Goodwin Captain Beefheart

Every Album, Every Song
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78952-381-2
Verlag: Sonicbond Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

Captain Beefheart (Don Vliet) was undoubtedly the creator of the most bizarre and wonderful music. A child prodigy sculptor, he applied his artistic approach to music, creating 'aural sculptures'. After befriending Frank Zappa in high school, they collaborated on a teenage rock opera and science fiction/fantasy film entitled Captain Beefheart vs The Grunt People. It was from this film that Don took his name. His Magic Band started out as a blues group in the mid-sixties, but soon, with lysergic propulsion, surreal poetry, free-form jazz, polyrhythms and African beats, they established themselves at the forefront of West Coast acid rock.
A series of hugely inventive albums, including the infamous Trout Mask Replica, and some legendary live performances, established them as the foremost avant-garde rock band. Few bands were as influential, with The Beatles, The Fall, PJ Harvey and Tom Waits all paying homage, and as a result, The Magic Band have inspired a myriad of tribute bands and created a mythology like no other. This book sets the history of the band in context, analysing every track and attempting to interpret both the music and Don Vliet's poetry. It is essential reading for diehard fans and the Beefheart-curious alike.

Opher Goodwin is the author of many books on rock music and science fiction and taught the first 'History of Rock Music' classes in the UK. He was fortunate to spend the sixties in London, the epicentre for the underground explosion of rock music and culture, where he was able to see everyone from Pink Floyd, Hendrix and Cream to The Doors, Captain Beefheart and Roy Harper. He was introduced to Captain Beefheart in 1967 and attended that first amazing gig at Middle Earth. He never fully recovered but now lives happily in East Yorkshire, UK.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goodwin, Opher

Leseproben

Introduction

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band are probably the weirdest band that ever existed, and possibly the best. Many people have described a gig they attended as life-changing. Few would’ve been as life-changing as my first Captain Beefheart gig.

In 1967 I was 18 years old, supposedly studying for A-levels, but actually undergoing a more serious study of girls, music, Kerouac and the burgeoning underground scene. I was working long shifts through Friday nights at a Lyons bakery, where I met another crazy longhair called Mike. Mike was a little older than me and was seriously into underground music: particularly psychedelia and acid rock. He was a student of English Literature at York University and had the longest hair around: a major credential at the time. He never brushed or combed his hair (believing that it caused split ends), but he ran his fingers through to rid his hair of major tangles. Mike enthused about going to UFO and Middle Earth in London to drop acid and dance all night to bands like Pink Floyd. He was into the West Coast acid rock scene and knew about every band in the Los Angeles/San Francisco area before they’d even released an album.

We spent many happy hours sitting in his room, where Mike would fascinate me with the debut albums of The Doors, Country Joe and the Fish, Love and Quicksilver Messenger Service. We were in a world of our own.

Apart from John Peel, who played these jewels on his wonderful late-night radio show Perfumed Garden, no one else seemed to have heard of this treasure trove of music. John Peel championed Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, claiming they were the best band on the planet. He not only played them on his show but ferried Don and the band around to gigs and introduced them onstage. Peel carried a lot of weight in the underground scene, which is probably why Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band were better known and had more of a following here in Britain than their native USA.

I first heard Beefheart’s Safe As Milk at Mike’s on the day of its release. To say I was bowled over is an understatement. I was into both the blues and psychedelia, but this seemed to combine the two in a way that blasted your mind and body into atoms. It shook me, and I was hooked. I’d never heard anything like it. By this time, I was also going to London underground clubs Middle Earth, UFO, The Roundhouse, The Marquee and Les Cousins. For me, it was to see mainly Pink Floyd, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Jimi Hendrix and Roy Harper. When I heard that Captain Beefheart was going to play at Middle Earth, I was ecstatic. There was only one problem: I was in the midst of my A-level exams. I had been offered a provisional place at university, and needed the grades, but music was more important to me, and besides, my biology exam was a week away. Surely I could afford a night off. High on adrenalin, I drove to London on my trusty motorbike, only to discover that the gig had been postponed. Beefheart’s bassist Jerry Handley was ill, and they’d been replaced by the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation. Now, I quite liked Aynsley Dunbar, but he was no substitute for Captain Beefheart, who was rescheduled for the following week as a double bill with John Mayall (another favourite of mine). That made it an absolute must.

The gig was now going to be the night before my A-level biology exam.

