I recently received a message from John Drumbo French to update me on progress with his new recordings:

So here Rockette and I are at Proper Record's wonderful new studio recording my new CD "City of Refuge" which is basically a Magic Band influenced compilation of music I've put together over the last year and a half.

I'm listening to Rockette put a bass line on a song called "Maybe That'll Teach Ya" which is based loosely on a jam that was done by Don, Doug Moon, and myself. I used the Moon riff and Don's line "Maybe That'll Teach Ya" and wrote a whole song around it about the futility of revenge. It's a more bluesy kind of simple piece.

I don't think Mark or I have ever sounded better together. This has been a lot of fun and I'm sure that Beefheart fans will be pleased as this will fill a particular need for new fresh material in the style of the Magic Band. I started getting these ideas about six months into the project, I suppose, as a result of the complete saturation I was undergoing to achieve a reasonable MB sound.

So, just thought I'd update you.

Gotta go, John French

Posted by Graham Johnston at 11:47 AM  - 5 comments - post a comment

Zoot Horn Rollo passes comment on the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder by an idiot in Oregon's Register Guard paper:

Local guitar teacher Bill Harkleroad, named one of Rolling Stone magazine's "100 greatest guitarists" ever in 2003, admired Lennon more for his social and political views, for taking "risks to say what he thought," than for his musical legacy.

Harkleroad, better known as Zoot Horn Rollo when he played guitar for Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band more than three decades ago, said Lennon and U2's Bono are among the few rock legends who had the ability to use their fame that way.

"Imagine was a cool tune, but it was more (Lennon's) political work that I admired," Harkleroad said.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 11:05 AM  - 0 comments - post a comment

An article by Gerry Fialka in Venice Paper caught my attention. It described a party held in the Canals at Venice, California to raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In the band was, "Leon Rubenhold, who had played with Captain Beefheart and was ripping up guitar on stage."

Leon Rubenhold has had a long and distinguished career in the music business, including work with Lowell George, Wilson Pickett and The Four Tops, but this was the first I had read about him playing with Captain Beefheart. I wrote and asked him to tell me all about it. Leon's reply follows:

Beefheart Stint

My time with Don was a brief couple of weeks back in 1975 just after Bongo Fury was released. My dear friend Elliot Ingber (a.k.a. Winged Eel Fingerling) told me Don needed another guitarist for their upcoming European tour and I should check it out. So I went down to the rehearsal studio which was on Sunset Blvd near Gower St. It was actually Frank Zappa's headquarters of offices and rehearsal rooms. I went in the room and Don was there along with John French (a.k.a. Drumbo). John and I jammed for awhile, maybe a half hour or so playing spontaneous riffs and grooves. At the end of that jam John said "We've had over seventy guitar players come in here and you are the only one who has the feel we need. You've got the gig if you want it."

I knew some of the other guitarists that had come down to try out and many of them were very well known and monster players around town. I felt very flattered to say the least.

Rehearsals began shortly thereafter and continued on for about two weeks or so. It was John and I mostly going over the tunes and feels together while Don sat in a corner of the room and drew in a coloring book with magic markers coloring on the reverse side of the pages ... an interesting technique. He would stop coloring sometimes to voice a comment or whistle or sing a specific lick he wanted played.

At one rehearsal I was deeply concentrating on a specific passage when I turned my head and Zappa was standing right next to me with that typical intense look on his face scrutinizing what I was playing. I stopped playing and we started talking and he said he was impressed with what and how I was doing with learning the parts. Which by the way had to be played exactly as written or the song would not work.

That afternoon we all went across the street for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, Frank, Don, John and myself. I believe the cover shot of Bongo Fury was taken at that restaurant at one of the booths.

Rehearsals were going along fine till one Saturday afternoon Don called me at home and told me that Denny Wally the guitarist in Frank's band had just quit and that he had decided to have Denny replace me because Denny knew all the material and they would not have to rehearse anymore. Don hated to rehearse.

So on the following Tuesday I get a call at home from Frank Zappa and he is asking me if I wanted to replace Denny in his band and could I come up to his house and play for awhile to feel things out?

Later that afternoon there I am at Frank's home studio sitting cross legged on the carpet with Frank playing acoustic guitars together. We ran through some of his more difficult material and we both agreed that there just wasn't enough time to get it together for a tour of Australia that started on Friday of the same week. He said that if we were flying on a chartered flight we could have rehearsed on the plane but since it was a commercial flight it wasn't possible. I was thinking it would take a week just to learn one of his songs properly not the whole show. In addition he wanted me to be the only guitarist because he just wanted to sing. Talk about turning up the pressure a few notches.

