Captain Beefheart - Biography
Captain Beefheart is one of American music’s true originals. Born of the blues, his music was transmitted by the self-taught, untutored bandleader-vocalist-saxophonist-harp player to the young, often terrified members of his Magic Band. His unprecedented style incorporated Delta slide guitar, free jazz saxophonics, cripplingly askew rhythms, and spoken-word eruptions. His sound, which challenged sidemen and listeners alike, never attracted more than a fervent cult. But his off-kilter music has influenced a gallery of acolytes that includes Pere Ubu, Public Image, Ltd., Tom Waits, Devo, and PJ Harvey, to name only a few.
He was born Don Vliet in Glendale, Calif., on January 15, 1941, to a Helms Bakery delivery truck driver and a part-time cosmetics saleswoman. As a child, he showed his first artistic aptitude as a painter and sculptor; before he was in his teens, he attracted the attention of sculptor Augustino Rodriguez, who had young Vliet join him on a local educational TV show to create in front of the cameras. He turned down a three-year scholarship to study sculpting in Europe. It’s widely believed that he assumed the name “Don Van Vliet” — which he goes by to this day -- as a teenager in homage to one of his idols, Vincent Van Gogh.
As he entered his high school years, he moved with his family to Lancaster, Calif., on the outskirts of Los Angeles. At Antelope Valley High, Van Vliet encountered the rebellious aspiring young musician Frank Zappa, who shared his love for blues and R&B. He collaborated with Zappa on a stillborn band called The Soots (some of whose early home recordings appeared during the ‘90s on a couple of Zappa compilations for Rykodisc). A similarly unfinished science fiction film provided him with his enduring nom de musique: Captain Beefheart.
Formed in 1964, The Magic Band were a fairly conventional white blues group; its members recruited from various Antelope Valley blues outfits. After a successful appearance at the 1965 Hollywood Teen Fair at the Hollywood Palladium, the group was signed to A&M Records, then still best-known for its instrumental hits by the label’s co-owner, trumpeter Herb Alpert. Working with producer David Gates — later the leader of the sugary hit-makers Bread — The Magic Band cut two stomping blues singles, a cover of Bo Diddley’s “Diddy Wah Diddy” and “Frying Pan.” Beefheart had by then developed his vocal style, a guttural, octave-leaping appropriation of bluesman Howlin’ Wolf’s abrasive yowl.
The 45s went nowhere and the Magic Band was dropped by A&M, but Buddah Records executive and producer Bob Krasnow enthusiastically picked up the offbeat group. In April 1967, Beefheart entered the studio with a newly recruited guitarist — the much-coveted Santa Monica whiz Ry Cooder, formerly of the local combo The Rising Sons (which also included vocalist Taj Mahal among its members). The sessions marked the debut of long-suffering John French, who would serve as Beefheart’s drummer, sometime guitarist, musical director, and whipping boy into the ‘70s.
By the time the group’s debut album Safe As Milk (1967) was released that fall, Cooder had quit the group — on the eve of a scheduled appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival — because of Beefheart’s erratic behavior and the declining amount of blues content in The Magic Band’s songs. While Safe As Milk did contain material like a cover of bluesman Robert Pete Williams’ “Grown So Ugly” and other rootsy tracks, the band moved into terra incognita on the rhythmically obtuse “Abba Zabba” and the curlicued pop song “Electricity” (which included an electronic leitmotif on the hand-manipulated theremin by guest instrumentalist Stanley Hoffman).
In the face of adversity, Beefheart soldiered on. Thanks to the machinations of producer-manager Krasnow, The Magic Band wound up recording two versions of an album that was originally conceived as a two-LP set of songs and jams, provisionally titled It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper. The more conventional, but nonetheless eccentric, tracks ended up on the album Strictly Personal (1968), issued on Krasnow’s Blue Thumb label with a stickily psychedelic layering of studio processing that enraged the bandleader. (The bluesy, veering jams were belatedly released as Mirror Man.)
