He was physically described pretty well in the article.

As for "weird" and "freak," you should probably load the 1971 context for full understanding.

What is the 1971 context, for this millenial's benefit?

Being different was itself weird back then, while it's almost normal now. Being long haired and stoned and consciousness oriented, among short haired short sleeved pocket protected engineering units was especially weird.

"Freak" would have been the title editor's attempt to put a particular image of hippiness into a reader's head, justified or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_scene

Heh, that article is interesting with how much it references Zappa. I am not his biggest fan, but whenever I hear the word Freak, I think of his song "Hungry Freaks, Daddy".

I'm not the only one who, ever since I opened this article, has been hearing the lines:

The rising tide

Of the left-behinds

Of the Great Society

(too too too too too tee!)