One such individual was Lora Logic (Sara Whitby), formerly of the punk band X-Ray Spex, who found the post-punk ensemble Essential Logic in 1978. In her song, “Aerosol Burns,” from Fanfare in the Garden, her voice bursts forth like Bjork on steroids as she breaks the song’s title into spit consonants and vowels. While twisting her saxophone into squeaks curling around the broken sounds, Logic marries some of the raw power of punk honed in earlier bands to Beefheart’s style of intricately shifting melodies. But Lora Logic wasn’t the only woman inspired by the wilderness of Beefheart’s music.
Another such individual inhabiting a wilderness was Polly Jean Harvey. Born in England the year Trout Mask was released, she taught herself guitar by listening to her parents’ Beefheart albums. When she recorded her debut Dry in 1992, she integrated the primal charge of punk with the raw texture of the blues. With a wry humour, like Beefheart, she savaged pop convention with a frankness that set her apart from the more self-conscious brooding of Sinead O’Connor.
One of the more obvious figures drinking from the pond is Tom Waits. Ironically, once signed to Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight label (even touring with Zappa in the early 70s), Waits began as a melancholic singer/songwriter sitting at the piano bellowing heartache and longing like Hoagy Carmichael reborn as a beatnik. With a raspy growl, Waits spent the 70s depicting the lives of hipster lowlifes in songs like “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” and “Heartattack and Vine.” In 1983, he moved from Asylum Records to Island, after firing his manager and his producer, then dramatically changed his recording approach with Swordfishtrombones. His new songs (“Underground,” “16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought Six”) took on the shape of soundscapes, abstract short stories in which even his voice became part of the grain of the piece. An existential Harry Parch, Waits would include (among the standard bass guitars, pianos, and drums) utilitarian devices like brake drums, metal aunglongs, and buzz saws. He incorporated the rough surface of Beefheart’s music without surrendering to its primal power.
As highly imaginative and riveting as Waits’s music is, it is still the music of a very sane man playing the abstract artist. When Waits became a movie actor in the 80s, he learned how to vary the role-playing he exhibited too narrowly in his hipster persona of the 70s. On later records, Rain Dogs (1985), Frank’s Wild Years (1987), and the terrific Mule Variations (1999), he remade the blues and gospel with the same sonic eclecticism Beefheart put into Trout Mask Replica. But he did so by acting the part of a different fish rather than becoming one. Which is why Tom Waits, as wonderfully innovative as he is, won’t scare people away from their stereos.
There are many other contemporary groups that have tried to unlock the mystery of Trout Mask’s power and replicate it. “Frownland” was covered by the underground post-punk Scottish band Nectarine No. 9 on their 1994 album Guitar Thieves. Drawing from the well of free jazz and Beat poetry, Nectarine No. 9 is a musical hybrid of Albert Ayler and Vic Godard & the Subway Sect. “Frownland” also inspired the five-piece Seattle band of the same name (their latest CD, slyly incorporating Dylan, was Sad Eyed Lady of the Frownlands). Mixing droning guitars with Patrice Tullai’s airy vocals, Frownland provides what one writer described as “melancholic elegance.” Former Mothers’ drummer Jimmy Carl Black and singer Eugene Chadbourne went on to form a band called Pachuco Cadaver. On CD and in concert, they covered a range of Zappa and Beefheart material (including an epic interpretation of “Veteran’s Day Poppy”). A rock group soon popped up in Detroit called Bill’s Corpse, a five-piece band with two drummers. Another five-piece group calling themselves Sweet Sweet Bulbs emerged out of the Big Wheel Blues Festival as a distinctive cover band doing the dark repertoire of Cowboy Junkies, John Martyn, and Nick Cave. “We are more motivational than an Anthony Robbins lecture,” they reminded us with a dark chuckle.
