Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

An imaginary conversation about "Trout Mask Replica"

I press the On button.

The CD starts.

I tweak the volume gain a bit.

The few seconds of waiting before the first track, "Frownland", kicks in feel like hours.

My friend is on edge. Anxious. And he thinks:

II – (Jeez, this is supposed to be the masterpiece of mus...)

The track starts.

The colors on his face shift with the speed of a chameleon.

A wall of sound seems to shatter his perception.

Disappointment quickly spreads across his face...

II- Oh, come on...! What the hell is this?

I – I figured.

II – No, sorry, but does this sound like music to you?

I – Well, what do you think it is?

II – I don't know, it seems to me like they never even rehearsed this track once.

I – Heh heh…

II – Is the whole record like this?

A sense of dread, thinly veiled by a touch of irony, creeps into my friend's mood.

I – Yeah, more or less… Yeah.

II – There's nothing here that suggests any real sonic exploration. The drums are sour, the guitars are bare and barely in tune with each other; not to mention the bass, which feels totally detached from the context. And the voice, my God, the voice.

I – Is this the first time you've listened to Beefheart?

II – No. A while back I listened to some of “Safe as Milk”.

I – Right, when he smashed $1200 worth of microphones. Yeah. Unlike his previous records, on this one Van Vliet has total control over his band.

II – And where exactly does that come through?

I – It's simpler than you'd think. Generally, a rock band relies on the lowest common denominator available: the beat, the rhythm. Whatever the intentions, it's the pre-set rhythm that calls the shots.

II – Which is exactly what doesn't happen here.

I — Exactly. Van Vliet is first and foremost a bluesman. And bluesmen, take Robert Johnson, are capable, with just a guitar accompanying them, of setting the rhythm according to the feeling they're expressing; that's why the rhythm seems disjointed. It's simply free. Free to follow the context.

II — I could even agree, but that seems more like a conceptual stance than a musical one. I mean, this whole mess isn't remotely enjoyable.

I — Indeed, it's not meant to be. The record is simply proposing an alternative way of experiencing music. This isn't exactly the best rock'n'roll record. It's a record of other rock'n'roll.

II — And what would be the point of that?

I — Beefheart, like the whole freak movement, isn't interested in making music that follows in the footsteps of what already exists; why make a record that could be better than an "Abbey Road" or a "Volunteers"? In their own genres, those records have already achieved remarkable results. It's more important to devour the stereotypes crystallized in that music and reassemble them to give birth to a new form. It's a process called "deconstruction".

II — Don't tell me Beefheart now has the nerve to create a new kind of music?

I — No, no. Not a new music. But a new way of listening.

II — But the way he treats the listener is terrifying, then.

I — Undoubtedly. "Trout Mask Replica" is a record that takes all your musical certainties, grinds them into mush, and then flushes them down the toilet. And you, as you're slipping down, can make out the Captain through the haze, waving goodbye.

II — My God.

I — Let me remind you that Edgar Varèse, whom Zappa (who, incidentally, produced this record) considered the spiritual father of the Freaks, used to say that it wasn't important to debate the experimental nature of his music, but rather what the listener's ear was capable of experiencing.

II — So Beefheart is carrying out an operation that's the antithesis of all the popular music of the time?

I — Of the commercial kind, yes. But his approach owes a great deal to the free jazz of those years. Musicians like Ayler, Taylor, Sheep, Coleman, Cherry, Dolphy and Kirk (the only two the Captain openly cites) played a decisive role in Beefheart's musical formation. The influences are many: delta blues for the voice and the slide guitar, dada for the lyrics, free jazz for the horns.

II — Whose offspring is this record, then?

I — That's where the revolution lies! The juxtaposition and recombination of all those elements in such an original way makes any attempt at classification impossible and pointless.

II – In what moments is it most evident?

I – The most striking aspect, besides the vocal delivery, is the texture created by the use of double guitar. The two guitars, never one lead and one rhythm, work together to create an extremely dense counterpoint.

II – Yes, now I'm starting to understand. The bass, like the drums, also plays a fundamental role in the development of the piece. That is, they don't just accompany, but are an integral part of the musical discourse; they contribute, on equal footing with the others, to building the piece. It's free.

I – Exactly. That's why many passages are left to the spontaneity of the moment. Beefheart recorded his vocals without the aid of headphones, so he only had a "visual" perception of the music the band was playing.

II – Are you saying the album owes much of itself to chance?

