Trivia / Captain Beefheart

• Black Sheep Hit: "Hit" is a stretch, but the only Beefheart song to make the national charts in America was "Diddy Wah Diddy" in 1966, peaking at #128. It's a fairly straightforward Garage Rock Cover Version of a Bo Diddley song.
• Colbert Bump: John Peel was frequently this for Beefheart in the UK.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • The oft-quoted story that the group were fired from A&M Records for Don breaking a microphone on a demo of "Electricity" is untrue — the song wasn't written yet. In actual fact the group were dropped due to the failure of the "Moonchild" single and the label's dissatisfaction with the demos for the unfinished A&M LP. Allegedly, the mic did break at the end of the Safe as Milk version and it was left in.
  • It's quite common for articles to overemphasise Ry Cooder's work on Safe As Milk purely due to his popularity afterwards. He essentially was hired as a session musician on the LP and left almost immediately afterwards — the main guitarist was Alex St. Clair Snouffer.
  • Some refer to the many Spotlight Kid outtakes as the sessions for an unreleased double LP called Brown Star. In fact this was a working title of Clear Spot and the only thing true is that some of the Spotlight Kid outtakes were indeed rerecorded for Clear Spot (these are "Low Yo Yo Stuff", "Circumstances", "Sun Zoom Spark" and "Clear Spot" as well as the future reworked tracks "Little Scratch [The Past Sure Is Tense]", "Dirty Blue Gene" and "Harry Irene").
• Creator's Apathy: According to keyboardist Michael Smotherman, Van Vliet was so detached during the recording of Bluejeans & Moonbeams that the other band members literally had to push him up to the microphone to get him singing.
• Creator Backlash: Beefheart came to hate Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans and Moonbeams. He had originally recorded them in the hopes of finding commercial success, but only succeeded in alienating his fans while the mainstream audience he was trying to reach responded with apathy.
• Cut Song:
  • "Here I Am, I Always Am" was the original b-side to "Moonchild" and appears as such on an acetate, but the band decided to use "Frying Pan" instead. It was eventually used as a bonus track on "The Legendary A&M Sessions" EP in the mid 80s, as well as on the Grow Fins box set in 1999, which included an alternate take of it too.
  • The planned double album "It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper" had several songs that did not make it to "Mirror Man" or "Strictly Personal", these being "Big Black Baby Shoes", "Flower Pot", "Dirty Blue Gene" and "Moody Liz". However, all of these songs were unfinished. Both the then-unfinished "On Tomorrow" and "Moody Liz" would be rerecorded in the Strictly Personal sessions, but only the former was finished for the album - the latter's outtake version (complete with phasing) has leaked however.
  • "Funeral Hill" and "Kiss Me My Love" from the Spotlight Kid sessions, "Little Scratch" from the Clear Spot sessions (although its music was later reused for "The Past Sure Is Tense"). There are numerous other examples from this period.
  • Whilst most of the tracks from the then-unreleased album Bat Chain Puller were re-recorded across Beefheart's last three albums Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), Doc at the Radar Station, and Ice Cream for Crow, the songs "Seam Crooked Sam" and "Odd Jobs" were not. Beefheart did want to keep some of the songs exclusive in case he got the rights to release the album at a later date, but it never happened during his lifetime.
• Defictionalization: Don originally wanted Clear Spot to be pressed on clear vinyl, but this was an expensive process in 1972 and the budget wouldn't allow it. By the album's 50th Anniversary Reissue in 2022, however, it was a much more common process - so this edition of the album was finally on the clear vinyl Don intended. It didn't, however, replicate his original plan of being a clear record in embossed PVC sleeve (the latter which was used on early pressings), so fans would have to recreate this themselves.
• Executive Meddling: Beefheart said his second album Strictly Personal was a victim of this, though he only said this after it failed to become a commercial success. Specifically, Beefheart claimed the phasing and other gratuitous "psychedelic" effects heard throughout the album were added by Record Producer Bob Krasnow without his knowledge or approval.
  • Ex-members have said that the direction of the two 1974 albums was largely caused by the manipulative tactics of Don's managers at the time, the DiMartino brothers. This was particularly evident after his entire group walked out on him — the DiMartinos more or less convinced him that doing what they said was the only way to gain success, and would not allow outside influences.
