We're Only in It For The Money

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
You know, the youth in America today is so wonderful. I'm proud to be part of this gigantic mass deception.
—Lyrics from the song Flower Punk.
Unbind your mind. There is no time bo-i-i-i-i-n-g to lick your stamps. And paste them in. Discorporate. And we'll begin. Freedom! Freedom! Kindly loving! You'll be absolutely free. Only if you want to be.
—Lyrics from the song Absolutely Free

We're Only In It For The Money (recorded in 1967, released in 1968) is one of Frank Zappa's most famous and popular conceptual albums. A scathing attack on such 1960s topics as the flower power movement, police brutality, The Beatles, the generation gap and the growing mass commercialization of pop music. Many fans call it one of his best albums and it's certainly one of his most characteristic.

Apart from this the album also has several instrumental "musique concrete" tracks and songs containing inside jokes about Zappa's band and friends. According to the liner notes the listener should read the story In The Penal Colony by Franz Kafka first, before listening to the final track "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny".

Its cover is particularly memorable for offering the first Sgt. Pepper's Shout Out with an inside cover spoofing one for The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, an album that itself was inspired by Zappa's Freak Out! (1966) album.

The album is Trope Namer for Only in It For the Money.

Tropes used in We're Only in It For The Money include:
  • Accentuate the Negative: "Flower power sucks, sucks, sucks..."
  • And I Must Scream: The victims in the concentration camps in "Concentration Moon" and "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny"
  • Art Initiates Life: Some of the rumors about concentration camps for hippies turned out to have some truth in them.
  • Audience Participation: In the liner notes Zappa asks the audience to read Kafka's In The Penal Colony before starting to listen to the final track.
  • Bawdy Song:
    • Two people collecting urine and smearing boogers on windows in "Let's Make The Water Turn Black"
    • Rape in "Harry, You're A Beast"
    • "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?"
  • Black Comedy Rape: "Harry You're A Beast"
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:

The child will grow and enter the world of liars and cheaters and people like you
 Who smile and think they know
 What this is about
 You think you know everything
 Maybe so
 The song we sing
 Do you know

