until recently, few people
outside
of new york city have been aware of gary lucas' talents as a
musician.
as a featured guitar player in captain beefheart's magic band,
lucas demonstrated
tremendous ability and a voracious appetite for instrumental
pieces the
complexity of which make the guitar offerings of famed
berkeley school
of school alumni look like the bland, self-indulgent crap they
really are.
the 57 seconds of 'flavor bud living' (from 'doc at the radar
station')
are, to my ears, far more imaginative and skilled playing than
the sum
total of pat metheny's work (yawn), while the 120 seconds of
'evening bell'
(from 'ice cream for crow') easily surpass the heinous shit
that joe satriani
and yngwie malmsteen pass off on unwitting fools as
interesting music.
in fact, if all of three of these
hacks'
fans dropped their lighters from the air in salutation of
the mundane long
enough to give a careful listen to either of the beefheart
records that
lucas played on, or lucas' enemy records releases, this
world would be
a better place with less misanthropical types like myself,
and berkeley
would just be a hair farmer infested city in california,
instead of a boston
school for metal-loving purveyors of technically oriented
cheese-whiz.
lucas' 1991 release 'skeleton at
the feast'
displays his strong instrumental writing, highlighted by the
live recording
of lucas' collaboration with keyboardist walter horn on the
soundtrack
for the 1921 silent expressionist film 'the golem'. at press
time, lucas'
current release 'gods and monsters' [the group he plays in -
t.t.] is just
hitting the shelves of cd stores around the nation,
accompanied by glowing
reviews from widely divergent sources.
i have been fortunate enough to
see lucas
play both with beefheart and in a performance of 'the golem'
soundtrack,
and i look forward to seeing him play on an upcoming tour in
support of
the 'gods and monsters' ceedee. what follows is an interview
conducted
far too early in the morning after a performance of 'the
golem' soundtrack in minneapolis in the summer of 1991 and
several
phone interviews over the course of the following year.
how did you get involved with don
van
vliet?
i was a fan originally. i knew his
records
up to 'trout mask replica' and i admired him a lot. when i was
a freshman
at yale university, in [january - t.t.] 1971, i saw
that he was
making an appearance in new york - his first on the east coast
- so some
friends and i drove down to see him play in a little mafia
club called
ziggalano's.
we went into the club and they were
playing
'flying' by the faces over the p.a. i'll never forget: don
came out before
the show and said: 'will you please take off that music? how
dare you think
that people want to hear this music. i mean, really, let's
have some concern
for the audience here'. i liked his spirit because he was
bucking up against
the corporate rock thing - this was warner brothers' attempt
to push another
of their artists at the show.
don was on a bill with ry cooder,
who was
okay. i like him a lot better on record; his live shows didn't
knock me
out. for him to be on the bill was ironic, because cooder was
in the magic
band on 'safe as milk'. don said that the reason he was unable
to play
the june 1967 monterey pop festival was because cooder quit
two weeks before
they were supposed to play, and he would never work with ry
cooder again,
but there he was (laughs) playing on the same bill as
him. anyway,
they came out and demolished the house and my head, i remember
thinking:
'god, if i ever do anything professionally, i would like to
play with thís
guy'. it just seemed to kind of go with musical achievements;
he was just
killing everybody.
a year later i was music director at
yale's
radio station, wybc, and i had the opportunity to interview
him over the
phone and met him when he came to yale to play woolsley hall
to promote
the 'the spotlight kid' album. the show was, at first, a bit
of a disappointment
to me because i had raved to everyone about the complexity of
his music,
and he had seemed to pare it down to a real minimal kind of
blues/rock
'n' roll approach. it was good because he had put in winged
eel fingerling,
elliot ingber, on lead guitar as a nod to the lead guitar that
was popular
in america. they came out and played the show, but it was
sabotaged by
the sound which was really bad because they hadn't had a
sound-check and
the acoustics were sloppy, you couldn't hear anything.
a lot of people left disappointed;
they would
come up to me and say: 'what were you talking about?!'. they
didn't get
it, but nevertheless i was still a believer. at the time i met
him, i was
convinced that he was the ultimate genius of american music: i
was a fan.
on subsequent meetings i loosened up and became more of a
friend than a
fan that was approaching someone admired. it wasn't until
several years
later that i approached don with the idea of playing guitar,
or even told
him that i played.
frankly, i never thought i was good
enough
at this point. i was into jeff beck and all this english rock
and roll.
