captain beefheart interview - let's hope the hip people choose life instead of death on their hip (england late march 1972)

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

you've had a lot of interviews, do you think everybody is trying to fathom the legend?

maybe they think i am bacon or shakespeare... (two famous british writers - t.t.) - i'm just kidding.... i am not putting myself up alongside shakespeare, because he's gone and i am better and he's gone and i'm here. he did some awful nice stuff and i am not comparing but it seems that zappa tried to make something like that out: you know, a real classic. or a callic or something - he has no business trying to train callics. i have always been a callic and if i am lucky, one day i may even be a cauliflower but for a better evolution....

a flower, we could be picked like a flower. but people just don't understand simple things like that.... i would never want to be a guru or anything like that. i did a satirical thing, 'ella guru'. that's obvious. but people don't seem to understand. there is too much freak stuff attached around it. they've got the wrong guy. i don't want them to take the needle or be a porcupine to dig captain beefheart.

well, it even clouds me. when you tell me about various bits and pieces it becomes clearer because you have been under zappa's command.

(turning to his wife jan:) are you all right babe? you have been sitting there all day not saying a word.... do you wanna go to the toilet...? there's one through the kitchen.

too much work...! getting high on your own urine, they're liable to think you're a yogi - a yogi is a policeman with a paper gun. you can get high on holding your own urine, that is one form of poison. when people say they are doing drug music, i really think a human being did it. i don't think that an aspirin on that particular day, that wonderful day, suddenly turned into a human being and painted the world or anything like that.

no, i don't think god is a modern tablet: i have a song called 'ussen's bible' that i wrote over here. i wrote it very freely, there was no fear of guns and i like that. i could come over here and really write, i am sure. it is a drag man, thinking that they are having life and death on their hip. let's hope the hip people don't have life and death, let's hope they choose life instead of death on their hip. that's significant what i just said - that would be good in an article or a --.... but i hope people don't interpret it as an article of clothing, but as a mental article....

graham springett (friend of phil's): you are going to liverpool, aren't you? the river...-

is that the mersey?... i heard about that, with somebody named 'the pacemakers'.

that fellow (gerry - t.t.) was pretty good, wasn't he? the way he played the guitar: as if he didn't really want to do it - that was far out. he sure had an artist approach; i mean, good grief, he was really into it. we have already eaten today, we are starting on the night, no tooth to the moon.... no, i'm just teasing you; acting like one of those heavy-duty indian poets.

[totally uninteresting part of the chat skipped, till the conversation switches to one of don van vliet's favourite topics: flashy cars... - teejo]

i have a '50 hudson hornet at home and it is barbecue brown. futuristic tan, almost like they have taken a syringe and taken the color off a buffalo and put it on the metal and it didn't quite make it. animal colors look very far out on metal....

oh lord, that's really far out, where's he at man..., doesn't he know that some chick is liable to dig the material and have it put on a coat. a very dangerous thing to emulate anything that beautiful; that is really weird: a tiger.... i wish they would quit poaching all those animals over there, you ought to scream back to your ancestors... - i'm just kidding. but that wasn't in africa, that was here, like rabbits and sheep....

you mean i may have eaten a poached lox.... do you like creamed cheese and lox, it is like salmon. nova scotia lox are salmon with cream cheese on a bagel. it is a jewish dish.

well, i think they are beginning to get over that now. i guess it is better that they get over it now than prolong it and get embarrassed to even come and hear me after that.

i can. i did, for instance, 'the dust blows forward and the dust blows back' and 'orange claw hammer' and 'china pig' on the 'trout mask replica' album on a cassette.

it said something on the lyric sheet to 'trout mask replica' about the condition of the players on 'china pig' ('owing to the condition of the players and the environment of the recording, certain portions are inaudible, thus we can only guess at the real meaning'): what was the condition?

oh that. well, i will tell you about that, completely sober as a matter of fact. in the background there was a fellow typing out the words to another song. it was a strictly spontaneous thing.... music is good for you, makes you let go of things without getting anything back. you know, like, how are you gonna trap a note?