We're listening.
—"The Idiot Bastard Son"
  • Broken Record: The infamous needle scratch sound on "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music"
  • Body Horror: "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body"? Answer: your mind.
  • Born Unlucky: "The Idiot Bastard Son"
  • Bowdlerized: The entire original album has completely been revised and re-recorded. This re-recorded version is now the official version. When one compares the older and newer version one notices extreme differences and changes made, mostly in sound quality and montage.
  • Call Back and Continuity Nod: "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body" is reprised later
    • The quote "Hi, boys and girls. I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group" first appears in the track "Are You Hung Up?" and is later reprised in "Concentration Moon"
    • Engineer Gary Kellgren contributes "creepy whispering", which can be heard in "Are You Hung Up?" and "Hot Poop".
    • In the liner notes Zappa asks the audience "Is this phase one of "Lumpy Gravy"?", while he asked the opposite question in the album "Lumpy Gravy": "Is this phase two of "We're Only In It For The Money"?
    • The classical piece heard in "Mother People" can also be heard on the album "Lumpy Gravy"
  • The Cameo:
    • Jimi Hendrix on the album cover. And yes, it's really him, not just some collage cut-out.
    • Eric Clapton says "God, it's God. I see God" in "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music", and contributes clichéd stoner dialogue to "Are You Hung Up?".
  • Concept Album
  • Crapsack World
  • Creator Cameo: "Hello, Frank Zappa…..."
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: The person tortured in "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny"
  • Cryptic Conversation: At various points on the album
  • Dark Comedy
  • Dramatic Thunder: On the album cover.
  • Electronic Speech Impediment: Sped up voices can be hear regularly on the album, mostly for comedic effect.
    • "Flower Punk" is entirely sped up.
    • "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?, Part 2" slowly starts slowing down near the end.
  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: On the final track "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny" characters laugh demonically with the fate of the tortured person.
  • Evil Laugh: See above.
  • Evil Twin: Some CD packages describe this album as "Sgt. Peppers' evil twin".
  • Fading Into the Next Song: Each track - it's a gapless album.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: The parents' daughter is shot by the cops too in "Mom & Dad".
  • Follow the Leader: Mocked in "Who Needs The Peace Corps?", "Absolutely Free" and "Flower Punk".
  • The Future Will Be Better: The lyrics of "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance".
  • Genre Roulette
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: The line "Better shut your mouth about the length of my hair/How would you survive/if you were alive/shitty person?" was censored on the album.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Eric Clapton claiming he sees "God" on "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music", while this would later become his nickname.
    • The line about a hippie going to get crabs in "Who Needs The Peace Corps?" becomes much more funnier after family restaurant chain Joe's Crab Shack released psychedelic t-shirts promoting "Peace, Love and Crabs", blissfully unaware of the potential double entendre related to the album.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters
  • Hype Backlash: A key moment that led to the creation of this album was when Zappa went to check out the music scene in San Francisco and came back unimpressed, feeling that the music wasn't as revolutionary as they claimed.
  • Inner Monologue Conversation:
    • Gary Kellgren's ranting about erasing Zappa's tapes in "Are You Hung Up?" and "Hot Poop".
    • Rock musicians fantasize about the amount of money and groupies they'll get after the show is over on "Flower Punk"
  • Intercourse with You: Harry wants sex with Madge on the track "Harry You're A Beast" and gets his way.
  • Last-Note Nightmare: Ending an album with "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny": need to say more?
  • Match Cut
  • My Country, Right or Wrong:
    • "Concentration Moon" - "American way/how did it start? Thousands of creeps killed in the park..."
    • "Harry You're A Beast" - "That's you, American womanhood."
    • "Flower Punk" - "The youth in America today is so wonderful. I'm glad to be part of this gigantic mass deception."
    • "The Idiot Bastard Son" - "The father's a Nazi in Congress today/The mother's a hooker somewhere in L.A."
  • Non-Appearing Title: The album's title is never mentioned in any of the lyrics.
  • The Not-Remix: Frank Zappa remixed and re-recorded some parts of We're Only In It For The Money and Cruising With Ruben & The Jets in the mid 1980s with New-Wave style sounds. Not surprisingly, fans were pissed, and as a result, Zappa's estate restored and released Money to its original form in 1995, while the original mix of Ruben wouldn't appear again for another 15 years.
  • One-Woman Song: "Lonely Little Girl"
  • Only in It For the Money: Trope Namer
  • Out-of-Clothes Experience: "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance"
  • Parental Hypocrisy: The parents in "Mom & Dad" think that the "creeps" who were killed in the park by the cops got what they deserved, until they find out their daughter was among them.
  • Parental Obliviousness: "Lonely Little Girl", "Mom & Dad", "Mother People", "Bow Tie Daddy",...
  • The Parody/Whole-Plot Reference: The album spoofs The Beatles "Sgt. Peppers" record.
  • Properly Paranoid: The entire album has a very paranoid feeling to it complete with many conspiracy theories and tracks frequently interrupted by snippets of mumbling people.
  • Protest Song
  • Rage Against the Author: "One of these days I'm going to erase all the Zappa tapes in the world" on "Are You Hung Up?"
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: "Mom and Dad", which calls out the parents who said the hippies deserved to get shot by the cops, when it's the parents' lack of concern and love for their children that played a huge role in it happening in the first place.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: This is basically the definitive critique on the late 1960s.
  • Reference Overdosed:
  • Sampling
  • Scare Chord
  • Sgt. Pepper's Shout Out: The Trope Namer (indirectly).
  • Scunthorpe Problem: Some producers asked Zappa to change the line "And I still remember momma in her apron and her pad feeding all the boys at Ed's café" in "Let's Make The Water Turn Black" because they misunderstood the word "pad" and thought it referred to a "sanitary napkin".
  • Shout-Out:
    • The Beatles on the album cover
    • Jimi Hendrix' "Hey Joe" on "Flower Punk"
    • Lenny Bruce's routine in "Harry You're A Beast"
  • Shrouded in Myth: Zappa's strange hand gestures on the back cover of the album, while Ian Underwood holds up a piece of paper.
  • Spoken Word in Music
  • Stage Names: "Hi, boys and girls, I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group."
  • Studio Chatter: Various moments on this album.
  • Take That:
    • Hippies in "Who Needs The Peace Corps?", "Concentration Moon" and "Absolutely Free"
    • The commercialization of rock ‘n' roll in the album title and tracks as "Absolutely Free" and "Flower Punk"
    • "American womanhood" is targeted in "Harry You're A Beast"
    • The police in "Concentration Moon" and "Mom & Dad"
    • The U.S.A in "Mom & Dad"
    • Ignorant parents in "Bow Tie Daddy", "Mother People", "Lonely Little Girl", "Concentration Moon" and "Mom & Dad"
    • Gary Kellgren's line "And tomorrow I get to work with The Velvet Underground, which is just a shitty a group as Frank Zappa's group..." on the original vinyl version. This line was cut on the CD release.
  • Take That, Audience!: The listener himself is attacked in "The Idiot Bastard Son"
  • Throw It In: The word "discorporate" is explained at the start of the song "Absolutely Free".
    • The track "Telephone Conversation" is a piece of a telephone conversation that Zappa recorded between Pamela Zarubica (the original Suzy Creamcheese from the album "Freak Out!") and a friend of hers, Vicki, who claimed that Pamela's father was looking for her and had called in help from the FBI. Apparently the FBI was threatening to arrest Vicki for withholding information. Zarubica called her back to discuss matters and Zappa recorded the conversation including a 45-second snippet that made it on the album.
  • This Trope Is Bleep The tracks "Harry You're A Beast" and "Hot Poop" has a few censored lyrics
  • Unintentional Period Piece: The album criticizes the hippie movement and The Beatles and therefore is both very dated and a document of its time at the same time.
  • Write Who You Know:
    • The lyrics in "Let's Make The Water Turn Black" are about two eccentric friends of Zappa's, Ronnie and Kenny Williams, who used to collect all their urine in a giant jar and smeared their boogers on the windows.
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