I – It's a controlled aleatory process. The songs were written by Van Vliet on piano and then transcribed by French, aka Drumbo. The process from writing the songs to the final recording took almost a year and a half of hard work. Working out the polyrhythms was the most exhausting task the band faced.

II – What was the audience's reaction?

I – We're talking about an artist who had already paved the way for "Trout Mask Replica" with previous albums, all of very high quality. His association with Zappa's entourage had already pigeonholed him into a very specific niche. His records, to put it in contemporary terms, had a well-defined target audience.

II – So, Beefheart only made records for an elite?

I – No. In fact, much later, when people reminded him that Zappa had described his music as "difficult," he would get irritated, because those words had only served to permanently push away part of his audience.

II – Still, it's clear Beefheart didn't do much to make himself likable…

I – Some parts of the audience and music critics did already glimpse the masterpiece, like Langdon Winner.

II – So most music fans didn't understand the album's true worth?

I – No. But we have to give those who disagreed some credit. In those years, as still today, expectations were for polished records, with dream-catching melodies, perhaps with some harmonic or rhythmic daring, but that always hit the mark on first listen.

II – An approach that didn't apply to the Captain and his band, though…

I – I'd say definitely not. Beefheart and the Magic Band offer up a desolate rhythmic adventure, truly wild explosions, unleashing telluric forces. The "aleatory" dissonant harmonic aggregations and the display of these dissonances on "Trout Mask Replica" shatter every expectation of taste and beauty, throwing any listener into crisis. The lyrics, often overlooked but every bit as important as the music, tell grotesque stories, pure nonsense; all of it marked out by broken words, mispronounced or invented to expose the grotesque, foolish side of the human being. And the beloved melody is shattered into tiny fragments; and not even the frequent repetitions of these fragments (let's call them proto-refrains) offer any satisfaction: they're born and die instantly.

II – Nonetheless, this fragmentation, which as you say has a clear programmatic purpose, we also find in the rhythms.

I – Above all in the rhythms. In fact, most music critics today focus especially on the novelty of how the rhythms are handled. Piero Scaruffi even states that "[…] the record is in fact an anthology of chaos in all its musical forms […]"

II – A rather extreme judgment, don't you think?

I – Of course. But Scaruffi had in mind a notion of rhythm as a succession of accents arranged into more or less complex structures; yet even if we stuck to a less exhaustive notion of rhythm, the beat, no one could fail to sense its extraordinary vitality, even on first listen.

II – Except we don't grasp its variety.

I – Maybe because our expectations are disappointed. An attitude very similar to the one that greeted the first listens to Stravinsky's "Sacre du Printemps".

II – How did such a project come about?

I – Beefheart recorded all 28 songs in a single 8-hour session at the piano. "...I don't spend a lot of time thinking. The music comes by itself. I couldn't explain it..." he always claimed. The material, recorded on tape, was handed to French, who took charge of transcribing it. Legend has it, confirmed moreover by Drumbo, that those recordings were lost by mistake and that he had to rewrite it all from scratch while Van Vliet played at the piano.

II – That story doesn't surprise me, ha ha…

I – The cast included both old and new names: Jeff Cotton "Antennae Jimmie Semens" and Bill Harkleroad "Zoot Horn Rollo" on guitars, Mark Boston "Rockette Morton" on bass, Victor Hayden "The Mascara Snake" (Van Vliet's cousin) on clarinet, John French "Drumbo" on drums. The latter isn't credited on the album cover, since he quit the sessions at the last minute. Rehearsals dragged on for several months, during which Beefheart, in the breaks, subjected the musicians to the so-called "brainwashing sessions".

II – What?

I – Oh, yes. Basically, one member of the band (almost always Antennae) was, so to speak, forced to read aloud the texts prepared by the Captain. Beefheart was often compared to a dictator by his musicians; he had a very overbearing personality — if he felt like playing the sax, everyone had to sit there and listen to him; if he felt like watching TV, everyone had to sit next to him.

It's in this climate that the lyrics were put together; so we get songs about the easy-rider lifestyle, "Wild Life", anti-capitalist songs, "Veteran's Day Poppy", songs about disasters, "The Blimp", about the Holocaust, "Dachau Blues", about escaping from "Frownland", about killing a "China Pig", about one's own state of mind, "My Human Gets Me Blues".

II – What are the musical peculiarities of these recordings? I mean, you can tell the sonic framework is very well defined.