yeah, i do too. i played for five days once without stopping. my back and muscles were hurt on every one of them. you know it is silly, but i'm not there yet. i mean, i don't know all about it yet.

oh yeah..., i like to fool around with the guitar, pretty far out man. a piano turned up like this [a harp] and you are accused of being an angel every minute, like catching a harp string on a curved field.

let's put it this way: i played it the first time i came over to 'middle earth' (20 january 1968 - t.t.). antennae jimmy semens and drumbo gave me a soprano and i played it for two and a half hours and i had never played it before - and it is the same now: i never played it before, every time that i play it. i never rehearse. drumbo was keeping track of the times that i played that horn. i have played that horn now probably two hundred forty times and never rehearsed in between them and won't.

i don't rehearse the voice either. like 'trout mask replica', i just sang that thing when i went in to do it. i had no idea how it was going to sound, i just read the paper and sung it.... occasionally i'll just sing out of memory, but i usually read it....

oh yeah, i love it.... i did that on 'dachau blues' and also on 'flash gordon's ape'. had three of them going, it was really weird.... and the guy left the studio: thought i was kidding. well i was, you know, i always am.... but why more significance on that than any other thing that i do? they just left the studio and i left the thing running. they thought i was 'goofing off'.

i have changed engineers and now i'm gonna be with a fellow named ted templeman, i think this guy is good.... the other guy was good, but just doesn't have enough time for someone like me. by the way: he told me one thing that was really funny. he told me that this album that i had done now - listen to this, it's hilarious - he told me: 'well you are sure feeling better, a lot more down to earth...: you were really crazy when you did 'lick my decals off, baby'...'. and i was half way through the album and i went..., oh boy, i was really scared.

you mean, the fellow that takes the girl out on an iceberg, hands her a ronson (brand of cigarette lighters - t.t.) and says: 'i'll see you around'?. well i think that is sort of what has been done to women: kind of left floating when they are on the ground. they have this blood clock, you know: the period. if you really want to know what is happening, ask a woman.

men are really far out; woman have been considered to be far out, but i think they're ín. a lot of men would disagree with what i just said, [but] women certainly know what is good for men.... i guess man is the biggest flaw on the planet, but since you have to survive, it's very important to take into consideration the natural flaws that already exist. i am trying to find out if i have arrived or not....

now when the monkey reaches into the jar for the raisins, he can't get his hand out of the jar. you go round with a glass jar on your hand all your life.... then the monkey, being that his claws are worn down - as is referred to in 'when it blows its stacks' - has a glass jar on one hand and is holding onto the tree with the other, afraid to break the jar because he will get cut.

why?.... you can get your own distillery, people have been making their own whiskey for years. just take the fire out of it and you have got nice water.... or put the fire into it and you have got, in some cases, nice water too. but in my case i get allergic when i drink, i break out in a horrid rash: i look like the beatles record of 'strawberry fields forever' - fields, not feels....

(here there is a long pause until the captain starts talking about the famous two-fingered peace sign.)

don't you think it is a bit fascist nowadays? don't you think that when you close them together, it's a nazi salute because of all the teevee type of thought pattern that would make somebody do that..., it replaces 'hello'....

good. i would love to man, but i wouldn't want to be on top of anything, because if i couldn't hold up, then i would topple.

not with me on it though: imagine that plastic, it would be almost like an artificial hand compared to a real one, when i went on. if you want to know what that ís: it is a man running over a stop sign. i know it was a man, because a woman would have had to pay for the tires....

(speaking very deeply:) don't i have a deep voice, eh...? they would have to bury me pretty deep to keep my voice off the air. they had to dig real deep to find a way to keep me from being around. like zappa was just digging till his shovel ran out - and his shovel is worn out now, poor little thing - probably had a bent sand bucket when he went to the beach as a child.

i find more and more that zappa is less and less: i always thought he was a nice fellow till he made me think that he wasn't. he forced it on me, like 'i'm not níce!'. i never got paid for 'willie the pimp' or 'trout mask replica' - that's business? don't keep all your eggs in one basket...!