“Dali’s Car” inspired the name of the short-lived 1984 band formed by the vocalist and lyricist Peter Murphy of Bauhaus and bassist Mick Karn of Japan. The duo recorded one record, The Waking Hour, that included the aptly titled single “The Judgement is the Mirror.” The record, as a collection of keyboard- and bass-driven songs, was a commercial disaster. Part of the problem lay in the discontentment of their collaboration. Unlike the Magic Band, Murphy and Karn had not spent time together writing or recording the songs. They preferred to send the tapes back and forth. In fact, most of the tunes were written before they came together in the studio. When they did show up together, they clashed so often that neither wanted to work together again. “Situations full of tension can often be the most creative,” Mick Karn remarked echoing the underpinnings that shaped Trout Mask Replica. “Perhaps due to our strong, opposing opinions, there’s a certain strength to Dali’s Car. I doubt if there will be a reunion.” There wasn’t.
Other bands would turn up calling themselves Ant Man Bee or Ella Guru, some lasting, others luxuriating in obscurity like some secret society. But there were other established groups who preferred to cover the music itself. In 2000, the White Stripes would release a CD EP called Party of Special Things to Do, a three-song tribute to Beefheart, which included a rousing rendition of “China Pig.” The punk band Dead Kennedys would do their own pulsing version of “Orange Claw Hammer.” In 2003, a tribute album called Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish appeared (appropriately enough) on Animal World Recordings. Beside a scattering of songs from across Beefheart’s career, Trout Mask is well represented by A Warm Palindrome’s sharp interpretation of “Orange Claw Hammer.” Miss Murgatroid gives a sonic splendour to the title track, understanding the song’s roots in sound poetry. Truman’s Water does a lively punk version of “Hair Pie: Bake 2,” while 25 Suaves take a thrash metal approach to “Dachau Blues.”
For those who are under the misconception that only men listen to Beefheart, a tribute CD called Mama Kangaroos: Woman of Philadelphia Sing Captain Beefheart appeared in 2005. The album featured twenty female bands from Philly giving a whole new interpretation to songs like “Well” and “Orange Claw Hammer.” Gary Lucas, who joined the Magic Band in the 80s, said the music ranged from “old timey to camp cabaret to bloozy rawk ’n roll.” Lucas would start his own tribute band called Fast ’n’ Bulbous, making its first appearance at the Jazz en Agosto Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, on August 13, 2005. The group’s purpose was to take Beefheart’s music as a vehicle for both improvisation and arranging. Taking the place of Beefheart’s booming voice was a four-piece horn section.
Music wasn’t the only area infiltrated by Trout Mask. In 1997, novelist Robert Rankin wrote an absurdist autobiography titled Sprout Mask Replica. The front jacket is a facsimile of the album cover, featuring a man in a fedora with a sprout face wearing a suit and tie with slogan buttons all over his jacket. The book is an elliptical tale filled with short anecdotes about Rankin’s mythical ancestors. While one group, the Crombies, eats metal, Rankin himself is portrayed as a man with the power of a chaos butterfly (an insect of transformation out of “Pena”). Like Beefheart’s record, Rankin isn’t interested in telling a formal story. The narrative is told through many threads, some leading down paranoid trails to conspiracy theories. Rankin draws inspiration from the record by making the characters aware that they are in a book, just as Zappa and Beefheart consistently made the listeners aware that they were listening to a record. For an album that few people cared to listen to in 1969, Trout Mask Replica was finding its way, like a termite through wood, into the unconsciousness of the culture at large.
* * *
Over the years, while others were happily drinking from the same pond, the man who created it was getting no such sustenance. Paranoia was always a lethal fuel in the air. After Trout Mask Replica was released, Beefheart began unleashing hostility toward John French. It took root back when the group was still working on the record. Victor Hayden had invited Jeff Bruchell, a friend, to the house to watch the band rehearsals. “Don and Jeff would observe me practising for Trout Mask and Jeff would say, ‘I would love to do that,’” French recalled.
“Don would say loudly enough for me to hear, ‘Yeah, and I bet you could, too.’” Not long after the album was finished, Bruchell was suddenly sitting in with the group and French was asked to “take a walk.” French did just that. He went to Wyoming to work on a cattle ranch only to soon discover, upon the album’s release, that he wasn’t credited on the record—despite all his invaluable contributions. (The CD has since corrected the historic revisionism.)
