As conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zubin earned a reputation for doing the unconventional; rushing in, as Time magazine described it, “where many Angelenos fear to tread” and also “getting away with it musically”. In April 1968, at a regular concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zubin showed the audience motion pictures while following the score of Contextures, a new multimedia orchestral work which he commissioned from Kraft, who also happened to be his principal timpanist.

Zubin tried two experiments, mixing the classics with rock music. Both generated much controversy, bringing the odium of the musical literati on Zubin. The first, in March 1970, was an NBC television special called The Switched On Symphony in which Zubin and the Los Angeles Philharmonic appeared with such rock performers as TheWho and Jethro Tull, and soul singer Ray Charles. The aim was ostensibly to show the connection between rock music and the classics.

A more practical aim was to enthuse the younger generations to take to classical music by associating rock with orchestras. That this was attempted by trying to forge a non-existent link between the two did not particularly worry anyone. It did not really fool anyone, however.

An observation in the New York Times provides a flavour of what the critics thought about it. “Maestro Mehta insisted on viewing this silly piece of camp as a vital link joining the world of the symphony with that of the rockers. What absurdities men are persuaded to utter on television!”

Zapped!

The second experiment, and one in which Zubin broke new ground, was when he collaborated with the American composer, guitarist, singer and director Frank Zappa in May 1970. It was a decision he would regret. Throughout the autumn of 1969, Zappa had been finishing an orchestral piece and in the spring he finally heard it performed. He met Zubin at KPFA-FM during a radio interview and mentioned it.

Zubin was impressed by his knowledge of the music of Edgar Varese and Stravinsky. Zappa told him that he would go to libraries when on tour and look through their scores. Zubin was too busy to read what Zappa had given him but his orchestra manager liked the score and persuaded him to read it.

After three months of talks, it was announced that on 15 May 1970, Zappa’s 200 Motels written for his band, The Mothers of Invention, and the orchestra would be performed in concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Pauley Pavilion, University of California, conducted by Zubin. It was to be part of “Contempo ’70 – 20th Century Music”, a series of four concerts of twentieth-century music with Zubin conducting the first three and Boulez the final one.

Fleischmann and Zubin had been stressing the need for a wider variety of contemporary orchestral music performances in Los Angeles. Zappa’s inclusion was part of a broader effort to expose the orchestra and its audiences to the most vital trends in the music of the day. But both Zubin and Fleischmann were clear that this was not another attempt to wed symphonic music to rock.

In the first half, Zubin conducted Varese and Stravinsky and in the second, 200 Motels. Zappa’s 200 Motels required the musicians to perform, to put it mildly, in an unconventional way. Attired in yellow-striped pants, a ponytailed Zappa prefaced the performance with a short speech and then turned to Zubin and said, “All right, Zubin, hit it.”

The players were required to snort, grunt and throw confetti; the bass horn player had to twirl like a drunken elephant and at one point the entire 104-member orchestra stood up and walked into the audience, improvising their own music. The players had to do fey finger snaps over their heads and also belch (literally).

Percussionist Kraft, dutifully following the score, fired a popgun as the Mothers, on a platform six feet above the orchestra, performed some of their greatest hits. Zappa used the occasion for a parody of Jim Morrison’s stage act, reworking Morrison’s The End with its theme of incest and patricide.

Zubin, despite his remark about how “most rock groups could not do this sort of thing because they cannot read music”, was pretty disgusted with the goings-on and, despite Zappa’s protests, cut out the entire second part of 200 Motels. This was just as well because part two called for a chorus to blow bubbles through straws and the soprano soloist to sing “Munchkins get me hot”.

Zubin may just have forgotten that he was teaming up with a man whose main goal in life was to zap the musical establishment. All that the concert before 11,000 rock fans at the basketball arena proved was that any marriage between rock and classical music was likely to be a mismatch. As the Mothers bassist Jeff Simmons remarked on the orchestra: “Those dudes are really out of it, man. It’s like working with people from another planet.”

No doubt the orchestra players must have felt the same way. There were no complaints from the management of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, though, which was happy with the $33,000 the box office brought in. Zappa wanted to record the concert but the union insisted on the Los Angeles Philharmonic being paid full-scale even if the recording was not released, which, for ninety-six players, was just too much. They tried to sell it to the networks but without success.