I – Certainly. On the left channel you'll find a guitar setting the rhythm while on the right the other one seems to be imitating a slide. Their lines are distinct, both soloing and almost never in sync, neither with each other nor with the drums or the vocals.

II – An approach, this, that seems to run in the opposite direction to the Velvet Underground.

I – Sure. The Velvet Underground had an essentially minimalist approach.

II – So the vocals and horns are left with total freedom of movement within that context.

I – Yes, like a flock of sheep in a green pasture.

II – Without holding back on noise!

I – Yeah, exactly. In fact, almost every track is bookended by snippets of conversations recorded between the band or with the rest of the studio staff. That's the clearest sign of Zappa's presence. Indeed, often among the voices you hear is his own ("Uh shit, how did that harmony get in there?" he says at one point).

II – So, since there's no homogeneity, all the tracks carry equal weight.

I – "Well" is a Beefheart solo showcase, highlighting his vocal talents, as does "Orange Claw Hammer"; "When Big Joan Sets Up" offers a great sax solo; "Sugar 'n Spikes" is a bouncing boogie driven by the guitar rhythm; "Pachuco Cadaver" is a wild nursery rhyme; "Moonlight On Vermont" comes in with explosive guitars; the blues of "Ant Man Bee" and "China Pig" look back to Blind Lemon and the Delta, the so-called blues'n'dada; Jeff's old-spinster voice on "Pena"; "Veteran's Day Poppy" with its blues opening, hard rock development and collage, capped by a halting riff coda.

II – Nothing is superfluous or self-indulgent.

I – More than that. If anything, there's an uneasy sense of constant restraint. The guitars are exemplary in this respect, their sound stripped of any effects, laid bare in all their rawness.

II – In other words, the record is built, thematically and tonally, using as little as possible.

I – Exactly. That's what gives it the character of a block of granite. So the work isn't what it might appear to be; it's perfectly homogeneous!

II – Do you mean the lack of homogeneity I was talking about is only on a surface level?

I – Yes. Here the homogeneity operates at the level of macrostructure; that is, it concerns the generating principle of the whole record, not the treatment of the individual track.

II – Is it a concept album?

I – In a broad sense, yes. Western capitalist society tends to crystallize every artistic form, as Warhol's pop art had already made clear. Contemporary civilization invests in a ritual, rock'n'roll, and Beefheart offers a new one, stripped-down and primitive, to which he lends an extraordinary, a-historical, hallucinatory dimension. His music aims straight at the heart of rock and captures its essential traits. The music of "Trout Mask Replica" makes clear that rock is the offspring of a shotgun union between blues and death.

II – What did this record leave to the generations that followed?

I – Although Van Vliet always downplayed his music's influence on the development of later genres — new wave above all — there's no doubt that "Trout Mask Replica" became a fundamental point of reference. The commercial circuit, on the other hand, never gave it any consideration at all.

II – Which bands and artists were most affected by it?

I – Jason Gross recalls that, over the years, Beefheart gathered (unwittingly, it seems) a following of devoted disciples and brilliant heirs to his work. What would Pere Ubu, Tom Waits, Talking Heads or Residents have been without him? Sonic Youth and Xtc covered his songs. His musicians infiltrated bands like Pixies and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Beefheart, like the Velvet Underground, became one of the seeds of new music at the end of the Seventies, an underground hero.

II – Beefheart's operation wasn't unique, though.

I – Not at all. Gross likes to bring up this anecdote. If you've only ever watched films like "Die Hard" or "Terminator" and then jump straight into "Dog Star Man", "Un Chien Andalou" or "Empire", you'll think "...what the hell is going on..." and your popcorn will end up all over the floor. Stan Brakhage, Luis Bunuel or Andy Warhol grab hold of cinematic matter and turn it inside out like a glove to make it into abstraction. Exactly what Beefheart did with rock.

We've reached the fade-out of "Veteran's Day Poppy" and the album comes to a close. But a new era has just begun.

This piece was written by assembling concepts drawn from the following bibliographical references:

John Picarella – The beating of an ashtray heart

Jason Gross – Kill your idols

Dick Larson – Trout Mask Replica? The Captain must be mad!

Byron Coley – Three decades inside the Mask

Matt Groening – Plastic Factory

Mike Barnes – Behind Trout Mask. An interview with John French

Langdon Winner – The odissey of Captain Beefheart

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27/10/2006