History Music / WereOnlyInItForTheMoney

When the album went into production, it originally had a different concept and direction. In fact, the entirety of ''Money'', ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'', the dialogue sessions from the reissue of ''Music/LumpyGravy'', and parts of ''Music/UncleMeat'' were recorded at the same New York sessions. Music/TheBeatles' ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'' album came out while the Mothers of Invention were recording the album, and Zappa decided to change the album's concept to parody that album because he felt that in the context of late 60s America ([[UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement widespread rioting]], UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar) the Beatles' emphasis on "love" was [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids dangerously naive]]. The cover is particularly memorable for offering the UrExample of the SgtPeppersShoutOut.

* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: The person tortured in "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny"

* ElectronicSpeechImpediment: Sped up voices can be hear regularly on the album, mostly for comedic effect.

** "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?, Part 2" slowly starts slowing down near the end.

* FollowTheLeader: Mocked in "Who Needs The Peace Corps?", "Absolutely Free" and "Flower Punk", where it is shown that hippies are merely following a brainless commercial trend. [[invoked]]

* IntercourseWithYou: Harry wants sex with Madge on the track "Harry You’re A Beast" and gets his way.

* LastNoteNightmare: "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny", a nightmarish track that should be understood within the context of Creator/FranzKafka's ''Literature/InThePenalColony'' and closes the album.
* MisogynySong: "Harry You're a Beast", directed at "American womanhood".

** "Harry You're a Beast"

* TheNotRemix: Frank Zappa remixed and re-recorded some parts of ''We're Only in It for the Money'' and ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'' in 1984 with New-Wave style instrumentation. Other songs were sped-up, slowed down or had other editing adjustments. Unsurprisingly, fans were pissed; 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.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: This is basically the definitive critique on the late 1960s.

** Owsley Stanley in "Who Needs The Peace Corps?".

** Creator/LennyBruce in "Harry You’re a Beast".

* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: "What's The Ugliest Part of Your Body?":

** Creator/LennyBruce's routine in "Harry You're a Beast"

** Hippies in "Who Needs the Peace Corps?," "Concentration Moon", and "Absolutely Free"

** "American womanhood" is targeted in "Harry You're a Beast"

** Ignorant parents in "Bow Tie Daddy," "Mother People," "Lonely Little Girl," "Concentration Moon", and "Mom & Dad"

* AndIMustScream: The victims in the concentration camps in "Concentration Moon" and "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny"

** Rape in "Harry, You're A Beast"

* BlackComedyRape: "Harry You’re a Beast", where a guy named Harry ravages a woman named Madge. Though it is clear that Harry is a dumb asshole.

* CoversAlwaysLie: From judging the album cover and the art work within you might expect this album to be an entire musical and lyrical parody of ''[[Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'', but it's not. The only real similarity is that "A Day in the Life", just like "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny" are both the closing track, both closing on one note slowly fading out at the end.

!! Tracklist

# "Who Needs The Peace Corps?" (2:34)

# "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?" (1:03)

# "Let's Make The Water Turn Black" (2:01)

# "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (Reprise)" (1:02)

# "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny" (6:25)

!!Personnel

* AlternateAlbumCover: The cover art was designed as an unflattering, yet very thorough SgtPeppersShoutOut, which Music/PaulMcCartney reportedly approved of. However, Creator/VerveRecords changed the cover at the last minute to swap the outer art with the gatefold photo, which depicts a plain image of the Mothers of Invention against a yellow background (as a riff on the ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'' gatefold photo). When Zappa regained the rights to his back-catalog in The '80s, he had the inner and outer art swapped back to match his original intentions.

* AudienceParticipation: In the liner notes Zappa asks the audience to read Creator/FranzKafka's ''In The Penal Colony'' before starting to listen to the final track.

** Two people collecting urine and smearing boogers on windows in "Let's Make The Water Turn Black"

** "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?" sounds bawdy, but the answer turns out to be [[spoiler: your mind]]

** "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?" is reprised later.

** In the liner notes Zappa asks the audience "Is this phase one of ''Lumpy Gravy''?", while he asked the opposite question in the album ''Music/LumpyGravy (1968)'': "Is this phase two of ''We're Only In It For The Money''?"

** Zappa would re-use the phrase ''What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?'' in "Flower Punk" on ''Music/FillmoreEastJune1971'' (1971), ''Music/SheikYerbouti'' (1979), ''Music/JoesGarage'' (1979) and ''Music/ThingFish'' (1985). The band member fantasizing about his royalty check in "Flower Punk" shares a similar theme with Billy being happy about receiving his royalty check in "Billy The Mountain" from ''Music/JustAnotherBandFromLA''.

** Music/JimiHendrix on the album cover, standing on the far left, around the same place Sonny Liston was in the Beatles' ''Sgt. Pepper''. And yes, it's really him, not just some collage cut-out.

** The vegetables on the front cover are a call back to the vegetable concepts of ''Music/AbsolutelyFree (1967)''. ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' even has a track named "Absolutely Free".