beefheart's music seemed unbelievably complex with the
contrapuntal fingerpicking
style. so, i just woodsheded until i found that i was good
enough, that
my technique was cognizant enough. when that came about it was
[spring]
1975. i had lost touch with him; he had done these sell out
records for
mercury; there were a lot of good things on 'unconditionally
guaranteed',
but i never could get into 'bluejeans and moonbeams'. these
albums had
the unfortunate effect of alienating the people who liked him
and they
failed to create any new fans for him, which was a disastrous
thing....
in any case, i was in syracuse and i
noticed
that captain beefheart was playing with frank zappa. i thought
this was
incredible because it was my understanding that they were
bitter enemies.
i went to the show and afterwards i saw don and had a nice
reunion. then
i went and saw them play in boston and brought my guitar up
there and,
after the show, played for him and we talked about forming a
new band,
but it was pretty vague at this point; i didn't know exactly
when this
would be. it seemed at this point in his career he didn't have
a band and
frank was helping him out. apparently there was a bench
warrant out for
his arrest in california for running out on his managers, the
de martino
brothers, who were involved in the production of the mercury
albums. so
with that in mind, i took it with a grain of salt.
i had the opportunity to go to
taiwan and
work in the family business, which was probably an attempt to
get me out
of the country as i was having a live-in affair with and older
woman in
new york city. she was fifty-six and i was twenty-two; it was
pretty incredible. my parents
didn't like that at all, so they kind of lured me into this
gig in taiwan
where i was nominally looking over my father's trade business,
and spending
all my time in bands with chinese kids and other foreigners.
i was living it up, things were
nice, then
one day i was playing a club called 'the scarecrow', where my
girl-friend,
ling ling, instigated a horrible fight. there were some people
very seriously
injured in the melee that broke out after we were finished
playing, so
i was told to take the first plane out of taiwan; the police
wanted me
to testify and this made it dangerous for me there. my
girlfriend and i
returned to the u.s., got married at san francisco city hall,
and before
returning to new york for lack of work in san francisco, i
called don up
and asked about the band. he kind of had a deal going, so it
was like:
'stay in touch...'.
so, i got a job writing in the ad
department
for cbs records. i would call don from work and have intense
two-hour conversations
every day for years - thank you, cbs. he had an album that we
had signed
him to do, 'shiny beast/bat chain puller', coming out on
warner bros. when
he came to new york he told me that he wanted my wife and i to
manage him
and for me to play guitar for the magic band. i couldn't
really be a full-time
manager because of the day job, and, as the band wasn't really
working
that much. i stayed in new york and learned pieces by mail.
at first he sent me an instrumental
piece
to learn for 'doc at the radar station' called 'flavor bud
living', which
i recorded with him in los angeles. it was fun recording with
him and he
invited me to go on tour with the band. i would come out
during the set
and do 'flavor bud living' solo while don and the band left
the stage.
it was nerve-rackingly fun. i was sitting in with them on 'her
eyes are
a blue million miles', played bass on 'making love to a
vampire with a
monkey on my knee', and read some of his poetry. this was
about one fourth
of the show. it was fun to tour, a lot of fun. i played europe
and the
east and west coast dates.
picture by carla
gahr
i saw the beacon theatre show in
new york
in 1980 when i was about fourteen. i had heard a lot of his
stuff already,
as my older brothers were followers of his work.
nevertheless, i was amazed
at the show. it was my first time seeing a live band and it
seemed incredible
to me how an audience could respond to performers; they
seemed as much
a part of the experience as the musicians. the whole event
was pretty inspirational.
i went home to washington and started learning electric
guitar by listening
to my older brother's link wray records and breaking the
strings on his
telecaster. watching james blood ulmer open for beefheart
and fry one or
two twin reverbs was pretty amusing: it seemed like don
wouldn't let him
use one of the magic band's twins, so the beefheart set was
much longer....
