Captain Beefheart
The multi-genre fusion experimentalist Captain Beefheart (born Don Van
Vliet) was born on 15 January 1941 in suburban Glendale,
California, where his father drove a baker's van. He was an only
child, and his grandparents lived next door.
 His
family indulged his artistic talents - he was sculpting from the
age of four. As a teenager, he discovered the blues along
with childhood friend Frank Zappa, who was to remain a friend, and
rival, throughout his life.
Together, in Lancaster, California, in the Mojave Desert, Zappa
and Van Vliet came up with the name Captain Beefheart (from the
title of an unmade Zappa film, "Captain Beefheart vs. the
Grunt People") and the latter formed a blues band, His
Magic Band, in the mid-1960s.
Though the band's title
remained with Beefheart over two decades, the band's membership
was to change frequently.
The group was originally a straight-ahead blues band with
Beefheart's distinctive vocal style borrowed from such blues
progenitors as Howlin' Wolf and Blind Willie Johnson. Signed
to A&M Records after an April 1965 performance at the Teenage
Fair at the Hollywood Palladium, the Magic Band bowed with a
relatively faithful cover of Bo Diddley's Diddy Wah Diddy
produced by David Gates, later of the soft-rock band Bread.
Beefheart steered his Magic Band through Delta blues boogaloo
and acid freak out on their debut album, Safe As Milk (1967).
Arranged by 19-year-old musical director Ry Cooder (who also
played slide) the album was marked by odd rhythms and spasmodic
beats, with Zig Zag Wanderer hinting at the full
flowering of Van Vliet's vision on Trout Mask Replica.
Van Vliet wrote all 28 songs for 1969 art rock masterpiece Trout
Mask Replica during an eight-and-a-half hour piano
session. Especially impressive given that he had never previously
played the instrument!
For pre-production he gave his Magic Band silly names
(guitarist Jeff Cotton became Antennae Jimmy Semens, for example)
before rehearsing them at a suburban Los Angeles house for eight
months under a cultish regime of starvation and sleep deprivation.
Recalling the experiment while writing a 1998 memoir prompted
guitarist Billy 'Zoot Horn Rollo' Harkleroad to run out onto his
lawn and vomit. The
album was produced by Frank Zappa who gave his friend full
artistic rein." If it had been produced by any professional,
famous producer," Zappa said later, "there could have
been a number of suicides involved."
 Lack
of financial success caused guitarist Alex St Claire (real name
Alexis Clair Snouffer) to leave the band in 1968, but he returned
for the exhilarating 1973 tour and the lacklustre Unconditionally
Guaranteed album.
Ultimately - despite a couple of spells in
rehab - Alex was unable to win his long battle against alcohol.
His body was discovered in his apartment in January 2006. The
exact circumstances of his death were unclear.
After 1982's Ice Cream For Crow album Van Vliet
retired from the music business to concentrate on painting and
sculpting in his Mojave desert home. He died in December 2010 in
California, from complications from multiple sclerosis. He was 69.
Artists like Tom Waits, Nick
Cave, Oasis, Red Hot Chilli
Peppers and The White Stripes are among those who have cited him
as an influence.
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