After a catastrophic promotional trip to Europe that nearly marooned The Magic Band in France, Beefheart regrouped in Southern California with the remnants of his battered group, French (now re-named “Drumbo” by the bandleader) and guitarist Jeff Cotton (rechristened “Antenna Jimmy Semens”). Beefheart’s cousin, bass clarinetist Victor Hayden, signed on as “The Mascara Snake.” Two young Lancaster musicians completed a new lineup: guitarist Bill “Zoot Horn Rollo” Harkleroad and bassist Mark “Rockette Morton” Boston.
This ramshackle collection of performers collaborated on the album upon which Beefheart’s reputation largely rests. Broke and starving, The Magic Band live communally in a house on Entrada Drive in suburban Woodland Hills for the better part of a year, working on music that French transcribed from Beefheart’s banged-out piano lines and whistled ideas. Guitarist Cotton assembled the vocalist’s lyrics from jottings on scattered scraps of paper. The compositions were rehearsed endlessly, under conditions French later described as “a truly cultlike mixture of brainwashing, intimidation, and coercion.”
Beefheart’s old comrade Frank Zappa — by now leader of the prominent Los Angeles band The Mothers of Invention initially taped an album-length version of 28 mercilessly complex and dissonant songs live, in the manner of a Delta blues field recording, at the Woodland Hills house. (These were released in their entirety on Revenant Records’ crucial 1999 collection Grow Fins.) Zappa then took the band into a Glendale studio and re-recorded 21 of the songs in one four-hour session. Those recordings and a few of the “live” tracks were issued on Zappa’s Straight label as the two-LP set Trout Mask Replica (1969), among the most flabbergasting rock albums ever issued.
No one had ever heard anything quite like the album. Its subject matter veered from ecology and genocide to life at sea, hoboing, and the death of a piggy bank. Its sound — like some unholy mating of Charley Patton and Albert Ayler -- mashed together dithering slide guitars and squealing reeds over barrages of clattering, arrhythmic drumming. The unfettered vocals for some tracks were apparently recorded over the phone; others were clearly improvised on the spot. Listeners responded with either utter rapture or complete incomprehension, but, no matter what the verdict was, virtually everyone agreed that nothing like Trout Mask Replica had ever been recorded by a rock band.
Needless to say, the album was not the stuff of the top 40, but Beefheart soon complained bitterly that his art had been wrongfully marketed by Zappa as the work of a “freak.” Despite this enmity, The Magic Band remained on Straight for a lean, more user-friendly, yet still unconventional follow-up, Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970). Amazingly, given the stress involved in the making of Trout Mask Replica, core band members Harkleroad, Boston, and French remained in the fold for the sequel; they were joined by percussionist and ex-Mothers of Invention member Art “Ed Marimba” Tripp (who would replace French as the Magic Band’s drummer in 1972).
The Magic Band sundered its connection with Zappa and signed with Warner Bros. Records’s Reprise imprint in 1972. Yet the Zappa association remained important for the next couple of Beefheart albums. Guitarist Elliot “Winged Eel Fingerling” Ingber, late of the Mothers, joined for The Spotlight Kid (1972), while ex-Mothers bassist Roy “Orejon” Estrada played on Clear Spot (1972). The three post-Trout Mask albums are probably the most accessible and crisply made in the Beefheart catalog; the Magic Band’s nerve-jangling playing grew increasingly streamlined, and their angular rhythms could be more readily apprehended by the average listener. By Clear Spot — crisply produced by Ted Templeman, who had worked with Van Morrison and the Doobie Brothers — Beefheart was employing a conventional horn section, and occasionally even singing what could be described as a ballad.
With the singularly misguided notion that he could attain commercial success, Beefheart hooked up with a new management/production team — Andy and Augie DiMartino, former producer of The Cascades (“Rhythm of the Rain”) and handlers of Gary Puckett & The Union Gap (“Young Girl”) — and embarked on a path that would scuttle his band and momentarily damage his credibility and derail his career.
