Captain Beefheart
Encyclopedia
Don Van Vliet was an American musician
, singer-songwriter
and artist
best known by the stage name
Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12 studio albums. Noted for his powerful singing voice with its wide range
, Van Vliet also played the harmonica
, saxophone
and numerous other wind instrument
s. His music blended rock
, blues
and psychedelia
with free jazz
, avant-garde
and contemporary experimental composition
. Beefheart was also known for exercising an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians, and for often constructing myths about his life.
During his teen years in Lancaster, California
, Van Vliet developed an eclectic musical taste and formed "a mutually useful but volatile" friendship with Frank Zappa
, with whom he sporadically competed and collaborated. He began performing with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the original Magic Band line-up, initiated by Alexis Snouffer
, in 1965. The group drew attention with their cover of Bo Diddley
's "Diddy Wah Diddy
", which became a regional hit. It was followed by their acclaimed debut album Safe as Milk, released in 1967 on Buddah Records
. After being dropped by two consecutive record labels, they signed to Zappa's Straight Records
. As producer, Zappa granted Beefheart unrestrained artistic freedom in making 1969's Trout Mask Replica
, which ranked fifty-eighth in Rolling Stone
magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
. In 1974, frustrated by lack of commercial success, he released two albums of more conventional rock music that were critically panned; this move, combined with not having been paid for a European tour, and years of enduring Beefheart's abusive behavior, led the entire band to quit. Beefheart eventually formed a new Magic Band with a group of younger musicians and regained contemporary approval through three final albums: Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
(1978), Doc at the Radar Station
(1980) and Ice Cream for Crow
(1982).
Van Vliet has been described as "one of modern music's true innovators" with "a singular body of work virtually unrivalled in its daring and fluid creativity". Although he achieved little commercial or mainstream critical success, he sustained a cult following
as a "highly significant" and "incalculable" influence on an array of New Wave
, punk
, post-punk
, experimental
and alternative rock
musicians. Known for his enigmatic personality and relationship with the public, Van Vliet made few public appearances after his retirement from music (and from his Beefheart persona) in 1982. He pursued a career in art, an interest that originated in his childhood talent for sculpture, and a venture which proved to be his most financially secure. His expressionist
paintings and drawings command high prices, and have been exhibited in art galleries and museums across the world. Van Vliet died in 2010 after many years of multiple sclerosis
.
, on January 15, 1941, to Glen Alonzo Vliet, a service station
owner of Dutch ancestry from Kansas
, and Willie Sue Vliet (née Warfield), who was from Arkansas
. He claimed to have as an ancestor Peter Van Vliet, a Dutch painter who knew Rembrandt. Van Vliet also claimed that he was related to adventurer and author Richard Halliburton
and the cowboy actor Slim Pickens
, and said that he remembered being born.
Van Vliet began painting and sculpting at age three. His subjects reflected his "obsession" with animals, particularly dinosaurs, fish, African mammals and lemurs. At the age of nine he won a children's sculpting competition organised for the Los Angeles Zoo
in Griffith Park
by a local tutor, Agostinho Rodrigues. Local newspaper cuttings of his junior sculpting achievements can be found reproduced in the Splinters book, included in the Riding Some Kind Of Unusual Skull Sleigh boxed CD work, released in 2004. The sprawling park, with its zoo and observatory
had a strong influence on young Vliet, as it was a short distance from his home on Waverly Drive. The track "Observatory Crest" on Bluejeans & Moonbeams reflects this continued interest. A portrait photo of the school-age Vliet can be seen on the front of the lyric sheet within the first issue of the US release of Trout Mask Replica.
For some time during the 1950s Van Vliet worked as an apprentice with Rodrigues, who considered him a child prodigy
. Vliet made claim to have been a lecturer at the Barnsdall
Art Institute in Los Angeles at the age of eleven, although it is likely he simply gave a form of artistic dissertation. Accounts of Van Vliet's precocious achievement in art often include his statement that he sculpted on a weekly television show. He claimed that his parents discouraged his interest in sculpture, based upon their perception of artists as 'queer'. They declined several scholarship
offers, including one from the local Knudsen Creamery to travel to Europe with six years' paid tuition to study marble sculpture
. Van Vliet later admitted personal hesitation to take the scholarship based upon the bitterness of his parents' disencouragement.
Van Vliet's artistic enthusiasm became so fervent, he claimed that his parents were forced to feed him through the door in the room where he sculpted. When he was thirteen the family moved from the Los Angeles area to the more remote farming town of Lancaster
, near the Mojave Desert
, where there was a growing aerospace
industry and testing plant that would become Edwards Airforce Base. It was an environment that would greatly influence him creatively from then on. Van Vliet remained interested in art; his paintings, often reminiscent of Franz Kline
's, were later featured on several of his own albums. Meanwhile he developed his taste and interest in music, listening "intensively" to the Delta blues
of Son House
and Robert Johnson, jazz artists such as Ornette Coleman
, John Coltrane
, Thelonious Monk
and Cecil Taylor
, and the Chicago blues
of Howlin' Wolf
and Muddy Waters
. During his early teenage years Vliet would sometimes socialize with members of local bands such as "The Omens" and "The Blackouts", although his interests were still focused upon an art career. The Omens' guitarists Alexis Snouffer and Jerry Handley would later become founders of "The Magic Band" and The Blackouts' drummer, Frank Zappa, would later capture Vliet's vocal capabilities on record for the first time. This first known recording, when he was simply 'Don Vliet', is "Lost In A Whirlpool" - one of Zappa's early 'field recordings' made in his college classroom with brother Bobby on guitar. It is featured on Zappa's posthumously released The Lost Episodes
(1996).
Van Vliet claimed that he never attended public school, alleging "half a day of kindergarten" to be the extent of his formal education and saying that "if you want to be a different fish, you've got to jump out of the school." His associates said that he only dropped out during his senior year of high school to help support the family after his father's heart attack. His graduation picture appears in the school's yearbook. While attending Antelope Valley High School
in Lancaster, Van Vliet became close friends with fellow teenager Frank Zappa
, the pair bonding through their interest in Chicago blues
and R&B
. Van Vliet is portrayed in both The Real Frank Zappa Book and Barry Miles
' biography Zappa as fairly spoiled at this stage of his life, the center of attention as an only child. He spent most of his time locked in his room listening to records, often with Zappa, into the early hours in the morning, eating leftover food from his father's Helms bread truck
and demanding that his mother bring him a Pepsi
. His parents tolerated such behavior under the belief that their child was truly gifted. Vliet's 'Pepsi-moods' were ever a source of amusement to band members, leading Zappa to later write the wry tune "Why Doesn't Someone Give Him A Pepsi?" that featured on the Bongo Fury
tour.
After Zappa began regular occupation at Paul Buff's PAL Studio
in Cucamonga
he and Van Vliet began collaborating, tentatively as "The Soots". By the time Zappa had turned the venue into Studio Z the duo had completed some songs. These were "Cheryl's Canon", "Metal Man Has Won His Wings" and a Howlin' Wolf
styled rendition of Little Richard
's "Slippin' and Slidin'
". Further songs, on Zappa's Mystery Disc
(1996), "I Was a Teen-Age Malt Shop" and "The Birth of Captain Beefheart" also provide an insight to Zappa's 'teenage movie' script titled Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People, the first appearances of the Beefheart name. It has been suggested this name came from a term used by Vliet's Uncle Alan who had a habit of exposing himself to Don's girlfriend, Laurie Stone. He would urinate with the bathroom door open and, if she was walking by, would mumble about his penis, saying "Ahh, what a beauty! It looks just like a big, fine beef heart." In a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone
, Van Vliet requests "don't ask me why or how" he and Zappa came up with the name. He would later claim in an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman
that the name referred to "a beef in my heart against this society." In the "Grunt People" draft script Beefheart and his mother play themselves, with his father played by Howlin' Wolf. Grace Slick
is penned in as a 'celestial seductress' and there are also roles for future Magic Band members Bill Harkleroad and Mark Boston.
Van Vliet enrolled at Antelope Valley Junior College as an art major, but decided to leave the following year. He once worked as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner
salesman, during which time he sold a vacuum cleaner to the writer Aldous Huxley
at his home in Llano
, pointing to it and declaring, "Well I assure you sir, this thing sucks." After managing a Kinney's shoe store, Van Vliet relocated to Rancho Cucamonga
, California
, to reconnect with Zappa, who inspired his entry into musical performance. Van Vliet was quite shy but was eventually able to imitate the deep voice of Howlin' Wolf
with his wide vocal range. He eventually grew comfortable with public performance and, after learning to play the harmonica
, began playing at dances and small clubs in Southern California.
, a Lancaster rhythm and blues
guitarist, invited Vliet to sing with a group that he was assembling. Vliet joined the first Magic Band and changed his name to Don Van
Vliet, while Snouffer became Alex St. Clair (sometimes spelled Claire). Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band signed to A&M
and released two single
s in 1966. The first was a version of Bo Diddley
's "Diddy Wah Diddy
" that became a regional hit in Los Angeles. The followup, "Moonchild" (written by David Gates
) was less well received. The band played music venues that catered to underground artists, such as the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.
album. A&M's Jerry Moss
reportedly described this new direction as "too negative" and dropped the band from the label, although still under contract. Much of the demo recording was accomplished at Art Laboe
's Original Sound Studio, then with Gary Marker
on the controls at Sunset Sound
on 8-track. By the end of 1966 they were signed to Buddah Records
and much of the demo work was transferred to 4-track, at the behest of Krasnow
and Perry
, in the RCA Studio in Hollywood, where the recording was finalized. Tracks that were originally laid down in the demo by Doug Moon are therefore taken up by Cooder's work in the release, as Moon had departed over 'musical differences' at this juncture.
Drummer John French
had now joined the group and it would later (notably on Trout Mask Replica) be his patience that was required to transcribe Van Vliet's creative ideas (often expressed by whistling or banging on the piano) into musical form for the other group members. On French's departure this role was taken over by Bill Harkleroad
for Lick My Decals Off, Baby.
Many of the lyrics on the Safe as Milk album were written by Van Vliet in collaboration with the writer Herb Bermann, who befriended Van Vliet after seeing him perform at a bar-gig in Lancaster in 1966. The song "Electricity" was a poem written by Bermann, who gave Van Vliet permission to adapt it to music.
Much of the Safe as Milk material was honed and arranged by the arrival of 20-year–old guitar prodigy Ry Cooder
, who had been brought into the group after much pressure from Vliet. The band began recording in spring 1967, with Richard Perry
cutting his teeth in his first job as producer. The album was released in September 1967. Richie Unterberger of Allmusic called the album "blues–rock gone slightly askew, with jagged, fractured rhythms, soulful, twisting vocals from Van Vliet, and more doo wop, soul, straight blues, and folk–rock influences than he would employ on his more avant garde outings".
. Both John Lennon
and Paul McCartney
were known as great admirers of Beefheart. Lennon displayed two of the album's promotional 'baby bumper stickers' in the sunroom at his home. Later, the Beatles planned to sign Beefheart to their experimental Zapple label (plans that were scrapped after Allen Klein
took over the group's management). Van Vliet was often critical of the Beatles, however. He considered the lyric "I'd love to turn you on", from their song "A Day in the Life
", to be ridiculous and conceited. Tiring of their "lullabies", he lampooned them with the Strictly Personal song "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones", that featured the sardonic refrain of "strawberry fields, strawberry fields forever
". It should also be noted that 'strawberry fields' could also be an oblique reference to a form of LSD circulating at the time. The album's five 'acid stamps' and first track "Ah Feel like Ahcid" may underline this, whilst 'Smokin' Stones' is probably a 'pro comment' on the contrasting rhythm and blues style of the Rolling Stones. Vliet spoke badly of Lennon after getting no response when he sent a telegram of support to him and wife Yoko Ono
during their 1969 "Bed–In
for peace". Van Vliet did meet McCartney in Cannes
during the Magic Band's 1968 tour of Europe, though McCartney later claimed to have no recollection of this meeting.
at him, only to be told "Get that fucking thing out of here, get out of here and get back in your room", which he obeyed. (Other band members have disputed this account, although Moon is likely to have 'passed through' the studio with a weapon.) Moon was present during the early demo sessions at Original Sound studio
, above the Kama Sutra
/Buddah offices. The works Moon laid down did not see the light of day, as he was replaced by Cooder when they continued on material at Sunset Sound
with Marker. Marker then fell by the wayside when recording was moved by Krasnow and Perry to RCA Studio. This would have a profound effect on the quality of the Safe as Milk work, as the former studio was 8-track and the subsequent studio a 4-track.
To support the album's release the group had been scheduled to play at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival
. During this period Vliet suffered severe anxiety attacks
that made him convinced that he was having a heart attack, probably exacerbated by his heavy LSD use and the fact that his father died of heart failure a few years earlier. At a vital 'warm-up' performance at the Mt. Tamalpais Festival (June 10/11) shortly before the scheduled Monterey Festival (June 16/18), the band began to play "Electricity" and Van Vliet froze, straightened his tie, then walked off the ten–foot stage and landed on manager Bob Krasnow
. He later claimed he had seen a girl in the audience turn into a fish, with bubbles coming from her mouth. This aborted any opportunity of breakthrough success at Monterey, as Cooder immediately decided he could no longer work with Van Vliet, effectively quitting both the event and the band on the spot. With such complex guitar parts there was no means for the band to find a competent replacement in time for Monterey. Cooder's spot was eventually filled for a short spell by Gerry McGee, who had played with The Monkees
. According to French the band did two gigs with McGee, one of which was at The Peppermint Twist near Long Beach. The other was at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
, 7 August 1967, as opening act to The Yardbirds
. McGee was in the group long enough to have an outfit made by a Santa Monica boutique that also created the gear worn by the band on the Strictly Personal cover stamps.
filled the guitar spot vacated, in turn, by Cooder and McGee. In October and November 1967 the Snouffer/Cotton/Handley/French line–up recorded material for what was planned to be the second album. Originally intended to be a double album called It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper for the label, it was released later in pieces in 1971 and 1995. After rejection from Buddah, Bob Krasnow encouraged the band to re–record four of the shorter numbers, to add two more, and make shorter versions of "Mirror Man" and "Kandy Korn". The music was already weakly recorded with a trebly thin sound; Krasnow then implemented a strange mix full of "phasing" that by most accounts (including Beefheart's) diminished the music's strength; this was released in October 1968 as Strictly Personal
on Krasnow's Blue Thumb
label. Stewart Mason in his Allmusic review of the album described it as a "terrific album" and a "fascinating, underrated release", "every bit the equal of Safe as Milk and Trout Mask Replica". Langdon Winner
of Rolling Stone
called Strictly Personal "an excellent album. The guitars of the Magic Band mercilessly bend and stretch notes in a way that suggests that the world of music has wobbled clear off its axis," with the lyrics demonstrating "Beefheart's ability to juxtapose delightful humor with frightening insights". Van Vliet furthered his own mythology through interviews.
issues; the material was actually recorded in November and December 1967. Essentially a "jam
" album, described as pushing "the boundaries of conventional blues–rock, with a Beefheart vocal tossed in here and there. Some may miss Beefheart's surreal poetry, gruff vocals, and/or free jazz influence, while others may find it fascinating to hear the Magic Band simply letting go and cutting loose". The album's 'miss-credit errors' also state band members as "Alex St. Clare Snouffer" (Alex St. Clare/Alexis Snouffer), "Antennae Jimmy Simmons" (Semens/Jeff Cotton) and "Jerry Handsley" (Handley). First vinyl was issued in both a die-cut gatefold (revealing a 'cracked' mirror) and a single sleeve with same image. The UK Buddah issue was part of the Polydor-manufactured 'Select' series.
During his first trip to England in January 1968, Captain Beefheart was briefly represented in the UK by mod icon Peter Meaden
, an early manager of The Who
. The Captain and his band members were initially denied entry to the United Kingdom, because Meaden had illegally booked them for gigs without applying for appropriate work permit
s. After returning to Germany for a few days, the group was permitted to re-enter the UK, when they recorded material for John Peel
's radio show and appeared at the Middle Earth venue, introduced by Peel on Saturday 20 January. By this time, they had terminated their association with Meaden. On January 27, 1968, Beefheart achieved one of his most memorable live performances, when the band performed in the MIDEM Music Festival
on the beach at Cannes
, France.
Alex St. Claire left the band in June 1968 after their return from a second European tour and was replaced by teenager Bill Harkleroad; bassist Jerry Handley left a few weeks later.
. Beefheart had also been conceptualizing new band names, including "25th Century Quaker" and "Blue Thumb", whilst making suggestions to other musicians that they might get involved. The thought-process of "25th Century Quaker" was that it would be a 'blues band' alias for the more avant-garde work of the Magic Band. Photographer Guy Webster actually photographed the band in Quaker-style outfits, and the picture appears in The Mirror Man Sessions CD insert. It would later transpire that much of this situation was transient and that Buddah's Bob Krasnow was to set up his own label. The label that was unsurprisingly named Blue Thumb
launched with its first release Strictly Personal, a truncated version of the original Beefheart vision of a double album. Thus "25th Century Quaker" became a track and a potential band-name became a label
.
In overview, the works for the double album in this period were intended to be packaged in a plain brown wrapper, with a 'strictly personal' over-stamp and addressed in a manner that could have connotations of drug content, pornographic or illicit material; As per the small ads of the time; "It comes to you in a plain brown wrapper". Given that Krasnow had effectively poached the band from Buddah there were limitations on what material could be released. Strictly Personal was the result, contained in its enigmatically-addressed parcel sleeve. The raft of material left behind eventually emerged, firstly on CD as I May Be Hungry, But I Sure Ain't Weird and later on vinyl, implemented by John French, as It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper (which has two tracks that are missing from the former release). Both Blue Thumb and the stamps on the cover of Strictly Personal have LSD connotations, as does the track "Ah Feel Like Ahcid".
, Trout Mask Replica
was released as a 28 track double album in June 1969 on Frank Zappa
's newly formed Straight Records
label. First issues, in the USA, were auto-coupled and housed in the black 'Straight' liners along with a 6-page lyric sheet illustrated by The Mascara Snake
. A school-age portrait of Van Vliet appears on the front of this sheet, whilst the cover of the gatefold enigmatically shows Beefheart in a 'Quaker'
hat, obscuring his face with the head of a fish. The fish is a carp - arguably a 'replica' for a trout, photographed by Cal Schenkel
. The inner spread 'infra-red' photography is by Ed Caraeff
, whose Beefheart vacuum cleaner images from this session also appear on Zappa's Hot Rats
release (a month earlier) to accompany "Willie The Pimp" lyrics sung by Vliet. Alex St. Clair had now left the band and, after Junior Madeo from The Blackouts was considered, the role was filled by Bill Harkleroad. Bassist Jerry Handley had also departed, with Gary Marker stepping in. Thus the long rehearsals for the album began in the house on Ensenada Drive in Woodland Hills, L.A., that would become the infamous 'Magic Band House'.
The Magic Band began recordings for Trout Mask Replica with bassist Gary 'Magic' Marker
at T.T.G.
(on "Moonlight On Vermont" and "Veteran's Day Poppy"), but later enlisted bassist Mark Boston after his departure. The remainder of the album was recorded at Whitney Studios, with some field recording
s made at the house. Boston was acquainted with French and Harkleroad via past bands. Van Vliet had also begun assigning nicknames to his band members, so Harkleroad became "Zoot Horn Rollo", and Boston became "Rockette Morton
", while John French assumed the name "Drumbo
", and Jeff Cotton became "Antennae Jimmy Semens". Van Vliet's cousin Victor Hayden, "The Mascara Snake
", performed as a bass clarinetist later in the proceedings. Vliet's girlfriend Laurie Stone, who can be heard laughing at the beginning of "Fallin' Ditch", would also became an audio typist
at the Magic Band house.
Van Vliet wanted the whole band to "live" the Trout Mask Replica album. The group rehearsed Van Vliet's difficult compositions for eight months, living communally
in their small rented house in the Woodland Hills
suburb of Los Angeles. With only two bedrooms the band members would find sleep in various corners of one, whilst Vliet occupied the other and rehearsals were accomplished in the main living area. Van Vliet implemented his vision by completely dominating his musicians, artistically and emotionally. At various times one or another of the group members was "put in the barrel," with Van Vliet berating him continually, sometimes for days, until the musician collapsed in tears or in total submission. Drummer John French
described the situation as "cultlike" and a visiting friend said "the environment in that house was positively Manson
esque." Their material circumstances were dire. With no income other than welfare and contributions from relatives, the group barely survived and were even arrested for shoplifting food (Zappa bailed them out). French has recalled living on no more than a small cup of beans a day for a month. A visitor described their appearance as "cadaverous" and said that "they all looked in poor health." Band members were restricted from leaving the house and practiced for 14 or more hours a day.
