Who Are the Brain Police?

"Who Are the Brain Police?"
Single by The Mothers of Invention
from the album Freak Out!
B-side	"Trouble Every Day"
Released	1966 (1966)
Recorded	March 9, 1966
Genre	Experimental rock
Length	3:22
Label	Verve
Songwriter(s)	Frank Zappa
Producer(s)	Frank Zappa
The Mothers of Invention singles chronology
"How Could I Be Such a Fool?" (1966) "Who Are the Brain Police?" (1966) "Big Leg Emma" (1967)

"Who Are the Brain Police?" is a Frank Zappa song, performed by The Mothers of Invention, released on the Mothers' debut album, Freak Out!. It was released by Verve Records as a single in 1966. Zappa said the song had a religious theme, according to one source.^[1]

Zappa wrote about the song on the Freak Out! liner notes: "At five o’clock in the morning someone kept singing this in my mind and made me write it down. I will admit to being frightened when I finally played it out loud and sang the words."^[2]

In a 1988 interview, Zappa added:

A lot of people police their own brains. They're like citizen soldiers, so to speak. I've seen people who will willingly arrest, try and punish their own brains. Now that's really sad. That's vigilante brain policism. It's not even official, it's like self-imposed. ... It's hard to pin it down to one central agency when you realize that so many people are willing to do it to themselves. I mean, the people who want to become amateur brain police, their numbers grow every day – people who say to themselves, 'I couldn't possibly consider that', and then spank themselves for even getting that far. So, you don't even need to blame it on a central brain police agency. You've got plenty of people who willingly subject themselves to this self-mutilation.^[3]