Back in October of 1971, I went to see Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band at the Gymnasium at Tuft’s University in Medford, Mass. This gig was shortly prior to the early 1972 release of their THE SPOTLIGHT KID album. I was 19 years old and I had seen earlier incarnations The Magic Band of going back to 1967. I had all the Beefheart albums in my record
collection, and I knew all the songs. Something was different at this show; there were new songs and there were unprecedented improvised blues-rock guitar solos on many of the tunes – from a guy with long hair and a bushy beard; who reminded me, in his looks, of a 1940’s image of King Neptune. This was Elliot Ingber, stage-renamed by Beefheart as Winged Eel Fingerling.
Stepping out of that time frame into now, I can tell you a bit about Elliot. He was born in 1941, and lived in the Minneapolis area in his youth. Early on he was a master of American Chicago style electric blues, years before the idiom caught on in England. In 1959 he was on the very first recording of surf music: the single MOON DAWG by his band The Gamblers. The flip side of that single: LSD-25 is also the first mention of the psychedelic drug in American popular music. Elliot was in Zappa’s Mothers of Invention for their first album: FREAK OUT! He was also associated with early Little Feat and The Fraternity of Man. He spent a few years in different incarnations of Beefheart’s Magic Band.
Back in 1971, I was sitting on the floor of the gym, super-enjoying the show, when they suddenly played a 7 minute instrumental with a long solo from Elliot in it. This was ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND, a tune that had been played on previous tours with solos from Beefheart on sax, as well as shorter solos from Elliott and Zoot Horn Rollo (aka Bill Harkleroad). But at this show it was given over to one long very psychedelic solo from Mr. Ingber. The floor fell away from underneath me during his solo. I was transported to a music spaces and dimensions that I had never visited before. I was a fan of Bay Area psychedelic bands, Indian Music, Blues, African Music, post WW-II classical composer, Zappa, etc. But nothing had ever taken me to the place that Elliot’s improvisation suddenly moved me to. I was not a musician; I had never played any instrument. But at one moment during the solo I suddenly knew that I had to go buy a guitar the next day. Which I did: purchasing a black Fender Telecaster at nearby Tavian Music. Oddly enough, today I can listen to the live audience recordings of the show on YouTube and I can identify the exact moment when I realized my destiny to go purchase a guitar.
It was at 5:19 in this video of the concert that I was at,
that I decided to go and buy a guitar the next day after Elliot’s solo :
I had my own cassette recording that I had made at the show. I listened to it hundreds of times during my first years of playing. ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND was the first tune that I learned to play on guitar. In 1972 THE SPOTLIGHT KID was released with a studio version of ALICE on it. Elliot’s solo on the album was the first solo that I learned from a record, lifting the turntable’s needle up and down to learn it phrase by phrase and slowing it down to 16 RPM to figure out the fast flurries of notes. I have played the song live with more than twenty different bands — dozens of times over the years.
Now, 53 years later in 2024, I have a discography of more that 450 albums that I have played on. I’ve recorded in many idioms: free improv, jazz, blues, rock, Hindustani, Korean, contemporary classical, Malagasy, electronic music, etc. In all those genres I catch myself channeling things that I learned from Elliot’s ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND solo. It’s not licks, or
harmonic ideas, or melodies, though – it is narrative modes and storytelling + connection to some external spirit world + heart & soul. As well as just internal visual patterns in my brain of synesthetic clouds of notes in space. Everything I do on guitar connects back to that moment in 1971 being transported by Elliot in the Tufts Gym.
Elliot was in and out of The Magic Band several times. During the later 70’s incarnations I was introduced to him and we have been friends since. In recent decades he could be classified as a recluse; now in his 80’s. But whenever we speak on the phone he picks up the conversation exactly where we left it at last contact a year or two before. Elliot knows things about guitar and music that few others know. He has his own highly unique, and unfortunately not-so-well-documented approach, to blues guitar. In that department I’d put him on a cosmic level of soul and originality with Peter Green and Mike Bloomfield. It’s a strange thing to have your most significant guitar guru be somebody that folks have heard or have heard of. I’ve played and recorded with so many lifetime musical heroes who had been with me before I ever touched a guitar: Derek Bailey, Jerry Garcia, Sonny Sharrock, Cecil Taylor, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Terry Riley, Freddie Roulette, John French, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ray Russell, Harvey Mandel, Amos Garrett, John Abercrombie, Fred Frith, Bob Weir, Sylvestre Randafison, Barry Melton, Zakir Hussain… The list goes on and on. What’s most important for me is that Elliot Ingber has always been where guitar began for me as a guitar player. Some spark jumped from Elliot to me back in 1971, and things have never been the same since. He’s a man who is very difficult to discover historical and personal information about. There are very few great examples of his personal expression on released recordings. If you want to know more – you won’t find much on the internet. The best advice that I can give you today is go listen on YouTube to his playing on ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND on THE SPOTLIGHT KID album right now.
Henry Kaiser with Elliot. Photos by Matt Groening.
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This piece is included with the permission of Henry Kaiser and Joel Harrison and is available in the book Pity the Genius – A Journey through American Guitar Music in 33 Tracks by Joel Harrison. For more about the book please follow the links below :
https://cymbalpress.com/guitar
https://www.amazon.com/Pity-Genius-Journey-through-American/dp/1955604169