Physical assaults were encouraged at times, along with verbal degradation. Beefheart spoke of studying texts on brainwashing at a public library at about this time, and appeared to be applying brainwashing techniques to his bandmembers: sleep deprivation, food deprivation, constant negative reinforcement, and rewarding bandmembers when they attacked each other or competed with each other. At one point Cotton ran from the house and escaped for a few weeks, during which time Alex Snouffer filled in for him and helped to work up "Ant Man Bee". French, who had thrown a metal cymbal at Cotton, ran after him yelling that he too wanted to come. Cotton later returned to the house with French's mother, who took him away for a few weeks, but he later felt compelled to return, as did Cotton. Mark Boston at one point hid clothes in a field across the street, planning his own getaway.
John French's 2010 book Through the Eyes of Magic describes some of the "talks" which were initiated by his actions such as being heard playing a Frank Zappa drum part ("The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)") in his drumming shed, and not having finished drum parts as quickly as Beefheart wanted. French writes of being punched by band members, thrown into walls, kicked, punched in the face by Beefheart hard enough to draw blood, being attacked with a sharp broomstick, and eventually of Beefheart threatening to throw him out of an upper floor window. He admits complicity in similarly attacking his bandmates during "talks" aimed at them. In the end, after the album
's recording, French was ejected from the band by Beefheart throwing him down a set of stairs with violence, telling him to "Take a walk, man" after not responding in a desired manner to a request to "play a strawberry" on the drums. Beefheart replaced French with drummer Jeff Bruschel, an acquaintance of Hayden. Referred to as 'Fake Drumbo' (playing on French's drumset) this final act resulted in French's name not appearing on the album credits, either as a player or arranger. Bruschel toured with the band to Europe but was replaced by the next recording.
According to Van Vliet, the 28 songs on the album were written in a single 8½ hour session at the piano, an instrument which he had no skill in playing, an approach Mike Barnes compared to John Cage
's "maverick irreverence toward classical tradition", though band members have stated that the songs were written over the course of about a year, beginning around December 1967. (The band did watch Federico Fellini
's 1963 film 8½
during the creation of the album). It took the band about eight months to mold the songs into shape, with French bearing primary responsibility for transposing and shaping Vliet's piano fragments into guitar and bass lines, which were mostly notated on paper. Harkleroad in 1998 said in retrospect: "We're dealing with a strange person, coming from a place of being a sculptor/painter, using music as his idiom
. He was getting more into that part of who he was instead of this blues singer." The band had rehearsed the songs so thoroughly that the instrumental tracks for 21 of the songs were recorded in a single four and a half hour recording session. Van Vliet spent the next few days overdubbing the vocals. The album's title came from its cover artwork, which was photographed and designed by Cal Schenkel
; Van Vliet wearing the raw head of a carp, bought from a local fish market and fashioned into a mask by Schenkel.
Trout Mask Replica incorporated a wide variety of musical styles, including blues, avant garde/experimental, and rock. The relentless practice prior to recording blended the music into an iconoclast
ic whole of contrapuntal tempo
s, featuring slide guitar
, polyrhythmic drumming (with French's drums and cymbals covered in cardboard), honking saxophone
and bass clarinet
. Van Vliet's vocals range from his signature Howlin' Wolf
inspired growl to frenzied falsetto
to laconic, casual ramblings.
The instrumental backing was effectively recorded live in the studio, while Van Vliet overdubbed most of the vocals in only partial synch with the music by hearing the slight sound leakage through the studio window. Zappa said of Van Vliet's approach, "[it was] impossible to tell him why things should be such and such a way. It seemed to me that if he was going to create a unique object, that the best thing for me to do was to keep my mouth shut as much as possible and just let him do whatever he wanted to do whether I thought it was wrong or not."
Van Vliet used the ensuing publicity, particularly with a 1970 Rolling Stone interview with Langdon Winner, to promulgate a number of myths which were subsequently quoted as fact. Winner's article stated, for instance, that neither Van Vliet nor the members of the Magic Band ever took drugs, but Harkleroad later contradicted this. Van Vliet claimed to have taught both Harkleroad and Boston to play their instruments from scratch; in fact the pair were already accomplished young musicians before joining the band. Last, Van Vliet claimed to have gone a year and half without sleeping. When asked how this was possible, he claimed to have only eaten fruit.
Critic Steve Huey of Allmusic writes that the album's influence "was felt more in spirit than in direct copycatting, as a catalyst rather than a literal musical starting point. However, its inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless experiments in rock surrealism to follow, especially during the punk and New Wave era." In 2003, the album was ranked fifty-eighth by Rolling Stone in their list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
: "On first listen, Trout Mask Replica sounds like raw Delta blues
", with Beefheart "singing and ranting and reciting poetry over fractured guitar licks. But the seeming sonic chaos is an illusion—to construct the songs, the Magic Band rehearsed twelve hours a day for months on end in a house with the windows blacked out. (Producer Frank Zappa was then able to record most of the album in less than five hours.) Tracks such as "Ella Guru" and "My Human Gets Me Blues" are the direct predecessors of modern musical primitives such as Tom Waits
and PJ Harvey
". Guitarist Fred Frith
noted that during this process "forces that usually emerge in improvisation are harnessed and made constant, repeatable."
Critic Robert Christgau
gave the album a B+, saying that "I find it impossible to give this record an A because it is just too weird. But I'd like to. Very great played at high volume when you're feeling shitty, because you'll never feel as shitty as this record". BBC
disc jockey
John Peel
said of the album: "If there has been anything in the history of popular music which could be described as a work of art in a way that people who are involved in other areas of art would understand, then Trout Mask Replica is probably that work." It was inducted into the United States National Recording Registry
in 2011.
(1970) continued in a similarly experimental vein. An album with "a very coherent structure" in the Magic Band's "most experimental and visionary stage", it was Van Vliet's most commercially successful in the United Kingdom, spending twenty weeks on the UK Albums Chart
and peaking at number 20. An early promotional music video
was made of its title song, and a bizarre television commercial was also filmed that included excerpts from "Woe-Is-uh-Me-Bop", silent footage of masked Magic Band members using kitchen utensils as musical instruments, and Beefheart kicking over a bowl of what appears to be porridge onto a dividing stripe in the middle of a road. The video was rarely played but was accepted into the Museum of Modern Art
, where it has been used in several programs related to music.
On this LP Art Tripp III
, formerly of the Mothers of Invention, played drums and marimba. Lick My Decals Off, Baby was the first record on which the band was credited as "The Magic Band", rather than "His Magic Band"; journalist Irwin Chusid
interprets this change as "a grudging concession of its members' at least semiautonomous humanity." Robert Christgau gave the album an A-, commenting that "Beefheart's famous five-octave range and covert totalitarian structures have taken on a playful undertone, repulsive and engrossing and slapstick
funny". Due to licensing disputes, Lick My Decals Off, Baby was unavailable on CD for many years, though it remained in print on vinyl. It was ranked second in Uncut
magazine's May 2010 list of "The 50 Greatest Lost Albums". In 2011, the album became available for download on the iTunes Store
.
(simply credited to "Captain Beefheart") and Clear Spot
(credited to "Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band"), were both released in 1972. The atmosphere of The Spotlight Kid is "definitely relaxed and fun, maybe one step up from a jam." And though "things do sound maybe just a little too blasé," "Beefheart at his worst still has something more than most groups at their best." The music is simpler and slower than on the group's two previous releases, the uncompromisingly original Trout Mask Replica and the frenetic Lick My Decals Off, Baby. This was in part an attempt by Van Vliet to become a more appealing commercial proposition as the band had made virtually no money during the previous two years—at the time of recording, the band members were subsisting on welfare food handouts and remittances from their parents. Van Vliet offered that he "got tired of scaring people with what I was doing... I realized that I had to give them something to hang their hat on, so I started working more of a beat into the music." Magic Band members have also said that the slower performances were due in part to Van Vliet's inability to fit his lyrics with the instrumental backing of the faster material on the earlier albums, a problem that was exacerbated in that he almost never rehearsed with the group. In the period leading up to the recording the band lived communally, first at a compound near Ben Lomond, California
and then in northern California near Trinidad
. The situation saw a return to the physical violence and psychological manipulation
that had taken place during the band's previous communal residence while composing and rehearsing Trout Mask Replica. According to John French, the worst of this was directed toward Harkleroad. In his autobiography Harkleroad recalls being thrown into a dumpster, an act he interpreted as having metaphorical intent.
Clear Spots production credit of Ted Templeman
made Allmusic consider "why in the world [it] wasn't more of a commercial success than it was," and that while fans "of the fully all-out side of Beefheart might find the end result not fully up to snuff as a result, but those less concerned with pushing back all borders all the time will enjoy his unexpected blend of everything tempered with a new accessibility." The song "Big Eyed Beans from Venus" is noted as "a fantastically strange piece of aggression." A Clear Spot song, "Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles", appeared on the soundtrack of the Coen brothers
' cult comedy film The Big Lebowski
(1998).
, which markedly continued the trend towards a more commercial sound heard on some of the Clear Spot tracks, the Magic Band's original members departed. Disgruntled and past members worked together for a period, gigging at Blue Lake
and putting together their own ideas and demos, with John French earmarked as the vocalist. These concepts eventually coalesced around the core of Art Tripp III
, Harkleroad and Boston, with the formation of Mallard
, helped by finance and UK recording facilities from Jethro Tull's
Ian Anderson
. Some of French's compositions were used in the band's work, but the group's singer was Sam Galpin and the role of keyboardist was eventually taken by John Thomas, who had shared a house with French in Eureka
at the time. At this time Vliet attempted to recruit both French and Harkleroad as producers for his next album, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Andy Di Martino produced both of these Virgin label
albums.
Vliet was forced to quickly form a new Magic Band to complete support-tour dates, with musicians who had no experience with his music and in fact had never heard it. Having no knowledge of the previous Magic Band style, they simply improvised what they thought would go with each song, playing much slicker versions that have been described as "bar band" versions of Beefheart songs. A review described this incarnation of the Magic Band as the "Tragic Band", a term that has stuck over the years. Mike Barnes said that the description of the new band "grooving along pleasantly", was "an appropriately banal description of the music of a man who only a few years ago composed with the expressed intent of shaking listeners out of their torpor". The one album they recorded, Bluejeans & Moonbeams
(1974) has, like its predecessor, a completely different, almost soft rock
sound from any other Beefheart record. Neither was well received; drummer Art Tripp recalled that when he and the original Magic Band listened to Unconditionally Guaranteed, they "were horrified. As we listened, it was as though each song was worse than the one which preceded it." Beefheart later disowned both albums, calling them "horrible and vulgar", asking that they not be considered part of his musical output and urging fans who bought them to "take copies back for a refund".
. Van Vliet now found himself stuck in a web of contractual hang-ups. At this point Zappa had begun to extend a helping hand, with Vliet already having performed incognito as Rollin' Red on Zappa's One Size Fits All
(1975) and then joining with him on the Bongo Fury
album and its later support tour. Two Vliet-penned numbers on the Bongo Fury album are Sam With The Showing Scalp Flat Top and Man With The Woman Head. The form, texture and imagery of this album's first track Debra Kadabra, sung by Vliet, has 'angular similarities' to the work he would later produce in his next three albums. On the Bongo Fury album Vliet also sings "Poofter's Froth, Wyoming Plans Ahead", harmonizes on "200 Years Old" and "Muffin Man" and plays harmonica and soprano saxophone.
In early 1976 Zappa put on his producer hat and, once again, opened up his studio facilities and finance to Vliet. This was for the production of an album provisionally titled Bat Chain Puller. The band were John French (drums), John Thomas (keyboards) and Jeff Moris Tepper and Denny Walley (guitars). Much of the work on this album had been finalized and some demos had been circulated when fate once again struck the Beefheart camp. In May 1976 the long association between Zappa and his manager/business partner Herb Cohen
ceased. This resulted in Zappa's finances and ongoing works becoming part of protracted legal negotiations. The Bat Chain Puller project went 'on ice' and has remained in the Zappa vaults since. Consequently, the thrust and works of this album had to be reworked and recorded again. Some bootlegs on both vinyl and CD, purportedly containing original tracks, have circulated. After this recording John Thomas joined ex-Magic Band members in Mallard
.
Prior to his next album Beefheart appeared in 1977 on the Tubes
' album Now
, playing saxophone on the song "Cathy's Clone", and the album also featured a cover of the Clear Spot song "My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains". In 1978 he appeared on Jack Nitzsche
's soundtrack to the film Blue Collar
.
label. Shiny Beast contained re-workings of the shelved Bat Chain Puller album and still retained this works' original guitarist, Jeff Moris Tepper. However, he and Vliet were now joined by a whole new line-up of Richard Redus (guitar, bass and accordion), Eric Drew Feldman
(bass, piano and synthesizer), Bruce Lambourne Fowler
(trombone and air bass), Art Tripp
(percussion and marimba) and Robert Arthur Williams
(drums). Thus, the album was suffixed Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
and took on new musical directions. It was co-produced by Vliet with Pete Johnson. Members of this Magic Band and the 'Bat Chain' elements would later feature on Beefheart's last two albums. Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) was described by Ned Raggett of Allmusic to be "...manna from heaven for those feeling Beefheart had lost his way on his two Mercury albums". Following Vliet's death, John French claimed the 40-second spoken word track "Apes-Ma" to be an analogy of Van Vliet's deteriorating physical condition. The album's sleeve features the Don Van Vliet painting Green Tom, made in 1976. One of the many works that would mark out his longed-for career as a painter of note in later years.
(1980) helped establish Beefheart's late resurgence. Released by Virgin Records
during the post-punk
scene, the music was now accessible to a younger, more receptive audience. He was interviewed in a feature report on KABC-TV
's Channel 7 Eyewitness News in which he was hailed as "the father of the New Wave
. One of the most important American composers of the last fifty years, [and] a primitive genius"; Van Vliet said at this period, "I'm doing a non-hypnotic music to break up the catatonic state... and I think there is one right now." Huey of Allmusic cited the Doc at the Radar Station as being "generally acclaimed as the strongest album of his comeback, and by some as his best since Trout Mask Replica", "even if the Captain's voice isn't quite what it once was, Doc at the Radar Station is an excellent, focused consolidation of Beefheart's past and then-present". Van Vliet's biographer Mike Barnes speaks of "revamping work built on skeletal ideas and fragments that would have mouldered away in the vaults had they not been exhumed and transformed into full-blown, totally convincing new material." During this period, Van Vliet made two appearances on David Letterman
's late night television program on NBC
, and also performed on Saturday Night Live
.
Richard Redus and Art Tripp departed on this album, with slide guitar and marimba duties taken up by the reappearance of John French. The guitar skills of Gary Lucas
also feature on the track "Flavor Bud Living".
(1982), was recorded with Gary Lucas
(who was also Van Vliet's manager), Jeff Moris Tepper, Richard Snyder and Cliff Martinez
. This line-up made a video to promote the title track, directed by Van Vliet and Ken Schreiber, with cinematography by Daniel Pearl
, which was rejected by MTV
for being "too weird." However, the video was included in the Letterman broadcast on NBC-TV, and was also accepted into the Museum of Modern Art. Van Vliet announced "I don't want MTV!" during his interview with Letterman, in reference to MTV's "I want my MTV" marketing campaign of the time. Ice Cream for Crow, along with songs such as its title track, features instrumental performances by the Magic Band with performance poetry
readings by Van Vliet. Raggett of Allmusic called the album a "last entertaining blast of wigginess from one of the few truly independent artists in late 20th century pop music, with humor, skill, and style all still intact"; with the Magic Band "turning out more choppy rhythms, unexpected guitar lines, and outré arrangements, Captain Beefheart lets everything run wild as always, with successful results". Barnes writes that "the most original and vital tracks (on the album) are the newer ones", saying that it "feels like an hors-d'oeuvre for a main course that never came". Promotional work proposed to Beefheart by Virgin Records was as unorthodox as him making an appearance in the 1987 film Grizzly II: The Predator
. Soon after, Van Vliet retired from music and began a new career as a painter
. Gary Lucas tried to convince him to record one more album, but to no avail.
in a limited edition of 1,500 copies, this prestigious signed and numbered box set contains a "Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh" CD of Vliet-recited poetry, the Anton Corbijn
film of Vliet Some YoYo Stuff on DVD and two art books. One book, entitled Splinters, gives a visual 'scrapbook' insight into Vliet's life, from an early age to his painting in retirement. The second, eponymously titled, book is packed with art pages of Vliet's work. The first is bound in green linen, the second in yellow. These colors are counterpointed throughout the package, which comes in a green slipcase measuring 235 x 325 x 70 mm. An onion-skin wallet, nestling at the package's inner sanctum, contains a matching-numbered Vliet lithograph on hand-rolled paper, signed by the artist. The two books are by publishers "Artist Ink Editions".
's, on several of his albums. In 1987, Van Vliet published Skeleton Breath, Scorpion Blush, a collection of his poetry, paintings and drawings.
In the mid 1980s, Van Vliet became reclusive and abandoned music, stating he had gotten "too good at the horn" and could make far more money painting. Beefheart's first exhibition had been at Liverpool's Bluecoat Gallery during the Magic Band's 1972 tour of the UK. He was interviewed on Granada regional television standing in front of his bold black and white canvases. He was inspired to begin an art career when a fan, Julian Schnabel
, who admired the artwork seen on his album covers, asked to buy a drawing from him. His debut exhibition as a serious painter was at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York in 1985 and was initially regarded as that of "another rock musician dabbling in art for ego's sake", though his primitive, non-conformist work has received more sympathetic and serious attention since then, with some sales approaching $25,000. Two books have been published specifically devoted to critique and analysis of his artwork: Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh: On The Arts Of Don Van Vliet (1999) by W.C. Bamberger and Stand Up To Be Discontinued, first published in 1993, a now rare collection of essays on Van Vliet's work. The limited edition version of the book contains a CD of Van Vliet reading six of his poems: "Fallin' Ditch", "The Tired Plain", "Skeleton Makes Good", "Safe Sex Drill", "Tulip" and "Gill". A deluxe edition was published in 1994; only 60 were printed, with etchings of Van Vliet's signature, costing £
180.
In the early 1980s Van Vliet established an association with the Michael Werner Gallery
. Eric Feldman stated later in an interview that at that time Michael Werner told Van Vliet he needed to stop playing music if he wanted to be respected as a painter, warning him that otherwise he would only be considered a "musician who paints". In doing so, it was said that he had effectively "succeeded in leaving his past behind." Gordon Veneklasen, one of the gallery's directors in 1995 described Van Vliet as an "incredible painter" whose work "doesn't really look like anybody else's work but his own." Van Vliet has been described as a modernist
, a primitivist
, an abstract expressionist
, and an outsider art
ist. Morgan Falconer of Artforum
concurs, mentioning both a "neo-primitivist aesthetic" and further stating that his work is influenced by the CoBrA
painters. The resemblance to the CoBrA painters is also recognized by art critic Roberto Ohrt, while others have compared his paintings to the work of Jackson Pollock
, Franz Kline
, Antonin Artaud
, Francis Bacon, Vincent van Gogh
and Mark Rothko
.
According to Dr. John Lane, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
, in 1997, although Van Vliet's work has associations with mainstream abstract expressionist painting, more importantly he was a self-taught artist and his painting "has that same kind of edge the music has." Lane explained that in contrast to the busied, bohemian urban lives of the New York abstract expressionists, the rural desert environment Van Vliet was influenced by is a distinctly naturalistic one, making him a distinguished figure in contemporary art, whose work will survive in canon. Van Vliet stated of his own work, "I'm trying to turn myself inside out on the canvas. I'm trying to completely bare what I think at that moment" and that "I paint for the simple reason that I have to. I feel a sense of relief after I do". When asked about his artistic influences he stated that there were none. "I just paint like I paint and that's enough influence." He did however state his admiration of Georg Baselitz
, the De Stijl
artist Piet Mondrian
, and Vincent van Gogh; after seeing van Gogh's paintings in person, Van Vliet quoted himself as saying that "the sun disappoints me so".
Exhibits of his paintings from the late 1990s at both the Anton Kern and Michael Werner Galleries of New York City received favorable reviews, the most recent of which were held between 2009 and 2010. Falconer stated that the most recent exhibitions showed "evidence of a serious, committed artist." It was claimed that he stopped painting in the late 1990s. A 2007 interview with Van Vliet through email by Anthony Haden-Guest
, however, showed him to still be active artistically. He exhibited only few of his paintings because he immediately destroyed any that did not satisfy him.
, with his wife Janet "Jan" Van Vliet. By the early 1990s he was using a wheelchair as a result of multiple sclerosis
. The severity of his illness was sometimes disputed. Many of his art contractors and friends considered him to be in good health. Other associates such as his longtime drummer and musical director John French
and bassist Richard Snyder have stated that they had noticed symptoms consistent with the onset of multiple sclerosis, such as sensitivity to heat
, loss of balance, and stiffness of gait, by the late 1970s.