• Late Export for You:
  • Due to a contractual issue (The LP was recorded for Warner (Bros.) Records in the US whilst Beefheart was still contracted to Virgin Records elsewhere), 1978's Shiny Beast did not get released in the UK until 1980. As promotion was focused on his current LP Doc At The Radar Station at the time, it went somewhat under the radar.
  • The UK did not receive the A&M singles until the mid-80s EP The Legendary A&M Sessions. Only a mono version of "Safe As Milk" was released there in the 60s — it took a few years for the first stereo version to appear there (as "Dropout Boogie") and it initially omitted two tracks.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Despite Trout Mask Replica's iconic status, the Captain thought Lick My Decals Off, Baby was his best album, and some fans and critics agree. To people who were in the early 80s post-punk scene, Doc at the Radar Station has this status. On the other hand, a good amount of fans (especially female) really like Clear Spot.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": "Ice Rose" (off 1978's Shiny Beast) and "Semi Multicolored Caucasian" (off 1982's Ice Cream For Crow) seem similar to "Alice In Blunderland" (off 1971's The Spotlight Kid). In actual fact, "Ice Rose" was first written and recorded in 1967 as "Big Black Baby Shoes", and the other two songs (both written and demoed in the Spotlight Kid sessions in 1971) were based on sections from it.
• Missing Episode: Despite the significant amount of Spotlight Kid outtakes that have either leaked or seen official release, versions of "Odd Jobs" and "Candle Mambo" mentioned by John French in Through The Eyes Of Magic have never seen release. In addition, a 1966 A&M Demo Tape contained versions of "Owed T'Alex" and "Mark XI" (an early "Love Lies") but none of the group members asked had a copy. Furthermore, there was a rerecording of "Kandy Korn" done along with early versions of "Moonlight On Vermont" and "Veteran's Day Poppy", and possibly "Sugar And Spikes", whilst Alex St. Clair was still in the band but before the recording of Trout Mask Replica proper (It was, very briefly, going to be a rerecording of Strictly Personal with new songs, but he was talked out of it).
  • "Funeral Hill", though it appeared semi-officially on a Repertoire reissue of "Mirror Man" — a bootleg source that is actually lower quality than some leaks) — was omitted from the 2014 Outtakes collection in the Sun Zoom Spark set, despite being a complete track with vocals. The reason has not been confirmed, but it is believed to be that Jan Van Vliet felt uncomfortable releasing a song in which Beefheart talks about his own death.
• Money, Dear Boy: After Lick My Decals Off, Baby, the Magic Band's musical output for the next 3 years became more and more conventional in order to make more money, as they were barely making a living off of their previous endeavors. This is especially obvious on the Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams albums, which Beefheart later disowned.
• The Pete Best: The original drummer Vic Mortenson, who lasted from Van Vliet & Zappa's pre-Magic band material right through to the recording of the A&M material, was most famously the author of the original version of "Call On Me" (the slow demo version found on Grow Fins). Due to his military training, he was called up for service and couldn't continue with the group. His successor PG Blakely is even more of an example since he was replaced by John French. The guitarist Doug Moon has the distinction of playing live with the group and on their A&M material, though he left prior to Safe as Milk — though reappeared on "China Pig" on Trout Mask Replica.
• Reclusive Artist: He became practically the epitome of this trope after he quit music to focus on painting. His failing health did not help.
  • The same is true of Trout Mask Replica musicians Jeff Cotton aka "Antennae Jimmy Semens" and Victor Hayden "The Mascara Snake". In the case of Cotton he retired from public life, which led to the assumption he hated his former association with the group — in 2018 he was interviewed and this proved to not be the case with him reminiscing fondly. In the case of Hayden, Van Vliet's cousin, his only post-Trout Mask activity was the painting for the cover of Bluejeans & Moonbeams.
• Revival by Commercialization: "Moonlight On Vermont" was not a single at the time of Trout Mask Replica, but it is practically Beefheart's theme song whenever he is mentioned on The BBC. For a while, Radio 6 played it regularly.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: Beefheart was musically active from 1966 to 1982 and only released a handful of albums before he quit the music industry for the rest of his life. Yet his influence on alternative music is enormous!
• They Also Did: Three group members got more famous for other groups:
  • Ry Cooder (Safe As Milk era, became a solo success)
  • Gary Lucas (Last two LPs, later worked with Jeff Buckley and wrote the riffs for his popular songs "Mojo Pin" and "Grace")
  • Cliff Martinez (Ice Cream For Crow era, worked with Red Hot Chili Peppers on their first two LPs).
