Uncle Meat - Background

Background

Frank Zappa, who had been interested in film since high school, decided to develop a film vehicle for The Mothers of Invention, entitled Uncle Meat. The proposed film would combine elements of science fiction and road stories inspired by the band's sexual escapades. Subsequently, Zappa began working on a project called No Commercial Potential, which eventually became the albums We're Only in It for the Money, Lumpy Gravy, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets and Uncle Meat. Zappa stated, "It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definitely related."

According to artist Cal Schenkel, "I started working on the story of Ruben and the Jets that is connected with the Uncle Meat story, which is this old guy turns this teenage band into these dog snout people We started that before it actually became Ruben and the Jets. That came out of my love for comics and that style, the anthropomorphic animals, but also it was part of a running story line."