One of Van Vliet's last public appearances was in the 1993 short documentary Some Yo Yo Stuff by filmmaker Anton Corbijn
, described as an "observation of his observations". Around 13 minutes long and shot entirely in black and white, with appearances by his mother and David Lynch
, the film showed a noticeably weakened and dysarthric
Van Vliet at his residence in California, reading poetry, and philosophically discussing his life, environment, music and art. In 2000, he appeared on Gary Lucas' album Improve the Shining Hour and Moris Tepper's Moth to Mouth, and spoke on Tepper's 2004 song "Ricochet Man" from the album Head Off. He is credited for naming Tepper's 2010 album A Singer Named Shotgun Throat.
Van Vliet often voiced concern over and support for environmentalist issues and causes, particularly the welfare of animals. He often referred to Earth as "God's Golfball" and this expression can be found on a number of his later albums. In 2003 he was heard on the compilation album Where We Live: Stand for What You Stand On: A Benefit CD for EarthJustice
singing a version of "Happy Birthday to You
" retitled "Happy Earthday". The track is 34 seconds long and was recorded over the telephone.
, weeks short of his 70th birthday. The gallery stated him to be "a complex and influential figure in the visual and performing arts," and "one of the most original recording artists of his time". The cause was named as complications from multiple sclerosis
. Tom Waits
and Kathleen Brennan
commented on his death, praising him: "Wondrous, secret... and profound, he was a diviner of the highest order."
Dweezil Zappa
dedicated the song "Willie the Pimp" to Beefheart at the "Zappa Plays Zappa" show at the Beacon Theater in New York City on the day of his death, while Jeff Bridges
exclaimed "Rest in peace, Captain Beefheart!" at the conclusion of the December 18 episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live.
Van Vliet met Frank Zappa
when they were both teenagers and shared an interest in rhythm and blues
and Chicago blues
. They collaborated together from this early stage, with Zappa's scripts for 'teenage operettas' such as "Captain Beefheart & The Grunt People" helping to elevate the Van Vliet persona of Captain Beefheart. In 1963, the pair recorded a demo at the Pal Recording Studio
in Cucamonga as the Soots, seeking support from a major label. Their efforts were unsuccessful, as "Beefheart's Howlin' Wolf vocal style and Zappa's distorted guitar" were "not on the agenda" at the time.
The friendship between Zappa and Van Vliet over the years was sometimes expressed in the form of rivalry as musicians drifted back and forth between their groups. Van Vliet embarked on the 1975 Bongo Fury
tour with Zappa and The Mothers
, mainly because conflicting contractual obligations made him unable to tour or record independently. Their relationship grew acrimonious on the tour to the point that they refused to talk to one another. Zappa became irritated by Van Vliet, who drew constantly, including while on stage, filling one of his large sketch books with rapidly executed portraits and warped caricatures of Zappa. Musically, Van Vliet's primitive style contrasted sharply with Zappa's compositional discipline and abundant technique. Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black
described the situation as "two geniuses" on "ego trips".
Estranged for years afterwards, they reconnected at the end of Zappa's life, after his diagnosis with terminal prostate cancer
. Their collaborative work appears on the Zappa rarity collections The Lost Episodes
(1996) and Mystery Disc
(1996). Particularly notable is their song "Muffin Man
", included on the Zappa/Beefheart Bongo Fury album, as well as Zappa's compilation album Strictly Commercial
(1995). Zappa finished concerts with the song for many years afterwards. Beefheart also provided vocals for "Willie the Pimp
" on Zappa's otherwise instrumental album Hot Rats
(1969). One track on Trout Mask Replica, "The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)", features Magic Band guitarist Jeff Cotton talking on the telephone to Zappa superimposed onto an unrelated live recording of the Mothers of Invention (the backing track was later released in 1992 as "Charles Ives" on You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5
). Van Vliet also played the harmonica on two songs on Zappa albums: "San Ber'dino" (credited as "Bloodshot Rollin' Red") on One Size Fits All
(1975) and "Find Her Finer" on Zoot Allures
(1976). He is also the vocalist on "The Torture Never Stops (Original Version)" on Zappa's You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4
.
-oriented groups of that era, were influenced by the success of English bands such as The Rolling Stones
and The Beatles
. At this time Van Vliet was simply the lead singer of the group, which had been brought together by guitarist Alex St. Clair
. As in many emerging groups in California at the time, there were elements of psychedelia
and the foundations of contemporary hippie
counterculture.
Thus, it seemed quite logical to promote the group as "Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band", around the concept that Captain Beefheart had 'magic powers' and, upon drinking a 'Pepsi
', could summon up "His Magic Band" to appear and perform behind him. The strands of this logic emanating from Vliet's Beefheart persona having been 'written in' as a character in a 'teenage operetta' that Zappa had formulated, along with Van Vliet's renowned 'Pepsi-moods' with his mother Willie Sue and his generally spoilt teenage demeanor.
gigs, appearances at the Avalon Ballroom and winning the Teenage Fair 'Battle of the Bands
', the group finally bagged a contract for recording two singles with the newly-created A&M Records
label with Leonard Grant as their manager. It was at this time that musical relationships had also been struck with members of Rising Sons
who would later feature in the band's recordings. The A&M deal also brought some contention between members of the band, torn between a career as an experimental 'pop' group and that of a purist blues band. Working with young producer David Gates
also opened up horizons for Vliet's skills as a poet-cum-lyricist, with his "Who Do You Think You're Fooling" on the flipside of the band's first single, a cover of the Ellas McDaniel/Willie Dixon
-penned hit, "Diddy Wah Diddy". Fate and circumstance, not for the first time, would befall the band's success upon its release - which coincided with a singles cover of the same song by The Remains
. The initial line-up of the Magic Band that entered the studio for the A&M recordings was not that which emerged by the second release, "Moonchild", also backed by a Vliet-penned number, "Frying Pan". A 12" vinyl 45rpm mono EP was later released in 1987, with the four tracks of the two singles, plus "Here I Am, I Always Am" as a fifth previously unreleased song. This release was titled The Legendary A&M Sessions, with a red-marbled cover and (later) members Moon, Blakely, Vliet, Snouffer and Handley seated in a 'temperance dance band' photo-pose.
The original Magic Band was primarily a rhythm and blues
band, led by local Lancaster guitarist Alexis Snouffer
, along with Doug Moon (guitar), Jerry Handley (bass), and Vic Mortenson (drums), the last being rotated with and finally replaced by Paul Blakely, known as 'P.G. Blakely'. For the first A&M recording Mortenson had been called up for active service
and Snouffer stood in on drums, with a recently recruited Richard Hepner taking up the guitar role. By the time the single was aired on a pop television show P.G. Blakely was back in the drum seat. He then left for a career in television and was replaced by John French
by the time the band cut their first album, as the first release on the new Buddah Records
label.
Personnel in the Magic Band for Beefheart's first album, Safe as Milk, were Alex St. Clair, Jerry Handley and John French. Earlier meetings with the Rising Sons had also secured them the guitar and arranging skills of Ry Cooder
, which also brought about input from Taj Mahal
on percussion and guitar work from Cooder's brother-in-law Russ Titelman
. Further guests to this line-up included Milt Holland
on percussion and the all-important and controversial theremin
work on Electricity by Dr Samuel Hoffman. It was perhaps this track, above the others, which caused A&M to view the band as 'unsuitable' for their label with what was seen as weird and too psychedelic for popular consumption. Thus, this album was recorded for Buddah, with the band signed to Kama Sutra
, which left them close to penniless after extricating themselves from A&M. A large proportion of the tracks on this album were co-written with Van Vliet by Herb Bermann, whom Vliet initially met up with at a bar gig near Lancaster. Part-time Hollywood television actor and budding scriptwriter Bermann and his then wife Cathleen spent some time in Vliet's company prior to this release. Bermann would later write for Neil Young
and script an early Spielberg
-directed television medical drama. Gary 'Magic' Marker
(the "Magic" added by Beefheart) was involved in early session work for this release, and his involvement with Rising Sons was also instrumental in acquiring the skills of Cooder, upon an unfulfilled suggestion that Marker might produce the album. Marker would later lay down two uncredited bass tracks for Trout Mask Replica before being replaced by Mark Boston
.
French worked on five more Beefheart albums, while Snouffer worked with Beefheart on and off on three more albums. Bill Harkleroad joined the Magic Band as guitarist for Trout Mask Replica and stayed with Beefheart through May 1974.
The musicians also resented Van Vliet for taking complete credit for composition and arranging when the musicians themselves pieced together most of the songs from taped fragments or impressionistic directions such as "Play it like a bat being dragged out of oil and it's trying to survive, but it's dying from asphyxiation." John French summarized the disagreement over composing and arranging credits metaphorically:
Post-Beefheart, receiving only a "grumpy" reception from him, the band reformed in 2003 with John French on lead vocals, Gary Lucas
and Denny Walley on guitars, Rockette Morton
on bass, and Robert Williams on drums. At the start of their only European tour, Williams left and was replaced by Michael Traylor. The band released two albums and toured before disbanding in 2006.
They toured the UK in 2005, playing a selection of small venues. John Peel was initially skeptical about the re-formed Magic Band. He played a live recording of the band recorded at the 2003 All Tomorrows Parties festival on his radio show; afterwards he couldn't speak and had to put on another record to regain his composure. Later the band did a live session for him. The band's albums are Back To The Front (on the London-based ATP Recordings
, 2003) and 21st Century Mirror Men (2005). They played over 30 shows throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, and one in the United States. They have been chosen by Jeff Mangum
of Neutral Milk Hotel
to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties
festival that he will curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England.
, the BBC
's 1997 The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart narrated by John Peel
, and the 2006 independent production Captain Beefheart: Under Review.
According to Peel, "If there has ever been such a thing as a genius in the history of popular music, it's Beefheart... I heard echoes of his music in some of the records I listened to last week and I'll hear more echoes in records that I listen to this week." His narration added: "A psychedelic shaman who frequently bullied his musicians and sometimes alarmed his fans, Don somehow remained one of rock's great innocents". Mike Barnes referred to him as an "iconic counterculture hero", who with the Magic Band "went on to stake out startling new possibilities for rock music". Lester Bangs
cited Beefheart as "one of the four or five unqualified geniuses to rise from the hothouses of American music in the Sixties", while John Harris of The Guardian
praised the music's "pulses with energy and ideas, the strange way the spluttering instruments meld together". A Rolling Stone biography described his work as "a sort of modern chamber music
for [a] rock band, since he plans every note and teaches the band their parts by ear. Because it breaks so many of rock's conventions at once, Beefheart's music has always been more influential than popular." In this context, it is performed by the classical group, the Meridian Arts Ensemble
. Piero Scaruffi characterized "three basic elements": "the ballad out of tune, with guitar interlaced with jolting rhythm, vocal miasma and a rogue harmonica". Scaruffi ranked Trout Mask Replica number one on his list of the greatest rock albums of all time. He says that "the distance between Captain Beefheart and the rest of rock music is the same distance that there was between Beethoven
and the symphonists of his time". Nicholas E. Tawa, in his 2005 book Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century: Styles and Singers and What They Said About America, included Beefheart among the prominent progressive rock
musicians of the 1960s and 70s, while the Encyclopædia Britannica
describes Beefheart's songs as conveying "deep distrust of modern civilization, a yearning for ecological balance, and that belief that all animals in the wild are far superior to human beings."
Many artists have cited Van Vliet as an influence, beginning with the Edgar Broughton Band
, who covered Dropout Boogie as Apache Drop Out (mixed with The Shadows
' "Apache
") as early as 1970 and The Kills
coverage of it 32 years later. The Minutemen
were fans of Beefheart, and were arguably among the few to effectively synthesize his music with their own, especially in their early output, which featured disjointed guitar and irregular, galloping rhythms. Michael Azerrad
describes the Minutemen's early output as "highly caffeinated Captain Beefheart running down James Brown
tunes", and notes that Beefheart was the group's "idol". Others who arguably conveyed the same influence around the same time or before include John Cale
of The Velvet Underground
, Laurie Anderson
, The Residents
and Henry Cow
. Genesis P-Orridge
of Throbbing Gristle
and Psychic TV
, and poet mystic Z'EV
, both pioneers of industrial music
, cited Van Vliet along with Zappa among their influences. More notable were those emerging during the early days of punk rock
, such as The Clash
and John Lydon
of the Sex Pistols
(reportedly to manager Malcolm McLaren
's disapproval), later of the post-punk band Public Image Ltd.
Cartoonist and writer Matt Groening
tells of listening to Trout Mask Replica at the age of 15 and thinking "that it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me—and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realised they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard." Groening first saw Beefheart and the Magic Band perform in the front row at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
in the early 1970s. He later declared Trout Mask Replica to be the greatest album ever made. He considered the appeal of the Magic Band as outcasts who were even "too weird for the hippie
s". Groening served as the curator of the All Tomorrow's Parties
festival that reunited the post–Beefheart Magic Band.
Van Vliet's influence on post–punk bands was demonstrated by Magazine
's recording of "I Love You You Big Dummy" in 1978 and the tribute album Fast 'n' Bulbous - A Tribute to Captain Beefheart
in 1988, featuring the likes of artists such as the Dog Faced Hermans
, The Scientists
, The Membranes
, Simon Fisher Turner
, That Petrol Emotion
, the Primevals
, The Mock Turtles
, XTC
, and Sonic Youth
, who included a cover of Beefheart's "Electricity" as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of their 1988 album Daydream Nation
. Other post-punk bands influenced by Beefheart include Gang of Four
, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Pere Ubu
, Babe the Blue Ox
and Mark E. Smith
of The Fall. The Fall covered "Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones" in their 1993 session for John Peel
. Beefheart is considered to have "greatly influenced" New Wave artists, such as David Byrne
of Talking Heads
, Blondie
, Devo
, The Bongos
, and The B-52s.
Tom Waits
' shift in artistic direction, starting with 1983's Swordfishtrombones
, was, Waits claims, a result of his wife Kathleen Brennan
introducing him to Van Vliet's music. "Once you've heard Beefheart," said Waits, "it's hard to wash him out of your clothes. It stains, like coffee or blood." Guitarist John Frusciante
of the Red Hot Chili Peppers
cited Van Vliet as a prominent influence on the band's 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik
as well as his debut solo album Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt
(1994) and stated that during his drug-induced absence, after leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he "would paint and listen to Trout Mask Replica." Black Francis of the Pixies cited Beefheart's The Spotlight Kid as one of the albums he listened to regularly when first writing songs for the band, and Kurt Cobain
of Nirvana
acknowledged Van Vliet's influence, mentioning him among his notoriously eclectic range.
The White Stripes
in 2000 released a 7" tribute single, Party of Special Things to Do
, containing covers of that Beefheart song plus "China Pig" and "Ashtray Heart". The Kills
included a cover of "Dropout Boogie" on their debut Black Rooster EP
(2002). The Black Keys
in 2008 released a free cover of Beefheart's "I'm Glad" from Safe as Milk. In 2005 Genus Records produced a tribute to Captain Beefheart titled Mama Kangaroos - Philly Women Sing Captain Beefheart. Beck
included "Safe as Milk" and "Ella Guru" in a playlist of songs as part of his website's Planned Obsolescence series of mashups
of songs by the musicians that influenced him. Franz Ferdinand
cited Beefheart's Doc At The Radar Station as a strong influence on their second LP, You Could Have It So Much Better
. Placebo
briefly named themselves Ashtray Heart, after the track on Doc at the Radar Station; the band's album Battle for the Sun
contains a track called "Ashtray Heart". Joan Osborne
covered Beefheart's "(His) Eyes are a Blue Million Miles", which appears on Early Recordings. She cited Van Vliet as one of her influences. PJ Harvey
and John Parish
discussed Beefheart's influence in an interview together. Harvey's first experience of Beefheart's music was as a child. Her parents had all of his albums; listening to them made her "feel ill". Harvey was reintroduced to Beefheart's music by Parish, who lent her a cassette copy of Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) at the age of 16. She cited him as one of her greatest influences since. Parish described Beefheart's music as a "combination of raw blues and abstract jazz. There was humour in there, but you could tell that it wasn't [intended as] a joke. I felt that there was a depth to what he did that very few other rock artists have managed [to achieve]." Ty Segall covered "Drop Out Boogie" on his 2009 album, Lemons.
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
and artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
best known by the stage name
Stage name
A stage name, also called a showbiz name or screen name, is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers such as actors, wrestlers, comedians, and musicians.-Motivation to use a stage name:...
Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12 studio albums. Noted for his powerful singing voice with its wide range
Vocal range
Vocal range is the measure of the breadth of pitches that a human voice can phonate. Although the study of vocal range has little practical application in terms of speech, it is a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech and language pathology, particularly in relation to the study...
, Van Vliet also played the harmonica
Harmonica
The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...
, saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
and numerous other wind instrument
Wind instrument
A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator , in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into a mouthpiece set at the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of...
s. His music blended rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and psychedelia
Psychedelic music
Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...
with free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
, avant-garde
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
and contemporary experimental composition
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
. Beefheart was also known for exercising an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians, and for often constructing myths about his life.
During his teen years in Lancaster, California
Lancaster, California
Lancaster is a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, in the high desert, near the Kern County line. Lancaster currently ranks as the 30th largest city in California, and the 148th largest city in the United States. Lancaster is the principal city within the Antelope Valley...
, Van Vliet developed an eclectic musical taste and formed "a mutually useful but volatile" friendship with Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
, with whom he sporadically competed and collaborated. He began performing with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the original Magic Band line-up, initiated by Alexis Snouffer
Alex St. Clair
Alex St. Clair , was an American musician.Twice guitarist for Captain Beefheart, St. Clair was a contemporary of Frank Zappa at Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California, where St. Clair played trumpet and Zappa played drums. They bought their first guitars within days of each other.St...
, in 1965. The group drew attention with their cover of Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
's "Diddy Wah Diddy
Diddy Wah Diddy
"Diddy Wah Diddy" is a song written by Willie Dixon and Ellas McDaniel—known as Bo Diddley—and recorded by the latter in 1956. Over the years, the song has been covered by many bands and artists, including The Astronauts, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, The Remains, The Twilights, Taj Mahal,...
", which became a regional hit. It was followed by their acclaimed debut album Safe as Milk, released in 1967 on Buddah Records
Buddah Records
Buddah Records was founded in 1967 in New York City. The label was born out of Kama Sutra Records, an MGM Records-distributed label, which remained a key imprint following Buddah's founding...
. After being dropped by two consecutive record labels, they signed to Zappa's Straight Records
Straight Records
Straight Records was a record label formed in 1969 to distribute productions and discoveries of Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager Herb Cohen. Straight was formed at the same time as a companion label, Bizarre Records. Straight and Bizarre were manufactured and distributed in the U.S. by...
. As producer, Zappa granted Beefheart unrestrained artistic freedom in making 1969's Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica is the third album by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, released in June 1969. Produced by Beefheart's friend and former schoolmate Frank Zappa, it was originally released as a double album on Zappa's Straight Records label...
, which ranked fifty-eighth in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...
. In 1974, frustrated by lack of commercial success, he released two albums of more conventional rock music that were critically panned; this move, combined with not having been paid for a European tour, and years of enduring Beefheart's abusive behavior, led the entire band to quit. Beefheart eventually formed a new Magic Band with a group of younger musicians and regained contemporary approval through three final albums: Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
Shiny Beast is the tenth studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band. Originally released in 1978, it is considered to be Beefheart's comeback album following 1974's poorly received efforts, Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams, and is the first of his three critically...
(1978), Doc at the Radar Station
Doc at the Radar Station
Doc at the Radar Station is the eleventh studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, released in August 1980 to favorable reviews. The painting on the album cover is by Don Van Vliet himself...
(1980) and Ice Cream for Crow
Ice Cream for Crow
Ice Cream for Crow is the twelfth and final studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, released in September 1982. It is the last Don Van Vliet recorded before abruptly retiring from music as Captain Beefheart to devote himself to a career as a painter...
(1982).
Van Vliet has been described as "one of modern music's true innovators" with "a singular body of work virtually unrivalled in its daring and fluid creativity". Although he achieved little commercial or mainstream critical success, he sustained a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
as a "highly significant" and "incalculable" influence on an array of New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
, experimental
Experimental rock
Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
and alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
musicians. Known for his enigmatic personality and relationship with the public, Van Vliet made few public appearances after his retirement from music (and from his Beefheart persona) in 1982. He pursued a career in art, an interest that originated in his childhood talent for sculpture, and a venture which proved to be his most financially secure. His expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
paintings and drawings command high prices, and have been exhibited in art galleries and museums across the world. Van Vliet died in 2010 after many years of multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
.
