This first appeared in the 21st August 1994 Independent on
Sunday.
GARY LUCAS
First saw Captain Beefheart play at a New York club in 1971. Their
acquaintance was years old before he plucked up the courage to reveal
that he played the guitar. Then Lucas's wife became Beefheart's
manager and he was given an instrumental to play on 'Doc at the
Radar Station' (1980). By 1982 Lucas was a full-time member of the
Magic Band. It was at this point that Beefheart decided he didn't
want to make records. Lucas now has his own band, Gods and Monsters.
The first time I saw him perform I was just transfixed. To me it
was the pinnacle: so complex and yet so beautiful and effortless
and fun-loving. And Beefheart himself was a magical personality:
he had a very refreshing iconoclastic attitude -like an early punk
- and his comments to the audience used to crack me up. I remember
him yelling at people who were sitting down: "Get up, get up, I'm
older than you."
He had a very unusual way of putting music together. He didn't
write it down. He'd either send you tapes of him playing it on the
piano, or put tapes together of him singing the parts, or whistling.
You'd spend hours, weeks, trying to translate the stuff on to the
guitar - I'd learn five seconds a day, about two bars. Then he would
give vocal instructions, he'd whisper in my ear "play like you died",
or "play like you're balancing a tray of red jujubes". You would
do whatever he told you to, there was no improvisation allowed,
and some-times he would pick on each person in turn to intimidate.
It was unpleasant - like going to school and he was the professor
- but if you loved the music enough, you put up with it.
JOHN PEEL
Airwave overlord of the musical underground, drove Beefheart
around on his first UK tour, and has been playing his records on
the radio ever since.
The first time I saw him was at the Whiskey A Go Go. I was working
for a radio station in California, and Beefheart was supporting
Them. He came over to London when Safe As Milk came out, and I actually
burst into tears on stage - I was so excited at being able to say
"put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen, for Captain Beefheart
and the Magic Band". At this time he had some strange saxophone
he'd been given by Ornette Coleman - a shahnai I think it was called.
A lot of his numbers consisted of a great deal of rather tuneless
blowing through that. A lot of the audience were understandably
fairly alienated by this and would leave. But somebody like that
is so manifestly ahead of you in the game, it seems impertinent
not to enjoy it. On that first tour I actually hired a car and drove
him to all his gigs. There was one which was legendary at a place
called Frank Freeman's Dancing School in Kidderminster. That was
not some kind of groovy hippie name: it actually was a dancing school,
run by a Frank Freeman. He and his wife used to make sandwiches
for the bands, and they'd sit and chat as though receiving you in
their drawing room. They were really sweet and Beefheart responded
to this. I found a tape of that show a couple of months ago and
it's stupendous stuff. He is an extraordinarily productive man.
If you spend time with him, his conversations can seem rather impenetrable,
but this is just because his thought-processes are not those of
anybody else you're likely to meet. A lot of his verbal jokes are
quite innocent - you'll think to yourself "why did he say that?"
Then a few days later you'll see what he meant.
CRAIG SCANLON
Guitarist and songwriter in Salford soul institution The Fall,
has never met Beefheart, but this band would not have sounded the
same without him.
The first record I got of his was Trout Mask Replica. The parental
reaction was very satisfying: 'What is that rubbish?' At first I
thought what the rest of the band still say if I put it on in the
tour bus - it sounds like five people playing different songs at
once. But there are so many different layers to it; a lot of really
beautiful stuff's going on. People think it's improvised, but it
isn't, it's very carefully structured.
Beefheart has influenced my guitar-playing - just in a liberating
way, I wouldn't dare try to copy him. We were asked to play on a
tribute album, but there's no point. It's a shame he stopped making
music. I went to one of his exhibitions. It looked like he was painting
Bambi decomposing, but then I suppose that's the kind of thing he
was doing with his music.