BEEFHEART
interview

from musiczine england 1 february(?) and 1 april(?) 1981 MOONLIGHT DRIVE #1/81 and #2/81
by phil maltman
is 23, 27 and 28 march 1972 interview

note:
* longer transcription published in fall 1994 as 'let's hope the hip people choose life instead of death on their hip' on website PHILIPMALTMAN.com
* slightly edited introduction and text

part 1 - THIS is PART 2 - part 3

*

terry: it was funny last night though, ed was playing so much like drumbo on the songs from 'trout mask replica'.

but not like him now.... this cat is...: i really dare say he's the best there ever was on this planet. i mean, when i say best, he feels about it so nice, he doesn't mean any harm. i have to tell you the truth: drumbo occasionally meant harm when he played that instrument. he had a real hatred, but that's all right: as long as it goes into music it is washed clean - not to be religious - like holy water.

i think drumbo left because of the fact that, since i created all of the music all of that time, i then wanted thém to create something - because i had been up for grabs defending that stuff for a long time - and he didn't want any part of it. i always tried to get him to play his own parts, and i always try to get this group to play their own parts. sometimes though, i don't know what it is, zoot and rockette don't want any part of playing their own parts. they just want to play my music, but i always told them: 'this is my idea, it took me a long time - that's why we didn't get a lot done', but at least we got something honest done.

how is winged eel fingerling (elliot ingber) fitting into the band? is he still living a long way from you?

he lives in los angeles, but comes up there whenever we are.... no it is ok to have him live in l.a. until he gives up, he lives in santa monica straight, and there's a lot of health food stores....

is it a big community?

i don't know. well, it is varied, like a hundred and ten acres overlooking the ocean. rockette morton has a goat named carob, a big billy goat. nice thing, smart. when it was a baby - it's four now - that goat was trained on horseback to jump through a hoop, a hoop of fire, onto another horse's back...; but he would never perform in public. he was too bashful. they say he would have been worth hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a three or four year period. but he was too bashful to perform, or too smart...! goats áre smart...! people say they aren't.

do you think people have to teach goats then?

i don't think so. i think goats have to teach people. did you ever eat goat's milk cheese? you can eat that without spilling blood.

can you tell us about your last manager, grant gibbs?

man, i don't know where he's at, but all i can tell you is he tried to pull a funny stunt. because we had a corporation, 'god's golfball', that i started. he was in the corporation with a fellow named mark green, al lieffer and myself. very nice: open, you know, and everything - and he just blew it! grant gibbs blew it...: he was trying to act like (henry david) thoreau (nineteenth century poet and philosopher - t.t.) or something in a day and age when it's ridiculous.... he was supposed to be my manager, with people like writers, people i really like...; he didn't ever relay the messages they sent me, things like that! it was just vulgar.

carl scott is there now. he is really there, casts a big shadow, casts a real big shadow.... ah, that's a nice way of saying it: he weighs four hundred and fifty pounds, you know, american.... he casts a beautiful shadow, artistically. he is losing weight for his health, but he sure looks good. he is a good man, that's how i'm over here.

terry: the things that are on the back of the new album [poems], i saw those in an american magazine, 'creem', with cross marks on them where herb cohen (co-owner of zappa's record labels 'straight' and 'bizarre' -.t.t.) had crossed them out, crumpled them up and thrown them into the dustbin.

isn't that enough? what really ironic is that grant gibbs used to work for straight/bizarre, so frank zappa and herb cohen. evidently they shamed him to such a degree that he tried to be with me to get that past out - which i think is even more vulgar than what théy did. because he found those biographies in a trash can, and he is the one who saved them and had them put into creem, and there were the slash marks he thought was such a degradation to art.

bút then he did the same thing, when he thought he could be with captain beefheart and get back at zappa - which i never wanted: to get back at zappa. i just wanted to get away from him - and here he goes and does me worse. i mean, just as bad: pretending to be nice as he was,then being like that, just a complete detumescence of my business. i mean, where is he, gone away again? no, man! i was just waiting by my phone, you know, like not just waiting there.... i had a line out over the hills, a lot of people were trying to contact me for work over here....

i didn't even hear about it, and then all of a sudden i get on this tour of the u.s.. 'where have you been!? it's fantastic! this legend!'. i said: 'what do you mean?'. they said: 'what about gibbs?', and all of a sudden the tip-off came - isn't that though? you know the books, they have delayed me getting out 'old fart at play' and 'singing ink', the book of poetry. but he had nothing to do with a film with me - even zappa has been over here saying that he's going to do a film with me. i wouldn't do a film with zappa..., i would do it with someone that would sit down and look in my eyes and eat with me, breathe with me or hold their breath.

yeah. well, he'd better turn it over to warner reprise, because they bought my contract. he and cohen, they sold me in the night, like they would an indian dancer or something, you know what i mean - a sort of shanghai job. but if you listen to a song called 'orange claw hammer', you'll know that i was aware they were going to do that anyway, but there was no way i could get out of the paper at that time. you listen to that and see what you think...: 'i was shanghaied by a high hat beaver mustache man and his pirate friend'....

not only that, but 'the blimp' also. but what can you do when they pull business routines on you like that...? i mean, i was free, but i'm not that hole they want to make me go through that blows the musical trumpet.... you know, like, man, i'm not gonna do that for nobody. i blow my own horn, nobody tells me when to blow my horn. that's what they were trying to do and there's no way.... so it just delayed me, let's say, and also deluded me.

additional picture by ed thrasher

what really worried me, is the way that this society is, like when i did 'trout mask replica' that sort of imagination is few and far between, and i wonder about zappa putting me off in the category of a freak, because i thought maybe that would encourage children, and men and women and everything.... - ah, dogs are just too unattached to take hard narcotics - and try to be as freaky as captain beefheart and the magic band when they hear that album, and the thing is that i was totally down, always have been, once it was slipped on me....

it seems a bit strange that nobody, even people i know, seems to realise that 'trout mask replica' is so far ahead, and get onto it.... i just don't understand it....

that's it! yóu are an artist and a writer, and... --

yeah, but it's sad....

it is sad.

yes, because how do you find a business man who has a mind like an artist?

you know, i think i've done that - and it has taken me seven years. a lot of people say: 'it's about time you're making it', but i don't like people telling me it's about time you're making it. i've been making it all along, and they haven't been making it, you know, i mean the business.... because there's a lot of people who would like to hear this group.... well, they are showing it now, but that's because of warner reprise. but they have rooked people again with the words not being on the album (the uk version of 'lick my decals off, baby' - teejo). i don't know what to do about that, but i'll try to get them out in a magazine over here. i think they should pay for publishing it....

terry: it's like that with most records, say, by 'the grateful dead' or 'jefferson airplane'....

no, don't say those in comparison with me, please.

terry: i'm talking about the business men, not the musicians.