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DON'T ARGUE WITH THE CAPTAIN
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BEHIND THE TROUT MASK
the groovy beat happening of john 'drumbo' french

from usa 1 january 1990 OPTION #30
by michael davis
is late 1989 interview JOHN FRENCH

part 1 - THIS is PART 2

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was the recording done mostly live?

we were given six hours to do the basic tracks and we did them in four-and-a-half. there's maybe half a dozen things that weren't recorded during those hours, a capella songs like 'well', and so on.

they were going to record the album at the house but don sort of threw a fit, saying: 'the band's not getting into it'. well, obviously, the band was - because if you listen to 'hair pie, bake 1', it sounds great. don and his cousin victor haydon (aka the mascara snake) were outside the house playing their horns, so we didn't hear a thing they were doing until after the song was done, but they could hear us.

'trout mask replica' is usually looked upon as the breakthrough, but 'safe as milk' is pretty amazing for its time.

yeah. that would have been about may of 1967. i joined the band in around october of '66, and 'safe as milk' was recorded the following may.

'safe as milk' had ry cooder on it; he wasn't a member of the magic band, was he?

he was hired by the record company to get the music together, to make it recordable and get the final arrangements together. they came over and saw that we could play, but that we didn't have the music finished. so cooder would show up at nine in the morning while don would stay in bed until noon every day, yelling ideas to him from the bedroom.

ry was not only a great player, but he arranged a lot of those songs. he put them in order, adding parts where they were missing, bass parts, guitar parts. he was great with drum parts too, he could tell me exactly what to play.

we were both eighteen on that album, and i really respected him: it got me inspired because here was someone tying all this mess together. i had been in the band for six months, and we didn't have one song we could play from beginning to end and know where we were at all points.

'safe as milk' was probably recorded in about a week instrumentally. when it came time to do the vocals, we realized that don had only a rough idea of how the words fit the music. i asked him where the lyrics were and he brought out this huge box full of napkins and bits of paper....

i had to go through it and put them in piles; then he would put them in order. then i hand-wrote all of them because we didn't have a type-writer. i did it because he couldn't do stuff like that for himself - or he pretended like he couldn't.

we took a copy of the instrumental tape to buddah records' office, and producer richard perry sat with don for a full day putting together the words. some of them came together pretty easily, but 'abba zaba', for instance, took about three hours.

richard was really a valuable asset. he wrote out a horn chart for 'i'm glad', he thought of drum ideas for 'autumn's child'. i would say between richard en ry, that album came into being.

on the albums after 'trout mask replica' you were off and on with the band....

i left the band after 'trout mask replica' because it was a very intense period of time and i just wasn't happy with the group, so i worked on a cattle ranch in wyoming. they had another drummer for a while who ended up kicking jeff cotton in the ribs, breaking some of them, so jeff left the band.

around the time of the cover of rolling stone thing in '70 [published 14 may 1970 - t.t.] artie tripp (aka ed marimba / ted cactus) had taken over drumming. but they eventually called me up. don said: 'i need you back in the group: artie doesn't lend the right approach to the drums on this'.

they could sit down and listen to what i had done, but they didn't know where i was coming from or how to make up new drum parts. even though don was great at writing drum parts, they didn't know what i had done and they wanted it to sound consistent with the album before.

captain beefheart magic band member john
                      french / drumbo 1989 - picture by richard
                      thompson
picture by
richard thompson

i said: 'fine'. i dropped out of college, rejoined the band and sat around for six months doing almost nothing for the album ('lick my decals off, baby') that was supposed to be recorded in three weeks.

was don essentially living from advance to advance then?

he was, to a degree. he wouldn't tour as much as he should have. he was very disorganized. he didn't know his lyrics, he couldn't go on stage and perform without somebody really preparing him and getting him built up for it.

that sounds pretty odd: when i saw you guys at some club down in orange county around the time 'lick my decals off, baby' came out, you blew me away (during one of the shows at the warehouse in anaheim on 6 and 7 november 1970 - t.t.).

okay, i remember the exact show. that was before we went out on tour. we had been rehearsing and that was our first performance. it got a lot better than that. like anybody else, once he has played something a few times, don starts improvising and improving upon his performance, and each one gets better. the band kept getting better and tighter. sometimes it would go off into a different plane, but it got very, very good.

[here the interview turned to the songwriting and playing activities of john french, especially during his time in the 'crazy backwards alphabet' band. so did he piece together a track entitled 'we are in control?' for their album 'crazy backwards alphabet' (which also contains a cover version of beefheart's 'mirror man', by the way), and wrote the leftover 'disposable thoughts' which eventually was used for the 'live, love, larf & loaf' record of the french-frith-kaiser-thompson project. john also mentioned the fact that he had completed a demo and was looking for a solo deal. (it would take some years, but in 1994 he made 'waiting on the flame', on which a certain bill harkleroad plays too.) - t.t.]

is this more accessible direction you are going in changing your drumming style much? the more i listen to you, the more i think that you just don't have the same relationship with the style that most drummers have.

people that really listen to music appreciate the kind of drumming that i do. most people get very confused by it.

i am doing more straightforward drumming on this newer stuff: i'm keeping a back-beat with the snare, which i always thought was boring. but it seems to work with the new songs because the material is different enough, and i still use the tom toms in the same way.

what i thought i would do is reserve the style of drumming that i was known for, like with 'trout mask replica', or with 'disposable thoughts' for a crazy backwards alphabet project.

i really hope that crazy backwards alphabet will get together at least one more time and do a very strong, very powerful statement, powerful in terms of like a 'trout mask replica'. i have always wanted to do something like that again, just for the sheer joy of playing that style.

'disposable thoughts' is sort of in that style, so is 'we are in control?'. people say they enjoy it, but usually musicians don't want to learn that type of material because it is difficult. you have to really think about it: it is mathematical. you have to analyze it before you play it, and then forget about it and just play it.

*

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