Herb Bermann interview
Herb Bermann kept silent about Captain Beefheart for over thirty five years - so silent that some people said that Captain Beefheart had invented him.
Captain Beefheart was pretty quiet about Herb Bermann too.
Herb Bermann was credited as writing eight of the songs on Safe As Milk; it would have been a completely different record without him.
Herb Bermann’s name was on Neil Young's After The Gold Rush too but he did not write any of that. The credit was for a screenplay by Herb and his co-writer Dean Stockwell which had acted as an inspiration for the album.
Herb Bermann was sixty-seven when he broke his silence. He and his neighbours had been moved out of their homes and away from their community in Lower Topanga Canyon. Herb had lived there with those people for most of his life and had not wanted to go.
Soon afterwards, when I asked for an interview, Herb Bermann was setting the record straight. He’d written an autobiographical poem, a celebration of his place on this earth and a lament for times gone. He agreed to speak to me.
Admirers of Captain Beefheart will be charmed by Herb Bermann’s Captain Beefheart stories and his descriptions of how some of the songs came to be written. They may also be surprised to learn just which songs Herb says he wrote.
“I wrote a song called Trust Us. I wrote all the words and it showed up on the Strictly Personal album after Safe As Milk and left my name off it. How about that for being burned for a song called Trust Us?”
Herb told me that the Captain Beefheart albums in all contain about twice as many of his songs as he was credited or paid for. Without Herb’s songs it seems that Strictly Personal would have been a completely different record too.
“Just as many songs that were backlogged in the collaboration between Don and myself were effectively stolen from me. How that happened or who was responsible I really don’t know…”
Despite this disappointment Herb Bermann is very grateful to Don Van Vliet. His work on Safe As Milk led to all sorts of opportunities.
“I built up a whole screen writing career hop-scotching off of that. I’ve written for Steven Spielberg and won Writers Guild awards for television and the screen. I’ve become a guest lecturer at the UCLA Film Department. I have workshops for young aspiring writers and poets and screenwriters and songwriters. The whole underpinning and foundation of kicking off decades of the rest of my life was built upon the Safe As Milk material with Don.”
“How could I be bitter? I mean Don grandfathered me into decades of doing what I was put on this planet to do, which was to write and to tell stories in whatever form.”
Herb Bermann’s own story is remarkable and touching. It reveals previously unpublished information about the early work of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Neil Young and Steven Spielberg. It also introduces us to an artist whose work and influence have been generally overlooked.
These interviews took place over the telephone on 13 November 2003 and on 10 February 2004.
Herb told me that these interviews would be his last, that he would be silent again.
Interview one
I was a scribe for Captain Beefheart – Herb Bermann speaks
Interview two
He wrote Plastic Factory, now he sells credit cards – the careers of a Zig Zag Wanderer
If you would like to reproduce any of this copyright material you should contact either Derek or Graham first.
Additional information
Herb Bermann’s poem Colophon is included in the anthology Idlers of the Bamboo Grove – Poetry from Lower Topanga Canyon, edited by Pablo Capra. A drawing of Herb Bermann by James Mathers is included in the book which is available from the publisher, Brass Tacks Press.
Susan Bunn’s article, The mystery man from The Magic Band, appeared in The Malibu Times on 6 July 2000.
Amy Landau’s overview of the history and politics of Topanga Canyon was published in Hope Dance Magazine, issue #43, March/April 2004.
The documentary film Topanga - Paradise Lost, by Natalie Lettner and Werner Hanak, Eurotrash Productions, ca. 60 mins, awaits completion. According to an early press release the film will show the collision between the private paradise of the artist colony and a public paradise run by the state government. ”Who could oppose a national park? And yet, for many inhabitants the “expulsion” is a personal catastrophe.” The film-makers tell me that at least some of their footage of a recitation by Herb of his poem Electricity will be included.
Some Herb Bermann television scripts are held in special collections at UCLA Library.
The Door Into Summer screenplay by Herb Bermann from the Robert A. Heinlein novel, 10/12/72, 107 pages.
The Outcast by Herb Bermann and Al C. Ward, 9/18/72, from the series Medical Center.
Silent Night, Deadly Night by Herb Berman, 10/27/75, from the series SWAT.
The Steven Spielberg film, Par for the Course, was broadcast on 3/10/71. Copies of this film continue to elude collectors of Spielberg’s work.
Herb Bermann played George Washington in director Malcolm Venville’s advert for MasterCard’s Priceless campaign, The Date (2003). The advert received an Adweek Best Spot accolade. A video can be found at ad-rag.com where it is known as Dead Presidents.
I sent Herb Bermann transcripts from three different Captain Beefheart recordings of Dirty Blue Gene. It is these which Herb told me he did not recognise as his own lyrics.
The song Can Fever is not a Captain Beefheart song although recordings of it include a sample from Captain Beefheart's Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do.
Can Fever was written by David Jones and Steve Coffin of the band Screeper. With Alan Buxey they also wrote the song Bone Crazy. Although the BMI website lists Herb Bermann, Barry J Coffing and Don Van Vliet as composers, they had nothing to do with writing these songs.
Triple Combination, a song which Herb claims as his own, was recorded at Don’s mother’s house in 1966 and was first released on the 1999 Revenant compilation Grow Fins. The opening line, which is repeated, runs, “The words are from whence the music came and they ain’t no never no never the same.” Does this give paws for that shiny beast of thought?
The annual Valyermo Fall Festival still takes place every autumn.
Derek Laskie, February 2006
