Creativity Quote by Jimmy Carl Black

It lands like a shrug with teeth: a working musician pushing back against someone else narrating his decline. Jimmy Carl Black isn’t delivering poetry here; he’s doing damage control in plainspoken, slightly tangled syntax that feels more honest because it isn’t polished. The awkward phrasing ("I might say", "is not so") signals a guy choosing restraint over scorched earth, even as he corrects the record.

The intent is reputational triage. By opening with "The fans have been very nice to me", he frames his credibility around the only tribunal that matters in rock: the audience. That’s a savvy move because it sidesteps industry gatekeepers and private band politics. Then comes the quiet jab: "all those fans that Frank said went away". The name "Frank" isn’t just a reference; it’s a power dynamic. In the Zappa universe, Frank is the auteur, the official historian, the one whose version of events tends to harden into canon. Black’s line punctures that authority without directly calling him a liar. It’s not "Frank’s wrong", it’s "my lived reality disagrees."

The subtext is about ownership: who gets to define a career, a legacy, a falloff. Rock history loves the myth of the discarded sideman, the guy left behind when genius moves on. Black resists becoming that cautionary footnote. He asserts continuity - fans didn’t vanish, the connection held - and in doing so he re-centers the story on the long, unglamorous truth of musicianship: you survive on relationships, not mythology.