meetings, Beefheart insisted that the group move to LA once they were dropped by A&M. There was good reason for the maneuver. The Magic Band had drawn interest from Bob Krasnow, the California head of Kama Sutra Records. Krasnow had been a huge fan of “Diddy Wah Diddy” and was hoping to sign Beefheart to Kama Sutra’s new subsidiary, Buddha Records. But not all the band members saw light at the end of this tunnel. “A lot of problems started to surface then,” Doug Moonremembered. “People were doing drugs and one thing or another. When we left Lancaster we got into the influence of LA—all the people and stuff down there—and it got crazy. Don was listening to everybody. And everybody had their own opinion. The band, at some point in there, lost its soul.” Whether the group was losing its soul was up for debate, but they were certainly about to lose Moon, who was being singled out for “incompetence” by the Captain. Although Moon was a perfectly competent player, Beefheart was desperate to squeeze Cooder into the group. When it became clear to Gary Marker that Moon was being prepped for departure, he sought out his old band-mate. Marker convinced Cooder that, even though in name it was Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, it could easily be the Ry Cooder Group.
It turned out that Krasnow was just as eager as Beefheart to have Cooder in the Magic Band. He even called up Cooder and told him that Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band were “going to be the biggest thing since the Beatles, bigger than the Beatles.” The hyperbole was definitely enticing to Cooder, but it didn’t alleviate his uneasiness. Cooder had already witnessed Doug Moon’s emotional exhaustion from all the abuse he was taking from Don Van Vliet. After figuring that he shared many similar musical ideas with Beefheart, though, he relented anyway and joined the group. On Cooder’s first day at rehearsals, he saw Moon’s firing firsthand. “[Van Vliet said,] ‘Well, I’ll tell you what we’re doing and what we’re not doing,” Cooder recalled. Pointing at Moon, Beefheart continued his tirade. “‘Get outta here, Doug, just get outta here. You’re no use to us now.’” To paraphrase Beefheartbiographer Mike Barnes, the hornet’s nest was being stirred.
* * *
When Doug Moon complained that the group was losing its soul, what he was perhaps perceiving was the dissolution of the band as a collaborative entity. Beefheart’s quest to find democratic freedom in his art found him becoming something of an authoritarian to do it. The path to
Trout Mask Replica
was not outlined by the quixotic zeal of a group breaking all the rules to find themselves. It was etched by one man’s narrow will to achieve his own artistic liberation. Within that ambiguous quest, casualties were certain. Since Alex Snouffer’s guitar playing had waned during his stint as the group’s drummer, Don Van Vliet was able to gain complete control of the band when Ry Cooder came onboard. Doug Moon’s firing would turn out to be moot anyway. He didn’t see any place for himself on the band’s first record,
Safe as Milk
. “By the time the album finally came out, those songs had evolved to become a little bit more avant-garde and a little bit more hinting at things to come in Don’s later albums,” Moon explained to Elaine Shepherd of the BBC in 1995. “That was the transitional period and that’s why I left, because of those influences. I did not have that calling. When it got a little too far out, a little too weird, unsyncopated and bizarre and avant-garde, it just did not work with me.”
When
Safe as Milk
was released in September 1967, it was clear to anyone who heard it that Beefheart’s music had begun to evolve dramatically from the basic blues style in which it began. They started doing the new record inSunset Sound, an eight-track studio, with Gary Marker engineering and Richard Perry, who would later produce a bevy of artists including Ringo
It turned out that Krasnow was just as eager as Beefheart to have Cooder in the Magic Band. He even called up Cooder and told him that Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band were “going to be the biggest thing since the Beatles, bigger than the Beatles.” The hyperbole was definitely enticing to Cooder, but it didn’t alleviate his uneasiness. Cooder had already witnessed Doug Moon’s emotional exhaustion from all the abuse he was taking from Don Van Vliet. After figuring that he shared many similar musical ideas with Beefheart, though, he relented anyway and joined the group. On Cooder’s first day at rehearsals, he saw Moon’s firing firsthand. “[Van Vliet said,] ‘Well, I’ll tell you what we’re doing and what we’re not doing,” Cooder recalled. Pointing at Moon, Beefheart continued his tirade. “‘Get outta here, Doug, just get outta here. You’re no use to us now.’” To paraphrase Beefheartbiographer Mike Barnes, the hornet’s nest was being stirred.
* * *
When Doug Moon complained that the group was losing its soul, what he was perhaps perceiving was the dissolution of the band as a collaborative entity. Beefheart’s quest to find democratic freedom in his art found him becoming something of an authoritarian to do it. The path to
Trout Mask Replica
was not outlined by the quixotic zeal of a group breaking all the rules to find themselves. It was etched by one man’s narrow will to achieve his own artistic liberation. Within that ambiguous quest, casualties were certain. Since Alex Snouffer’s guitar playing had waned during his stint as the group’s drummer, Don Van Vliet was able to gain complete control of the band when Ry Cooder came onboard. Doug Moon’s firing would turn out to be moot anyway. He didn’t see any place for himself on the band’s first record,
Safe as Milk
. “By the time the album finally came out, those songs had evolved to become a little bit more avant-garde and a little bit more hinting at things to come in Don’s later albums,” Moon explained to Elaine Shepherd of the BBC in 1995. “That was the transitional period and that’s why I left, because of those influences. I did not have that calling. When it got a little too far out, a little too weird, unsyncopated and bizarre and avant-garde, it just did not work with me.”
When
Safe as Milk
was released in September 1967, it was clear to anyone who heard it that Beefheart’s music had begun to evolve dramatically from the basic blues style in which it began. They started doing the new record inSunset Sound, an eight-track studio, with Gary Marker engineering and Richard Perry, who would later produce a bevy of artists including Ringo
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