• Troubled Production: Hoo, boy... The recording of Trout Mask Replica is close to being an ultimate example of the trope.
  • Beefheart wanted the band to "live" his music, and so, he got all the musicians living in a small, dilapidated rented house for eight months. The house had only two bedrooms, one (bigger) was occupied by Beefheart, the other shared by the remaining four musicians, who were strictly restricted from leaving the house and forced to practice for at least 14 hours a day.
  • The composition itself was difficult. Beefheart had no musical education and could not read notes - on purpose - so his "compositions" were actually, in many cases, little more than piano chords created by Captain hitting ten different keys simultaneously. Sometimes, it took weeks to transpose the chord onto a guitar and figure out a way to play it properly. In the end, although the other musicians played a key role in arranging all the songs, all music, lyrics and arrangements were credited to Beefheart alone.
  • The recording was an ultimate nightmare. Beefheart demanded an absolute submission from all his accompanying players, and so, 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. The musicians were so broken spiritually that, when Beefheart started attacking one of them, they joined in just not to be the next to face the anger. Drummer John French recalled an accident where he didn't play a drum break the way the boss wanted; first Beefheart scolded him and punched him in the face, then the other musicians started beating him just to calm the Captain down (including beating the drummer with a broomstick until it broke), and finally Beefheart told him that the next time French would be thrown out of a window.
  • The financial situation (of the musicians, but not Beefheart) was dire to say the least. French remembers living on a small cup of beans daily for at least a month. A friend who visited their house stated that the musicians were looking cadaverous. Eventually they resorted to shoplifting to survive; on one occasion, when they got caught, Frank Zappa (who served as the album's producer) had to bail them out (at Beefheart's request - just because the sessions had to be put on a halt had they remained in jail).
  • At one point Jeff Cotton (the guitarist) escaped for a few weeks after a heated argument with French; the drummer, who had thrown a metal cymbal at Cotton, ran after him yelling that he too wanted to get out. Both of them later felt compelled to return. The bassist Mark Boston at one point hid clothes in a field across the street, planning his own getaway.
  • By the end of the sessions, John French did dare to play something not the way Beefheart imagined it. He was fired from the band and, despite playing a major role in converting Beefheart's loose and foggy ideas into music, he was not credited on the album cover either as a musician or as an arranger. Oh, and Beefheart announced his firing by kicking French down a flight of stairs.
• What Could Have Been: He had a few unreleased records:
  • The first was partly recorded for A&M, prior to the group getting dropped (what was done is on "Grow Fins").
  • The second was a double LP "It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper" which wasn't finished, and instead edited down to one LP and remixed as Strictly Personal. The outtakes appeared partly on Mirror Man and partly on I May Be Hungry But I Sure Ain't Weird, though there are a fair number of lost tracks (the most famous of which being an early version of the later recorded "Owed T'Alex"). Then co-lyricist Herb Bermann's book "Mystery Man From The Magic Band" details further — some instrumental tracks were supposed to have lyrics (for example, "Flower Pot"), and some of the tracks that appear only in lyrics had their music reused on later releases (for example, "The Smithsonian Institute Blues").
  • The third was a live album recorded in London in 1974. It would have followed the Bluejeans And Moonbeams album though cancelled due to the fact that Van Vliet refused to tour that LP (he soon after joined Frank Zappa for the tour that produced Bongo Fury). A couple of tracks appeared on Virgin's "V Sampler" of the period, and there was an unofficial release of two thirds of the show in the 90s, though it took until the 2000s for Virgin release the whole show, which they did as part of their remaster series. It received such a critical mauling and poor sales that it was taken out of print.
  • The fourth was the original Bat Chain Puller, which though finished, was mired in litigation due to Zappa's then-manager Herb Cohen funding the recording with Zappa's royalties without permission. After Cohen's death, the Zappa family finally got to release it.
  • The last, a follow up to Ice Cream For Crow, War Milk was attempted, though Van Vliet was talked out of it by his wife Jan, in favor of his painting career.
  • The band turned down the offer to play at the Monterey Pop Festival at the insistence of guitarist Ry Cooder, who felt the group was not ready. However, Cooder has also claimed that at a warm-up show several days before, Beefheart refused to sing and jumped off the stage, leaving the band to play a mostly instrumental set. The guitarist said this was the reason he refused to play.

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