* CrapsackWorld: Hippies blindly follow trends and get tortured in concentration camps, police officers kill hippies, square parents don't care until they discover their daughter is one of them, American womanhood is empty and gets raped, idiot bastard sons gets born,... [[spoiler: No wonder that the ugliest part of you body is your mind]]

* CoversAlwaysLie: From judging the album cover and the art work within you might expect this album to be an entire musical and lyrical parody of ''[[Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand Sgt. Peppers]]'', but it's not. The only real similarity is that ''A Day In The Life'', just like ''The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny'' are both the closing track, both closing on one note slowly fading out at the end.

* EverybodyLaughsEnding: On the final track "The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny", characters laugh demonically with the fate of the tortured person.

* GeorgeLucasAlteredVersion: The drum and bass parts of the original album, as well as those on ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'', were re-recorded in the 80s. While Zappa claimed the original tapes were damaged, it is believed that he hated the original performances and wanted to update them to something more suitable (and also comical.) Despite fan outcry, Zappa chastised "collectors and purists" for their reverance of the original material. The original release was re-issued after his death by Rykodisc in 1995.

* MisogynySong: "Harry You're A Beast", directed at "American womanhood".

** "Harry You're A Beast"

* ParentalObliviousness: "Lonely Little Girl", "Mom & Dad," "Mother People," "Bow Tie Daddy,"...

* QuestioningTitle: "Are You Hung Up?", "What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?"

** Several people featured on the album cover were cut-out from Zappa's high school year book, namely some teachers, administrational staff and high school students. Other are personal colleagues and friends, such as secretary Pauline Butcher, graphic designer Cal Schenkel, his girlfriend Sandy Hurvitz, Zappa's father Francis, Zappa's then manager Herb Cohen and his daughter Lisa.
** 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.

* RecordNeedleScratch: Near the end of ''Nasal Retentive Calliope Music''.

** Ronny and Kenny Williams in "Let's Make The Water Turn Black" and "The Idiot Bastard Son".
** Creator/LennyBruce in "Harry You’re A Beast".

* {{Sampling}}: The opening whispering from ''Are You Hung Up?'' returns again during ''Concentration Moon''.

* ScunthorpeProblem: When Zappa went to the Netherlands for their equivalent of the UsefulNotes/{{Grammy Award}}s, he discovered that they had edited 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'' (as in a completely harmless ''notepad'') and thought it referred to a ''sanitary napkin''.

** Creator/LennyBruce's routine in "Harry You’re A Beast"

** Hippies in "Who Needs The Peace Corps?," "Concentration Moon", and "Absolutely Free"

** "American womanhood" is targeted in "Harry You’re A Beast"

* ToiletHumour: "Let's Make The Water Turn Black", about two friends of Zappa who smeared their nose drippings on a window and collected their urine in a jar.

* {{Feelies}}: Tying in with its concept as a parody of ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'', the album originally included a cutout sheet with Zappa's facial hair, a pigtail, a mock dollar bill, a hall monitor badge, a human nipple, and a standee of Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

** "Flower Punk" specifically is a parody of "Hey Joe"; both the Music/JimiHendrix and Music/{{Love}} versions.

''We're Only in It for the Money'' (recorded in 1967, released in 1968) is an album by The Mothers of Invention, and one of Music/FrankZappa's most famous and popular concept albums. A scathing attack on such 1960s topics as the flower power movement, police brutality, Music/TheBeatles, PsychedelicRock, the generation gap and the growing mass commercialization of pop music. In 2005, it was among the records selected by the UsefulNotes/NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically important".

I will [[DoesNotLikeShoes wander around barefoot]].\\

* ReCut: The album received two levels of censoring when it was originally sold, depending on the territory it was released: a censored version and a heavily censored version, which even cut swear words out of reversed portions. Several copies over the years have included songs from different versions on one disc, and a full history of different edits [[http://home.westbrabant.net/~hades/Phase315ofWOIIFTMcensorship.htm lies here.]]

* UsefulNotes/StatueOfLiberty: Seen on the album cover.

** In the album cover art inside the booklet a text balloon has Zappa say: "Between the buttons!" This is a reference to ''Music/BetweenTheButtons'' by Music/TheRollingStones, which was his favorite album by this band. He even deemed it superior to ''Sgt. Peppers''.

* DesignStudentsOrgasm and DetailHoggingCover: Cal Schenkel's album cover.

* FollowTheLeader: Mocked in "Who Needs The Peace Corps?", "Absolutely Free" and "Flower Punk", where it is shown that hippies are merely following a brainless commercial trend.

** The album cover shows images of UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson, UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein, Music/LudwigVanBeethoven, blues singer Big Mama Thornton, Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Creator/RodSerling, Pope Paul III, John Zacherley (best known for his single "Dinner With Drac"), Eric Burdon (Music/TheAnimals), Music/DavidCrosby, Music/ElvisPresley, Creator/NancySinatra, Creator/EdWynn, Creator/LonChaney in ''Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera1925'' and Max Schreck (best known as Orlock in ''Film/{{Nosferatu}}''), Creator/SoupySales, Creator/ThedaBara and Music/CaptainBeefheart.