captain beefheart interviews - the captain (usa september 1969 straight / reprise / bovema / negram bio)

from UNPUBLISHED usa mid september? 1969 'STRAIGHT RECORDS' PRESS INFORMATION
by unknown writer
is august? 1969 interview

notes:
* this undated and uncredited interview probably was meant to be press info from 'straight records' but never was published as such
* shortened and edited text published as bio: captain beefheart in usa early january 1970 REPRISE RECORDS
* almost complete text published as 3p biografie: the captain in holland summer 1970 BOVEMA
* (updated) large part of text published as bio: captain beefheart in usa january 1972 REPRISE RECORDS and holland 31 march 1972 NEGRAM

a chronicle of man's inhumanity to man, coupled with a warning:

down in dachau blues, down in dachau blues
still crying about the burning back in world war two's
one mad man six million lose
....
the world can't forget that misery
and the young ones now begging the old ones
please to stop being madmen
before they have to tell their children
about the burning back in world war three's

that cite is from beefheart's 'dachau blues', a song of which a yippie ('anti-establishment activist' - t.t.) leader said it would be a classic if it had been written by a human. but despite the freakish exterior, don van vliet is very human. his respect for life can be encountered in his intense, almost obsessive love for animals.

we're all animals, aren't we? animals never judge. i have seen some mighty beautiful animals and some mighty mean people. that's a judging on my part, but...: man can reason, but what does he do with that power? he tries to exterminate his own species and then he points to the animals to say he is a higher form of life.

why are humans so guilty? what are they guilty of? what did that, i wonder about that. our political and social institutions have done so much to cripple people. but they were created by people, so it is a case of people crippling people.

i don't think the church should be in politics. no organized religion. a man should organize himself. what is god? i don't know if i have one - maybe an elephant or a rhino or some corn when i'm hungry.... that's my god.

the captain and his band live in a modest house in the san fernando valley, california, high on a hill in the midst of jungle-like foliage. he likes it because animals are around. he regularly feeds raccoons that wander onto the grounds. and he even leaves sugar outside the house for the ants.

i love all living things, and i don't think we should kill them.

ecology is one of beefheart's great concerns. the smog man has created, the wars he has perpetrated, and the senseless killing of animals and all wildlife, man's insensitivity to life - the thought of it all has the power to make him physically ill. and it shows in his music. for instance, there is 'wild life':

wild life along with my wife
i'm going up on the mountain for the rest of my life
....
find me a cave and talk them bears into taking me in
....
wild life - it's a man's best friend

and then there is 'ant man bee':

white ants running
black ants crawling
yellow ants dreaming
brown ants longing
all those people longing to be free
....
all the ants in god's garden they can't get along
war still running on
....
why do you have to do this?
you've got to let us free
....
now the bee takes his honey
then he sets the flower free
but in god's garden
only man and the ants
they won't let each other be

mark boston / rockette morton, john french / drumbo, bill harkleroad / zoot horn rollo, jeff cotton / antennae jimmy semens, don van vliet / captain beefheart
picture by ed caraeff
which could have been used (but only was published in recent years)

don van vliet says he has always been a sensitive person, even as a boy. he was born in glendale, california, and already dabbled in the arts when he was five years old. his love for animals made him a regular visitor at the griffith park zoo, and one day he met a professional sculptor. the man showed him how to make his favorite animals out of clay. later he began to include busts of people in his work and by age thirteen he was considered an extremely promising artist. he had even won a scholarship to study sculpture in europe.

my parents didn't want me to go. they told me all artists were queer. to discourage me, they moved with me to lancaster, california, in the desert. that's where i met frank zappa, in high school there.

about then i got interested in music. mostly the blues singers. they sounded very human to me. i picked up a harmonica and learned how to play it. it was a very natural instrument: breathing ín, and óut.

then i turned on to the saxophone. i joined a group called 'the blackouts'; i about said it was a colored group, but then everybody is colored or you wouldn't be able to see them.... they ended up firing me because i was a bit too freakish for them. they were playing rhythm 'n' blues and i was starting to experiment a little.

van vliet and zappa were high school chums, both vitally interested in music. but zappa liked rock 'n' roll and rhythm 'n' blues, and beefheart liked traditional blues and the latest progressive jazz. the captain continued with his sculpting in high school and, against his parents' wish, enrolled at antelope valley college as an art major. it was no success.

they wanted me to go back and start from scratch, to do meaningless things. they wanted me to draw squares and cut out things, and i was beyond that. it was the same old thing about forms again. they're everywhere, in every field. i didn't think there was a forward or a back, but just where you were at. they wanted squares and i wanted to draw circles. so i left college.

after dropping out, don van vliet and zappa made up a new name for the would-be-sculptor: captain beefheart.

the two talked about starting a band called 'the soots', but never went through with it.

i couldn't play music, and i don't believe in time: four/four, etcetera. fránk believed in time. we were great friends, but we couldn't get it together. so i started my own group and he started 'the mothers of invention' (although in both cases 'joined' is more according to truth - teejo).

beefheart had the basic idea for the kind of music he wanted in his head then, but the musicians he was playing with would have no part of it. they stuck to blues-rock and were good enough to catch the ear of a record company scout who decided to sign them.

it was a disaster. jerry moss at a&m (alpert & moss records - t.t) told me the material i wanted to do, my music, was negative. i tried their way; we cut bo diddley's 'diddy wah diddy' and a few other songs, then i couldn't take it anymore and left. i went back to the desert.

i said if other people in the group wanted to do that kind of stuff, i would try it, but i couldn't take it. those other guys in the group - one is now a printer with the los angeles times, one has a paper route, one's an electronics technician, and one went back to college and is playing in a marching band.