This article: Though it reached No. 130 on the Billboard chart, Freak Out! was neither a major commercial nor critical success when it was first released in the United States. Many listeners were convinced that the album was drug-inspired, and interpreted the album's title as slang for a bad LSD trip. The album made the Mothers of Invention immediate underground darlings with a strong counter-cultural following. In The Real Frank Zappa Book, Zappa quotes a negative review of the album by Pete Johnson of the Los Angeles Times, who wrote:
I guess you might call it surrealistic paintings set to music. Not content to record just two sides of musical gibberish, the MOI devote four full sides to their type of "artistry". If anyone owns this album, perhaps he can tell me what in hell is going on ... The Mothers of Invention, a talented but warped quintet, have fathered an album poetically entitled Freak Out, which could be the greatest stimulus to the aspirin industry since the income tax.
The album developed a major cult following in the United States by the time MGM/Verve had been merged into a division of PolyGram in 1972.  At that time many MGM/Verve releases including Freak Out! were prematurely deleted in an attempt to keep the struggling company financially solvent. Zappa had already moved on to his own companies Bizarre Records and Straight Records which were distributed by Warner Bros. Records. Freak Out! was initially more successful in Europe and quickly influenced many English rock musicians. According to David Fricke, the album was a major influence on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles' Freak Out! Zappa criticized the Beatles, as he felt they were "only in it for the money".Freak Out! was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999, ranked at number 243 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2003, and featured in the 2006 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The album... contains an answer for the question: What publication placed the album that the album that reached 130 on the Billboard chart as 243rd on their 500 greatest albums list?, what is it ?


Rolling Stone