Creativity Quote by Jimmy Carl Black

There is a whole worldview packed into that shruggy benchmark: in the young Jimmy Carl Black's mind, "genius" wasn't a vibe or a brand, it was a single, remote category reserved for a mythic scientist. By invoking Einstein, he frames genius as something institutional and distant, certified by textbooks and black-and-white photos, not something you spot in a sweaty rehearsal room. That choice quietly tells you how little cultural permission working musicians once had to call their own brilliance by its name.

The line is also an affectionate self-own. "In those days" marks the speaker's earlier naivete, but it doubles as a comment on the era's hierarchy of intellect: rock musicians could be talented, wild, innovative, but "genius" belonged to the lab. So when he looks back at Frank - almost certainly Zappa, whose reputation now practically comes pre-labeled as Genius - Black is measuring the gap between lived experience and later canonization. He didn't know he was inside a legend while it was happening, because the culture hadn't taught him to recognize that kind of mind in that kind of body.

The intent lands as both humility and reclamation. Black isn't only praising Frank; he's revealing how fame rewrites perception. Genius often becomes obvious only after the machinery of critics, biographies, and posthumous narratives has done its work. The wit is in the deflation: you expect grand testimony about brilliance, you get a guy admitting he thought genius had one address, and it wasn't on the tour bus.