If It Weren't For Bad Luck
Andy Schwartz writes in the New York Rocker of January 1981. Photograph by Michael Uffer.
NEW YORK - Did ever a man suffer such unrelenting abuse, incomprehension, and just plain bad luck at the hands of the American record industry as Don Van Vliet, a/k/a Captain Beefheart?
After disentangling himself from a hopeless Warner Bros. contract; after engaging an enterprising and honest new manager; after reforming the second edition of his Magic Band and releasing what has been acclaimed as his best album in years - after all this, the hapless Cap once again finds himself virtually label-less in his native land. Within weeks after the appearance of Doc At The Radar Station, the distribution agreement between U.S. Atlantic and U.K. Virgin Records was terminated. Virgin's New York staff, already cut from a dozen workers to four, was summarily dismissed; the company's smart Greenwich Village townhouse office was put up for sale and all callers referred to its London headquarters.
Virgin rushed to ink an interim two-month U.S. distribution pact with RSO, but the agreement applied only to the latest albums by twee popsters XTC and metal morons Gillian; both Beefheart's album and the second Fingerprintz LP were cast adrift. Technically, Doc At The Radar Station is still an Atlantic release to be duly promoted and distributed; in truth, says Beefheart's manager, Ling Lucas, "the head of artist development (at Atlantic) tells me he's received no orders to work on this album. They tell me I have to get (Virgin president) Richard Branson to call the head guy at Atlantic, but what can Branson do? The deal's off."
The album, which had hovered hopefully around #200 in Billboard for a week or so, promptly dropped off the chart. Even a plethora of favorable press and a November 28 appearance on Saturday Night Live won't sell an album that never makes it into the racks.
The artist himself is battered but unbowed. An October tour of England and Europe played to sold-out houses, and Beefheart's position with Virgin in those territories remains secure. An American tour, booked by the Rosebud Agency of San Francisco, began in late November in Minneapolis and continues into December; support acts include James "Blood" Ulmer (at New York's Beacon Theater) and Jonathan Richman (at Emerald City in Philadelphia). The trek will wind up back in New York for a round of appearances at the city's leading rock / dance clubs. With or without record company support, Captain Beefheart soldiers on.
