By:
On:
In: Audio interviews, Multimedia
With: 0 Comments

This lecture took place at the Gifford Auditorium, Syracuse, 23rd April 1975. Don is fairly quiet throughout the lecture; when asked a direct question he gives not so much oblique answers as abstract statements beamed into his brain from who-knows where. When asked to talk a little about Trout Mask Replica, Don instead quotes sections from Sam With The Showing Scalp Flattop. Unmissable, but not particularly helpful. Frank Zappa, who does the vast majority of the talking, makes considerably more sense with his genuinely insightful ruminations on the workings of the music industry. Lecture part 1(44 minutes 26 seconds) Lecture part 2 (44 minutes 48 seconds)Read More →

By:
On:
In: Audio interviews, Multimedia
With: 0 Comments

Welcome to my very favourite item here at the Radar Station. It’s a streaming audio interview broadcast on the John Peel show on the 24th April 1973. Fourteen minutes long, it is less of an interview than a friendly chat. John Peel states at the beginning that he is notoriously bad at interviewing people, but this is one of the best interview I have ever heard with the Captain and really captures his sense of fun. This tape was sent to me by Peter Cooney, many thanks indeed. Click to hear the show.Read More →

By:
On:
In: Audio interviews, Multimedia
With: 0 Comments

By  Michael Tearson – hear it! This interview was recorded for the radio station WMMR in (probably ) February 1972. Tearson was a pioneer underground radio DJ and had been a fan for some time. His first radio show for WXPN back in 1967 was called “Beefpower” in honour of the Captain. The text of the interview along with a short commentary by Tearson was published in Terminal #19 – June 1985Read More →

By:
On:
In: Audio interviews, Multimedia
With: 0 Comments

Here you will find streaming audio files which make up a full interview which took place in California, July 1969, between Don Van Vliet and Meatball Fulton. Divided into 5 parts, each part is just over 20 minutes long for your convenience. You may occasionally hear sentences abruptly clipped due to the original tape running out in the machine recording the conversation. I doubt there is a more complete audio version of this interview available anywhere. This is a fascinating interview, with Don making a startling succession of inspired observations about music, art, drugs, literature, human society, nature etc etc. I tip my hat toRead More →

By:
On:
In: Cartoons
With: 0 Comments

These cartoons were sent to me by Colin B. Morton and are used with kind permission. All except the first are taken from the Colin B. Morton & Chuck Death Book “Great Pop Things”. Click for bigger versions: Note the appearance of a ‘Norton Nicholls’ in both the Zappa story and “Captain Beefheart: The Movie part 1”. Colin explained: [wp_quote] I attended Croesyceiliog School in Gwent (also Colin David Webb who wrote “Captain Beefheart – The Man & His Music” went to this school but a bit before me). In about 1983-4 I was standing at a bus stop talking to some kids from thatRead More →

By:
On:
In: Cartoons
With: 0 Comments

This cartoon is dated 6th March 1995 and was taken from the Eureka Times Standard. I must say that I can’t work out what the two accompanying questions have to do with anything, let alone Beefheart. Nevertheless, it’s a nice drawing. Many thanks to Sheldon Reber for sending it along.Read More →

By:
On:
In: Life articles and interviews
With: 4 Comments

Introduction by Anton Corbijn: Finally the time has arrived… Bono will meet Captain Beefheart! Albeit from a distance – Bono is staying in a hotel in Hollywood, in the middle of the second part of the American U2 tour, performing for about 30.000 people. Don Van Vliet, alias Captain Beefheart, is at home in the north of California where he has lived for so many years now. He´s not that fond of humanity and has practically no companions except for his wife, Jan. He retired from music in 1982 and is now a well-known and gifted painter. This conversation is something I was looking forwardRead More →

By:
On:
In: Life articles and interviews
With: 4 Comments

First, some background info… You said that you worked for Zappa… how long was this for and what did you do? I worked for John Williams (Art Director) for Frank’s Bizarre/Straight records. I began in 1968 and was there until August 1970. John hired me because my style was very similar to that of Cal Schenkel’s, who was working elsewhere at the time (and because, as John’s wife Suzy explained to my wife at the time, “John thinks Otis has a cool name”). Projects included the Mothers of Invention, Wild Man Fisher, the G.T.O.s, Tim Buckley, Lord Buckley, Linda Ronstadt, Lenny Bruceand last but notRead More →

By:
On:
In: Life articles and interviews
With: 0 Comments

Also guaranteed to have a catastrophic effect on your love-life is the music of Captain Beefheart, subject of John Peel’s adoring if oddly po-faced tribute, The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart (Tuesday, BBC2). But then perhaps he too is a “boy thing.” Years ago, I never understood why any woman I succeeded in luring home vanished swiftly into the night as soon as I played her some of the Captain’s more tender bellowings. All this time later, I couldn’t help but be moved to find that he’d lost none of his power to soothe and elevate the spirits. “Argh, no more, please, this isRead More →

By:
On:
In: Life articles and interviews
With: 0 Comments

We at the Observer can boast a couple of ancient links with Captain Beefheart, subject of tonight’s Rock Cults programme, The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart (BBC2, 11.15pm): Tom Hibbert’s band, the Angry Crabbers, played support to Captain Beefheart in a San Francisco club in 1981. `Nice set, son,’ rumbled the Captain when they came off stage. `I’ve got one word of advice to you: don’t sign with Virgin.’ Well, as those old cosmic links go, I was initially instrumental in signing the Captain to Virgin in 1974, after an eventful spring in Los Angeles that included composing a song with the Captain inRead More →

By:
On:
In: Life articles and interviews
With: 1 Comment

But why did he throw it all in and go to live in the Mojave Desert? Mike Barnes finds out. “I’M a genius, I was born with my eyes open,” said Captain Beefheart back in 1972. A lot of people still agree with him. John Peel is one of them. “If there has ever been such a thing as a genius in the history of popular music, it’s Beefheart,” he says. “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.” Beck, PJ Harvey and TomRead More →

By:
On:
In: Life articles and interviews
With: 0 Comments

An ornery cuss is Don van Vliet, the subject of next Tuesday’s BBC2 documentary Rock Cults: The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart, introduced and narrated by No 1 Beefheart fan John Peel. Frank Zappa, for instance, was almost literally on his deathbed before he could bring himself to comment in level tones about his former musical partner, the duo having fallen out horribly and infamously almost 20 years before. Tuesday night’s fascinating programme in fact arose accidentally out of producer-director Elaine Shepherd’s previous portrait of Zappa, when, in the last TV interview before his death from cancer in 1993, the renowned hippie-maverick, satirist, independentRead More →