| Don Van Vliet Quotes |
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A collection of notable quotes from the old puff-horse's mouth.
Don tossing away another killer quip...
"I'm not a rock star. I'm a soft person. I'm not a rock." On putting whale meat in dog-food:"Dogs don't want to eat whalemeat. [They] can't go on the ocean." "I was like an egg rolling through time until I was 24. Then the egg cracked and I popped out." "I got tired of scaring people with what I was doing." On his fascination with corvids:"Those ravens with those tuft things under their beaks like a double chin are pretty hip." 1982 Musician Magazine "I don’t like marches. I'll tell you why: war. It's very similar to disco." "I think more children should play with mudpies, but that's out now." 1972 Crawdaddy "The war is a pimple on the pope's pet dragon." 1982 to David Letterman "There is only the slightest movement of the fingers that makes the v-sign different from the Nazi salute. Always watch that." 1972 Music Echo "Why would [anyone] want to label themselves? I say, "Lick My Decals Off, Baby!" I'm not interested in making any new mustard or ketchup. I make very good mustard." 1971 Down Beat magazine "I'd always thought music was too formal, and I thought 'well, I'll get into this and fix it'." 1973 Oui Magazine "It's ridiculous: people sleep all their lives away. A big snooze while all these wars are going on without stopping..." 1972 New Musical Express "It makes me itch to think of myself as Captain Beefheart....I don't even have a boat." 1991 "The largest living land mammal is the absent mind." 1971 On drawing on stage:"What did they want me to do? I wasn't going to let the audience interrupt me. One of the band members would be doing a long solo, and what was I going to do? Stand there? I'd get my stuff and begin drawing. I couldn't waste time." Date unknown, post-retirement from music. On the Magic Band being seen as a blues band:"I like the blues..... but I like aqua marine just as much." 1978 "The way I keep in touch with the world is very gingerly, because the world touches too hard" 1994 On punk:"I think it's a damn good idea to get rid of that fixated heartbeat, but I hope they don't avoid the fact that the heart is what pumps the blood." 1979 "People use funny toilet paper because it means they're rich if it's perfumed. I think perfumed toilet paper causes rectal cancer. You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use." 1980 "Be kind, man - don't be mankind." 1973 John Peel radio interview On the moon landing..."They're about to poke their genitals into our cream cheese moon right now. That's my eye; the moon is part of me. Why don't they poke it in the sun? They're not very daring." 1969 On smoking pot..."It makes me feel like a fly with it's wings stuck in honey." 1980 On his musical contemporaries..."They can catch a straight line, but they can't catch a circle. I don't work in straight lines." 1972 "The most widely held misconception about me is that I'm a mystic. I'm not. I believe in black and white, I believe organically." 1990 On his lack of commercial success..."Isn't it a little too sexy to keep an erection all the time?" Early 1970s On his cat Garland..."Garland likes Lightnin' Hopkins but he has too much ego to listen to my music. If I'm listening to my music while I paint and Garland walks up I have to turn off the music or he won't come in the room.." 1988 On Safe As Milk..."It was a very ecological album. I was just trying to eke out a little logic." 1973 |
