Francesco Nunziata

Captain Mask Replica

by Michele Saran

Author: Francesco Nunziata
Title: Captain Mask Replica – Life and Art of Don Van Vliet / Captain Beefheart
Publisher: Arcana
Pages: 383
Price: Euro 25.00

The life, works and omissions of Don Glen “Captain Beefheart” Vliet. This, summarizing and certainly oversimplifying, is the content and premise of Francesco Nunziata's debut book, “Captain Mask Replica”. Published by Arcana – a guarantee of quality in the field – it's the first volume in Italian entirely devoted to one of the greatest geniuses in rock music, as well as his trusty outfit, the Magic Band in its various incarnations.
Another of its strengths is undoubtedly its linearity. Not so much, or not only, as ease of reading and overall clarity, but as a sharp reflection of the subject himself, a first meta-textual sketch of the man. Nunziata begins with the artist's birth and ends with his death (there is just one single digression: we'll leave readers the pleasure of discovering what it is), recounting, in between, every single episode, every single song, every album in meticulous detail. For a figure like Beefheart, in whom life and art cannot be separated, the choice couldn't be more fitting.

And Nunziata's text truly seems to flow, at times, like a novel, if not a feature film. From childhood, from his very first creations (sculptures), from that desert environment – whose mysterious potential for surreal indefiniteness gradually feeds into the shaping of his wholly original artistic aesthetic, as well as his worldview – to his early friendship with Frank Zappa and his very first school performances aping his beloved bluesmen, we move on to the first decisive step toward a musical career. Increasingly spotlighted as an atypical, lycanthropic, raspy and visceral singer, Don finds his true calling in jazz, admiring the great artists of his era, first astonished by the talent of Roland Kirk, and then certainly smitten with the great quartet of John Coltrane, with Ornette Coleman, with Cecil Taylor — essentially the crème of early free jazz.

If at first that nickname so many now know, Captain Beefheart (along with the added “Van” in honor of his idol Van Gogh), was merely a label for a musical identity still taking shape, Don gradually attained the status of absolute, even dictatorial, leader, going on to found, command and control entirely his own band, the iconic Magic Band. After recording his first singles, we arrive at his first legendary full-length, the Dadaist blues of “Safe As Milk” (1967), which already detonates both joys and sorrows: it elevates Don to the status of visionary singer and composer, truly inaugurating his microcosm of surrealism, his cubist poetry, while at the same time revealing his cantankerous, if not downright irascible, temperament, and above all his fraught relationship with record producers and, eventually, live audiences. Next come the long, visionary post-blues jams of “Mirror Man” (1968), the best showcase yet for the Magic Band, and the “incidental” taste of acid-blues that is “Strictly Personal” (1968), itself an attempted reworking by producer Bob Krasnow, somewhere between a stroke of genius and an unlistenable mess.

As expected, and as the book's very title suggests, the section devoted to the colossal “Trout Mask Replica” (1969), his undisputed masterpiece and one of the most important and controversial records in rock history, is the heart of the book. The recollection of the days of its making is extensive and highly detailed, and here Nunziata takes the opportunity, with precise and rightfully somewhat schoolmasterly rigor, to definitively dispel the misconception that reads the work superficially as the result of uncontrolled, off-the-cuff anarchy, or of altered states of consciousness so dear to hippie culture, or worse still, of some supposedly haphazard amateur performance.
The author's clear intent is instead to highlight how the album's polytonal, polymorphic, polyrhythmic and dissonant delights (“Dachau Blues”, “Frownland”, “Pena”, “Fallin' Ditch”), the leader's atonal incantations, his jarring little jokes and soliloquies (“Well”, “The Dust Blows Forward”, “The Blimp”), and everything else in this small yet vast, influential universe, represent a perfect crystallization of chaos and alien poetry, rather than a mere product of chance or of no-sense for its own sake. On the contrary, it is the result of meticulous work born from Don's piano sketches, transformed and refined through drummer John French's essential contribution, finished off with Zappa's production flourishes, but also shaped by the surrounding environment (the strictly surreal, self-imposed isolation of the Trout House). And that same rationality – arguably to an even greater degree – pervades the “aftermath” album: “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” (1970).

But the book is also, and above all, a treasure trove of information. After two transitional albums such as “Spotlight Kid” (1972) and “Clear Spot” (1972), it's particularly interesting to discover the reasons and backstory behind his period of exhaustion, stupor and crisis, “Unconditionally Guaranteed” (1974) and “Bluejeans & Moonbeams” (1974), the constant hiring of musicians, the rupture with Zappa and the subsequent, if unstable, reconciliation sealed by the collaborative “Bongo Fury” (1975), and the rebirth entrusted to the lost album “Bat Chain Puller” (1976), the source of the late-career trilogy: “Shiny Beast” (1978), “Doc At The Radar Station” (1980) and “Ice Cream For Crow” (1982). Finally, it's moving to read about his final period, the brief hesitation before his definitive departure from the music scene, his very last interviews (one lovely gem: a conversation with Bono) and his last radio appearances, his joyful venture into his beloved painting (to which an entire chapter is devoted), his late friendship with disciple Tom Waits (as well as with a young, enthusiastic PJ Harvey), and sadly the illness that led to his passing in December 2010.

“Captain Mask Replica” is an absolutely essential read for fans of the Captain, essential for the way it sculpts a fully rounded portrait of the man, for how it explains the reasons behind the myth, justifying and rationalizing it, while at the same time demythologizing him, filling in human, everyday details, painting a portrait of Don the man, his strength and his fragility, his influential energy and his inglorious contradictions. Not, then, the traditional rise-and-fall narrative. Rather, a knowledgeable and more than thorough treatise (the information and connections are impressive, for instance those drawn between the artist's songs and the blues titles that inspired them), yet always passionate, handled with warmth and dedication, with love for music, and of course for Don's music in particular. For non-fans, for listeners unfamiliar with these sounds, or for new generations, it's equally unmissable reading, if only to pay tribute to one of those true, great eminences capable of expanding the language of rock, turning it into the magnificent universal melting pot we know and appreciate today.