poet/playwright Vliet hadrecently met, “Electricity” diverted dramatically from the basic blues of “Diddy Wah Diddy.” When co-founder Jerry Moss heard lyrics like “Midnight cowboy stains in black reads dark roads without a map / To free-seeking electricity,” he lost his bearings. He immediately described the tune as “too negative” for the label—even deeming it too dangerous for his daughter’s mental health. A&M decided to drop the group from their roster. Since there was no immediate interest in the pure voltage of Beef-heart’s revamped poetic output, the band withdrew to lay the foundations of what would unwittingly evolve into
Trout Mask Replica
.
* * *
When the band retreated to Beefheart’s mother’s house in the fall of 1966, with no recording contract, they were in disarray. Yet Vliet seemed to thrive on the chaos within the group. For one thing, he began composing more songs that broke from the traditional blues and R&B forms. He began providing some new direction as well by slowly taking over the band from Snouffer. Since Beefheart wasn’t technically gifted, he initially conveyed his ideas by translating them through Doug Moon. “I would fall into a little riff maybe that I heard off a blues album, and Don would pick up on something: ‘Hey! Keep doing that, Man!’” Moon recalled. Vliet would then grab lyrics, written on scraps of paper, from a brown paper bag and compose songs based on Moon’s chord changes—just as he would a few years later on the acoustic blues track “China Pig” from
Trout Mask Replica
. He would devise a musical shorthandby whistling and humming melodies, as Thelonious Monk often did with his ensembles, to teach the band the new songs. But he was becoming more and more obsessed with including Ry Cooder and finding ways to get rid of Doug Moon.
Beefheart began his little coup by bringing some new blood into the band. He called up John French and invited him to join. “Don called and said, ‘This is Don Vliet, do you know who this is?’ French remarked. “Then very hesitantly: ‘Do you wanna, ah—well, I was wondering if you’d like, ah—I was thinking—maybe you would like to blow drums with us?’” Vliet looked up Gary Marker from the Rising Sons, with whom he had now developed a stronger friendship after the Teenage Fair gig. It was Marker, a former jazz player, who introduced him to the modern jazz of Ornette Coleman and Roland Kirk. Besides inspiring Beefheart’s own interest in the saxophone, the exposure to modern jazz helped influence many of the conceptual ideas found on
Trout Mask
.
What began to distinguish the new songs from the old, though, was the increasing presence of marijuana and hallucinogens, which were introduced into the mix by Beefheart’s cousin Victor Hayden, a long-haired urchin, who would later be dubbed the Mascara Snake on
Trout Mask Replica
. Since grass is a very social drug, it encouraged the group to work together, even if their rehearsals resembled an ad hoc pot party. The material naturally started to grow more strangely abstract and complex, with psychedelic overtones. “Autumn’s Child,” for example, also co-written with Herb Bermann, was an early blueprint for many of the songs on
Trout Mask Replica
. Once againinvoking the image of the fish out of school seeking personal freedom, Beefheart sings:
Harvest moon be nimble
Apples bob and tremble
Fish pond streaks love kind
Found the child I had to find.
Other unusual items emerged, like “Plastic Factory,” which Don co-wrote with Jerry Handley and which evoked the ecological concerns later found on
Trout Mask
’s “Ant Man Bee”:
Bee ’n flower growin’
Boy ’n girl are glowin’
Fac’trys no place for me
Boss man let me be.
Other R&B-flavoured tracks like “Call on Me” and “I’m Glad” were being considered for the group’s first record—whenever they could find an interested label. Soon all of this would be remedied.
After many band
Trout Mask Replica
.
* * *
When the band retreated to Beefheart’s mother’s house in the fall of 1966, with no recording contract, they were in disarray. Yet Vliet seemed to thrive on the chaos within the group. For one thing, he began composing more songs that broke from the traditional blues and R&B forms. He began providing some new direction as well by slowly taking over the band from Snouffer. Since Beefheart wasn’t technically gifted, he initially conveyed his ideas by translating them through Doug Moon. “I would fall into a little riff maybe that I heard off a blues album, and Don would pick up on something: ‘Hey! Keep doing that, Man!’” Moon recalled. Vliet would then grab lyrics, written on scraps of paper, from a brown paper bag and compose songs based on Moon’s chord changes—just as he would a few years later on the acoustic blues track “China Pig” from
Trout Mask Replica
. He would devise a musical shorthandby whistling and humming melodies, as Thelonious Monk often did with his ensembles, to teach the band the new songs. But he was becoming more and more obsessed with including Ry Cooder and finding ways to get rid of Doug Moon.
Beefheart began his little coup by bringing some new blood into the band. He called up John French and invited him to join. “Don called and said, ‘This is Don Vliet, do you know who this is?’ French remarked. “Then very hesitantly: ‘Do you wanna, ah—well, I was wondering if you’d like, ah—I was thinking—maybe you would like to blow drums with us?’” Vliet looked up Gary Marker from the Rising Sons, with whom he had now developed a stronger friendship after the Teenage Fair gig. It was Marker, a former jazz player, who introduced him to the modern jazz of Ornette Coleman and Roland Kirk. Besides inspiring Beefheart’s own interest in the saxophone, the exposure to modern jazz helped influence many of the conceptual ideas found on
Trout Mask
.
What began to distinguish the new songs from the old, though, was the increasing presence of marijuana and hallucinogens, which were introduced into the mix by Beefheart’s cousin Victor Hayden, a long-haired urchin, who would later be dubbed the Mascara Snake on
Trout Mask Replica
. Since grass is a very social drug, it encouraged the group to work together, even if their rehearsals resembled an ad hoc pot party. The material naturally started to grow more strangely abstract and complex, with psychedelic overtones. “Autumn’s Child,” for example, also co-written with Herb Bermann, was an early blueprint for many of the songs on
Trout Mask Replica
. Once againinvoking the image of the fish out of school seeking personal freedom, Beefheart sings:
Harvest moon be nimble
Apples bob and tremble
Fish pond streaks love kind
Found the child I had to find.
Other unusual items emerged, like “Plastic Factory,” which Don co-wrote with Jerry Handley and which evoked the ecological concerns later found on
Trout Mask
’s “Ant Man Bee”:
Bee ’n flower growin’
Boy ’n girl are glowin’
Fac’trys no place for me
Boss man let me be.
Other R&B-flavoured tracks like “Call on Me” and “I’m Glad” were being considered for the group’s first record—whenever they could find an interested label. Soon all of this would be remedied.
After many band
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