Early life and musical influences, 1941–1962
Van Vliet was born Don Glen Vliet in Glendale, CaliforniaGlendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
, on January 15, 1941, to Glen Alonzo Vliet, a service station
Filling station
A filling station, also known as a fueling station, garage, gasbar , gas station , petrol bunk , petrol pump , petrol garage, petrol kiosk , petrol station "'servo"' in Australia or service station, is a facility which sells fuel and lubricants...
owner of Dutch ancestry from Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
, and Willie Sue Vliet (née Warfield), who was from Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
. He claimed to have as an ancestor Peter Van Vliet, a Dutch painter who knew Rembrandt. Van Vliet also claimed that he was related to adventurer and author Richard Halliburton
Richard Halliburton
Richard Halliburton was an American traveler, adventurer, and author. Best known today for having swum the length of the Panama Canal and paying the lowest toll in its history—thirty-six cents—Halliburton was headline news for most of his brief career...
and the cowboy actor Slim Pickens
Slim Pickens
Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. , better known by the stage name Slim Pickens, was an American rodeo performer and film and television actor who epitomized the profane, tough, sardonic cowboy, but who is best remembered for his comic roles, notably in Dr...
, and said that he remembered being born.
Van Vliet began painting and sculpting at age three. His subjects reflected his "obsession" with animals, particularly dinosaurs, fish, African mammals and lemurs. At the age of nine he won a children's sculpting competition organised for the Los Angeles Zoo
Los Angeles Zoo
The Los Angeles Zoo , is a zoo founded in 1966 and located in Los Angeles, California. The City of Los Angeles owns the entire zoo, its land and facilities, and the animals...
in Griffith Park
Griffith Park
Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park covers of land, making it one of the largest urban parks in North America...
by a local tutor, Agostinho Rodrigues. Local newspaper cuttings of his junior sculpting achievements can be found reproduced in the Splinters book, included in the Riding Some Kind Of Unusual Skull Sleigh boxed CD work, released in 2004. The sprawling park, with its zoo and observatory
Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory is in Los Angeles, California, United States. Sitting on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in L.A.'s Griffith Park, it commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin, including downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest...
had a strong influence on young Vliet, as it was a short distance from his home on Waverly Drive. The track "Observatory Crest" on Bluejeans & Moonbeams reflects this continued interest. A portrait photo of the school-age Vliet can be seen on the front of the lyric sheet within the first issue of the US release of Trout Mask Replica.
For some time during the 1950s Van Vliet worked as an apprentice with Rodrigues, who considered him a child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
. Vliet made claim to have been a lecturer at the Barnsdall
Barnsdall Art Park
The Barnsdall Art Park has as its mission the presentation, promotion, enrichment, and development of the arts and artists of the Los Angeles region in all its cultural diversity...
Art Institute in Los Angeles at the age of eleven, although it is likely he simply gave a form of artistic dissertation. Accounts of Van Vliet's precocious achievement in art often include his statement that he sculpted on a weekly television show. He claimed that his parents discouraged his interest in sculpture, based upon their perception of artists as 'queer'. They declined several scholarship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
offers, including one from the local Knudsen Creamery to travel to Europe with six years' paid tuition to study marble sculpture
Marble sculpture
Marble sculpture is the art of creating three-dimensional forms from marble. Sculpture is among the oldest of the arts. Even before painting cave walls, early humans fashioned shapes from stone. From these beginnings, artifacts have evolved to their current complexity...
. Van Vliet later admitted personal hesitation to take the scholarship based upon the bitterness of his parents' disencouragement.
Van Vliet's artistic enthusiasm became so fervent, he claimed that his parents were forced to feed him through the door in the room where he sculpted. When he was thirteen the family moved from the Los Angeles area to the more remote farming town of Lancaster
Lancaster, California
Lancaster is a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, in the high desert, near the Kern County line. Lancaster currently ranks as the 30th largest city in California, and the 148th largest city in the United States. Lancaster is the principal city within the Antelope Valley...
, near the Mojave Desert
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...
, where there was a growing aerospace
Aerospace
Aerospace comprises the atmosphere of Earth and surrounding space. Typically the term is used to refer to the industry that researches, designs, manufactures, operates, and maintains vehicles moving through air and space...
industry and testing plant that would become Edwards Airforce Base. It was an environment that would greatly influence him creatively from then on. Van Vliet remained interested in art; his paintings, often reminiscent of Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
's, were later featured on several of his own albums. Meanwhile he developed his taste and interest in music, listening "intensively" to the Delta blues
Delta blues
The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The...
of Son House
Son House
Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...
and Robert Johnson, jazz artists such as Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
, John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
, Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
and Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...
, and the Chicago blues
Chicago blues
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...
of Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
and Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
. During his early teenage years Vliet would sometimes socialize with members of local bands such as "The Omens" and "The Blackouts", although his interests were still focused upon an art career. The Omens' guitarists Alexis Snouffer and Jerry Handley would later become founders of "The Magic Band" and The Blackouts' drummer, Frank Zappa, would later capture Vliet's vocal capabilities on record for the first time. This first known recording, when he was simply 'Don Vliet', is "Lost In A Whirlpool" - one of Zappa's early 'field recordings' made in his college classroom with brother Bobby on guitar. It is featured on Zappa's posthumously released The Lost Episodes
The Lost Episodes
The Lost Episodes is a 1996 posthumous album by Frank Zappa which compiles previously unreleased material. Much of the material covered dates from early in his career, and as early as 1958, into the mid-1970s...
(1996).
Van Vliet claimed that he never attended public school, alleging "half a day of kindergarten" to be the extent of his formal education and saying that "if you want to be a different fish, you've got to jump out of the school." His associates said that he only dropped out during his senior year of high school to help support the family after his father's heart attack. His graduation picture appears in the school's yearbook. While attending Antelope Valley High School
Antelope Valley High School
Antelope Valley High School is located in Lancaster, California, and is part of the Antelope Valley Union High School District, in northernmost Los Angeles County, California. It was founded in 1912. It is located near the western edge of the Mojave Desert...
in Lancaster, Van Vliet became close friends with fellow teenager Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
, the pair bonding through their interest in Chicago blues
Chicago blues
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...
and R&B
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
. Van Vliet is portrayed in both The Real Frank Zappa Book and Barry Miles
Barry Miles
Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subject of the 1960s London underground. He has written numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in left-wing papers such as The Guardian...
' biography Zappa as fairly spoiled at this stage of his life, the center of attention as an only child. He spent most of his time locked in his room listening to records, often with Zappa, into the early hours in the morning, eating leftover food from his father's Helms bread truck
Helms Bakery
The Helms Bakery in Culver City, California was a notable industrial bakery of Southern California that operated from 1931 to 1969.In 1926, Paul Helms of New York took an early retirement for health reasons and moved his family to Southern California and its mild climate...
and demanding that his mother bring him a Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
. His parents tolerated such behavior under the belief that their child was truly gifted. Vliet's 'Pepsi-moods' were ever a source of amusement to band members, leading Zappa to later write the wry tune "Why Doesn't Someone Give Him A Pepsi?" that featured on the Bongo Fury
Bongo Fury
Bongo Fury is a mostly live album released by Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart in 1975. The live portions were recorded on May 20 & 21, 1975 at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas...
tour.
After Zappa began regular occupation at Paul Buff's PAL Studio
Pal Recording Studio
Pal Recording Studio was an independent recording studio that operated in Cucamonga, California The studio was started by engineer/innovator Paul Buff. The studio is known for its instrumental Surf music recordings like Wipeout and the original demo recording of Pipeline. The original location...
in Cucamonga
Rancho Cucamonga, California
Rancho Cucamonga is a suburban city in San Bernardino County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,269, up from 127,743 at the 2000 census. L. Dennis Michael was elected as Mayor on November 2, 2010. Jack Lam is the City Manager...
he and Van Vliet began collaborating, tentatively as "The Soots". By the time Zappa had turned the venue into Studio Z the duo had completed some songs. These were "Cheryl's Canon", "Metal Man Has Won His Wings" and a Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
styled rendition of Little Richard
Little Richard
Richard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, and actor, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. He was also the first artist to put the funk in the rock and roll beat and...
's "Slippin' and Slidin'
Slippin' and Slidin'
"Slippin' and Slidin" is an R&B/rock song performed by Little Richard. The song is credited to Little Richard, Edwin Bocage , Al Collins, and James Smith....
". Further songs, on Zappa's Mystery Disc
Mystery Disc
Mystery Disc is a compilation album by Frank Zappa. It was released on CD in 1998, compiling tracks that were originally released on two separate vinyl records and included in the mail order Old Masters box sets, which were released in three volumes between 1985 and 1987...
(1996), "I Was a Teen-Age Malt Shop" and "The Birth of Captain Beefheart" also provide an insight to Zappa's 'teenage movie' script titled Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People, the first appearances of the Beefheart name. It has been suggested this name came from a term used by Vliet's Uncle Alan who had a habit of exposing himself to Don's girlfriend, Laurie Stone. He would urinate with the bathroom door open and, if she was walking by, would mumble about his penis, saying "Ahh, what a beauty! It looks just like a big, fine beef heart." In a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, Van Vliet requests "don't ask me why or how" he and Zappa came up with the name. He would later claim in an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman
Late Night with David Letterman
Late Night with David Letterman is a nightly hour-long comedy talk show on NBC that was created and hosted by David Letterman. It premiered in 1982 as the first incarnation of the Late Night franchise and went off the air in 1993, after Letterman left NBC and moved to Late Show on CBS. Late Night...
that the name referred to "a beef in my heart against this society." In the "Grunt People" draft script Beefheart and his mother play themselves, with his father played by Howlin' Wolf. Grace Slick
Grace Slick
Grace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...
is penned in as a 'celestial seductress' and there are also roles for future Magic Band members Bill Harkleroad and Mark Boston.
Van Vliet enrolled at Antelope Valley Junior College as an art major, but decided to leave the following year. He once worked as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner
Vacuum cleaner
A vacuum cleaner, commonly referred to as a "vacuum," is a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt, usually from floors, and optionally from other surfaces as well. The dirt is collected by either a dustbag or a cyclone for later disposal...
salesman, during which time he sold a vacuum cleaner to the writer Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
at his home in Llano
Llano, California
Llano is an unincorporated town located in Los Angeles County, California, near the San Bernardino Countyline. The town has a population of about 1200.- Geography :...
, pointing to it and declaring, "Well I assure you sir, this thing sucks." After managing a Kinney's shoe store, Van Vliet relocated to Rancho Cucamonga
Rancho Cucamonga, California
Rancho Cucamonga is a suburban city in San Bernardino County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,269, up from 127,743 at the 2000 census. L. Dennis Michael was elected as Mayor on November 2, 2010. Jack Lam is the City Manager...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, to reconnect with Zappa, who inspired his entry into musical performance. Van Vliet was quite shy but was eventually able to imitate the deep voice of Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
with his wide vocal range. He eventually grew comfortable with public performance and, after learning to play the harmonica
Harmonica
The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...
, began playing at dances and small clubs in Southern California.
Initial recordings, 1962–1969
In early 1965 Alex SnoufferAlex St. Clair
Alex St. Clair , was an American musician.Twice guitarist for Captain Beefheart, St. Clair was a contemporary of Frank Zappa at Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California, where St. Clair played trumpet and Zappa played drums. They bought their first guitars within days of each other.St...
, a Lancaster rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
guitarist, invited Vliet to sing with a group that he was assembling. Vliet joined the first Magic Band and changed his name to Don Van
Van (Dutch)
Van is a preposition in the Dutch and Afrikaans languages, meaning "of" or "from". It is also a common prefix in Dutch surnames , as in Vincent van Gogh or Marco van Basten...
Vliet, while Snouffer became Alex St. Clair (sometimes spelled Claire). Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band signed to A&M
A&M Records
A&M Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that operates under the mantle of its Interscope-Geffen-A&M division.-Beginnings:...
and released two single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
s in 1966. The first was a version of Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
's "Diddy Wah Diddy
Diddy Wah Diddy
"Diddy Wah Diddy" is a song written by Willie Dixon and Ellas McDaniel—known as Bo Diddley—and recorded by the latter in 1956. Over the years, the song has been covered by many bands and artists, including The Astronauts, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, The Remains, The Twilights, Taj Mahal,...
" that became a regional hit in Los Angeles. The followup, "Moonchild" (written by David Gates
David Gates
David Gates is an American singer-songwriter, best known as the lead singer of the group Bread, which reached the tops of the musical charts in Europe and North America on several occasions in the 1970s. The band was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame...
) was less well received. The band played music venues that catered to underground artists, such as the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.
Safe as Milk
After fulfilling their deal for two singles the band presented demos to A&M during 1966 for what would become the Safe as MilkSafe as Milk (album)
Safe as Milk is the début album by Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, originally released in 1967. It is a heavily blues-influenced work, but also hints at many of the features—such as surreal lyrics and odd time signatures—that would later become trademarks of Beefheart's music.The album is also...
album. A&M's Jerry Moss
Jerry Moss
Jerome S. "Jerry" Moss is an American recording executive, best known for being the co-founder of A&M Records, along with trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert....
reportedly described this new direction as "too negative" and dropped the band from the label, although still under contract. Much of the demo recording was accomplished at Art Laboe
Art Laboe
Art Laboe is an American pioneering disc jockey, songwriter, record producer, and radio station owner who is generally credited with coining the term "Oldies But Goodies."....
's Original Sound Studio, then with Gary Marker
Gary Marker
Gary 'Magic' Marker is a bass guitarist and recording engineer best known for his involvement in various psychedelic rock bands of the 1960s....
on the controls at Sunset Sound
Sunset Sound Recorders
Sunset Sound Recorders is a recording studio in Hollywood, California, located at 6650 Sunset Boulevard.The Sunset Sound Recorders complex was converted in 1962 by Walt Disney's Director of Recording, Tutti Camarata, from a collection of old commercial and residential buildings - some built more...
on 8-track. By the end of 1966 they were signed to Buddah Records
Buddah Records
Buddah Records was founded in 1967 in New York City. The label was born out of Kama Sutra Records, an MGM Records-distributed label, which remained a key imprint following Buddah's founding...
and much of the demo work was transferred to 4-track, at the behest of Krasnow
Bob Krasnow
Bob Krasnow is a leading music industry entrepreneur. His early career included working as a promotions man for James Brown and sales representative for Decca Records. In the early 1960s, Krasnow founded MK Records, which released the novelty record "," a parody of the 1960 presidential campaign...
and Perry
Richard Perry
Richard Perry is an American music producer. Perry began as a performer in his adolescence, but shifted gears after graduating college and rose through the late 1960s and early 1970s to become a highly successful and popular record producer with over a dozen gold records to his credit by 1982...
, in the RCA Studio in Hollywood, where the recording was finalized. Tracks that were originally laid down in the demo by Doug Moon are therefore taken up by Cooder's work in the release, as Moon had departed over 'musical differences' at this juncture.
Drummer John French
John French (musician)
John "Drumbo" French is an American drummer and musician. He played on Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and on various other Beefheart recordings: Beefheart dubbed him "Drumbo"...
had now joined the group and it would later (notably on Trout Mask Replica) be his patience that was required to transcribe Van Vliet's creative ideas (often expressed by whistling or banging on the piano) into musical form for the other group members. On French's departure this role was taken over by Bill Harkleroad
Bill Harkleroad
Bill Harkleroad, known professionally as Zoot Horn Rollo , is an American guitarist. He is best known for his work with Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band...
for Lick My Decals Off, Baby.
Many of the lyrics on the Safe as Milk album were written by Van Vliet in collaboration with the writer Herb Bermann, who befriended Van Vliet after seeing him perform at a bar-gig in Lancaster in 1966. The song "Electricity" was a poem written by Bermann, who gave Van Vliet permission to adapt it to music.
Much of the Safe as Milk material was honed and arranged by the arrival of 20-year–old guitar prodigy Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, who had been brought into the group after much pressure from Vliet. The band began recording in spring 1967, with Richard Perry
Richard Perry
Richard Perry is an American music producer. Perry began as a performer in his adolescence, but shifted gears after graduating college and rose through the late 1960s and early 1970s to become a highly successful and popular record producer with over a dozen gold records to his credit by 1982...
cutting his teeth in his first job as producer. The album was released in September 1967. Richie Unterberger of Allmusic called the album "blues–rock gone slightly askew, with jagged, fractured rhythms, soulful, twisting vocals from Van Vliet, and more doo wop, soul, straight blues, and folk–rock influences than he would employ on his more avant garde outings".
Recognition
Among those who took notice were The BeatlesThe Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
. Both John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
and Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
were known as great admirers of Beefheart. Lennon displayed two of the album's promotional 'baby bumper stickers' in the sunroom at his home. Later, the Beatles planned to sign Beefheart to their experimental Zapple label (plans that were scrapped after Allen Klein
Allen Klein
Allen Klein was an American businessman, talent agent and record label executive. His clients included The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.- The accountant :...
took over the group's management). Van Vliet was often critical of the Beatles, however. He considered the lyric "I'd love to turn you on", from their song "A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life
"A Day in the Life" is a song by The Beatles, the final track on the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with orchestral additions...
", to be ridiculous and conceited. Tiring of their "lullabies", he lampooned them with the Strictly Personal song "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones", that featured the sardonic refrain of "strawberry fields, strawberry fields forever
Strawberry Fields Forever
"Strawberry Fields Forever" is a song by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and attributed to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. It was inspired by Lennon's memories of playing in the garden of a Salvation Army house named "Strawberry Field" near his childhood home."Strawberry Fields...
". It should also be noted that 'strawberry fields' could also be an oblique reference to a form of LSD circulating at the time. The album's five 'acid stamps' and first track "Ah Feel like Ahcid" may underline this, whilst 'Smokin' Stones' is probably a 'pro comment' on the contrasting rhythm and blues style of the Rolling Stones. Vliet spoke badly of Lennon after getting no response when he sent a telegram of support to him and wife Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
during their 1969 "Bed–In
Bed-In
During the Vietnam War, in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two week-long Bed-Ins for Peace in Amsterdam and Montreal, which were their non-violent ways of protesting wars and promoting peace...
for peace". Van Vliet did meet McCartney in Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
during the Magic Band's 1968 tour of Europe, though McCartney later claimed to have no recollection of this meeting.
The flipside of success
Doug Moon left the band because of his dislike of the band's increasing experimentation outside his preferred blues genre. Ry Cooder told of Moon becoming so angered by Van Vliet's unrelenting criticism that he walked into the room pointing a loaded crossbowCrossbow
A crossbow is a weapon consisting of a bow mounted on a stock that shoots projectiles, often called bolts or quarrels. The medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which derived from the word ballista, a torsion engine resembling a crossbow in appearance.Historically, crossbows played a...
at him, only to be told "Get that fucking thing out of here, get out of here and get back in your room", which he obeyed. (Other band members have disputed this account, although Moon is likely to have 'passed through' the studio with a weapon.) Moon was present during the early demo sessions at Original Sound studio
Original Sound
Original Sound is a Los Angeles, California-based record label. It was founded in the early 1950s by KPOP deejay Art Laboe. It began as a small label that specialized in compiling and re-releasing "oldies" R&B and rock 'n' roll songs...
, above the Kama Sutra
Kama Sutra Records
Kama Sutra Records was started in 1964 by Arthur "Artie" Ripp, Hy Mizrahi and Phil Steinberg as Kama Sutra Productions, a production house. The word "Kama Sutra" is a Sanskrit terminology....
/Buddah offices. The works Moon laid down did not see the light of day, as he was replaced by Cooder when they continued on material at Sunset Sound
Sunset Sound Recorders
Sunset Sound Recorders is a recording studio in Hollywood, California, located at 6650 Sunset Boulevard.The Sunset Sound Recorders complex was converted in 1962 by Walt Disney's Director of Recording, Tutti Camarata, from a collection of old commercial and residential buildings - some built more...
with Marker. Marker then fell by the wayside when recording was moved by Krasnow and Perry to RCA Studio. This would have a profound effect on the quality of the Safe as Milk work, as the former studio was 8-track and the subsequent studio a 4-track.
To support the album's release the group had been scheduled to play at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival
Monterey Pop Festival
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California...
. During this period Vliet suffered severe anxiety attacks
Panic attack
Panic attacks are periods of intense fear or apprehension that are of sudden onset and of relatively brief duration. Panic attacks usually begin abruptly, reach a peak within 10 minutes, and subside over the next several hours...
that made him convinced that he was having a heart attack, probably exacerbated by his heavy LSD use and the fact that his father died of heart failure a few years earlier. At a vital 'warm-up' performance at the Mt. Tamalpais Festival (June 10/11) shortly before the scheduled Monterey Festival (June 16/18), the band began to play "Electricity" and Van Vliet froze, straightened his tie, then walked off the ten–foot stage and landed on manager Bob Krasnow
Bob Krasnow
Bob Krasnow is a leading music industry entrepreneur. His early career included working as a promotions man for James Brown and sales representative for Decca Records. In the early 1960s, Krasnow founded MK Records, which released the novelty record "," a parody of the 1960 presidential campaign...
. He later claimed he had seen a girl in the audience turn into a fish, with bubbles coming from her mouth. This aborted any opportunity of breakthrough success at Monterey, as Cooder immediately decided he could no longer work with Van Vliet, effectively quitting both the event and the band on the spot. With such complex guitar parts there was no means for the band to find a competent replacement in time for Monterey. Cooder's spot was eventually filled for a short spell by Gerry McGee, who had played with The Monkees
The Monkees (album)
The Monkees is the first album by the band The Monkees. It was released in October 1966 by Colgems Records in the United States and RCA Records in the rest of the world. It was the first of four consecutive U.S. number one albums for the group, taking the top spot on the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks....