So that's the story as it actually happened. I was in Beefheart's band but it was cut short and never made it past rehearsals.

Check out my website at http://www.leonrubenhold.com/ for other info on what I have been doing and what I have done.

thanks,
Leon Rubenhold

Thank you, Leon Rubenhold, for letting us read this fascinating and previously unpublished story.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 10:31 AM  - 3 comments - post a comment

One year after the sale of a 'Beep Seal' sculpture on eBay, another work by Don Van Vliet's childhood television co-star Agostinho Rodrigues has been sold there. The auction this time was for Rodrigues' 1953 depiction of a horse, the winning bid being $375.00. Details are on eBay here.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 10:14 AM  - 0 comments - post a comment

Hats were an important part of the appearance of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. There were probably dozens of hats worn on stage and in photo-shoots over the years. Don Van Vliet even named the guitarist Richard Snyder after a hat. The most famous hat, the one Don wore on the cover of Trout Mask Replica, was allegedly last seen in the possession of a Jethro Tull band member.

Even today, Magic Band guitarist, Beefheart manager, and reader of Beefheart poetry, Gary Lucas, is rarely seen on stage without a hat.

In a rare moment of bare-headedness Gary has agreed to donate his hat to the winner of an auction whose proceeds will go to 'People for the American Way'. Among other celebrities who have donated items to be auctioned for this cause are Patti Smith, Ry Cooder, Coldplay, Radiohead, Devendra Banhart, New Order, Robert Rauschenberg, Alec Baldwin, Randy Newman, Cindy Sherman, The Offspring, William Wegman and Robin Williams.

http://auction.pfaw.org/

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 10:59 PM  - 0 comments - post a comment

Foma Skilliton kindly alerted me to a website selling a small range of Beefheart t-shirts.

I have no idea about the quality nor the legitimacy of the images (photographer's royalties?) but since this is one of the most frequent questions I get asked I thought I'd pass along the info.

The pictures on the site are quite poor quality, so please be warned. There are sharp images of the shirts themselves but they are very pixelated around the actual print on the shirt, looking like the image has just been superimposed over an image of a shirt.

If you are tempted you can check them out at Fashionpunk. If you do buy one, please let us know whether you would recommend their t-shirts to others.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 6:15 PM  - 1 comments - post a comment

I'm looking forward to the DVD release next year of a new documentary about Captain Beefheart. A good number of Magic Band musicians were interviewed for it in London and America over the past couple of months, so it should be interesting to hear what they had to say.

Captain Beefheart biographer Mike Barnes was among those taking part and he has kindly allowed me to reproduce a short account of his experience. This was originally posted at The Fire Party Discussion List.

Don News aka Synchronicity

I went to be interviewed by Prism Films for the upcoming Beefheart DVD documentary yesterday. We were in a freezing cold, deserted nightclub in the afternoon for filming and other than just about getting hypothermia - my breath may well be visible - it was good fun, though an intense grilling on all things Beefheart for about two hours solid. I was glazing over in the glare of the lights and just about drooling by the end.

One thing that the director told me, which was quite amazing, is that when he interviewed Moris Tepper a few weeks ago at his home, Moris told him that he hadn't spoken to Don for about nine months. The phone went in the middle of the interview and guess who was on the other end? Quite extraordinary. It was thought not politic to ask Don to participate (and no prizes for guessing what the answer would have been) but they had a long chat. Moris said that he was still painting. Wish I knew more.
Mike

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 11:26 AM  - 1 comments - post a comment

The singer Freddie Wadling lay hyperventilating and nearly unconscious in the emergency room of Stockholm’s Sabbath Hill Hospital. His blood pressure was down and his stomach was as hard as a board. To Johan von Schreeb, a dark-haired surgeon with an eye of glass, Freddie’s symptoms were classic and life-threatening. Freddie had a burst stomach ulcer which had to be operated upon immediately or he would die. But Freddie’s wife Bella, who was present in the hospital, saw von Schreeb as a stranger in a white robe who wanted to stick a knife into Freddie. She refused permission to operate.

Von Schreeb had seen Freddie perform and he owned several of Freddie’s records (many visitors to this website will know Freddie’s vocals on the CD ‘The Music of Captain Beefheart - Live’). While Freddie was being stabilised in Intensive Care, von Schreeb remembered reading a newspaper interview where Freddie was asked who was his role model. His answer was Captain Beefheart’s mother.

