The Captain bumped in to me in 1980 at Duffy's Bar we were all looking at the stage and came walking through the crowd on his way to the stage. I feel greatly privileged
I love this interview with Don Van Vliet, he is very intelligent and sophisticated. I love his explanation about the title "Safe As Milk". Strontium-90 mostly comes from fallout from atomic bomb testing the military conducted in Nevada and New Mexico. When the government found out people were getting sick in the mid-west, they collected babies teeth from citizens to test the levels of Strontium-90 because the deadly element gets trapped in bones and teeth. This was the reason the military stopped above ground testing in the U.S. So, then they went to the South Pacific to test an even more deadly weapon, the hydrogen bomb. About 2,000 nuclear bombs were tested until they were finally halted, but not soon enough.
I just wish my own mind had been wired the same way as Don's (well at least in part). How refreshing to listen to someone's thoughts that are not pre-formatted by convention. I dont necessarily agree with him on some points, but that doesn't matter.
Lol, Don didn't write most of his music and he never gave credit to anyone else for their contributions. He also made sure that they were never paid, and abused them whenever they expressed criticism or couldn't play the way Don wanted. This guy slept til 4pm and never rehearsed with his band. But if they couldn't play some whack ass thing he wanted, he would throw them down the stairs or get the other members to start screaming at them / punching them. Meanwhile Zappa bailed his band out of jail after they were caught pilfering food from a grocery store. Source: John French and all other members of the band
Funny how you say all of these critical things about his way of doing things and yet somehow real people still worked with him willingly! It's almost like you weren't there and maybe don't know as much as you think you do about the "abusive" Captain Beefheart, who was so dreadful that instead of working at the Lumber Yard all these rockin' Drummers and Guitar Players had to keep making records and playing shows with him! And he didn't even let them play onstage, he'd take the instruments out of their hands and play their parts himself he was so lazy and demanding! Plus, I don't like the way all the music he made with other people sounds because of the way he acts! The drums are fine, but you can tell the drummer is afraid of the singer and that just puts me off!
@@thepuppethead1188 You clearly haven't read any of the memoirs written by John French or Bill Harkleroad. They stuck around because they were A) really really young and naive B) lived in the middle of nowhere with no employment opportunities C) didn't understand the music business or adult relationships D) were actively being pressured by people in their lives including Don to stay involved E) stockholm syndrome. This also isn't true: the band lineup was constantly changing and everyone who knew Don said this about him. Jeff Cotton, Alex Snouffer, Winged Eel Fingerling, the producers and engineers.. Don didn't know music theory and couldn't play any instruments. He would improvise on saxophone / simran horn / harp but it was just random notes. The way Trout Mask Replica was actually made was that Don would play random notes on the piano until he got a rhythm he liked, then John would transcribe it and stitch it together with other fragments until it was a song. He didn't know anything -- at all In fact, Evening Bell is literally just Don pounding randomly on the piano. He gave the recording to one of the band members and had him painstakingly learn it on guitar
@@threblog is that the same John French who continued to make atonal, rhythm based improvisation with Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and subsequently toured with a reformed version of the Magic Band to capitalize on an album of live material he helped to compile??? How deeply scarring his time with "Don" must've been that he didn't want anything to do with the tyrannically oppressive Beefheart. But hey I get it, he made some mistakes when he was young and could never learn a skil other than playing the drums in a highly irregular manner, it's not like James Williamson (you know the fellow who wrote all the riffs on Raw Power by the Stooges) didn't go on to become a distinguished digital audio engineer after working with the most drugged out, shambollic band who ever barely toured. You have a lot of misguided sympathy for the stage theatrics of rock music personalities that really ought be reserved for issues that seem to matter more than a dude who pretends to sing like Howlin' Wolf and locked his band in a house to rehearse nonsense forever...Charles Manson was a soulful folky and his gang of starved crazed brainwashed followers killed people! They didn't escape go on a european tour including TV appearances! And the ones who regretted it the most helped put out his records. The end.
he didn't say a goddamn thing this whole interview, but i had a blast because the SOB lives on his own planet
The Captain bumped in to me in 1980 at Duffy's Bar we were all looking at the stage and came walking through the crowd on his way to the stage. I feel greatly privileged
I love this interview with Don Van Vliet, he is very intelligent and sophisticated. I love his explanation about the title "Safe As Milk". Strontium-90 mostly comes from fallout from atomic bomb testing the military conducted in Nevada and New Mexico. When the government found out people were getting sick in the mid-west, they collected babies teeth from citizens to test the levels of Strontium-90 because the deadly element gets trapped in bones and teeth. This was the reason the military stopped above ground testing in the U.S. So, then they went to the South Pacific to test an even more deadly weapon, the hydrogen bomb. About 2,000 nuclear bombs were tested until they were finally halted, but not soon enough.