If I went, I wouldn’t be home until 3:00 a.m., and my exam started at 9:00 a.m.. I would have no last-minute revision, and I’d be knackered. Still, needs must. No choice! It was truly one of the best gigs I have ever been to. I can’t remember anything about John Mayall that night, but Beefheart just blew me away! Needless to say, I didn’t get the required grade, and the course of my life changed. However, I’d seen Captain Beefheart in all his glory! I wouldn’t change that even if I could.

The 1960s were a time of liberal views and creativity. Following World War II and the 1950s austerity, a generation of rebellious teenagers emerged. Fired with optimism, confidence and naivety, they sought to throw off the shackles of conformity and break out from the conservatism of their parents’ generation. This was the new age, and young people saw a world of new possibilities, with waves of creativity in fashion, art, writing, dance, architecture and, most of all, music. Social norms were being rejected. There were protests against the Vietnam war, marches for civil rights, a burgeoning spirit of environmentalism, feminism and equality, coupled with a rejection of the establishment. These sparked great social and political change. Young people had a voice, and they wanted to be heard. Minds were opened. Clothes were colourful. Hair was long. Music was loud. The hair, clothes, attitudes and protest weren’t a fashion; they were symbols of a new way of living; an alternative to the establishment.

The underground movement had an impact on the mainstream. Young people were dropping out, departing on adventures to exotic third-world countries and delving into new religions and cultures. They were appreciating the world’s beauty without needing lots of money. At that time of great social change, many young people were convinced there was a better way to live.

They were experimenting with communal living, getting back to nature, dropping out of the rat race, opposing the whole money-driven greed and warmongering attitudes. These were attempts at a simpler, better way of life.

This was the underground culture from which Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band appeared. They were part of the Los Angeles scene, playing at venues like the Avalon Ballroom that catered for the freaks of the day. The West Coast acid rock scene was based around San Francisco and Los Angeles. The two cities had completely opposite vibes, and intense rivalry. San Francisco had more country, jug band, folk roots with bands like Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Grateful Dead. Los Angeles had a punkier blues experimental feel, with bands like The Doors, Love, and also Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, who were more avant-garde.

The counterculture was about being far out. Bands were vying with each other to be more extreme, extolling the underground scene’s acid/drug culture. The more outrageous the costumes and hair, the better. A look at the cover of Country Joe and the Fish’s I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die clearly demonstrates that. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band topped them all. It didn’t get any weirder.

So where did this begin? Don Vliet was born on 15 January 1941 in Glendale, California. But in his early teens, the family moved out to the small town of Lancaster, way out in the Mojave Desert. As a boy, he’d always been precocious, heavily immersed in art and sculpture, to the point when at the age of 13, he was offered an all-expenses-paid scholarship to a European college. Don’s father had a low opinion of art and artists and turned it down. This didn’t deter Don from being involved in art projects in his usual obsessive manner.

Once while working on a sculpture, he refused to come out of his room, and demanded that food and drink be passed in to him. Don had a strange relationship with his parents, calling them by their first names, and ordering his mother around as if she was his maid.

Don developed a great liking for blues music, which was unusual for a white kid, particularly in a small desert town like Lancaster. He listened avidly to R&B radio stations and DJ Wolfman Jack’s radio station, which pumped out the blues greats like Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker. Don’s deep voice and great vocal range were perfect for a similar blues delivery.

At school, he met up with Frank Zappa, who also had an interest in blues, R&B and doo-wop. They began collaborating. Frank was similarly eccentric, experimental, rebellious and go-getting. Nothing was impossible; imagination was the only limitation. The two of them became involved, listening to R&B and doo-wop, playing instruments and singing. In 1963, Don left the restrictions of small-town Lancaster to team up with Frank in Cucamonga, where he’d set up a simple studio. The two of them began working on a number of ambitious projects. There was a doo-wop opera titled ‘I Was A Teenage Maltshop’ and a film called ‘Captain Beefheart vs. The Grunt People’ (Grunt People being their name for straight people). Some fragments of these pieces still exist and have been released on a number of albums.

Don adopted the persona Captain Beefheart. He explained that the name came from one of his uncles, who used to lewdly expose himself to Don’s girlfriend, saying, ‘Aah, what a beauty. It looks just like a fine beef heart’.

The early collaboration with Frank came to an untimely end when his Cucamonga studio was raided by police and Frank arrested for producing pornographic material. He’d been offered $100 to make a sex tape – a sum he couldn’t refuse – so he made a sex tape of fake moans from a female friend.

He handed over the tape, complete with grunts, squeals and squeaking bedsprings, and was immediately arrested. It was a sting. He had to plead guilty, went to jail for a week, and the police used this as an excuse to ransack his studio. That signalled the end of Frank and Don’s ambitious projects, and Don went back to Lancaster.

A number of young kids were...