. According to French the band did two gigs with McGee, one of which was at The Peppermint Twist near Long Beach. The other was at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium is a multipurpose convention center in Santa Monica, California owned by the City of Santa Monica. It was built in 1958 and designed by Welton Becket....
, 7 August 1967, as opening act to The Yardbirds
The Yardbirds
- Current :* Chris Dreja - rhythm guitar, backing vocals * Jim McCarty - drums, backing vocals * Ben King - lead guitar * David Smale - bass, backing vocals...
. McGee was in the group long enough to have an outfit made by a Santa Monica boutique that also created the gear worn by the band on the Strictly Personal cover stamps.
Strictly Personal
In August, guitarist Jeff CottonJeff Cotton
Jeff Cotton is an American rock guitarist, known for his work as a member of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. Cotton first came to attention as guitarist with Merrell and the Exiles, who had a few local hits in 1964 in the Los Angeles area...
filled the guitar spot vacated, in turn, by Cooder and McGee. In October and November 1967 the Snouffer/Cotton/Handley/French line–up recorded material for what was planned to be the second album. Originally intended to be a double album called It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper for the label, it was released later in pieces in 1971 and 1995. After rejection from Buddah, Bob Krasnow encouraged the band to re–record four of the shorter numbers, to add two more, and make shorter versions of "Mirror Man" and "Kandy Korn". The music was already weakly recorded with a trebly thin sound; Krasnow then implemented a strange mix full of "phasing" that by most accounts (including Beefheart's) diminished the music's strength; this was released in October 1968 as Strictly Personal
Strictly Personal
-Personnel:*Don Van Vliet - vocals, harmonica*Alex St. Clair - guitar*Jeff Cotton - guitar*Jerry Handley - bass guitar*John French - drums-External links:* at the Captain Beefheart Radar Station....
on Krasnow's Blue Thumb
Blue Thumb Records
Blue Thumb Records was an American record label founded in 1968 by Bob Krasnow, along with former A&M Records executives Tommy LiPuma and Don Graham. Krasnow had been in the record business for a number of years, working as a promotion man for King Records and also working for Buddah/Kama Sutra...
label. Stewart Mason in his Allmusic review of the album described it as a "terrific album" and a "fascinating, underrated release", "every bit the equal of Safe as Milk and Trout Mask Replica". Langdon Winner
Langdon Winner
Langdon Winner is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies atRensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York since 1990....
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
called Strictly Personal "an excellent album. The guitars of the Magic Band mercilessly bend and stretch notes in a way that suggests that the world of music has wobbled clear off its axis," with the lyrics demonstrating "Beefheart's ability to juxtapose delightful humor with frightening insights". Van Vliet furthered his own mythology through interviews.
Mirror Man
In 1971 some of the recordings done for Buddah were released as Mirror Man, bearing a liner note claiming that the material had been recorded "one night in Los Angeles in 1965". This was a ruse to circumvent possible copyrightCopyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
issues; the material was actually recorded in November and December 1967. Essentially a "jam
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
" album, described as pushing "the boundaries of conventional blues–rock, with a Beefheart vocal tossed in here and there. Some may miss Beefheart's surreal poetry, gruff vocals, and/or free jazz influence, while others may find it fascinating to hear the Magic Band simply letting go and cutting loose". The album's 'miss-credit errors' also state band members as "Alex St. Clare Snouffer" (Alex St. Clare/Alexis Snouffer), "Antennae Jimmy Simmons" (Semens/Jeff Cotton) and "Jerry Handsley" (Handley). First vinyl was issued in both a die-cut gatefold (revealing a 'cracked' mirror) and a single sleeve with same image. The UK Buddah issue was part of the Polydor-manufactured 'Select' series.
During his first trip to England in January 1968, Captain Beefheart was briefly represented in the UK by mod icon Peter Meaden
Peter Meaden
Peter Alexander Edwin Meaden was a publicist for various musicians and the first manager for The Who. He was a prominent figure in the English mod subculture of the early 1960s....
, an early manager of The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
. The Captain and his band members were initially denied entry to the United Kingdom, because Meaden had illegally booked them for gigs without applying for appropriate work permit
Work permit
Work permit is a generic term for a legal authorization which allows a person to take employment.It is most often used in reference to instances where a person is given permission to work in a country where one does not hold citizenship, but is also used in reference to minors, who in some...
s. After returning to Germany for a few days, the group was permitted to re-enter the UK, when they recorded material for John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
's radio show and appeared at the Middle Earth venue, introduced by Peel on Saturday 20 January. By this time, they had terminated their association with Meaden. On January 27, 1968, Beefheart achieved one of his most memorable live performances, when the band performed in the MIDEM Music Festival
Midem
-MIDEM:Short for Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale, MIDEM is the world's largest music industry trade fair, which has been held annually at and around the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France, since 1967...
on the beach at Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
, France.
Alex St. Claire left the band in June 1968 after their return from a second European tour and was replaced by teenager Bill Harkleroad; bassist Jerry Handley left a few weeks later.
The Mirror Man Sessions and new Buddha
In 1999 the defunct Buddah label emerged with a new look, a correct title spelling and relevant 'deity' image - replacing the silhouetted 'Shiva' image and Buddah name for Beefheart material. The Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) now had the Buddah catalogue, producing both a remastered CD of Safe as Milk and a CD titled The Mirror Man Sessions, the latter providing an insight to the Mirror Man and Strictly Personal albums, and recordings relating to the 'Brown Wrapper' project. The tracks are presented as "Original Masters" and provides further insight to the interpolating material that also appears on It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper. The insert also shows the entire band in Quaker hats and outfits.The 'Brown Wrapper' Sessions
After their Euro tour and the Cannes beach performance the band returned to the USA. Moves were already in the air for them to leave Buddah and sign to MGM and, prior to their May tour - mainly in the UK - they re-recorded some Buddah material of the partial Mirror Man sessions at Sunset Sound with Bruce BotnickBruce Botnick
Bruce Botnick is an American audio engineer and record producer, best known for his work with The Doors, and with Love. He engineered Love's first two albums, and co-produced their third album, Forever Changes, with the band's singer-songwriter, Arthur Lee.In November 1970, he took over production...
. Beefheart had also been conceptualizing new band names, including "25th Century Quaker" and "Blue Thumb", whilst making suggestions to other musicians that they might get involved. The thought-process of "25th Century Quaker" was that it would be a 'blues band' alias for the more avant-garde work of the Magic Band. Photographer Guy Webster actually photographed the band in Quaker-style outfits, and the picture appears in The Mirror Man Sessions CD insert. It would later transpire that much of this situation was transient and that Buddah's Bob Krasnow was to set up his own label. The label that was unsurprisingly named Blue Thumb
Blue Thumb Records
Blue Thumb Records was an American record label founded in 1968 by Bob Krasnow, along with former A&M Records executives Tommy LiPuma and Don Graham. Krasnow had been in the record business for a number of years, working as a promotion man for King Records and also working for Buddah/Kama Sutra...
launched with its first release Strictly Personal, a truncated version of the original Beefheart vision of a double album. Thus "25th Century Quaker" became a track and a potential band-name became a label
Blue Thumb Records
Blue Thumb Records was an American record label founded in 1968 by Bob Krasnow, along with former A&M Records executives Tommy LiPuma and Don Graham. Krasnow had been in the record business for a number of years, working as a promotion man for King Records and also working for Buddah/Kama Sutra...
.
In overview, the works for the double album in this period were intended to be packaged in a plain brown wrapper, with a 'strictly personal' over-stamp and addressed in a manner that could have connotations of drug content, pornographic or illicit material; As per the small ads of the time; "It comes to you in a plain brown wrapper". Given that Krasnow had effectively poached the band from Buddah there were limitations on what material could be released. Strictly Personal was the result, contained in its enigmatically-addressed parcel sleeve. The raft of material left behind eventually emerged, firstly on CD as I May Be Hungry, But I Sure Ain't Weird and later on vinyl, implemented by John French, as It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper (which has two tracks that are missing from the former release). Both Blue Thumb and the stamps on the cover of Strictly Personal have LSD connotations, as does the track "Ah Feel Like Ahcid".
Trout Mask Replica, 1969
Critically acclaimed as Van Vliet's magnum opusMagnum opus
Magnum opus , from the Latin meaning "great work", refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of a writer, artist, or composer.-Related terms:Sometimes the term magnum opus is used to refer to simply "a great work" rather than "the...
, Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica is the third album by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, released in June 1969. Produced by Beefheart's friend and former schoolmate Frank Zappa, it was originally released as a double album on Zappa's Straight Records label...
was released as a 28 track double album in June 1969 on Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
's newly formed Straight Records
Straight Records
Straight Records was a record label formed in 1969 to distribute productions and discoveries of Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager Herb Cohen. Straight was formed at the same time as a companion label, Bizarre Records. Straight and Bizarre were manufactured and distributed in the U.S. by...
label. First issues, in the USA, were auto-coupled and housed in the black 'Straight' liners along with a 6-page lyric sheet illustrated by The Mascara Snake
The Mascara Snake
The Mascara Snake, real name Victor Hayden, was a cousin and friend of Captain Beefheart . He joined The Magic Band in 1969, and is credited playing bass clarinet on Trout Mask Replica...
. A school-age portrait of Van Vliet appears on the front of this sheet, whilst the cover of the gatefold enigmatically shows Beefheart in a 'Quaker'
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
hat, obscuring his face with the head of a fish. The fish is a carp - arguably a 'replica' for a trout, photographed by Cal Schenkel
Cal Schenkel
Cal Schenkel is an artist specialising in album cover design. He was the main visual collaborator for Frank Zappa and was responsible for the art and graphic design of many of Zappa's most well-known album covers. Schenkel's work is iconic and distinctive in style; a forerunner of punk art and...
. The inner spread 'infra-red' photography is by Ed Caraeff
Ed Caraeff
Ed Caraeff is a photographer, illustrator and graphic designer, who has worked largely in the music industry. He has art directed, photographed and designed hundreds of record album covers from 1967 to 1982 for numerous artists, including Elton John, Carly Simon, Three Dog Night and Dolly Parton...
, whose Beefheart vacuum cleaner images from this session also appear on Zappa's Hot Rats
Hot Rats
Hot Rats is the second solo album by Frank Zappa. It was released in October 1969. Five of the six songs are instrumental . It was Zappa's first recording project after the dissolution of the original Mothers of Invention...
release (a month earlier) to accompany "Willie The Pimp" lyrics sung by Vliet. Alex St. Clair had now left the band and, after Junior Madeo from The Blackouts was considered, the role was filled by Bill Harkleroad. Bassist Jerry Handley had also departed, with Gary Marker stepping in. Thus the long rehearsals for the album began in the house on Ensenada Drive in Woodland Hills, L.A., that would become the infamous 'Magic Band House'.
The Magic Band began recordings for Trout Mask Replica with bassist Gary 'Magic' Marker
Gary Marker
Gary 'Magic' Marker is a bass guitarist and recording engineer best known for his involvement in various psychedelic rock bands of the 1960s....
at T.T.G.
TTG Studios
TTG Studios was a recording studio in Los Angeles, California, founded by Ami Hadani and Tom Hidley.-Studio:"TTG" stood for "two terrible guys." The studio was first established in 1965 at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue, in Hollywood section of Los Angeles...
(on "Moonlight On Vermont" and "Veteran's Day Poppy"), but later enlisted bassist Mark Boston after his departure. The remainder of the album was recorded at Whitney Studios, with some field recording
Field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...
s made at the house. Boston was acquainted with French and Harkleroad via past bands. Van Vliet had also begun assigning nicknames to his band members, so Harkleroad became "Zoot Horn Rollo", and Boston became "Rockette Morton
Rockette Morton
Rockette Morton is an American musician, best known as a bass guitarist and guitarist for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band in the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
", while John French assumed the name "Drumbo
John French (musician)
John "Drumbo" French is an American drummer and musician. He played on Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and on various other Beefheart recordings: Beefheart dubbed him "Drumbo"...
", and Jeff Cotton became "Antennae Jimmy Semens". Van Vliet's cousin Victor Hayden, "The Mascara Snake
The Mascara Snake
The Mascara Snake, real name Victor Hayden, was a cousin and friend of Captain Beefheart . He joined The Magic Band in 1969, and is credited playing bass clarinet on Trout Mask Replica...
", performed as a bass clarinetist later in the proceedings. Vliet's girlfriend Laurie Stone, who can be heard laughing at the beginning of "Fallin' Ditch", would also became an audio typist
Audio typist
An audio typist is someone who specialises in typing text from an audio source which they listen to. The source, or original document is usually recorded onto microcassettes created by someone dictating into a Dictaphone...
at the Magic Band house.
Van Vliet wanted the whole band to "live" the Trout Mask Replica album. The group rehearsed Van Vliet's difficult compositions for eight months, living communally
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
in their small rented house in the Woodland Hills
Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California
Woodland Hills is a district in the city of Los Angeles, California.Woodland Hills is located in the southwestern area of the San Fernando Valley, east of Calabasas and west of Tarzana, with Warner Center in its northern section...
suburb of Los Angeles. With only two bedrooms the band members would find sleep in various corners of one, whilst Vliet occupied the other and rehearsals were accomplished in the main living area. Van Vliet implemented his vision by completely dominating his musicians, artistically and emotionally. At various times one or another of the group members was "put in the barrel," with Van Vliet berating him continually, sometimes for days, until the musician collapsed in tears or in total submission. Drummer John French
John French (musician)
John "Drumbo" French is an American drummer and musician. He played on Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and on various other Beefheart recordings: Beefheart dubbed him "Drumbo"...
described the situation as "cultlike" and a visiting friend said "the environment in that house was positively Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
esque." Their material circumstances were dire. With no income other than welfare and contributions from relatives, the group barely survived and were even arrested for shoplifting food (Zappa bailed them out). French has recalled living on no more than a small cup of beans a day for a month. A visitor described their appearance as "cadaverous" and said that "they all looked in poor health." Band members were restricted from leaving the house and practiced for 14 or more hours a day.
Physical assaults were encouraged at times, along with verbal degradation. Beefheart spoke of studying texts on brainwashing at a public library at about this time, and appeared to be applying brainwashing techniques to his bandmembers: sleep deprivation, food deprivation, constant negative reinforcement, and rewarding bandmembers when they attacked each other or competed with each other. At one point Cotton ran from the house and escaped for a few weeks, during which time Alex Snouffer filled in for him and helped to work up "Ant Man Bee". French, who had thrown a metal cymbal at Cotton, ran after him yelling that he too wanted to come. Cotton later returned to the house with French's mother, who took him away for a few weeks, but he later felt compelled to return, as did Cotton. Mark Boston at one point hid clothes in a field across the street, planning his own getaway.
John French's 2010 book Through the Eyes of Magic describes some of the "talks" which were initiated by his actions such as being heard playing a Frank Zappa drum part ("The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)") in his drumming shed, and not having finished drum parts as quickly as Beefheart wanted. French writes of being punched by band members, thrown into walls, kicked, punched in the face by Beefheart hard enough to draw blood, being attacked with a sharp broomstick, and eventually of Beefheart threatening to throw him out of an upper floor window. He admits complicity in similarly attacking his bandmates during "talks" aimed at them. In the end, after the album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
's recording, French was ejected from the band by Beefheart throwing him down a set of stairs with violence, telling him to "Take a walk, man" after not responding in a desired manner to a request to "play a strawberry" on the drums. Beefheart replaced French with drummer Jeff Bruschel, an acquaintance of Hayden. Referred to as 'Fake Drumbo' (playing on French's drumset) this final act resulted in French's name not appearing on the album credits, either as a player or arranger. Bruschel toured with the band to Europe but was replaced by the next recording.
According to Van Vliet, the 28 songs on the album were written in a single 8½ hour session at the piano, an instrument which he had no skill in playing, an approach Mike Barnes compared to John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
's "maverick irreverence toward classical tradition", though band members have stated that the songs were written over the course of about a year, beginning around December 1967. (The band did watch Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
's 1963 film 8½
8½
8½ is a 1963 Italian fantasy film directed by Federico Fellini. Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director...
during the creation of the album). It took the band about eight months to mold the songs into shape, with French bearing primary responsibility for transposing and shaping Vliet's piano fragments into guitar and bass lines, which were mostly notated on paper. Harkleroad in 1998 said in retrospect: "We're dealing with a strange person, coming from a place of being a sculptor/painter, using music as his idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
. He was getting more into that part of who he was instead of this blues singer." The band had rehearsed the songs so thoroughly that the instrumental tracks for 21 of the songs were recorded in a single four and a half hour recording session. Van Vliet spent the next few days overdubbing the vocals. The album's title came from its cover artwork, which was photographed and designed by Cal Schenkel
Cal Schenkel
Cal Schenkel is an artist specialising in album cover design. He was the main visual collaborator for Frank Zappa and was responsible for the art and graphic design of many of Zappa's most well-known album covers. Schenkel's work is iconic and distinctive in style; a forerunner of punk art and...
; Van Vliet wearing the raw head of a carp, bought from a local fish market and fashioned into a mask by Schenkel.
Trout Mask Replica incorporated a wide variety of musical styles, including blues, avant garde/experimental, and rock. The relentless practice prior to recording blended the music into an iconoclast
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...
ic whole of contrapuntal tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
s, featuring slide guitar
Slide guitar
Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
, polyrhythmic drumming (with French's drums and cymbals covered in cardboard), honking saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
and bass clarinet
Bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
. Van Vliet's vocals range from his signature Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
inspired growl to frenzied falsetto
Falsetto
Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...
to laconic, casual ramblings.
The instrumental backing was effectively recorded live in the studio, while Van Vliet overdubbed most of the vocals in only partial synch with the music by hearing the slight sound leakage through the studio window. Zappa said of Van Vliet's approach, "[it was] impossible to tell him why things should be such and such a way. It seemed to me that if he was going to create a unique object, that the best thing for me to do was to keep my mouth shut as much as possible and just let him do whatever he wanted to do whether I thought it was wrong or not."
Van Vliet used the ensuing publicity, particularly with a 1970 Rolling Stone interview with Langdon Winner, to promulgate a number of myths which were subsequently quoted as fact. Winner's article stated, for instance, that neither Van Vliet nor the members of the Magic Band ever took drugs, but Harkleroad later contradicted this. Van Vliet claimed to have taught both Harkleroad and Boston to play their instruments from scratch; in fact the pair were already accomplished young musicians before joining the band. Last, Van Vliet claimed to have gone a year and half without sleeping. When asked how this was possible, he claimed to have only eaten fruit.
Critic Steve Huey of Allmusic writes that the album's influence "was felt more in spirit than in direct copycatting, as a catalyst rather than a literal musical starting point. However, its inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless experiments in rock surrealism to follow, especially during the punk and New Wave era." In 2003, the album was ranked fifty-eighth by Rolling Stone in their list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...
: "On first listen, Trout Mask Replica sounds like raw Delta blues
Delta blues
The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The...
", with Beefheart "singing and ranting and reciting poetry over fractured guitar licks. But the seeming sonic chaos is an illusion—to construct the songs, the Magic Band rehearsed twelve hours a day for months on end in a house with the windows blacked out. (Producer Frank Zappa was then able to record most of the album in less than five hours.) Tracks such as "Ella Guru" and "My Human Gets Me Blues" are the direct predecessors of modern musical primitives such as Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
and PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
". Guitarist Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...
noted that during this process "forces that usually emerge in improvisation are harnessed and made constant, repeatable."
Critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
gave the album a B+, saying that "I find it impossible to give this record an A because it is just too weird. But I'd like to. Very great played at high volume when you're feeling shitty, because you'll never feel as shitty as this record". BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
said of the album: "If there has been anything in the history of popular music which could be described as a work of art in a way that people who are involved in other areas of art would understand, then Trout Mask Replica is probably that work." It was inducted into the United States National Recording Registry
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording...
in 2011.
Lick My Decals Off, Baby
Lick My Decals Off, BabyLick My Decals Off, Baby
-Personnel:* Captain Beefheart – vocals, bass clarinet, tenor sax, soprano sax, harmonica* Zoot Horn Rollo – guitar and glass finger guitar* Rockette Morton – "bassius-o-pheilius"...
(1970) continued in a similarly experimental vein. An album with "a very coherent structure" in the Magic Band's "most experimental and visionary stage", it was Van Vliet's most commercially successful in the United Kingdom, spending twenty weeks on the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
and peaking at number 20. An early promotional music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
was made of its title song, and a bizarre television commercial was also filmed that included excerpts from "Woe-Is-uh-Me-Bop", silent footage of masked Magic Band members using kitchen utensils as musical instruments, and Beefheart kicking over a bowl of what appears to be porridge onto a dividing stripe in the middle of a road. The video was rarely played but was accepted into the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, where it has been used in several programs related to music.
On this LP Art Tripp III
Art Tripp
Arthur Dyer Tripp III is a chiropractor and former musician best known for his work as a percussionist with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band.-Early career:Tripp grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and started playing drums in...
