Inca Roads (song)

the ancient road system

"Inca Roads" is the opening track of the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention 1975 album, One Size Fits All. The song features unusual time signatures, lyrics and vocals. The marimba playing of Zappa's percussionist Ruth Underwood is featured prominently. The song was played in concert from 1970 to 1976, 1979 and 1988.

"Inca Roads" for the most part explores the stereotypes of aliens encountering the Incan civilization. These themes, like the album cover of One Size Fits All seem to parody the spirituality of many progressive rock albums around the same era. The lyrics "Did a vehicle come from somewhere out there, just to land in the Andes? Was it round and did it have a motor or was it something different?" imply that a UFO is landing in the Andes Mountains. As the song progresses, the lyrics become sillier and seem to mock the beginning of the song. An example of this is " or did someone build a place or leave a space for Chester's thing to land (Chester's thing on Ruth). Did a booger bear come from somewhere out there " The non serious nature of these lyrics and even the music itself seem to be mocking other progressive rock bands and their possibly forced divine depth. In an interview vocalist and keyboard player George Duke said that Zappa pushed for him to sing on "Inca Roads" and that beforehand Duke had no intentions of singing professionally and was only there to play keyboards. He went on to explain how Zappa had bought him a synthesizer (an instrument which Duke had disliked) and told him he could play around with it if he wanted. This led to Duke playing the synth part on "Inca Roads" as well.

Many early US vinyl LP copies of One Size Fits All contain a skip at 4:40 into Inca Roads just after the end of the guitar solo from Helsinki. These are marked "KENDUN A" in the runout grooves. The defect should have been caught during the test pressing stage. Defective copies were later recalled. The complex nature of the music makes it difficult to recognize the error without comparing to the correct version.

In 2018, Prog magazine named "Inca Roads" at hundredth position in their list "The 100 Greatest Prog Songs Of All Time."