I probably read this a while back on the Beefheart newsgroup:
someone was confused about the bass line on "Zig-Zag Wanderer" and wanted
to know if anyone had transcribed it. Well, one of the difficulties in figuring
out the bass part on that song is probably because - and if you listen carefully
you can hear it fairly clearly - there are three distinct basses being played
on that song, blending in and out, sometimes two playing, and for a few bars here
and there, three basses playing in unison, then one or two basses wandering off
with variants on the basic line.
It's a long story, but what happened was that three bass players
- Jerry Handley, Ry Cooder and yours truly - all took a whack at laying down something
with a little punch to it, and not knowing which or whose performance to use,
the producers (Krasnow and that other guy) ended up using bits and pieces from
everyone.