, formerly of the Mothers of Invention, played drums and marimba. Lick My Decals Off, Baby was the first record on which the band was credited as "The Magic Band", rather than "His Magic Band"; journalist Irwin Chusid
Irwin Chusid
Irwin Chusid is a journalist, music historian, radio personality and self-described "landmark preservationist." His stated mission has been to "find things on the scrapheap of history that I know don't belong there and salvage them." Those "things" have included such previously overlooked but...
interprets this change as "a grudging concession of its members' at least semiautonomous humanity." Robert Christgau gave the album an A-, commenting that "Beefheart's famous five-octave range and covert totalitarian structures have taken on a playful undertone, repulsive and engrossing and slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
funny". Due to licensing disputes, Lick My Decals Off, Baby was unavailable on CD for many years, though it remained in print on vinyl. It was ranked second in Uncut
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
magazine's May 2010 list of "The 50 Greatest Lost Albums". In 2011, the album became available for download on the iTunes Store
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
.
The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot
The next two records, The Spotlight KidThe Spotlight Kid
The Spotlight Kid is the sixth album by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, originally released in 1972. It is the only album formally credited solely to Captain Beefheart. Often cited as one of the most accessible of Beefheart's albums, it is solidly founded in the blues but also uses...
(simply credited to "Captain Beefheart") and Clear Spot
Clear Spot
Clear Spot is the seventh album by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, originally released on LP in 1972 in a clear plastic sleeve.After Trout Mask Replica, which was critically acclaimed but sold poorly, each of the group's following three albums was slightly more conventional than the one before...
(credited to "Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band"), were both released in 1972. The atmosphere of The Spotlight Kid is "definitely relaxed and fun, maybe one step up from a jam." And though "things do sound maybe just a little too blasé," "Beefheart at his worst still has something more than most groups at their best." The music is simpler and slower than on the group's two previous releases, the uncompromisingly original Trout Mask Replica and the frenetic Lick My Decals Off, Baby. This was in part an attempt by Van Vliet to become a more appealing commercial proposition as the band had made virtually no money during the previous two years—at the time of recording, the band members were subsisting on welfare food handouts and remittances from their parents. Van Vliet offered that he "got tired of scaring people with what I was doing... I realized that I had to give them something to hang their hat on, so I started working more of a beat into the music." Magic Band members have also said that the slower performances were due in part to Van Vliet's inability to fit his lyrics with the instrumental backing of the faster material on the earlier albums, a problem that was exacerbated in that he almost never rehearsed with the group. In the period leading up to the recording the band lived communally, first at a compound near Ben Lomond, California
Ben Lomond, California
Ben Lomond is a census-designated place in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, and also the name of the mountain to the west. The population was 6,234 at the 2010 census.-History:...
and then in northern California near Trinidad
Trinidad, California
Trinidad is a seaside city in Humboldt County, located on the Pacific Ocean north of the Arcata-Eureka Airport and north of the college town of Arcata...
. The situation saw a return to the physical violence and psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
that had taken place during the band's previous communal residence while composing and rehearsing Trout Mask Replica. According to John French, the worst of this was directed toward Harkleroad. In his autobiography Harkleroad recalls being thrown into a dumpster, an act he interpreted as having metaphorical intent.
Clear Spots production credit of Ted Templeman
Ted Templeman
Ted Templeman is an American record producer.-Career:He began his career in the mid 1960s in the Santa Cruz area as a drummer in a band called The Tikis. At the suggestion of Lenny Waronker, the group decided to change their name. Harpers Bizarre was born in 1966, with Templeman switching to...
made Allmusic consider "why in the world [it] wasn't more of a commercial success than it was," and that while fans "of the fully all-out side of Beefheart might find the end result not fully up to snuff as a result, but those less concerned with pushing back all borders all the time will enjoy his unexpected blend of everything tempered with a new accessibility." The song "Big Eyed Beans from Venus" is noted as "a fantastically strange piece of aggression." A Clear Spot song, "Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles", appeared on the soundtrack of the Coen brothers
Coen Brothers
Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers...
' cult comedy film The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski is a 1998 comedy film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Jeff Bridges stars as Jeff Lebowski, an unemployed Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler, who is referred to as "The Dude". After a case of mistaken identity, The Dude is introduced to a millionaire also named...
(1998).
Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams
In 1974, immediately after the recording of Unconditionally GuaranteedUnconditionally Guaranteed
Unconditionally Guaranteed is the eighth LP by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band, originally released in 1974. Upon release it was criticised for being too commercial; in any case, it failed to give Beefheart any real chart success, peaking at #192 on the Billboard Top 200.Immediately after...
, which markedly continued the trend towards a more commercial sound heard on some of the Clear Spot tracks, the Magic Band's original members departed. Disgruntled and past members worked together for a period, gigging at Blue Lake
Blue Lake, California
Blue Lake is a city in Humboldt County, California, United States. Blue Lake is located on the Mad River northeast of Eureka, at an elevation of 131 feet...
and putting together their own ideas and demos, with John French earmarked as the vocalist. These concepts eventually coalesced around the core of Art Tripp III
Art Tripp
Arthur Dyer Tripp III is a chiropractor and former musician best known for his work as a percussionist with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band.-Early career:Tripp grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and started playing drums in...
, Harkleroad and Boston, with the formation of Mallard
Mallard (band)
Mallard was the name of a band featuring ex-members of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band.In early 1974, after the recording of the uncharacteristically mainstream Unconditionally Guaranteed album, the tensions between Captain Beefheart and bandmembers Bill Harkleroad , Mark Boston and Art Tripp III ...
, helped by finance and UK recording facilities from Jethro Tull's
Jethro Tull (band)
Jethro Tull are a British rock group formed in 1967. Their music is characterised by the vocals, acoustic guitar, and flute playing of Ian Anderson, who has led the band since its founding, and the guitar work of Martin Barre, who has been with the band since 1969.Initially playing blues rock with...
Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson (musician)
Ian Scott Anderson, MBE is a Scottish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, best known for his work as the leader and flautist of British rock band Jethro Tull.-Early life:...
. Some of French's compositions were used in the band's work, but the group's singer was Sam Galpin and the role of keyboardist was eventually taken by John Thomas, who had shared a house with French in Eureka
Eureka, California
Eureka is the principal city and the county seat of Humboldt County, California, United States. Its population was 27,191 at the 2010 census, up from 26,128 at the 2000 census....
at the time. At this time Vliet attempted to recruit both French and Harkleroad as producers for his next album, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Andy Di Martino produced both of these Virgin label
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
albums.
Vliet was forced to quickly form a new Magic Band to complete support-tour dates, with musicians who had no experience with his music and in fact had never heard it. Having no knowledge of the previous Magic Band style, they simply improvised what they thought would go with each song, playing much slicker versions that have been described as "bar band" versions of Beefheart songs. A review described this incarnation of the Magic Band as the "Tragic Band", a term that has stuck over the years. Mike Barnes said that the description of the new band "grooving along pleasantly", was "an appropriately banal description of the music of a man who only a few years ago composed with the expressed intent of shaking listeners out of their torpor". The one album they recorded, Bluejeans & Moonbeams
Bluejeans & Moonbeams
Bluejeans & Moonbeams is the ninth LP by Captain Beefheart, originally released in 1974. Despite its uncharacteristically mainstream sound the album failed to chart...
(1974) has, like its predecessor, a completely different, almost soft rock
Soft rock
Soft rock is a style of music which uses the techniques of rock music to compose a softer, more toned-down sound. Soft rock songs generally tend to focus on themes like love, everyday life and relationships. The genre tends to make heavy use of acoustic guitars, pianos, synthesizers and sometimes...
sound from any other Beefheart record. Neither was well received; drummer Art Tripp recalled that when he and the original Magic Band listened to Unconditionally Guaranteed, they "were horrified. As we listened, it was as though each song was worse than the one which preceded it." Beefheart later disowned both albums, calling them "horrible and vulgar", asking that they not be considered part of his musical output and urging fans who bought them to "take copies back for a refund".
Bongo Fury to Bat Chain Puller
By the fall of 1975 the band completed their European tour, with further U.S. dates completed into the New Year of 1976, supporting Zappa along with Dr. JohnDr. John
Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. , better known by the stage name Dr. John , is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as Zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider...
. Van Vliet now found himself stuck in a web of contractual hang-ups. At this point Zappa had begun to extend a helping hand, with Vliet already having performed incognito as Rollin' Red on Zappa's One Size Fits All
One Size Fits All
One Size Fits All is a 1975 rock album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. It is the last Zappa album to be released with the subheading of "Mothers of Invention". A special four-channel Quadraphonic version of the album was prepared and advertised, but not released...
(1975) and then joining with him on the Bongo Fury
Bongo Fury
Bongo Fury is a mostly live album released by Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart in 1975. The live portions were recorded on May 20 & 21, 1975 at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas...
album and its later support tour. Two Vliet-penned numbers on the Bongo Fury album are Sam With The Showing Scalp Flat Top and Man With The Woman Head. The form, texture and imagery of this album's first track Debra Kadabra, sung by Vliet, has 'angular similarities' to the work he would later produce in his next three albums. On the Bongo Fury album Vliet also sings "Poofter's Froth, Wyoming Plans Ahead", harmonizes on "200 Years Old" and "Muffin Man" and plays harmonica and soprano saxophone.
In early 1976 Zappa put on his producer hat and, once again, opened up his studio facilities and finance to Vliet. This was for the production of an album provisionally titled Bat Chain Puller. The band were John French (drums), John Thomas (keyboards) and Jeff Moris Tepper and Denny Walley (guitars). Much of the work on this album had been finalized and some demos had been circulated when fate once again struck the Beefheart camp. In May 1976 the long association between Zappa and his manager/business partner Herb Cohen
Herb Cohen
Herbert "Herb" Cohen was an American personal manager, record company executive, and music publisher, best known as the manager of Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, and many other Los Angeles-based musicians in the 1960s and 1970s.-Life and career:Cohen was born in New York...
ceased. This resulted in Zappa's finances and ongoing works becoming part of protracted legal negotiations. The Bat Chain Puller project went 'on ice' and has remained in the Zappa vaults since. Consequently, the thrust and works of this album had to be reworked and recorded again. Some bootlegs on both vinyl and CD, purportedly containing original tracks, have circulated. After this recording John Thomas joined ex-Magic Band members in Mallard
Mallard (band)
Mallard was the name of a band featuring ex-members of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band.In early 1974, after the recording of the uncharacteristically mainstream Unconditionally Guaranteed album, the tensions between Captain Beefheart and bandmembers Bill Harkleroad , Mark Boston and Art Tripp III ...
.
Prior to his next album Beefheart appeared in 1977 on the Tubes
The Tubes
The Tubes are a San Francisco-based rock band, whose 1975 debut album included the hit single, "White Punks on Dope". During its first fifteen years or so, the band's live performances combined quasi-pornography with wild satires of media, consumerism, and politics...
' album Now
Now (The Tubes album)
Now is the third album released by The Tubes. It was partially produced by John Anthony. John Anthony left the project after a drug-induced breakdown, Bill Spooner took over and completed the project with the help of engineer Don Wood....
, playing saxophone on the song "Cathy's Clone", and the album also featured a cover of the Clear Spot song "My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains". In 1978 he appeared on Jack Nitzsche
Jack Nitzsche
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
's soundtrack to the film Blue Collar
Blue Collar (film)
Blue Collar is a 1978 film; the directorial debut of screenwriter Paul Schrader. This drama stars Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto.-Plot:...
.
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
Having extricated himself from a mire of contractual difficulties Beefheart emerged with this new album, in 1978, on the Warner BrosWarner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
label. Shiny Beast contained re-workings of the shelved Bat Chain Puller album and still retained this works' original guitarist, Jeff Moris Tepper. However, he and Vliet were now joined by a whole new line-up of Richard Redus (guitar, bass and accordion), Eric Drew Feldman
Eric Drew Feldman
Eric Drew Feldman is an American keyboard and bass guitar player. Feldman has worked with Captain Beefheart, Fear, Snakefinger, The Residents, Pere Ubu, Pixies, dEUS, Katell Keineg, Frank Black, The Polyphonic Spree, Tripping Daisy, Reid Paley, Charlotte Hatherley, Custard, and PJ Harvey.He was...
(bass, piano and synthesizer), Bruce Lambourne Fowler
Bruce Fowler
Bruce Lambourne Fowler is a prominent American trombone player and composer. He notably played trombone on many Frank Zappa records, as well as with Captain Beefheart, and in the Fowler Brothers Band...
(trombone and air bass), Art Tripp
Art Tripp
Arthur Dyer Tripp III is a chiropractor and former musician best known for his work as a percussionist with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band.-Early career:Tripp grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and started playing drums in...
(percussion and marimba) and Robert Arthur Williams
Robert Williams (drummer)
Robert Williams is a drummer and solo artist who has worked with Captain Beefheart, Hugh Cornwell, John Lydon and Zoogz Rift as well as recording solo.His albums include:*Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band:...
(drums). Thus, the album was suffixed Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
Shiny Beast is the tenth studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band. Originally released in 1978, it is considered to be Beefheart's comeback album following 1974's poorly received efforts, Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams, and is the first of his three critically...
and took on new musical directions. It was co-produced by Vliet with Pete Johnson. Members of this Magic Band and the 'Bat Chain' elements would later feature on Beefheart's last two albums. Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) was described by Ned Raggett of Allmusic to be "...manna from heaven for those feeling Beefheart had lost his way on his two Mercury albums". Following Vliet's death, John French claimed the 40-second spoken word track "Apes-Ma" to be an analogy of Van Vliet's deteriorating physical condition. The album's sleeve features the Don Van Vliet painting Green Tom, made in 1976. One of the many works that would mark out his longed-for career as a painter of note in later years.
Doc At The Radar Station
Doc at the Radar StationDoc at the Radar Station
Doc at the Radar Station is the eleventh studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, released in August 1980 to favorable reviews. The painting on the album cover is by Don Van Vliet himself...
(1980) helped establish Beefheart's late resurgence. Released by Virgin Records
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
during the post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
scene, the music was now accessible to a younger, more receptive audience. He was interviewed in a feature report on KABC-TV
KABC-TV
KABC-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, licensed to Los Angeles, California. KABC-TV's studios are located in Glendale, California...
's Channel 7 Eyewitness News in which he was hailed as "the father of the New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
. One of the most important American composers of the last fifty years, [and] a primitive genius"; Van Vliet said at this period, "I'm doing a non-hypnotic music to break up the catatonic state... and I think there is one right now." Huey of Allmusic cited the Doc at the Radar Station as being "generally acclaimed as the strongest album of his comeback, and by some as his best since Trout Mask Replica", "even if the Captain's voice isn't quite what it once was, Doc at the Radar Station is an excellent, focused consolidation of Beefheart's past and then-present". Van Vliet's biographer Mike Barnes speaks of "revamping work built on skeletal ideas and fragments that would have mouldered away in the vaults had they not been exhumed and transformed into full-blown, totally convincing new material." During this period, Van Vliet made two appearances on David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...
's late night television program on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, and also performed on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
.
Richard Redus and Art Tripp departed on this album, with slide guitar and marimba duties taken up by the reappearance of John French. The guitar skills of Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas is an American guitarist, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, a soundtrack composer for film and television, and an international recording artist with over a dozen solo albums to date. He has been described as "one of the best and most original guitarists in America" ; a "legendary leftfield...
also feature on the track "Flavor Bud Living".
Ice Cream for Crow
The final Beefheart record, Ice Cream for CrowIce Cream for Crow
Ice Cream for Crow is the twelfth and final studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, released in September 1982. It is the last Don Van Vliet recorded before abruptly retiring from music as Captain Beefheart to devote himself to a career as a painter...
(1982), was recorded with Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas is an American guitarist, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, a soundtrack composer for film and television, and an international recording artist with over a dozen solo albums to date. He has been described as "one of the best and most original guitarists in America" ; a "legendary leftfield...
(who was also Van Vliet's manager), Jeff Moris Tepper, Richard Snyder and Cliff Martinez
Cliff Martinez
Cliff Martinez is an American film score composer and former drummer.-Biography:Cliff Martinez was born in the Bronx, New York. Raised in Columbus, Ohio, his first job composing was for the popular television show Pee Wee's Playhouse...
. This line-up made a video to promote the title track, directed by Van Vliet and Ken Schreiber, with cinematography by Daniel Pearl
Daniel Pearl (cinematographer)
Daniel Pearl A.S.C. is an American cinematographer who has worked on many feature films, over 400 music videos and more than 250 commercials. His best known work is probably The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its 2003 remake....
, which was rejected by MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
for being "too weird." However, the video was included in the Letterman broadcast on NBC-TV, and was also accepted into the Museum of Modern Art. Van Vliet announced "I don't want MTV!" during his interview with Letterman, in reference to MTV's "I want my MTV" marketing campaign of the time. Ice Cream for Crow, along with songs such as its title track, features instrumental performances by the Magic Band with performance poetry
Performance poetry
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution.-History:...
readings by Van Vliet. Raggett of Allmusic called the album a "last entertaining blast of wigginess from one of the few truly independent artists in late 20th century pop music, with humor, skill, and style all still intact"; with the Magic Band "turning out more choppy rhythms, unexpected guitar lines, and outré arrangements, Captain Beefheart lets everything run wild as always, with successful results". Barnes writes that "the most original and vital tracks (on the album) are the newer ones", saying that it "feels like an hors-d'oeuvre for a main course that never came". Promotional work proposed to Beefheart by Virgin Records was as unorthodox as him making an appearance in the 1987 film Grizzly II: The Predator
Grizzly II: The Predator
Grizzly II: The Predator is an unreleased horror sequel to the popular film, Grizzly. The film is notable for featuring early appearances of future superstars George Clooney, Charlie Sheen, and Laura Dern in small supporting roles...
. Soon after, Van Vliet retired from music and began a new career as a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. Gary Lucas tried to convince him to record one more album, but to no avail.
Riding Some Kind Of Unusual Skull Sleigh
Released in 2004 by Rhino HandmadeRhino Entertainment
Rhino Entertainment Company is an American specialty record label and production company. It is owned by Warner Music Group.-History:Rhino was originally a novelty song and reissue company during the 1970s and 1980s, releasing compilation albums of pop, rock & roll, and rhythm & blues successes...
in a limited edition of 1,500 copies, this prestigious signed and numbered box set contains a "Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh" CD of Vliet-recited poetry, the Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn is a Dutch photographer, music video and film director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2, having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both for more than a decade...
film of Vliet Some YoYo Stuff on DVD and two art books. One book, entitled Splinters, gives a visual 'scrapbook' insight into Vliet's life, from an early age to his painting in retirement. The second, eponymously titled, book is packed with art pages of Vliet's work. The first is bound in green linen, the second in yellow. These colors are counterpointed throughout the package, which comes in a green slipcase measuring 235 x 325 x 70 mm. An onion-skin wallet, nestling at the package's inner sanctum, contains a matching-numbered Vliet lithograph on hand-rolled paper, signed by the artist. The two books are by publishers "Artist Ink Editions".
Paintings
Throughout his musical career, Van Vliet remained interested in art. He placed his paintings, often reminiscent of Franz KlineFranz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
's, on several of his albums. In 1987, Van Vliet published Skeleton Breath, Scorpion Blush, a collection of his poetry, paintings and drawings.
In the mid 1980s, Van Vliet became reclusive and abandoned music, stating he had gotten "too good at the horn" and could make far more money painting. Beefheart's first exhibition had been at Liverpool's Bluecoat Gallery during the Magic Band's 1972 tour of the UK. He was interviewed on Granada regional television standing in front of his bold black and white canvases. He was inspired to begin an art career when a fan, Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....
, who admired the artwork seen on his album covers, asked to buy a drawing from him. His debut exhibition as a serious painter was at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York in 1985 and was initially regarded as that of "another rock musician dabbling in art for ego's sake", though his primitive, non-conformist work has received more sympathetic and serious attention since then, with some sales approaching $25,000. Two books have been published specifically devoted to critique and analysis of his artwork: Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh: On The Arts Of Don Van Vliet (1999) by W.C. Bamberger and Stand Up To Be Discontinued, first published in 1993, a now rare collection of essays on Van Vliet's work. The limited edition version of the book contains a CD of Van Vliet reading six of his poems: "Fallin' Ditch", "The Tired Plain", "Skeleton Makes Good", "Safe Sex Drill", "Tulip" and "Gill". A deluxe edition was published in 1994; only 60 were printed, with etchings of Van Vliet's signature, costing £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
180.
In the early 1980s Van Vliet established an association with the Michael Werner Gallery
Michael Werner Gallery
Michael Werner Gallery is an art gallery founded by Michael Werner in New York City during the year 1990. It is the U.S. extension of the German Galerie Michael Werner founded in 1963 in Berlin.-History:...
