Jon Savage takes a tour through Captain Beefheart's back catalogue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/dec/22/captain-beefheart-back-catalogue
Don Van Vliet shouldn't be seen as a 'weirdo' he had pop tricks up
his sleeve and his most difficult music entered the top 20
by Jon Savage
22 December 2010
There's one Captain Beefheart song that I haven't been able to get
out of my head since his death was announced. Sue Egypt (from 1980's
Doc at the Radar Station) has many of the Captain's trademarks:
sudden rhythmic breaks and twists, otherworldly sounds, a
super-killer slide riff and vocal pyrotechnics taken into another dimension.
The whole track explodes with energy, from the opening guitar figure
through the saturated mellotron to the way that Beefheart's voice
swoops through the phonetic lyrics: "Boats to forever/ Boated ether/
Creep to ether, feather/ Sue Egypt." Despite the dark imagery
"voices pick you, crows hex you" you're left with a feeling of deep
joy and total exultation.
Captain Beefheart has been presented as some kind of weirdo, but
contrary to what you might think, he was popular particularly in
the UK, where Trout Mask Replica went top 20 in early 1970; Lick My
Decals Off, Baby reached No 21 a year later. Thanks to frequent UK
shows and the patronage of John Peel, he was a major figure in the
counterculture a charismatic charlatan/shaman.
Don Van Vliet was a complex, contradictory creature. As has been
well-documented, he was controlling, if not dictatorial, but at the
same time possessed a deep love for the natural world. He was a
carny, a visionary, a hustler, a utopian as crazy and as focused as
a desert fox. But what matters in the end is the work. And there is
so much to admire that has stood the test of time, and that indeed
will last as long as any 20th-century popular culture.
Since Van Vliet's death, many people have focused on Trout Mask
Replica, his 1969 double album, as his absolute pinnacle, and it
remains his most concentrated and ambitious work a dizzying mix of
lo-fi, free jazz, rumbling blues, instant catchphrases ("fast and
bull-bous"), sound verite and tumbling rhythms. The opening Frownland
could be Beefheart's manifesto and testament: "My spirit's made up of
the ocean, and the sky 'n the sun 'n the moon."
I like the Captain best when he's making his pop moves. The Magic
Band's first album, Safe As Milk, takes some beating, with its Ry
Cooder-enhanced hymns to white light (Electricity), protests against
dehumanised work (Plastic Factory) and American archetypes enhanced
(Yellow Brick Road). Other highlights include a cover of Robert
Williams's tortuous Grown So Ugly and the staccato Dropout Boogie
later adapted by Edgar Broughton.
1968's Strictly Personal is no slouch either, with songs such as
Kandy Korn particularly when you hear the extended versions later
released on 1971's Mirror Man. The production has long been
criticised but I really like phasing, backwards tapes and weird
mutterings. The idea that this was an inauthentic rendition of this
sacred music was a bit of a joke, considering how his persona and
mythos were so constructed.
The early-70s were Don's purple patch. The Spotlight Kid and Clear
Spot contained perennial classics such as Big Eyed Beans from Venus
a passionate hymn to femininity and Blabber and Smoke, an inspired
appeal on behalf of the environment: "Clean up the air/ 'N treat the
animals fair/ I can't help but think you treat love like ah joke/
Time's runnin' out." And then there's the sly humour of When It Blows
Its Stacks.
Like a lot of 60s vanguardists, Beefheart began to lose his way in
the mid-70s. Two simpler albums, Unconditionally Guaranteed, and
Bluejeans and Moondreams, were widely derided, but both have moments
of tenderness. A few years in the wilderness followed, before the
eventual release of 1978's Bat Chain Puller and 1980's Doc At the
Radar Station by which time the Captain's children were all over
radio and the alternative charts.
His influence has been well traced, but the most notable example
would have to be Johnny Rotten who took the phrase "old fart" from
the song Old Fart At Play on Trout Mask Replica, and turned it into
that perennial generational insult. Beefheart, a beacon of open
experimentation, was Rotten's musical weapon against the simplistic
straight-jacket within which Malcolm McLaren sought to confine him.
After 1982's Ice Cream for Crow, Beefheart never made another record
and, from then on, concentrated on painting. His withdrawal was
totally in character. In his finest songs like the nakedly
emotional 1975 version of Orange Claw Hammer recorded with Frank
Zappa Beefheart channeled a secret history of America, the
underbelly of a continent and a culture that has now all but vanished
along with one of its greatest poets.
.
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