His departure wasn’t long lasting though. In the fall of 1969, Bruchell and Jeff Cotton got into an ugly fight leading to Cotton suffering some broken ribs. By this time, Cotton had enough and left the group. But it wasn’t just the broken bones that prompted his departure, it was Beefheart’s consistent behaviour of railing against the group. Bruchell also abandoned ship, leaving Bill Harkleroad as the new music director. In the spring of 1970, French was invited back into the group. Upon arriving, he discovered that Beefheart had hired Art Tripp, Zappa’s former percussionist in the Mothers. Tripp introduced the marimba to the group (his instrument of choice in the Mothers of Invention); French strolled right back to his drum kit. Once more, French picked up the practice of transcribing Beefheart’s whistling and humming for the group’s follow up album, Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970). Initially, Dick Kunc was involved engineering the album. After making one small suggestion, though, Beefheart smelled betrayal. Kunc was fired, never to return. The record itself was a more refined version of Trout Mask, with Tripp’s marimba providing contrapuntal swing to contrast to French’s polyphonic drumming.
After completing the production on Trout Mask, Zappa was finishing up his second solo album, Hot Rats, which was largely an instrumental record. He had Beefheart sing the epic blues song “Willie the Pimp.” In the fall of 1969, before John French returned, Zappa served as road manager for Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band when they attended the Amougies Pop Festival in Belgium to perform alongside the Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, and jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp. When they returned, Beefheart followed up Lick My Decals Off, Baby with the dirgelike The Spotlight Kid (1972). It was while working on Clear Spot later in 1972 that Beefheart decided to unload his barrage of invective on Zappa. Was it jealousy? Perhaps. Zappa was about to launch another record label called DiscReet, after Bizarre/Straight was dropped by Warner Brothers. Where Zappa’s notoriety was growing in the 70s, Beefheart was becoming a cult figure. The hard work the group put into the radiant Clear Spot, which was a streamlined version of Beefheart’s music (without losing any of its shimmering beauty), was a commercial disappointment, charting at number 191.
Now desperate, Beefheart started an ill-advised attempt to go commercial. He signed a contract with Mercury Records in 1974 (Virgin in the UK), with a manager, Andy DiMartino, programming him to sell out. Beefheart’s first album on Mercury was Unconditionally Guaranteed, a record bereft of any magic. Featuring conventional jazz/pop arrangements, Beefheart’s growling voice was buried in the mix. The cover art was as hopeless as the music: Beefheart eagerly grabbing a fistful of money. Did he really believe that he’d finally hit the big time? Beefheart sounded anything but big; his attempt to be a common pop crooner made him sound ridiculously fake. Unconditionally Guaranteed charted even worse than Clear Spot. The original Magic Band members were naturally appalled. They decided immediately to leave the group. At which point, Beefheart’s audience started to abandon him as well, which made him angrier. When challenged, he would tell everyone that he had a right to win a Grammy. The different fish now wanted to be a common trout.
Unconditionally Guaranteed was followed by Bluejeans & Moonbeams (1974), another lacklustre effort with an anonymous studio band backing him. With his career almost over, he once again contacted Frank Zappa. After apologizing for all the insults, Beefheart was asked if he wanted to join the fall rehearsals for Zappa’s band. He showed up just before the group’s Halloween shows, but he flunked the audition because he couldn’t fit into Zappa’s airtight rhythm section. By the spring of 1975, though, Beefheart found his rhythm and nailed a spot in the band before their first gig at Pomona College in Claremont on April 11th. He toured the US with the group for the entire spring. When the band arrived in Austin, Texas, at the Armadillo for two nights, on May 20 and 21, 1975, they recorded what was to be the next Zappa album, Bongo Fury. It became something of a collaboration. Bongo Fury was basically an affectionate and humorous memoir about their early friendship. They traded songs and anecdotes and exchanged experiences. Without ever once getting maudlin, they reminisced about their early days in Lancaster. But it was shortlived. Bongo Fury would be the last collaboration between Zappa and Beefheart.
