A comparative account of the musical and cultural acts of Zappa and his cohort, collaborator and antagonist Captain Beefheart. Written in the iconoclastic spirit of Zappa's art, this book traces the mixed media experiments of California freakdom through the dada blues of Beefheart, mapping out the pleasures of imaginative excess.
“Barnes gets the story, and with the full participation of those brave musicians who attempted to interpret Beefheart's sometimes otherworldly methodology” – The Times Through new interview material, and with reference to reports and eulogies that appeared in the media, Mike Barnes studies the star’s legacy – putting the last two decades into context with the revelation of Van Vliet’s battle with MS.
"At last, the inside story of the best rock band of the 20th century. Zoot Horn Rollo tells all and opens the doorto the secret history of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band."-Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons.Rechristened as Zoot Horn Rollo, guitarist Harkleroad recalls what it was like to live, record and play with a temperamental genius such as Captain Beefheart on landmark albums such as Trout Mask Replica.
A no-holds barred account of working with Beefheart drawing on new reminiscences and interviews with all the key players from inside and around the Magic Band and the cross pollinated Mothers of Invention (masterminded by Frank Zappa).
In the spring of 1969, the inauspicious release of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica, a double-album featuring 28 stream-of-consciousness songs filled with abstract rhythms and guttural bellows, dramatically altered the pop landscape. Yet even if the album did cast its radical vision over the future of music, much of the record's artistic strength is actually drawn from the past. This book examines how Beefheart's incomparable opus, an album that divided (rather than) united a pop audience, is informed by a variety of diverse sources. Trout Mask Replica is a hybrid of poetic declarations inspired by both Walt Whitman and the beat poets, the field hollers of the Delta Blues, the urban blues of Howlin' Wolf, the gospel blues of Blind Willie Johnson, and the free jazz of Ornette Coleman. This book illustrates how Trout Mask Replica was not so much an arcane specimen of the avant-garde, but rather a defiantly original declaration of the American imagination.
"Suddenly, this skinny, longhaired kid who had been lounging against the wall inside sprang forward to confront me, rolling and popping his eyes, intensely vibing me with his own personal voodoo. He looked electric, on fire--as if he was about to jump out of his own skin. He was the very image of the young Tim Buckley--same sensual, red-lipped mouth, same sensitive, haunted, blazing eyes. He was a beautiful boy: so charismatic, so handsome, his chiseled face both angelic and demonic. This was obviously Jeff Buckley." Touched By Grace is a revealing account of the time Gary spent working with Jeff Buckley during Jeff's early days in New York City. It describes their magical first performance together at the Greetings From Tim Buckley concert in 1991, the creation of their landmark songs 'Grace' and 'Mojo Pin,' their plan to take on the world together in Gary's band Gods and Monsters--and then the moment when Jeff pulled the plug, opting instead to pursue a solo deal with Columbia Records, the very label that had recently cut short its contract with the original incarnation Gods and Monsters. In this fascinating and revelatory book, Gary writes with heartfelt honesty about the highs and lows of this unique creative collaboration, providing an eye-opening insight into a world of music, passion, betrayal, and more.
This new, completely revised and updated edition contains a wealth of new material, excerpts from the author's diaries and private letters home about life in Hollywood. In 1967, 21-year-old Pauline Butcher was working for a London secretarial agency when a call came through from a Mr Frank Zappa asking for a typist.The assignment would change her life forever. For three years, Pauline served as Zappa's PA, moving with him, his family and the Mothers of Invention, to a log cabin in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, where the 'straight' young English girl mixed with Oscar winners and rock royalty. Freak Out! is the captivating story of a naive young English girl thrust into the mad world of a musical legend as well as the most intimate portrait of Frank Zappa ever written.
Herb Bermann was credited as co-writing eight of the songs on CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND HIS MAGIC BAND's debut album Safe As Milk (1967); it would have been a completely different record without him. According to one observer:"[Captain Beefheart] called the guy 'The Poet.' For a while he was positively gagging us all out with it! 'The Poet said...' or 'The Poet is HEAVY, man!' I mean none of us could believe it.... You'd have thought Salvador Dali had walked in!"Yet Bermann kept silent about Captain Beefheart for almost 50 years -- so silent that some people said that Captain Beefheart had invented him. Now Bermann shares his story! Fans will be charmed by Bermann's descriptions of how his songs came to be written. They may also be surprised to learn just which songs he says he wrote. Included is a facsimile reproduction of his original lyric sheets, with dozens more songs that were never produced. Bermann's story reveals previously unpublished information about the early work of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, Neil Young and Steven Spielberg. It also introduces us to an artist whose work and influence have been generally overlooked.