Yes, interesting to learn how Don formulates his reasoning.
''Stars are matter. We're matter. So what does it matter?'' ~Don
Wow. Old Don was quite the character.
Yes. Wow.
I just wish my own mind had been wired the same way as Don's (well at least in part). How refreshing to listen to someone's thoughts that are not pre-formatted by convention. I dont necessarily agree with him on some points, but that doesn't matter.
Don had a lyricist that has not been fully recognised.
Lol, Don didn't write most of his music and he never gave credit to anyone else for their contributions. He also made sure that they were never paid, and abused them whenever they expressed criticism or couldn't play the way Don wanted. This guy slept til 4pm and never rehearsed with his band. But if they couldn't play some whack ass thing he wanted, he would throw them down the stairs or get the other members to start screaming at them / punching them. Meanwhile Zappa bailed his band out of jail after they were caught pilfering food from a grocery store. Source: John French and all other members of the band
Agree. He’s a whacked out weirdo who should have been in jail not making horrible ‘music’
Funny how you say all of these critical things about his way of doing things and yet somehow real people still worked with him willingly! It's almost like you weren't there and maybe don't know as much as you think you do about the "abusive" Captain Beefheart, who was so dreadful that instead of working at the Lumber Yard all these rockin' Drummers and Guitar Players had to keep making records and playing shows with him! And he didn't even let them play onstage, he'd take the instruments out of their hands and play their parts himself he was so lazy and demanding! Plus, I don't like the way all the music he made with other people sounds because of the way he acts! The drums are fine, but you can tell the drummer is afraid of the singer and that just puts me off!
Zappa was great. Don, however, was a genius.
@@thepuppethead1188 You clearly haven't read any of the memoirs written by John French or Bill Harkleroad. They stuck around because they were A) really really young and naive B) lived in the middle of nowhere with no employment opportunities C) didn't understand the music business or adult relationships D) were actively being pressured by people in their lives including Don to stay involved E) stockholm syndrome.
This also isn't true: the band lineup was constantly changing and everyone who knew Don said this about him. Jeff Cotton, Alex Snouffer, Winged Eel Fingerling, the producers and engineers.. Don didn't know music theory and couldn't play any instruments. He would improvise on saxophone / simran horn / harp but it was just random notes.
The way Trout Mask Replica was actually made was that Don would play random notes on the piano until he got a rhythm he liked, then John would transcribe it and stitch it together with other fragments until it was a song. He didn't know anything -- at all
In fact, Evening Bell is literally just Don pounding randomly on the piano. He gave the recording to one of the band members and had him painstakingly learn it on guitar
@@threblog is that the same John French who continued to make atonal, rhythm based improvisation with Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and subsequently toured with a reformed version of the Magic Band to capitalize on an album of live material he helped to compile??? How deeply scarring his time with "Don" must've been that he didn't want anything to do with the tyrannically oppressive Beefheart. But hey I get it, he made some mistakes when he was young and could never learn a skil other than playing the drums in a highly irregular manner, it's not like James Williamson (you know the fellow who wrote all the riffs on Raw Power by the Stooges) didn't go on to become a distinguished digital audio engineer after working with the most drugged out, shambollic band who ever barely toured.
You have a lot of misguided sympathy for the stage theatrics of rock music personalities that really ought be reserved for issues that seem to matter more than a dude who pretends to sing like Howlin' Wolf and locked his band in a house to rehearse nonsense forever...Charles Manson was a soulful folky and his gang of starved crazed brainwashed followers killed people! They didn't escape go on a european tour including TV appearances! And the ones who regretted it the most helped put out his records. The end.