack in the Box near Glenoaks, releasing gas from obsolete germ bombs, just as a freak Tornado cruises through. The poisonous Tornado claims many lives, including that of an accordion-player named Howard Kaplan, who, like many, is pulled into the cyclone and is dispersed over the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Though little actual effort has been taken to stop Billy, when Billy reaches Columbus, Ohio, he receives notice that he has been drafted and must attend his induction physical. Ethell protests, and Billy continues his vacation. The media goes wild, reporting that he is a communist and that he practices witchcraft.
Finally, a telehone rings in the secret briefcase of the only man who might have a chance of stopping Billy, a fantastic new superhero named Studebaker Hoch (pronounced HAWK, and named after, of course, the Studebaker Silver Hawk automobile). It is noted that little is known about Studebaker Hoch, however, all his origin stories are relatively dull. His personality is little known, his powers are rumoured to be flying, swimming, and/or singing like Neil Sedaka.
Much time had passed since the beginning of the destruction, including several months, days, cities, funny cars, walnuts, and Big John Masamanian. However, Hoch, clad in a Dudley Do-Right wristwatch and flexy bracelet, answers the phone call in his briefcase relatively uninformed of the previous destruction, and must be informed of what had occurred. At first he is somewhat in disbelief and uninterested, and briefly goes into casual discussion about family events, asking if the unnamed caller has received the album he sent him with "the pencil on the front," referring to the Zappa album Fillmore East - June 1971. Soon, however, he begins to take notes about Billy's path of destruction with much interest.
At this point, there is a brief dance lesson with Studebaker Hoch, for apparently the rumors about his dancing abilities were true. One such rumor, published in Rolling Stone, is that he can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. The widely accepted origins of Studebaker are apparently that he was born next to the frozen beef pies in a supermarket, underneath Joni Mitchell's autographed picture, next to Elliot Robert's bank book, next to a boat in which Bing Crosby was arrested whil throwing away his "stash." The beef pies are said to have been the main influence, and possibly the source of the powers, of Studebaker Hoch.
Now with a plan, Studebaker Hoch gathers some large, unused cardboard boxes, some Aunt Jemima syrup, some Kaiser broiler foil and a pair of blunt scissors. Then, hiding in between a pair of customized cars in the parking lot of Ralph's on Sunset Boulevard, he cuts out some wings from the cardboard, covers them in foil, and then places them under his arm. He walks to a telephone booth, where he spreads the syrup onto his legs, attracting a swarm of flies. The flies know Hoch by his reputation for how he "treats the flies alright" and, on his command, lift him and the telephone booth out of the parking lot, into the sky, and to New York in musical fanfare.
After the musical break, we rejoin Studebaker Hoch, who, standing on Billy the Mountain's mouth, tries to reason with Billy. At first he is friendly, but after Ethell protests, he tries to aggressively taunt Billy, who simply laughs at Hoch. Hoch, unfortunately standing on his jaw, once again, a cliff, loses his balance and falls perilously to his own injury and defeat. The moral of the story is stated in song: "a mountain is something you don't want to fuck with."
[edit] Musical Themes
Like most long Frank Zappa compositions, the song is heavily orchestrated, and for the most part written out in score-form. The music plays on recurring musical themes. Amongst them is the song's signature melody, which synchronises with the some of the first few lyrics, "Billy was a mountain, Ethell was a tree growing off of his shoulder." This theme later plays a role in The Adventures of Greggery Peccary, a similarly formed composition in which Billy and Ethell make cameo appearances.
There is also a recurring "chorus" to the song, which appears three times, first when the man in the double-knit checkered suit laments that he is trapped in the valley, moments later when Billy and Ethell celebrate their trip to Las Vegas, and finally, in the conclusion when the moral is stated, upon which the chorus develops further as well.
The theme from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is also used to introduce the city of New York, given that, at the time, the Tonight Show had not yet moved to Burbank, California. It is also, however to introduce the Watts residential district as well as a transition to show that time has passed during Studebaker Hoch's phone conversation.
Much of the bulk of the song, however, relies on incidental, rock-based vocal musical numbers depending on important points of the storyline, which transition into grooves and background music for a running, spoken narration.
The song makes reference to The Wizard of Oz and the musical number, Somewhere Over the Rainbow during the tornado sequence, and is sung by the Howard Kaplan character.
[edit] Notes
- ^ This is an oblique joke to the word "fissure" which is what Zappa meant by the reference.