Zubin described in strong language the piece Zappa composed: “It was the worst piece of music I have ever heard. But I’d given him my word, so we performed it. During the concert we were playing on two levels: his band would strike up something and keep quiet, and then we would strike up; it was really most boring. But when we were playing he would attract the audience with the most vulgar gyrations on stage. I really got very upset by the end of the concert. And I never spoke to him again.”

Zubin says it was his curiosity that made him do it. It was also consciously done to entice young people. When Zubin left the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1978 to assume the music directorship of the NewYork Philharmonic, Time magazine referred to this unfortunate experiment. “In his sixteen-year tenure there, Mehta made a few memorable mistakes, one an embarrassing rock-classical concert.” When I asked him about the collaboration, he said, “It was not a happy one. I never saw him again.”

In a reference to this performance, the Frank Zappa song Billy the Mountain includes a character who “some folks say he looked like Zubin Mehta”. Zubin’s other pop culture reference is that of the Muppet, Zubin Beckmesser.

The second part of the name (Beckmesser) is a character from Wagner’s opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. The Muppet Beckmesser is a conductor who gets electrocuted when he absent-mindedly inserts his baton into an electrical outlet. According to doctors, he would have died instantly had he not been such a poor conductor!

Messing with the KGB

In October 1970, Zubin led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a concert to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations at NewYork. There is a story behind this performance. Zubin discovered that the hall where he was supposed to conduct was unavailable for practice sessions since President Richard Nixon was slated to give his speech there. At a dinner before the performance, Zubin took the opportunity to bring this fact to Nixon’s notice.

Nixon was most cooperative and asked Henry Kissinger to postpone his speech and ensure that the hall was put at Zubin’s disposal. Kissinger, Zubin recalls, was “more than angry” and told Zubin that he did not appreciate what he had done.

Nixon’s speech was postponed, but Kissinger had his revenge. He changed the venue of Nixon’s address to the heads of state to Washington. As a result, only undersecretaries and other administrative staff of various countries were present at Zubin’s concert. Indira Gandhi wrote to him later saying that she would have loved to attend his concert but was unavoidably detained. Zubin and Kissinger eventually made up and were able to laugh at the incident in later years.

Speaking his mind publicly is a well-known trait of Zubin’s as is his inability to resist a smart one-liner. In 1976, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Zubin were to tour Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union), coinciding with the bicentenary celebrations of the founding of the United States. A Russian official came to Los Angeles to discuss the details with them.

On first being introduced to Vladimir Golovin, then deputy director of Gosconcert, the state concert agency of the Soviet Union, Zubin beamed mischievously and said, “In the name of Israel, I want to thank you for sending us so much talent.” Blood draining from his face, Golovin politely held his tongue. Zubin narrates this in his autobiography where he tells us that Golovin (he does not name him, though) pretended he could not understand and then just stopped talking.

The next day, a furious Golovin called Fleischmann and said that the orchestra could perform in the Soviet Union but not under “this Mehta”. Fleischmann politely told him that it was either the full package (with Zubin leading the orchestra) or nothing at all. The USSR part of the tour was cancelled, and later Zubin came to know that Golovin was a prominent KGB man.

The force was with him

In November 1977, Zubin took part in another musical experiment. He played excerpts from English composer Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets and Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, better known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in “Music from Outer Space – a Star Wars Concert” at the Hollywood Bowl.

He also led the orchestra in music from the films Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For special effects, each instrument’s stand in the orchestra had been hooked up to a microphone controlled by sound engineers, and stabbing rays of laser light began criss-crossing the bowl. As the music varied in intensity, the shape of the laser beams changed.

The 17,500-strong crowd erupted in uncontrolled frenzy and gave Zubin a nine-minute ovation. The success of the concert prompted Decca/London to make a crash recording of the Star Wars and Close Encounters suites that were soon at the top of the charts. Zubin told Time magazine: “This was an adventure. I wouldn’t do a Beethoven symphony this way, but surely other music could be enhanced with electronics.”

Though many thought that such experiments largely resulted from Zubin’s insatiable musical curiosity, it was not generally known that it was the irrepressible Fleischmann who encouraged and promoted some of the more unconventional performances associated with Zubin, the Star Wars concert being one of the best known. Fleischmann came up with the Stars Wars concert when the orchestra had to vacate the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the Academy Awards ceremony.

It started a trend and such concerts began to be held all over America, and then the world. That event kicked off the kind of movie-score concerts that are popular even today.

Excerpted with permission from Zubin Mehta: A Musical Journey, Bakhtiar K Dadabhoy, Penguin Books.