Von Schreeb decided to use a ruse to save Freddie’s life. In the presence of Freddie and Bella he answered a telephone call which he told them had come from Captain Beefheart’s mother. Beefheart’s mama had said it was OK that Freddie be operated on. From somewhere between sleep and wakefulness Freddie nodded. Bella gave her permission and the operation went ahead.

Freddie is still touring and recording today.

As in the life of Captain Beefheart, there is much that is myth about Freddie Wadling. Captain Beefheart went without sleep for a year and a half. Freddie Wadling did not talk for seven years. The Magic Band stole food because they were hungry. Freddie Wadling stole food because his cats were hungry.

The Swedes don’t seem to know how to regard their enigmatic Freddie. A 1999 documentary film labelled him as being one of the elf family, ‘Freddie Wadling – en släkting till älvorna’. A brand-new biography of Freddie is entitled ‘Freak’. Defying description, Freddie has just been feted in his homeland by being awarded the 2005 Cornelis stipend. This honour carries a 250,000 kroner purse which Freddie, the most pragmatic of national treasures, promptly announced that he would use to pay off his debts.

While the film seemed happy to indulge the mythology surrounding Freddie, the book promises to unravel some of the myths. It should be interesting to read what the author, Robert Lagerström, who has known Freddie for more than twenty years, makes of his subject.

Whether he is an elf or a freak or something else entirely it must be rather hard to classify a man who says that he dreams in opera, who began to sing the lyrics of Shakespeare’s contemporary John Dowland only so that he could afford to drink and who is as skilful in singing Kurt Weill or Swedish murder ballads as he is in interpreting the lyrics of children’s author Astrid Lindgren (not to mention those of Captain Beefheart).

Freddie’s musical roots are punk - he sang with The Leather Nun and Liket Lever and he has since worked with some of the most talented Swedish musicians - Cortex, Fleshquartet, Henryk Lipp (in Blue for Two) and Nina Persson for example. He played the monster in a musical production of Frankenstein and has released many solo albums, most recently 2005’s EMI/Capitol CD, ‘Jag Är Monstret’.

Freddie also writes his own lyrics, “grotesque with humour” as he describes them. He compares Beefheart’s writing with James Joyce’s, as breaking all the rules but containing something recognisable. He first heard Beefheart in 1966 and was immediately drawn to the unique voice and the unusual kind of music.

As for his feelings for Captain Beefheart and his mother, Freddie says this in the documentary film:

“I have never had anyone that could give me advice, anyone I could depend on. The advice which my mother gave me proved to be totally lying. I got an idea that Captain Beefheart could depend on his mother, that they had a relationship in which they were honest with each other. He tended to ring her up in the middle of the night. He’d pull out his old soprano saxophone and pull off some twenty minute long avant-garde solo, right down the receiver.

“What do you think ma,” he’d ask.

“Sounds good, sounds good, yeah.”

A full account of Captain Beefheart’s mother’s telephone call to Freddie’s bedside is included in Robert Lagerström’s book ‘Freak’. To me this seems an archetypal story, a myth worthy of the name, and one which could give a new slant to the term Rock God.

Captain Beefheart’s mother interceded at Sabbath Hill to save Freddie’s life. Did Freddie interpret this in a religious way? What would this make Don Van Vliet? Was “a toast to the ghost, the most holy-o”, called for?

Robert Lagerström told me that Freddie has very complex beliefs which he found difficult to understand. He wrote, “He believes in anything that suits him, from kabbalah and I-ching to sungods and ghosts.” The last two lines of an online interview with Freddie Wadling here seem to support this statement.

Freddie Wadling has recorded a lot of songs, often in English. He has the face of a baby and the voice of an angel. Check him out.

Samples of two of his tracks from ‘The Music of Captain Beefheart – Live’ are here. As Freddie said, “It’s actually the only record with myself I can listen to.”

Thanks to Robert Lagerström for finding time to reply to my questions about Freddie Wadling during the busy launch period for his book ‘Freak’. The book, Sweden’s first rock biography, is available from the publisher Reverb who kindly provided me with some extracts from it. Thanks also to Cecilie who explained the language used in the book and in the film. Any clumsiness or error in the English renditions is mine alone.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 8:46 PM  - 2 comments - post a comment