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A winter night in January 1981 I drove up to Reseda in Los Angeles to see Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band at the Country Club. It was a fantastic concert and Don and the band were flying. At the time I was working for the Danish Radio as a freelancer and I asked a guy at the door if Don would be available for an interview. To my surprise he came out and told me to meet Don at a Denny’s restaurant across the street. And there he came in his stage-clothes, very nice and we talked as you can hear here. After theRead More →

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Song List Nowadays A Woman’s Gonna Hit A Man Abba Zaba Hot Head Ashtray Heart Dirty Blue Gene Best Batch Yet A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond Doctor Dark Bat Chain Puller Sheriff of Hong Kong Kandy Korn Big Eyed From Venus Cover blurb: Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band toured Europe and North America to promote their critically acclaimed album, Doc At The Radar Station. This would be their final tour together. A year later, Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart, turned his back on the music business to focus on painting. Broadcast live by CBC at theRead More →

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Song List Disc 1 Hair Pie Nowadays A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man I Wanna Find A Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go Hot Head Ashtray Heart Dirty Blue Gene The Smithsonian Institute Blues (or The Big Dig) Best Batch Yet Safe As Milk One Red Rose That I Mean China Pig Disc 2 Sue Egypt Doctor Dark Bat Chain Puller My Human Gets Me Blues Sugar ‘N’ Spikes Sheriff Of Hong Kong Kandy Korn Veteran’s Day Poppy Big Eyed Beans From Venus Notes From the sleevenotes: One of the last concerts of what would turn out to be Beefheart’sRead More →

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Song List Disc 1 Hair Pie (instrumental) Nowadays A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man I Wanna Find A Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go Hot Head Ashtray Heart Dirty Blue Gene The Smithsonian Institute Blues (or The Big Dig) Best Batch Yet Safe As Milk One Red Rose That I Mean (instrumental) China Pig Disc 2 Sue Egypt (cut) Doctor Dark (cut) Bat Chain Puller My Human Gets Me Blues Sugar ‘N’ Spikes Sheriff Of Hong Kong Kandy Korn Veteran’s Day Poppy Big Eyed Beans From Venus Notes From the sleevenotes: Autumn 1980 through January 1981 captain Beefheart and theRead More →

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Song List Bass Solo – Suction Prints Nowadays A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man I Wanna Find Me A Woman Hot Head Ashtray Heart Dirty Blue Gene Smithsonian Institute Blues Best Batch Yet Band Intros Safe As Milk One Red Rose Sue Egypt Dr Dark Bat Chain Puller My Human Gets Me Blues Sheriff Of Hong Kong Kandy Korn Suction Prints Big Eyed Beans From Venus Total time: 73.57 Notes From the sleevenotes: This FM recording was taken from The Magic Band’s ‘last ever’ concert at The Golden Bear, on Huntington Beach, California on the 31st January 1981 after a sell-out tour of Europe &Read More →

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“You either love it or hate it,” explained the guy standing behind me to his wary girlfriend during Captain Don’s blistering set. “It’s the weirdest music I’ve ever heard, but I love it.” I don’t think the friend was convinced. Captain Beefheart certainly is an original, and with his new band (guitarists Jeff Tepper and “Midnight Hat Size” Snyder, bass and keyboard man Eric Feldman and drummer Robert Williams) he’s launched on a retrenching operation, basically abandoning his sometime commercial attempts and heading for the woods of experimentation again. From the moment he walked onstage with Feldman’s roaring bass solo as fanfare and stuck theRead More →

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I was very pleased to receive some photographs taken at a 40th Birthday Tour show which took place on Saturday 17th January 1981 at the Commodore Ballroom, in Vancouver, British Columbia. They were sent to me by Greg Gardner, who writes: I saw the Captain play twice – 2 days apart on his 40th Birthday Tour. Once in Vancouver, BC, and two days later in Bellingham, Washington. A friend and I managed to get in for the soundcheck at the Vancouver show, at which time I met up with a photographer for the newspaper there who knew nothing about Captain Beefheart, yet had been assignedRead More →

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Mike White’s photographs of Don in action were sent to me by Charles Holzhauer, and were taken by his friend Mike White. Another of Charles’ friends, Paul, can be seen with Don in the final picture. Charles thought that they were taken at The Stone in San Francisco on the last tour which would make the date 23 January 1981. Can anyone confirm that? Many thanks for sending these, Charles, and a big thankyou to Mike for agreeing to their being featured here. Copyright held by the photographer, Michael White. Used by permission, not to be reproduced for commercial use.Read More →

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In 12 albums spread out over 13 years, Captain Beefheart has created a body of work that breaks most every rule in American music and results in something that couldn’t possibly be anything but American music. Hey, man, take a look at these,” Captain Beefheart exclaims, holding some slides up to the bare bulb in his dressing rooms at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. “These are some pictures!” Taken by a local freelancer, the slides show Beefheart standing at the microphone, blowing his soprano sax. “These were taken in 1969 at Ungano’s, the first time I came to New York” he exclaims, and it’s hardRead More →

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*May 1970. High School kids in my living room. Singing. “Hot and slimy weenie, knocking at my door/Hot and slimy weenie, crawling ‘cross the floor/Hot and slimy weenie/hot and slimy weenie/hot and slimy weenie… WHERE ARE YOU NOW?!?” The tape still exists, us mindlessly wailing away over the same bass pattern with our 1970 rock band equipment, seconds later me grabbing the microphone and reciting the words to “The Blimp” from Trout Mask Replica and then all of us playing as loudly and as randomly and as “weird” as we thought Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band would be if they were in the sameRead More →

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“My music is terribly personal,” Don Van Vliet says, his eyes fixed intently on me. “I think any artist is that way. I think there’s a lot of people out there that are kidding about art. I mean, literally kidding.” Van Vliet speaks in a soft, slow Southern California drawl that sounds nothing at all like the raw, rasping bellow he usually affects when he’s singing under the name Captain Beefheart. But his intensity is the same, and he is every bit as captivating, clever, charming and sometimes exasperatingly difficult to follow in conversation as he is in performance or on record. One of theRead More →

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The first thing Don Van Vliet does when you meet him is to bring you immediately into his world. “Those people over there take too many showers,” he said to me seconds after I walked into his manager’s Greenwich Village apartment for our interview. “There.” He led me over to a window and pointed across the courtyard to a large living room. “They parade around there in their bathrobes!” I hadn’t even taken my coat off, but I felt comfortable already. Van Vliet / Captain Beefheart is a fun guy to be around. We sat down and he pointed to my light blue socks, commenting,Read More →