. Eric Feldman stated later in an interview that at that time Michael Werner told Van Vliet he needed to stop playing music if he wanted to be respected as a painter, warning him that otherwise he would only be considered a "musician who paints". In doing so, it was said that he had effectively "succeeded in leaving his past behind." Gordon Veneklasen, one of the gallery's directors in 1995 described Van Vliet as an "incredible painter" whose work "doesn't really look like anybody else's work but his own." Van Vliet has been described as a modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, a primitivist
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
, an abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
, and an outsider art
Outsider Art
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
ist. Morgan Falconer of Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
concurs, mentioning both a "neo-primitivist aesthetic" and further stating that his work is influenced by the CoBrA
COBRA (avant-garde movement)
COBRA was a European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951. The name was coined in 1948 by Christian Dotremont from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen , Brussels , Amsterdam .-History:...
painters. The resemblance to the CoBrA painters is also recognized by art critic Roberto Ohrt, while others have compared his paintings to the work of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
, Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
, Francis Bacon, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
and Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
.
According to Dr. John Lane, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
, in 1997, although Van Vliet's work has associations with mainstream abstract expressionist painting, more importantly he was a self-taught artist and his painting "has that same kind of edge the music has." Lane explained that in contrast to the busied, bohemian urban lives of the New York abstract expressionists, the rural desert environment Van Vliet was influenced by is a distinctly naturalistic one, making him a distinguished figure in contemporary art, whose work will survive in canon. Van Vliet stated of his own work, "I'm trying to turn myself inside out on the canvas. I'm trying to completely bare what I think at that moment" and that "I paint for the simple reason that I have to. I feel a sense of relief after I do". When asked about his artistic influences he stated that there were none. "I just paint like I paint and that's enough influence." He did however state his admiration of Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany...
, the De Stijl
De Stijl
De Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...
artist Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
, and Vincent van Gogh; after seeing van Gogh's paintings in person, Van Vliet quoted himself as saying that "the sun disappoints me so".
Exhibits of his paintings from the late 1990s at both the Anton Kern and Michael Werner Galleries of New York City received favorable reviews, the most recent of which were held between 2009 and 2010. Falconer stated that the most recent exhibitions showed "evidence of a serious, committed artist." It was claimed that he stopped painting in the late 1990s. A 2007 interview with Van Vliet through email by Anthony Haden-Guest
Anthony Haden-Guest
Anthony Haden-Guest is a British-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite who lives in New York and London. He is a frequent contributor to major magazines and has had several books published.-Family:...
, however, showed him to still be active artistically. He exhibited only few of his paintings because he immediately destroyed any that did not satisfy him.
Life in retirement
After his retirement from music, Van Vliet rarely appeared in public. He resided near Trinidad, CaliforniaTrinidad, California
Trinidad is a seaside city in Humboldt County, located on the Pacific Ocean north of the Arcata-Eureka Airport and north of the college town of Arcata...
, with his wife Janet "Jan" Van Vliet. By the early 1990s he was using a wheelchair as a result of multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
. The severity of his illness was sometimes disputed. Many of his art contractors and friends considered him to be in good health. Other associates such as his longtime drummer and musical director John French
John French (musician)
John "Drumbo" French is an American drummer and musician. He played on Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and on various other Beefheart recordings: Beefheart dubbed him "Drumbo"...
and bassist Richard Snyder have stated that they had noticed symptoms consistent with the onset of multiple sclerosis, such as sensitivity to heat
Uhthoff's phenomenon
Uhthoff's phenomenon is the worsening of neurologic symptoms in multiple sclerosis and other neurological, demyelinating conditions when the body gets overheated from hot weather, exercise, fever, or saunas and hot tubs...
, loss of balance, and stiffness of gait, by the late 1970s.
One of Van Vliet's last public appearances was in the 1993 short documentary Some Yo Yo Stuff by filmmaker Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn is a Dutch photographer, music video and film director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2, having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both for more than a decade...
, described as an "observation of his observations". Around 13 minutes long and shot entirely in black and white, with appearances by his mother and David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
, the film showed a noticeably weakened and dysarthric
Dysarthria
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor-speech system and is characterized by poor articulation of phonemes...
Van Vliet at his residence in California, reading poetry, and philosophically discussing his life, environment, music and art. In 2000, he appeared on Gary Lucas' album Improve the Shining Hour and Moris Tepper's Moth to Mouth, and spoke on Tepper's 2004 song "Ricochet Man" from the album Head Off. He is credited for naming Tepper's 2010 album A Singer Named Shotgun Throat.
Van Vliet often voiced concern over and support for environmentalist issues and causes, particularly the welfare of animals. He often referred to Earth as "God's Golfball" and this expression can be found on a number of his later albums. In 2003 he was heard on the compilation album Where We Live: Stand for What You Stand On: A Benefit CD for EarthJustice
Earthjustice
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm based in the United States that specializes in cases protecting natural resources, safeguarding public health, and promoting clean energy...
singing a version of "Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday to You
"Happy Birthday to You", also known more simply as "Happy Birthday", is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person's birth...
" retitled "Happy Earthday". The track is 34 seconds long and was recorded over the telephone.
Death
The Michael Werner Gallery announced on Friday, December 17, 2010, that Van Vliet had died at a hospital in Arcata, CaliforniaArcata, California
-Demographics:-2010 Census data:The 2010 United States Census reported that Arcata had a population of 17,231. The population density was 1,567.4 people per square mile...
, weeks short of his 70th birthday. The gallery stated him to be "a complex and influential figure in the visual and performing arts," and "one of the most original recording artists of his time". The cause was named as complications from multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
. Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
and Kathleen Brennan
Kathleen Brennan
Kathleen Brennan is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and artist. She was born in Johnsburg, Illinois, as noted by her husband and musical collaborator Tom Waits, in the song of the same name. Brennan and Waits met in 1980 during the filming of the Francis Ford Coppola film One from...
commented on his death, praising him: "Wondrous, secret... and profound, he was a diviner of the highest order."
Dweezil Zappa
Dweezil Zappa
Dweezil Zappa is an American rock guitarist and occasional actor.-Early life:Zappa was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of musician Frank Zappa and Adelaide Gail Sloatman, who worked in business. He is the second of four siblings: his older sister, Moon, younger sister Diva and younger...
dedicated the song "Willie the Pimp" to Beefheart at the "Zappa Plays Zappa" show at the Beacon Theater in New York City on the day of his death, while Jeff Bridges
Jeff Bridges
Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is an American actor and musician. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart....
exclaimed "Rest in peace, Captain Beefheart!" at the conclusion of the December 18 episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live.
Relationship with Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
when they were both teenagers and shared an interest in rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
and Chicago blues
Chicago blues
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...
. They collaborated together from this early stage, with Zappa's scripts for 'teenage operettas' such as "Captain Beefheart & The Grunt People" helping to elevate the Van Vliet persona of Captain Beefheart. In 1963, the pair recorded a demo at the Pal Recording Studio
Pal Recording Studio
Pal Recording Studio was an independent recording studio that operated in Cucamonga, California The studio was started by engineer/innovator Paul Buff. The studio is known for its instrumental Surf music recordings like Wipeout and the original demo recording of Pipeline. The original location...
in Cucamonga as the Soots, seeking support from a major label. Their efforts were unsuccessful, as "Beefheart's Howlin' Wolf vocal style and Zappa's distorted guitar" were "not on the agenda" at the time.
The friendship between Zappa and Van Vliet over the years was sometimes expressed in the form of rivalry as musicians drifted back and forth between their groups. Van Vliet embarked on the 1975 Bongo Fury
Bongo Fury
Bongo Fury is a mostly live album released by Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart in 1975. The live portions were recorded on May 20 & 21, 1975 at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas...
tour with Zappa and The Mothers
The Mothers of Invention
The Mothers of Invention were an American band active from 1964 to 1969, and again from 1970 to 1975.They mainly performed works by, and were the original recording group of, US composer and guitarist Frank Zappa , although other members have had the occasional writing credit...
, mainly because conflicting contractual obligations made him unable to tour or record independently. Their relationship grew acrimonious on the tour to the point that they refused to talk to one another. Zappa became irritated by Van Vliet, who drew constantly, including while on stage, filling one of his large sketch books with rapidly executed portraits and warped caricatures of Zappa. Musically, Van Vliet's primitive style contrasted sharply with Zappa's compositional discipline and abundant technique. Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black
Jimmy Carl Black
Jimmy Carl Black , born James Inkanish, Jr., was a drummer and vocalist for The Mothers of Invention.-Career: 1960s-1990s:Born in El Paso, Texas, Black was of Cheyenne heritage...
described the situation as "two geniuses" on "ego trips".
Estranged for years afterwards, they reconnected at the end of Zappa's life, after his diagnosis with terminal prostate cancer
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
. Their collaborative work appears on the Zappa rarity collections The Lost Episodes
The Lost Episodes
The Lost Episodes is a 1996 posthumous album by Frank Zappa which compiles previously unreleased material. Much of the material covered dates from early in his career, and as early as 1958, into the mid-1970s...
(1996) and Mystery Disc
Mystery Disc
Mystery Disc is a compilation album by Frank Zappa. It was released on CD in 1998, compiling tracks that were originally released on two separate vinyl records and included in the mail order Old Masters box sets, which were released in three volumes between 1985 and 1987...
(1996). Particularly notable is their song "Muffin Man
Muffin Man (song)
"Muffin Man" is a song recorded live by Frank Zappa. It appears on his 1975 mostly live album Bongo Fury made with Captain Beefheart . The song begins with studio-recorded spoken word lyrics delivered by Zappa and is followed by the chorus...
", included on the Zappa/Beefheart Bongo Fury album, as well as Zappa's compilation album Strictly Commercial
Strictly Commercial
Strictly Commercial is a compilation album by Frank Zappa. It was released in 1995 , two years after his death.-Side one:#"Peaches en Regalia"#"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" #"Dancin' Fool"...
(1995). Zappa finished concerts with the song for many years afterwards. Beefheart also provided vocals for "Willie the Pimp
Willie the Pimp
"Willie the Pimp" is a blues rock song from Frank Zappa's 1969 album Hot Rats. It features an idiosyncratic Captain Beefheart vocal and one of Zappa's classic guitar solos. It is 9 minutes and 16 seconds long on Hot Rats...
" on Zappa's otherwise instrumental album Hot Rats
Hot Rats
Hot Rats is the second solo album by Frank Zappa. It was released in October 1969. Five of the six songs are instrumental . It was Zappa's first recording project after the dissolution of the original Mothers of Invention...
(1969). One track on Trout Mask Replica, "The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)", features Magic Band guitarist Jeff Cotton talking on the telephone to Zappa superimposed onto an unrelated live recording of the Mothers of Invention (the backing track was later released in 1992 as "Charles Ives" on You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5
You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5
You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5 is a double compact disc collection of live recordings by Frank Zappa. Disc one comprises performances by the Mothers of Invention spanning the period from 1966 to 1969. "My Guitar" had been previously released as a single in 1969...
). Van Vliet also played the harmonica on two songs on Zappa albums: "San Ber'dino" (credited as "Bloodshot Rollin' Red") on One Size Fits All
One Size Fits All
One Size Fits All is a 1975 rock album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. It is the last Zappa album to be released with the subheading of "Mothers of Invention". A special four-channel Quadraphonic version of the album was prepared and advertised, but not released...
(1975) and "Find Her Finer" on Zoot Allures
Zoot Allures
Zoot Allures is a 1976 rock album by Frank Zappa. This was Zappa's only release on the Warner Bros. Records label. Due to a lawsuit with his former manager Herb Cohen Frank Zappa's recording contract was temporarily re-assigned from DiscReet Records to Warner Bros.The title is a pun on the French...
(1976). He is also the vocalist on "The Torture Never Stops (Original Version)" on Zappa's You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4
You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4
You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4 is a two-CD set of live recordings by Frank Zappa, recorded between 1969 and 1988, and released in 1991.-Disc one:#"Little Rubber Girl" - #*...
.
The Magic Band
The members of the original Magic Band had come together in 1965 and, like many rhythm and bluesRhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
-oriented groups of that era, were influenced by the success of English bands such as The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
and The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
. At this time Van Vliet was simply the lead singer of the group, which had been brought together by guitarist Alex St. Clair
Alex St. Clair
Alex St. Clair , was an American musician.Twice guitarist for Captain Beefheart, St. Clair was a contemporary of Frank Zappa at Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California, where St. Clair played trumpet and Zappa played drums. They bought their first guitars within days of each other.St...
. As in many emerging groups in California at the time, there were elements of psychedelia
Psychedelic music
Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...
and the foundations of contemporary hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
counterculture.
Thus, it seemed quite logical to promote the group as "Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band", around the concept that Captain Beefheart had 'magic powers' and, upon drinking a 'Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
', could summon up "His Magic Band" to appear and perform behind him. The strands of this logic emanating from Vliet's Beefheart persona having been 'written in' as a character in a 'teenage operetta' that Zappa had formulated, along with Van Vliet's renowned 'Pepsi-moods' with his mother Willie Sue and his generally spoilt teenage demeanor.
Beginning
In late 1965, after numerous car-club dances, juke jointJuke joint
Juke joint is the vernacular term for an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, primarily operated by African American people in the southeastern United States. The term "juke" is believed to derive from the Gullah word joog, meaning rowdy or disorderly...
gigs, appearances at the Avalon Ballroom and winning the Teenage Fair 'Battle of the Bands
Battle of the Bands
Battle of Bands is a contest in which two or more bands compete for the title of "best band". The winner is determined by a panel of judges, the general response of the audience, or a combination. The winning band usually receives a prize in addition to bragging rights. Traditionally, battles of...
', the group finally bagged a contract for recording two singles with the newly-created A&M Records
A&M Records
A&M Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that operates under the mantle of its Interscope-Geffen-A&M division.-Beginnings:...
label with Leonard Grant as their manager. It was at this time that musical relationships had also been struck with members of Rising Sons
Rising Sons
Rising Sons was a Los Angeles, California-based band founded in 1964. The original lineup was Ry Cooder , Taj Mahal , Gary Marker , Jesse Lee Kincaid and Ed Cassidy...
who would later feature in the band's recordings. The A&M deal also brought some contention between members of the band, torn between a career as an experimental 'pop' group and that of a purist blues band. Working with young producer David Gates
David Gates
David Gates is an American singer-songwriter, best known as the lead singer of the group Bread, which reached the tops of the musical charts in Europe and North America on several occasions in the 1970s. The band was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame...
also opened up horizons for Vliet's skills as a poet-cum-lyricist, with his "Who Do You Think You're Fooling" on the flipside of the band's first single, a cover of the Ellas McDaniel/Willie Dixon
Willie Dixon
William James "Willie" Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the Upright bass and the guitar, as well as his own singing voice, Dixon is arguably best known as one of the most prolific songwriters...
-penned hit, "Diddy Wah Diddy". Fate and circumstance, not for the first time, would befall the band's success upon its release - which coincided with a singles cover of the same song by The Remains
The Remains
The Remains were a mid-1960s rock group from Boston, Massachusetts, led by Barry Tashian, who later was harmony vocalist and guitarist for Emmylou Harris and part of the duo, Barry and Holly Tashian...
. The initial line-up of the Magic Band that entered the studio for the A&M recordings was not that which emerged by the second release, "Moonchild", also backed by a Vliet-penned number, "Frying Pan". A 12" vinyl 45rpm mono EP was later released in 1987, with the four tracks of the two singles, plus "Here I Am, I Always Am" as a fifth previously unreleased song. This release was titled The Legendary A&M Sessions, with a red-marbled cover and (later) members Moon, Blakely, Vliet, Snouffer and Handley seated in a 'temperance dance band' photo-pose.
The original Magic Band was primarily a rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
band, led by local Lancaster guitarist Alexis Snouffer
Alex St. Clair
Alex St. Clair , was an American musician.Twice guitarist for Captain Beefheart, St. Clair was a contemporary of Frank Zappa at Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California, where St. Clair played trumpet and Zappa played drums. They bought their first guitars within days of each other.St...
, along with Doug Moon (guitar), Jerry Handley (bass), and Vic Mortenson (drums), the last being rotated with and finally replaced by Paul Blakely, known as 'P.G. Blakely'. For the first A&M recording Mortenson had been called up for active service
Active duty
Active duty refers to a full-time occupation as part of a military force, as opposed to reserve duty.-Pakistan:The Pakistan Armed Forces are one of the largest active service forces in the world with almost 610,000 full time personnel due to the complex and volatile nature of Pakistan's...
and Snouffer stood in on drums, with a recently recruited Richard Hepner taking up the guitar role. By the time the single was aired on a pop television show P.G. Blakely was back in the drum seat. He then left for a career in television and was replaced by John French
John French (musician)
John "Drumbo" French is an American drummer and musician. He played on Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and on various other Beefheart recordings: Beefheart dubbed him "Drumbo"...
by the time the band cut their first album, as the first release on the new Buddah Records
Buddah Records
Buddah Records was founded in 1967 in New York City. The label was born out of Kama Sutra Records, an MGM Records-distributed label, which remained a key imprint following Buddah's founding...
label.
Personnel in the Magic Band for Beefheart's first album, Safe as Milk, were Alex St. Clair, Jerry Handley and John French. Earlier meetings with the Rising Sons had also secured them the guitar and arranging skills of Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, which also brought about input from Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal (musician)
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks , who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music...
on percussion and guitar work from Cooder's brother-in-law Russ Titelman
Russ Titelman
Russ Titelman is an American record producer and songwriter. He has to date won three Grammy Awards. He earned his first producing the Steve Winwood song "Higher Love", and his second and third for Eric Clapton's Journeyman and Unplugged albums...
. Further guests to this line-up included Milt Holland
Milt Holland
Milt Holland was an American drummer, percussionist, ethnic musicologist, and writer in the Los Angeles music scene who pioneered the use of African, South American, and Indian percussion styles in jazz, pop and film music, traveling extensively on those continents to collect instruments and to...
on percussion and the all-important and controversial theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
work on Electricity by Dr Samuel Hoffman. It was perhaps this track, above the others, which caused A&M to view the band as 'unsuitable' for their label with what was seen as weird and too psychedelic for popular consumption. Thus, this album was recorded for Buddah, with the band signed to Kama Sutra
Kama Sutra Records
Kama Sutra Records was started in 1964 by Arthur "Artie" Ripp, Hy Mizrahi and Phil Steinberg as Kama Sutra Productions, a production house. The word "Kama Sutra" is a Sanskrit terminology....
, which left them close to penniless after extricating themselves from A&M. A large proportion of the tracks on this album were co-written with Van Vliet by Herb Bermann, whom Vliet initially met up with at a bar gig near Lancaster. Part-time Hollywood television actor and budding scriptwriter Bermann and his then wife Cathleen spent some time in Vliet's company prior to this release. Bermann would later write for Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
and script an early Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
-directed television medical drama. Gary 'Magic' Marker
Gary Marker
Gary 'Magic' Marker is a bass guitarist and recording engineer best known for his involvement in various psychedelic rock bands of the 1960s....
(the "Magic" added by Beefheart) was involved in early session work for this release, and his involvement with Rising Sons was also instrumental in acquiring the skills of Cooder, upon an unfulfilled suggestion that Marker might produce the album. Marker would later lay down two uncredited bass tracks for Trout Mask Replica before being replaced by Mark Boston
Rockette Morton
Rockette Morton is an American musician, best known as a bass guitarist and guitarist for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band in the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
.
French worked on five more Beefheart albums, while Snouffer worked with Beefheart on and off on three more albums. Bill Harkleroad joined the Magic Band as guitarist for Trout Mask Replica and stayed with Beefheart through May 1974.
Beefheart takes the lead
While appearing humorous and kind-hearted in public, by all accounts Van Vliet was a severe taskmaster who abused his musicians verbally and sometimes physically. Vliet once told drummer John French he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and thus he would see inexistent conspiracies that explained this behaviour. The band were reportedly paid little or nothing. French recalled that the musicians' contract with Van Vliet's company stipulated that Van Vliet and the managers were paid from gross proceeds before expenses, then expenses were paid, then the band members evenly split any remaining funds—in effect making band members liable for all expenses. As a result French was paid nothing at all for a 33-city U.S. tour in 1971 and a total of $78 for a tour of Europe and the U.S. in late 1975. In his 2010 memoir Beefheart: Through The Eyes of Magic French recounted being "screamed at, beaten up, drugged, ridiculed, humiliated, arrested, starved, stolen from, and thrown down a half-flight of stairs by his employer".The musicians also resented Van Vliet for taking complete credit for composition and arranging when the musicians themselves pieced together most of the songs from taped fragments or impressionistic directions such as "Play it like a bat being dragged out of oil and it's trying to survive, but it's dying from asphyxiation." John French summarized the disagreement over composing and arranging credits metaphorically:
Post-Beefheart, receiving only a "grumpy" reception from him, the band reformed in 2003 with John French on lead vocals, Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas is an American guitarist, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, a soundtrack composer for film and television, and an international recording artist with over a dozen solo albums to date. He has been described as "one of the best and most original guitarists in America" ; a "legendary leftfield...
and Denny Walley on guitars, Rockette Morton
Rockette Morton
Rockette Morton is an American musician, best known as a bass guitarist and guitarist for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band in the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
on bass, and Robert Williams on drums. At the start of their only European tour, Williams left and was replaced by Michael Traylor. The band released two albums and toured before disbanding in 2006.
