The Captain is in

“A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?“

This has become a much loved quote in our house, repeated by offspring who were not even a glimmer in my eye at the time it was committed to vinyl. Although interestingly only really the men. The women mostly just find it ‘weird’. The real devotees go further, with “Fast and bulbous!” “That’s right, The Mascara Snake, fast and bulbous, also a tin teardrop”. “Bulbous also tapered”. “That’s right!”.

Now I’ve captured your attention you will either be glad that someone else is in on it, or curious as to what all this nonsense has to do with music. Don Van Vliet, commonly known as Captain Beefheart to anyone familiar with rock music of the sixties and seventies, is quite definitely an acquired taste, but to anyone with an open mind does reward investigation. So I’m not going to attempt a review of a particular record. The likes of John Peel and other music writers will always tell you that the Captain’s masterpiece, from which the above quotes come (Pachuco Cadaver and Pena are the two tracks) is Trout Mask Replica, but if you want to get further into his work it’s best to start elsewhere (probably Clear Spot, The Spotlight Kid or Shiny Beast – Bat Chain Puller). Trout Mask (which was produced by Frank Zappa) is avant garde to say the least, and unlistenable to commercial ears. And challenging to get through even if you do give it a go – it’s a double album. But actually all his music is pretty much rooted in the blues when it comes down to it.

Here is a documentary narrated by John Peel which tells you a lot more than I can in a short article

The Magic Band, Captain Beefheart’s backing band, are quite the most astonishing rock combo ever put together. As The Guardian‘s Alexis Petridis recently put it, “every instrument appears to be playing in a universe of its own, with only the most tangential relationship to each other.” And yet somehow it makes sense, and in some of his later work the interplay between the instruments, usually just guitars, bass and drums, plus Beefheart’s growled surrealist lyrics (they would need another article), is quite mesmerising. Try for instance Click Clack, off The Spotlight Kid album: so many guitar phrases going in completely different directions in different rhythms but creating something that works as a whole. Beefheart came up with more interesting names for the musicians than the ones they were born with; on guitars, Zoot Horn Rollo and Winged Eel Fingerling; on bass, Rockette Morton, on drums Drumbo, or sometimes Ed Marimba; on clarinet, The Mascara Snake. This points to the thing which draws you in, the humour. However he appears, and he was generally a pretty unpleasant person and tyrannical to work for, Beefheart had an irrepressible sense of humour which shone through, although the truth for the band was very different. They often survived on very little pay and complete lack of the basics including food, the Trout Mask Replica album being rehearsed to within an inch of its life over 8 months under practical siege conditions in a small house somewhere in LA. Every note had to be exact. The final recording took 4¹/₂ hours!

Of course the music being as inaccessible as it was early on, sales were terrible, and you can see a clear development into something more commercially acceptable as they progressed from the sixties into the early seventies, but the musicians were uniformly excellent. They had to be. For an example of the sheer dexterity of the playing, try Suction Prints from Shiny Beast (a completely new band line up however). Occasionally there would be tracks which just surprise you with their warmth, like the quite beautiful Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles, or My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains from Clear Spot. Or try the Latin influenced Tropical Hot Dog Night from Bat Chain Puller, which includes the immortal line ‘like two flamingoes in a fruit fight’. Or the brilliantly concise Sun Zoom Spark from Clear Spot. He could conform when necessary. However his music never really made enough converts to sustain a living, and he eventually quit in the early eighties and turned to painting, which in the world’s terms was a success, increasingly so after his death in 2010.

Here’s a glimpse of the best line up from 1972, not much footage to be found. The guy in the hat is Rockette Morton, the tall guy in red is Zoot Horn Rollo, Winged Eel in shades and beard, Roy Estrada on bass, and Ed Marimba on drums (I think). They must have been great to see live.