i think this planet is as bright as sirius. but i think it is the 'on the other side of the fence the grass is greener' element that is ruining this paradise. and even with people. they say: 'boy, wouldn't i like to be like him', and he says: 'boy, wouldn't i like to be like him'. when everybody's perfect anyway, as long as they don't try to cut off all these blood flows and things which go to make the brain do what it does. you know, like all those weird postures that people adopt. do you know what i mean?

that kind of thing is very hard to deal with. i've been a victim of it myself: i got extremely fat. but i got fat as an experiment to find out what people think at that weight. i mean, you have to know before you can say anything about it. but i don't think it's worth getting into the bullshit to find out what the bull ate when it comes to poison - hard drugs, narcotics and things like that.

so beefheart did not consciously push for superstardom those four or five years ago. he took things easy (or difficult, one might almost say), and made a double album of the music he wanted to play: 'trout mask replica' {and, unnoticed by the interviewer, 'lick my decals off, baby'! - teejo). again there had been great hassles getting the record to be released. but now things are beginning to go his way at last. he managed to withdraw himself from his association with frank zappa, at which name he still grimaces horribly.

he couldn't face you man to man. he could never talk to you like i am doing. he would crawl out of the room.

he started to find the musicians that he wanted and they all moved into different houses on his hundred and ten acre rented estate at eureka on the california-oregon border ('one of the hits of the world' - captain beefheart).

this group - the way it is - has been together three weeks before we came here. so this group has a long life ahead of it. this group will eventually be around each other the real way, will be able to do free music telepathically. i'm not looking for a flash in the pan. you see, it has taken me five years to get this group together. they're men and they're honest and i can appreciate that.

i think it's important that children and older people see a group like that. i'm not saying that i want to be a baby sitter because i'm an artist - because artists, writers, painters and musicians usually become baby-sitters in a society like this, in a society as turbulent as..., as it isn't. because it isn't that turbulent. it has just become too intellectual. i think that there should be some faster moves going on. like moves to stop people poaching on all those beautiful animals in africa. what if your child, if you ever have one, grows up and has to intellectualize a giraffe?

at the moment beefheart writes the music for every instrument in his band. there is nothing in the act that is not scripted beforehand, except for his own particular screeching horn solo.

that's the dolphins speaking through me, man. like i speak through them. like all my act is a reflection of everybody i ever met. i got it from them. that's why i like to play big concerts. i don't want to shove anybody out - because i got it from them. my thing is open-ended. if they praise me, they're only praising themselves.

i asked him why he didn't play any of the music on his first two albums at the albert hall.

well, i don't mind playing it, because i did it then [back in 1968 - t.t.]. but there is no way to go back. that cuts off now, and a lot of butterflies end up like jesus pinned to a wall in a collection. and i don't think it is fair to emulate something that doesn't have blood. far be it from me to bring up that old blood. i did do 'abba zaba', and i thought that sounded way better than it did before, because now i have musicians who are men and much nicer men.

he certainly doesn't have much respect for antiquity, in spite of his eulogy of van gogh. later, on the bus down to brighton, i showed him some colour pictures of tutankhamun from a paper i was reading.

what, you like them? man, you must be hard up, you must be really hard up to like that when there is so much that is better around today.

he really doesn't like that needling lock-you-up-in-a-museum-case mentality, and this, in a way, carries over to his ideas about the dangers and restrictiveness of concert halls.

it's very difficult to go to a concert for somebody in an audience. i think they should stand up and get into it with the musicians. i don't think that people should want someone to sit there like that.

are you playing any dance halls, or something like that then?

well, i don't know. but then again, the way it's set up and everything, if there weren't seats and that amount of organization in it, where somebody sits down, they might tear each other apart. you know, just accidentally, because of being that out of the form. not many people can escape out of the form successfully without backtracking themselves.

what they have to do is let the form come out in everything they do until it doesn't come out any more, then they're there. school sets that up. then what happens if somebody needs to have oxygen or the ambulance? that's why you've got to have organization. but it's whether a guy is nice that organizes something... 

again he said that, just as i was leaving, just as we had finished discussing the beatles and he had put down lennon and commended mccartney for playing his free concerts without any fuss:

it's whether a person is nice that matters. that's all that matters.