They toured the UK in 2005, playing a selection of small venues. John Peel was initially skeptical about the re-formed Magic Band. He played a live recording of the band recorded at the 2003 All Tomorrows Parties festival on his radio show; afterwards he couldn't speak and had to put on another record to regain his composure. Later the band did a live session for him. The band's albums are Back To The Front (on the London-based ATP Recordings
ATP Recordings
ATP Recordings is a record label that was started in 2001 by London concert promoter Barry Hogan of Foundation/All Tomorrow's Parties. It was originally created to bring out a compilation cd after the Tortoise-curated All Tomorrow's Parties event...
, 2003) and 21st Century Mirror Men (2005). They played over 30 shows throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, and one in the United States. They have been chosen by Jeff Mangum
Jeff Mangum
Jeff Mangum is a musician best known for being the lyricist, vocalist and guitarist of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, as well as being one of the cofounders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Mangum, along with the other founding members of the Elephant 6, attended Ruston High School in the late...
of Neutral Milk Hotel
Neutral Milk Hotel
Neutral Milk Hotel was an American indie rock band formed by singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeff Mangum in the early 1990s. The band was noted for its experimental sound, obscure lyrics and eclectic instrumentation....
to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties
All Tomorrow's Parties (music festival)
All Tomorrow's Parties is a music festival which takes place at Camber Sands holiday camp in East Sussex and Butlin's holiday camp in Minehead, Somerset, England....
festival that he will curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England.
Influence
Van Vliet has been the subject of at least two documentariesTelevision documentary
Documentary television is a genre of television programming that broadcasts documentaries.* Documentary television series, a television series which is made up of documentary episodes....
, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's 1997 The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart narrated by John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
, and the 2006 independent production Captain Beefheart: Under Review.
According to Peel, "If there has ever been such a thing as a genius in the history of popular music, it's Beefheart... I heard echoes of his music in some of the records I listened to last week and I'll hear more echoes in records that I listen to this week." His narration added: "A psychedelic shaman who frequently bullied his musicians and sometimes alarmed his fans, Don somehow remained one of rock's great innocents". Mike Barnes referred to him as an "iconic counterculture hero", who with the Magic Band "went on to stake out startling new possibilities for rock music". Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
cited Beefheart as "one of the four or five unqualified geniuses to rise from the hothouses of American music in the Sixties", while John Harris of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
praised the music's "pulses with energy and ideas, the strange way the spluttering instruments meld together". A Rolling Stone biography described his work as "a sort of modern chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
for [a] rock band, since he plans every note and teaches the band their parts by ear. Because it breaks so many of rock's conventions at once, Beefheart's music has always been more influential than popular." In this context, it is performed by the classical group, the Meridian Arts Ensemble
Meridian Arts Ensemble
The Meridian Arts Ensemble is an American chamber music ensemble based in New York City, specializing in the performance of new works for brass and percussion.-History:The Meridian Arts Ensemble was founded in 1987...
. Piero Scaruffi characterized "three basic elements": "the ballad out of tune, with guitar interlaced with jolting rhythm, vocal miasma and a rogue harmonica". Scaruffi ranked Trout Mask Replica number one on his list of the greatest rock albums of all time. He says that "the distance between Captain Beefheart and the rest of rock music is the same distance that there was between Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
and the symphonists of his time". Nicholas E. Tawa, in his 2005 book Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century: Styles and Singers and What They Said About America, included Beefheart among the prominent progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
musicians of the 1960s and 70s, while the Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
describes Beefheart's songs as conveying "deep distrust of modern civilization, a yearning for ecological balance, and that belief that all animals in the wild are far superior to human beings."
Many artists have cited Van Vliet as an influence, beginning with the Edgar Broughton Band
Edgar Broughton Band
The Edgar Broughton Band, founded in 1968 in Warwick, England, is an English Psychedelic Rock group.-Career:The band started their career as a blues group under the name of The Edgar Broughton Blues Band, playing to a dedicated but limited following in the region around their hometown of Warwick...
, who covered Dropout Boogie as Apache Drop Out (mixed with The Shadows
The Shadows
The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...
' "Apache
Apache (instrumental)
"Apache" is an instrumental written by Jerry Lordan. It has been recorded by many people, but the first released version was recorded by British group The Shadows in June 1960 and released the following month. The song topped the UK singles chart for five weeks...
") as early as 1970 and The Kills
The Kills
The Kills is a rock band formed by American singer Alison Mosshart and British guitarist Jamie Hince . Their first three albums, Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, and Midnight Boom, have garnered much critical praise...
coverage of it 32 years later. The Minutemen
Minutemen (band)
Minutemen were an American hardcore punk band formed in San Pedro, California in 1980. Composed of guitarist D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley, Minutemen recorded four albums and eight EPs before Boon's death in an automobile accident in December 1985...
were fans of Beefheart, and were arguably among the few to effectively synthesize his music with their own, especially in their early output, which featured disjointed guitar and irregular, galloping rhythms. Michael Azerrad
Michael Azerrad
Michael Azerrad is an American author, journalist and musician. He grew up in the New York City area and received his BA degree from Columbia College in 1983...
describes the Minutemen's early output as "highly caffeinated Captain Beefheart running down James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
tunes", and notes that Beefheart was the group's "idol". Others who arguably conveyed the same influence around the same time or before include John Cale
John Cale
John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....
of The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
, Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, The Residents
The Residents
The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
and Henry Cow
Henry Cow
Henry Cow were an English avant-rock group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler and bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper were important long-term members...
. Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is an English singer-songwriter, musician, writer and artist. P-Orridge's early confrontational performance work in COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, which dealt with subjects such as prostitution,...
of Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle were an English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group that evolved from the performance art group COUM Transmissions...
and Psychic TV
Psychic TV
Psychic TV or PTV, is a video art and music group that primarily performs psychedelic, punk, electronic and experimental music...
, and poet mystic Z'EV
Z'EV
Z'EV is an American poet, percussionist, and sound artist. After studying various world music traditions at CalArts, he began creating his own percussion sounds out of industrial materials for a variety of record labels...
, both pioneers of industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, cited Van Vliet along with Zappa among their influences. More notable were those emerging during the early days of punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, such as The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
and John Lydon
John Lydon
John Joseph Lydon , also known by the former stage name Johnny Rotten, is a singer-songwriter and television presenter, best known as the lead singer of punk rock band the Sex Pistols from 1975 until 1978, and again for various revivals during the 1990s and 2000s...
of the Sex Pistols
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...
(reportedly to manager Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls...
's disapproval), later of the post-punk band Public Image Ltd.
Cartoonist and writer Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
tells of listening to Trout Mask Replica at the age of 15 and thinking "that it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me—and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realised they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard." Groening first saw Beefheart and the Magic Band perform in the front row at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall , opened as the Portland Publix Theater before becoming the Paramount after 1930, is a historic theater building and performing arts center in Portland, Oregon, United States...
in the early 1970s. He later declared Trout Mask Replica to be the greatest album ever made. He considered the appeal of the Magic Band as outcasts who were even "too weird for the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
s". Groening served as the curator of the All Tomorrow's Parties
All Tomorrow's Parties (music festival)
All Tomorrow's Parties is a music festival which takes place at Camber Sands holiday camp in East Sussex and Butlin's holiday camp in Minehead, Somerset, England....
festival that reunited the post–Beefheart Magic Band.
Van Vliet's influence on post–punk bands was demonstrated by Magazine
Magazine (band)
Magazine are an English post-punk group active from 1977 to 1981, then reformed in 2009. Their debut single, "Shot by Both Sides", is now acknowledged as a classic and their debut album, Real Life, is still widely admired as one of the greatest albums of all time...
's recording of "I Love You You Big Dummy" in 1978 and the tribute album Fast 'n' Bulbous - A Tribute to Captain Beefheart
Fast 'n' Bulbous - A Tribute to Captain Beefheart
Fast 'n' Bulbous - A Tribute To Captain Beefheart was an album released by Imaginary Records in the UK in 1988, consisting of contemporary artists performing cover versions of songs by Captain Beefheart.-Track listing:...
in 1988, featuring the likes of artists such as the Dog Faced Hermans
Dog Faced Hermans
The Dog Faced Hermans were a four-piece band whose style could be described as anarcho-punk incorporating folk and noise influences as well as unorthodox instrumentation.-History:...
, The Scientists
The Scientists
The Scientists are an influential post-punk band from Perth, Australia, led by Kim Salmon, initially known as Exterminators and then Invaders. The band had two primary incarnations: the Perth-based punk band of the late 1970s and the Sydney/London-based swamp rock band of the 1980s...
, The Membranes
The Membranes
The Membranes were a post-punk band formed in Blackpool, Lancashire in 1977, the initial line-up being John Robb , Mark Tilton , Martin Critchley and Martin Kelly . Critchley soon left, with Robb and Tilton taking on vocals, and Kelly moving to keyboards, with "Coofy Sid" taking over on drums...
, Simon Fisher Turner
Simon Fisher Turner
Simon Turner is an English musician, songwriter, composer, producer and actor.After portraying Ned East in the 1971 BBC TV adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays and roles in films such as The Big Sleep , Dover-born Simon Turner quickly rose to fame as a teen star in Britain thanks to his mentor...
, That Petrol Emotion
That Petrol Emotion
That Petrol Emotion are a Northern Irish, London-based band with an American vocalist, Steve Mack.-Career:The band originally formed in 1984 from the ashes of the Derry Hitmakers, Bam Bam and the Calling and The Undertones. It was formed by guitarist John O'Neill and second guitarist Raymond Gorman...
, the Primevals
Primevals
The Primevals are a Glasgow rock group formed in 1983, who were influenced by the MC5, The Stooges, Captain Beefheart, Pharoah Sanders, The Gun Club, The Cramps and 1960s US garage rock.-History:...
, The Mock Turtles
The Mock Turtles
The Mock Turtles are a Manchester based indie rock band, formed in Middleton, Greater Manchester in 1985, who enjoyed some success in the early 1990s...
, XTC
XTC
XTC were a New Wave band from Swindon, England, active between 1976 and 2005. The band enjoyed some chart success, including the UK and Canadian hits "Making Plans for Nigel" and "Senses Working Overtime" , but are perhaps even better known for their long-standing critical success.- Early years:...
, and Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
, who included a cover of Beefheart's "Electricity" as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of their 1988 album Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation is the fifth studio album by the American alternative rock band Sonic Youth. It was released in October 1988 by Enigma Records in the United States, and by Blast First in the United Kingdom....
. Other post-punk bands influenced by Beefheart include Gang of Four
Gang of Four (band)
Gang of Four are an English post-punk group from Leeds. Original personnel were singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham. They were fully active from 1977 to 1984, and then re-emerged twice in the 1990s with King and Gill...
, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Pere Ubu
Pere Ubu
Pere Ubu is an experimental rock music group from Cleveland, Ohio.Père Ubu may also refer to:* Ubu, the enigmatic central figure of a series of French plays by Alfred Jarry, including Ubu Roi, and subsequent plays Ubu Cocu and Ubu Enchaîné...
, Babe the Blue Ox
Babe the Blue Ox (band)
Babe the Blue OX are a Brooklyn based rock band. Formed in 1991, the trio was initially composed of Tim Thomas , Rose Thomson and Hanna Fox . in 1995, the band contributed the song "Hazmats" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Bothered produced by the Red Hot Organization...
and Mark E. Smith
Mark E. Smith
Mark Edward Smith is the lead singer, lyricist, frontman, and only constant member of the English post-punk band The Fall.-Early life:...
of The Fall. The Fall covered "Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones" in their 1993 session for John Peel
The Complete Peel Sessions 1978–2004
The Complete Peel Sessions 1978–2004 is a 6 CD compilation album released by British avant-rock band The Fall in 2005. It comprises all 24 sessions the group recorded for the late John Peel's radio show. Peel was a fervent supporter of the group from early in their career, and The Fall recorded...
. Beefheart is considered to have "greatly influenced" New Wave artists, such as David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
of Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
, Blondie
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
, Devo
Devo
Devo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...
, The Bongos
The Bongos
The Bongos were a rock band from Hoboken, New Jersey, primarily active in the 1980s. With a unique blend of British Invasion-flavored power pop, jangly guitars, and dance beats they made the leap to national recognition with the advent of MTV.-Biography:...
, and The B-52s.
Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
' shift in artistic direction, starting with 1983's Swordfishtrombones
Swordfishtrombones
Swordfishtrombones is an album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1983. It was the first album that Waits produced himself....
, was, Waits claims, a result of his wife Kathleen Brennan
Kathleen Brennan
Kathleen Brennan is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and artist. She was born in Johnsburg, Illinois, as noted by her husband and musical collaborator Tom Waits, in the song of the same name. Brennan and Waits met in 1980 during the filming of the Francis Ford Coppola film One from...
introducing him to Van Vliet's music. "Once you've heard Beefheart," said Waits, "it's hard to wash him out of your clothes. It stains, like coffee or blood." Guitarist John Frusciante
John Frusciante
John Anthony Frusciante is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, record and film producer. He is best known as the former lead guitarist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom he had been for a number of years and recorded five studio albums...
of the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers is an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The group's musical style primarily consists of rock with an emphasis on funk, as well as elements from other genres such as punk, hip hop and psychedelic rock...
cited Van Vliet as a prominent influence on the band's 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the fifth studio album by American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, released on September 24, 1991. Produced by Rick Rubin, it was the band's first record released on Warner Bros. Records...
as well as his debut solo album Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt
Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt
Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt is the debut solo album by John Frusciante, released on March 8, 1994, on American Recordings. Frusciante released the album after encouragement from several friends, who told him that there was "no good music around anymore."Niandra Lades and Usually Just a...
(1994) and stated that during his drug-induced absence, after leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he "would paint and listen to Trout Mask Replica." Black Francis of the Pixies cited Beefheart's The Spotlight Kid as one of the albums he listened to regularly when first writing songs for the band, and Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...
of Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
acknowledged Van Vliet's influence, mentioning him among his notoriously eclectic range.
The White Stripes
The White Stripes
The White Stripes was an American rock band, formed in 1997 in Detroit, Michigan. The group consisted of the songwriter Jack White and drummer Meg White . Jack and Meg White were previously married to each other, but are now divorced...
in 2000 released a 7" tribute single, Party of Special Things to Do
Party of Special Things to Do
"Party of Special Things to Do" is a song by Captain Beefheart from the album Bluejeans & Moonbeams which was covered and released as a 7" single by Detroit, Michigan garage rock band The White Stripes...
, containing covers of that Beefheart song plus "China Pig" and "Ashtray Heart". The Kills
The Kills
The Kills is a rock band formed by American singer Alison Mosshart and British guitarist Jamie Hince . Their first three albums, Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, and Midnight Boom, have garnered much critical praise...
included a cover of "Dropout Boogie" on their debut Black Rooster EP
Black Rooster EP
Black Rooster EP is an EP and the first release from The Kills. It was released in 2002 through Domino Records.-Track listing:#"Cat Claw" – 3:31#"Black Rooster " – 4:24#"Wait" – 4:48...
(2002). The Black Keys
The Black Keys
The Black Keys are an American rock duo consisting of vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer/producer Patrick Carney. The band was formed in Akron, Ohio, in 2001. As of October 2011, the band has sold over 2 million albums in the U.S....
in 2008 released a free cover of Beefheart's "I'm Glad" from Safe as Milk. In 2005 Genus Records produced a tribute to Captain Beefheart titled Mama Kangaroos - Philly Women Sing Captain Beefheart. Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
included "Safe as Milk" and "Ella Guru" in a playlist of songs as part of his website's Planned Obsolescence series of mashups
Mashup (music)
A mashup or bootleg is a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another...
of songs by the musicians that influenced him. Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand (band)
Franz Ferdinand are a Scottish post-punk revival band formed in Glasgow in 2002. The band is composed of Alex Kapranos , Bob Hardy , Nick McCarthy , and Paul Thomson .The band first experienced chart success when their second single, "Take Me Out", reached #3 in...
cited Beefheart's Doc At The Radar Station as a strong influence on their second LP, You Could Have It So Much Better
You Could Have It So Much Better
You Could Have It So Much Better is the second studio album by Glaswegian indie rock band Franz Ferdinand that was first released 3 October 2005 in the United Kingdom. Recorded in both the United States and their own studio in Glasgow with producer Rich Costey, the album gave birth to the release...
. Placebo
Placebo (band)
Placebo are a British rock band from London, England, formed in 1994 by singer and guitarist Brian Molko and bass guitarist Stefan Olsdal. The band was joined by drummer Robert Schultzberg, who was later replaced by Steve Hewitt after conflicts with Molko. Hewitt left the band in October 2007 and...
briefly named themselves Ashtray Heart, after the track on Doc at the Radar Station; the band's album Battle for the Sun
Battle for the Sun
Battle for the Sun is the sixth studio album by British alternative rock band Placebo, released in 2009 on Solitary Man Records, Vagrant Records, Universal Records, and PIAS Recordings.-Production and recording:...
contains a track called "Ashtray Heart". Joan Osborne
Joan Osborne
Joan Elizabeth Osborne is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for her song "One of Us". She has toured with Motown sidemen the Funk Brothers and was featured in the documentary film about them, Standing in the Shadows of Motown.-Biography:Originally from Anchorage, Kentucky, a suburb...
covered Beefheart's "(His) Eyes are a Blue Million Miles", which appears on Early Recordings. She cited Van Vliet as one of her influences. PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
and John Parish
John Parish
John Parish is a British musician and producer best known for his work with singer and songwriter PJ Harvey,. His sister is the actress Sarah Parish.-Partial discography:Solo*Rosie *How Animals Move...
discussed Beefheart's influence in an interview together. Harvey's first experience of Beefheart's music was as a child. Her parents had all of his albums; listening to them made her "feel ill". Harvey was reintroduced to Beefheart's music by Parish, who lent her a cassette copy of Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) at the age of 16. She cited him as one of her greatest influences since. Parish described Beefheart's music as a "combination of raw blues and abstract jazz. There was humour in there, but you could tell that it wasn't [intended as] a joke. I felt that there was a depth to what he did that very few other rock artists have managed [to achieve]." Ty Segall covered "Drop Out Boogie" on his 2009 album, Lemons.
Discography
|
Clear Spot Clear Spot is the seventh album by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, originally released on LP in 1972 in a clear plastic sleeve.After Trout Mask Replica, which was critically acclaimed but sold poorly, each of the group's following three albums was slightly more conventional than the one before... (1972) Unconditionally Guaranteed Unconditionally Guaranteed is the eighth LP by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band, originally released in 1974. Upon release it was criticised for being too commercial; in any case, it failed to give Beefheart any real chart success, peaking at #192 on the Billboard Top 200.Immediately after... (1974) Bluejeans & Moonbeams Bluejeans & Moonbeams is the ninth LP by Captain Beefheart, originally released in 1974. Despite its uncharacteristically mainstream sound the album failed to chart... (1974) Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) Shiny Beast is the tenth studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band. Originally released in 1978, it is considered to be Beefheart's comeback album following 1974's poorly received efforts, Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams, and is the first of his three critically... (1978) Doc at the Radar Station Doc at the Radar Station is the eleventh studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, released in August 1980 to favorable reviews. The painting on the album cover is by Don Van Vliet himself... (1980) Ice Cream for Crow Ice Cream for Crow is the twelfth and final studio album by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, released in September 1982. It is the last Don Van Vliet recorded before abruptly retiring from music as Captain Beefheart to devote himself to a career as a painter... (1982) |
Further reading
- Courtier, Kevin (2007). Trout Mask Replica. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-2781-2
- Delville, Michel & Norris, Andrew (2005). Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Secret History of Maximalism. Cambrdige: Salt Publishing. ISBN 1-84471-059-9.
- Harkleroad, Bill (1998). Lunar Notes: Zoot Horn Rollo's Captain Beefheart Experience. Interlink Publishing. ISBN 0-946719-21-7.
- Bamberger, W.C. (1999). Riding Some Kind Of Unusual Skull Sleigh: On The Arts Of Don Van Vliet. ISBN 978-0-917453-35-9
- Beaugrand, Andreas and various (1994). Stand Up to Be Discontinued. (Paperback) ISBN 3-9801320-2-1.
- Van Vliet, Don (Captain Beefheart) (1987). Skeleton Breath, Scorpion Blush. (All poems in English, preface in German and English). Bern-Berlin: Gachnang & Springer. ISBN 978-3-906127-15-6
- Zappa, Frank & Occhiogrosso, Peter; The Real Frank Zappa Book, Poseidon Press (1989), ISBN 0-671-63870-X
External links
- Beefheart.com – The Captain Beefheart Radar Station
- Captain Beefheart at Rolling Stone
- [ Captain Beefheart at Allmusic]
- Some Yo Yo Stuff by Anton Corbijn