Although Captain Beefheart’s career was once again revitalized thanks to the Bongo Fury tour, his next album, Bat Chain Puller, would become a casualty of a vicious lawsuit between Zappa and his former manager, Herb Cohen. Beefheart’s record was initially to be released on Zappa’s DiscReet label. In talking to the press, Zappa considered Bat Chain Puller to be “[Beefheart’s] best album since Trout Mask Replica.” Once again, Beefheart had found his true voice. But after getting caught in the legal crossfire, Bat Chain Puller was never issued (although some songs would be rerecorded and put out on Beefheart’s next three albums on Virgin). The clash, though, brought on the final falling-out between Zappa and Beefheart. When Zappa eventually gained possession of the Bat Chain Puller tapes from Cohen in 1982, Beefheart and Magic Band guitarist Gary Lucas visited Zappa with the intent of using outtakes from that session to fill out Beefheart’s latest album, Ice Cream for Crow.
According to Lucas, Zappa had changed his mind about handing over the tapes. He told Lucas that he thought there might be a higher market in “Beefheartland” if the set was left intact. Zappa instead offered a song from the Bongo Fury tour, written by Zappa but sung by Beefheart, called “The Torture Never Stops.” While Lucas tried in vain to negotiate with Zappa, a depressed Beefheart started accompanying their arguing with his sarcastic poem about the record business, called “There Ain’t No Santa Claus on the Evening Stage.” Lucas ultimately refused “The Torture Never Stops,” but the torture didn’t end. Zappa abruptly concluded the conversation, went back to work, and he never worked with Beefheart again. Not long after the release of Ice Cream for Crow in 1982, Beefheart had had enough of recording. He decided to retire from the music business. Exhausted from living out a desert island of the mind, he soon retreated to a real one, with his wife Jan, to live in a trailer and paint. There would be occasional art shows throughout the United States, but there would be no more songs from the Captain.
As for the personal dispute between him and Zappa, it finally did reach a resolution in 1993, while Zappa was dying of prostate cancer. If their friendship had begun with some harmless musical mischief at the expense of a Webcor reel-to-reel, it had been the business of music that tore them apart. Not surprisingly, music would once again become a connecting link between these two iconoclasts in the end. I read somewhere that, in their final conversation, it wasn’t apologies or regrets that were exchanged. After all, what words could heal—or even change—the polar dynamics of both men? Over the phone, they did what best friends who love music always do. They played each other their old favorite records, in the end, sharing their common language.
Despite the good music that followed Trout Mask, there was really nowhere further for Captain Beefheart to go. Once you break down walls and find your freedom, you start to erect other walls to protect it. You end up ultimately losing the freedom you’ve won. None of the albums after Trout Mask inspired the ongoing debate that still rages over this particular record. Yet nearly forty years later, Trout Mask Replica is still in print, having sold to this date over 80,000 copies. But it will always be a lonely masterpiece, a record that forever carries the aura of the desert island within its grooves. As such, it will likely never inspire an intimate moment between friends, or become a touchstone for lovers. But one thing Trout Mask certainly isn’t is negligible.
When Gertrude Stein recited wha
t history teaches, she was taking into account that history isn’t what we prefer it to be. It simply is. For some, Trout Mask Replica is the worst record ever made. For others, a neglected masterpiece. History records both views and backs them up. But it doesn’t settle a thing. This album creates the kind of fuss that leads people to ask questions about what defines great music. It’s what makes Trout Mask more significant than the instant and disposable pop records that dominate the charts and soon disappear.
As music, Trout Mask Replica will continue to resonate because it forces us to hear things that can change our way of listening. In the current turbulent political climate, it’s become desirable to have our views consistently confirmed, rather than letting ourselves be truly informed. We prefer seeking security in the warm bosom of our own personal values and beliefs to expanding our ways of seeing and hearing into areas beyond personal taste. “The voice of Don Van Vliet, alias Captain Beefheart, was a signal and a proof that something else is possible—that nothing has to stay the way it is,” art critic Roberto Ohrt wrote about the lasting quality of Trout Mask Replica. “His music came out of a space in which the power of existing laws was broken. It expanded the framework of the imaginable, for the members of a generation whose own attitudes and ideas embodied a radical aspiration, but who had let their own lives be defined by a set of descriptions and signs over which they had virtually no control.”
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