what does one say to a man who, at the age of three, used to talk with lions inside their cages? how does one cope with such a greeting:

haven't i met you somewhere before?

no, i don't think so, actually.

weren't you at my concert last night? weren't you sitting up there (he points) in a group of seven in a box? that's where i've seen you.

it's all very easy when one is talking to captain beefheart. my journalist's paranoia which had been fed on extravagant media stories of the freakiness of the captain very quickly disappeared. we settled down to the most relaxed conversation i've had with a rock star, and the ever-civil beefheart (don van vliet, if you prefer) proved that his effervescent imagination was not limited to his music or to his 'bon mots' but extended to his everyday dealings with other people.

i should have met you the first day i came into town, he exclaimed, and invited me, whom he insisted on calling a writer - i feel most comfortable in the company of writers. we're not having an interview. this goes deeper than that. and i'm not performing. frankly, i prefer this to being on stage - to join him and his coach on a trip to a concert in brighton the following day.

he sat in a chair in his publicist's office, and as the sun played through the window, it lit him up as one of his dutch ancestors might have appeared in a painting by rembrandt. his quiet and beautiful young wife sat opposite on a sofa reading 'madame bovary'. occasionally, beefheart - who himself claims never to have read a book - would bring her into the conversation.

the rest of the time he talked in his quietly authoritative and all-embracing manner, sometimes, as in his act, incorporating a piece of show business or stylized excess into his rap (such as his opening comment recorded above), often taking himself and his responsibilities very seriously, but never, as far as i was concerned, ego-tripping too violently or laying it on too heavily for my comfort.

*

a number of friends who saw him in concert over here disagree with me on this point. one found him oppressive and boring, another arrogant and patronizing to his audience. that last view, i suppose, i can understand. there is no false modesty about the captain ('i am a super-star, only the record companies won't allow me to be so').

but such an opinion shows a lack of understanding of beefheart's humour, namely: leaving the stage after playing a short set, crowd shouts and thumps for more, beefheart comes back alone onto stage and whistles the [usa television] theme 'more' and goes off, crowd shouts and thumps some more, beefheart comes back with the band and plays for forty minutes more; and of his desire to involve his audience in a far-out musical and poetic world which he projects in his concerts through a very personal and original rock 'n' roll, not through easy drug-induced imagery and technique.

dope is a natural topic of conversation to turn to with beefheart, since his second album 'strictly personal' came on so strong as an acid album - lots of heavy phasing, song titles like 'i feel like ahcid', packaging which referred pointedly to the 5000 mg. [milligrams (of lsd, a popular heavy soft drug at the time) - t.t.] persona of the captain. it is a subject on which beefheart has some interesting views.

he says that he himself hasn't smoked pot (= marihuana - t.t.) for some ten years.

and as far as lysergic acid (aka lsd - t.t.) is concerned - i don't like to say things like this because of the habit that people have of trying to make me over into a little capsule somewhere - but, yes, i did have lysergic acid slipped on me seven years ago in honolulu. i don't want to lie about it. and i thought that i had a horrible temperature and that i was really ill. it really didn't feel like real to me. it was corny, man. really like a cheap movie, like one of those american movies where all of a sudden the woman feels faint and the walls go wooor, wooor, wo-oo-or. but i'm a painter, so i've got better imagery than that.

it's a dead scene, man. i think it's over for that stuff, and i wish it had never begun. it's like a disneyland trip. you know, all of a sudden great painters like van gogh are old hat. a fellow that painted the sun, dared to jump into the sun and out of it and paint it. i'm not going to sample every tablet on the table just because it might make me paint my stroke better. it might make me háve a stroke. maybe some people who think they're getting high are having strokes repeatedly.

picture by bob mazzer 29 march 1972, brighton

*

he explains 'strictly personal' away as something outside his control. he had mixed the album before he went away to england [in may 1968 - t.t.]. when he came back, his cousin the mascara snake (aka victor haydon - t.t.) played it to him and he found that the record company had completely remixed it, supposedly to make it sound similar to the effects of lysergic acid (abbreviation: lsd - t.t.), and also to hit a specific market that existed. beefheart was furious.

and then all of a sudden 'safe as milk' (his previous album) - now what i meant was: milk wasn't safe any longer, it had strontium 90 in it. but it was interpreted as lysergic. all of a sudden everybody said: 'oh yeah man, really! cool cat!'. i have never tried to be a hip cat.

the idea of being called a genius because somebody thought me a really heavy tablet is kind of horny. it doesn't put me off. but it makes me worry about people who do that. that's really scary. the idea of somebody going like that and all of a sudden my whole being is put into a capsule and thrown over and put under a set category. you know, while you're watching teevee you can be booglarized. your chair can be taken from underneath you. isn't that terrifying, catatonic?

but i can enjoy a good teevee program - well, maybe i can't do it successfully - but i've got enough of the explorer in me to try to do it even if it radiates me. but if your chair is stolen from underneath you, the high point of the program falls down, and you fall down and break your tail bone. that's usually what happens to people who take too much drugs and all of a sudden they say they don't have any imagination and that that pill is their imagination. that's absurd, man. too much vested interest in any one point is varying degrees of disconnection, which is insanity.

of course, 'strictly personal' is not beefheart's only album, although it played a considerable part in establishing him as a star, albeit on false pretences. the captain still hopes to put it out as he intended it to be.

there are a lot of diamonds in the mud. i think it is important to show them.

[note by teejo: a few rambling sentences here, mainly interesting for don's comment on the tracks of the a&m singles:]
'diddy wah diddy', the old bo diddley number - 'who do you think you're fooling?', about the government, using the statue as liberty as a symbol - 'moon child (written by producer david gates)', about the lighter and darker side of the light, i guess - 'out of the frying pan into the fire', about the lesser of two evils.