Moving to Mercury Records, Beefheart recorded Unconditionally Guaranteed (1974), an album that tried to scour the Magic Band’s music of its rough edges. If its intent was to score a hit, this lifeless collection missed: The set peaked on Billboard’s album chart at No. 192 — one slot lower than the top position of Clear Spot. The Magic Band promptly mutineed on the eve of a tour of the US and Europe; Harkleroad, Boston, and Tripp -- and, briefly, French -- would all be involved in the group Mallard, which advanced it own blend of off-center post-Beefheartian roots-rock weirdness for two albums. Beefheart hastily cobbled together a group of Sunset Strip rockers as a new “Magic Band” for a poorly-received tour; some of these players — referred to by fans as “The Tragic Band” -- appeared on the half-hearted Mercury album Bluejeans and Moonbeams (1974).
Having failed to sell out successfully, Beefheart was entangled in label and management problems. Looking for a way out of his cul-de-sac, he called Frank Zappa. Though his relationship with his high school buddy remained fractious, Zappa generously offered Beefheart a job as vocalist on a Mothers of Invention tour. Highlights of an Austin, Texas, gig were released on the co-billed Zappa/Beefheart/Mothers album Bongo Fury (1975).
Following the tour, Zappa brought Beefheart into the studio with a group that included former Magic Band members French and Denny Walley and guitarist Jeff Moris Tepper, a college student and Beefheart fanatic who had mastered the angular changes in the Captain’s music. The group cut an album provisionally titled Bat Chain Puller, but its release was aborted by Beefheart’s still unresolved label and management woes and a legal tussle between Zappa and his manager. (This material later became sporadically available under the title Dust Sucker.)
Undaunted, Beefheart began touring with a new young lineup conversant with the twists and turns of his style — Tepper, his friend Eric Drew Feldman (on bass and keyboards), and drummer Robert Arthur Williams. These players, guitarist Richard Redus, and Mothers trombonist Bruce Fowler re-recorded much of the Bat Chain Puller album for Beefheart’s return to the Warner Bros. fold, the misleadingly titled Shiny Beast [Bat Chain Puller] (1978). (On the eve of the album’s release, Beefheart reunited with ex-Magic Band guitarist Ry Cooder for his lone excursion into Hollywood soundtrack work: “Hard Workin’ Man,” the title theme for the feature film Blue Collar.)
Thanks to the high quality of his new material and the enthusiastic playing of the young Magic Band, Beefheart enjoyed renewed credibility in the critical community. Moreover, Shiny Beast appeared as interest in punk rock was sweeping the world; such important punk mouthpieces as former Sex Pistol John Lydon were openly singing the praises of the Captain’s music and its prophetic impact on their own work.
Two more albums, released by Virgin Records, generally sustained the high level of creativity heard on Shiny Beast. Doc at the Radar Station (1980) introduced guitarist Gary Lucas, an important and inventive late collaborator (and, for a time, Beefheart’s manager), and marked the reappearance of John French, who had first recorded with Beefheart 13 years earlier. Ice Cream For Crow (1982), which added drummer Cliff Martinez of the L.A. punk band The Weirdoes to the lineup, proved to be the Magic Band’s swan song.
By 1982, Beefheart had grown weary of making music and the grind of touring, and decided to devote himself full-time to his first avocation: art. Shedding his stage name, Don Van Vliet moved to Trinidad Bay in Northern California in mid-1983, to paint. Over the years, he has mounted several gallery and museum exhibitions of his work. His canvasses, much in the manner of the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, command prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. A 2003 limited edition set, Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh, focused almost exclusively on his career as a graphic artist.
In the few interviews he has given since he stopped making music, Beefheart has generally spoken dismissively of his work with The Magic Band. That’s a pity, for few American musical artists have formulated a style as unique, intuitive, brash, or exciting as his. A legion of musicians on the outer fringes of rock experimentation live in his profound debt.
Captain Beefheart died on December 17, 2010 in Arcata, California, due to complications from Multiple Sclerosis.