(laughs) you were at that
show? it
was great: ulmer fried our amps, don wouldn't let him near
anymore, so
we came out and played; it was a lot of fun.... i heard that
the minneapolis
gig was plagued by equipment problems.
i am told that don hated
minneapolis.
supposedly he played a short set to an unreceptive crowd and
told them
that he would never return:
'because this town sucks'. he may be right,
i am still trying to figure it out.
don was pretty frazzled by touring:
he hated
it - but wé loved it. he has a big problem negotiating his way
through
the world outside of isolated areas where he chooses to live.
i remember
it taking him about half an hour to walk from 57th street to
52nd on 5th
avenue, but that is don: he chooses to live that way.
he probably saw a lot of things
on those
five blocks that no one else ever sees.
you got it - that's right. he would
be like:
'man, did you sée that?' - kind of like a baby. i split up
with
my wife after that record and, being single, i had the time to
go full
time with the band. don would send me music for the upcoming
record 'ice
cream for crow'. he started by sending me the 'evening bell'
piano piece,
which was a monumental task to learn. i remember sitting with
a cassette
of him playing it on the piano; all of his music was kind of
'through composed':
he would play it once, but if you asked him again, i'm sure he
wouldn't
be able to play it. he wasn't really a technical musician that
way: he
played completely instinctively.
i would sit with it and struggle in
an attempt
to transcribe what he had done on piano to guitar. it has a
peculiar flavor
because the low e was tuned to d as the piece was more or less
centered
in d. to play piano music on the guitar creates a contention
in the listener
because the piece is not idiomatic for guitar. it was great,
but a lot
of work. i remember telling don that it was almost impossible
to play,
because you've only got nine fingers on guitar and ten on
piano. he told
me that i needed to grow another finger.
we recorded a lot of the older
pieces for
the record at a session in los angeles. a lot of the other
pieces were
composed - i think he was working on them. he would scat sing
the parts
to us at the rehearsals and we would memorize them; he would
whistle parts
while we followed him around with a tape recorder and we would
take it
back to the hotel to figure the stuff out.
it was really interesting. one day
he took
an ashtray, hurled it against the wall and recorded the sound
it made as
it spun around on the floor, sort of a wobbling sound, and
said to robert
williams, the drummer: 'learn it - that's the drum solo'. a
lot of the
pieces have found sounds out of nature. that's how a lot of
rhythms were
inspired. 'bat chain puller', for example, is apparently the
sound he heard
his windshield wipers making as they squeaked on the
windshield of his
car.
interesting approach. how did
'flavor
bud living' arise?
it was originally recorded before.
after
the mercury albums, don did an album for frank that was going
to come out
on zappa's label. it was called 'bat chain puller' and
produced by frank,
but it never came out because of a lawsuit between frank and
his manager,
herbie cohen; it tied up the tapes for years. on this record,
he had john
french playing the piece on guitar - but much slower than the
way i finally
played it on record. don said that he hated the way that
french played
it, that it was 'too religious, and it put the whole thing in
heavy syrup'.
i learned it from the bootlegged version originally and went
out to the
desert and played it for him.
he critiqued by saying that it was
all wrong!
i told him: 'that's how french played it', and don said:
'well, obviously,
he must have done it all wrong. i want you to play it using my
exploding
note theory'. 'what is that?', i asked. 'you play every note
as if it has
only a tangential relationship to the preceding note and the
note that
follows'. in other words: a very staccato and disconnected
phraseology.
so i rehearsed this and had him mold it as we started to play
it. we did
it in the first or second take.
why did don retire?
a substantial lack of remuneration
for his
recorded efforts.
safe to assume that this is a
permanent
retirement?
yes. the reason don doesn't make
music anymore
is because he doesn't want to create panic in art dealers or
the people
who buy his paintings.
for some time after beefheart's
retirement,
you didn't play professionally....
yeah, people told me to join a band
and 'capitalize
on this thing' but it was sort of a comedown to consider
playing with any
other people after playing with the magic band. i stopped
playing guitar
for a while as i had a lot of painful memories from the time
he stopped
working; it was a little strained for a year or so. just the
thought of
playing would cause my hands to ache. to remember the shit he
put musicians
through made me not want to continue on that course for a
while.
what got you to start playing out
again?
well, i met and befriended rollo of
the woodentops
and after hearing me play at home, he invited me to play on
the woodentops'
next record. i flew to england and i worked on their album
'wooden foot
cops on the highway'. that really gave me the bug to start
playing again.
i was thirty-five and i decided that if i didn't start playing
again, i would lose
the opportunity for good.
i fashioned a solo
guitar show
(which included a beefheart
medley - t.t.) and convinced the knitting
factory to stage it. it was plagued
by disaster from the beginning
but in the end it worked out fine. the knitting factory
neglected to advertise
in the paper: they thought no one would show up. i just put
some fliers
around, and on the day of the show it was absolutely packed.
it was very
well received, so i played again at the new music seminar. the
new york
times gave me a great write-up, and things began to work....
