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Know What I Mean? The Don Van Vliet Interview... Vancouver, March, 1973 By Rick McGrath With Bob Mercer and Jerry Silver This interview begins with the original published introduction... Beefheart at The Commodore. Do you know what I mean? Too many tables, too long between two sets to get too drunk, too many sitters, too many decibels, too few with it, after all. The Captain motions stand up, people yell siddown; good vibes, bad vibes. Bob Ness and I sitting...standing, laughing at the crowd and wondering at the stage. Vice versa. The Band magical; tight in execution, wondrous in content. Where do such riffs come from? Do they ever go back? Can we go with them? Beefheart singing Black Snake Blues a capella. Hubub. The Captain hisses snake sounds, sighs, snaps, slithers offstage. Scandal? After the gig, backstage, and an interview is set up back at the Holiday Inn. We walk. Arrive 2 am, sit down and set up. Zoot Horn Rollo and Ed Marimba (with green moustache) keep things moving along. Finally The Captain arrives, tells Bob Mercer he thinks Alice Cooper "failed erector set", and when Bob asks what he means by that, the answer comes: "I think he does number paintings and tries to make a big deal out of it. Do you know what I mean?" We were off. You had some difficulty on stage? I dug it. You mean the monitors? During Black Snake Blues? Oh, well, people were making noises and they felt guilty about making them. You see, everything's in key, until you take it out of key. And some of the people who were making those noises evidently felt guilty or didn't think they were supposed to make noises and upon not thinking they weren't supposed to make noises, they went out of key, you see? And I couldn't sing with all those outta keys. If they had just made noises like an animal makes noises, involuntarily; like a fish doesn't go around snapping his bubbles, doesn't even know he's making them. You know what I mean? When we go up there we're just combing out our hair, and we don't know we're combing our hair. We're not looking in a mirror. They were making noises, looking in a mirror, and there's a distortion. Do you understand what I mean? I'm just off the stage, and it takes me a long time to get back to the old world. Not that you're from the old world. That's not what I'm saying. It just takes me a long time to get it together to be able to talk. Because music's different than talking, even singing. You know that. What about Clear Spot? I like it. It's my favourite album of all I've done. Because the group's getting together. Now they're getting together more than when we did the album. Now I've got back Alex Sinclair, the fellow who taught Hendrix and Townshend. Hell, yes he did. We went to England and they didn't know what a slide was. Seven years ago. They didn't know what singin' was, either. They were going like this (sings falsetto vibrato) and we were into it. They thought we were really weird, way out. One guy thought I was a drunken methedrine addict at a speakeasy and the guy's name was John Lennon. The album was written in two hours in a station wagon going to a job. It was the way I felt at that time. Were the horns added after the fact? No, I wrote them out. Charts. I did them on a tape and had them transcribed by Art Tripp, who spent seven and a half years at the Manhatten School of Music. Do you record the music and then the lyrics? Unfortunately, I sing so hard I have to do that. I'd love to sing with the band, but it just won't work, because my voice leaks into their instruments. Which is what its supposed to do... but in a controlled manner... or else it doesn't come out properly on a disc, which is a drag. Have you ever recorded the voice first, then the instruments? On Trout Mask Replica I turned the tracks off when I sang. And on Lick My Decals Off Baby I played the horn with with the tracks off on Flash Gordon's Ape. It's no problem for me to know where to come in and out. It's not even a challenge, if you want to know the truth. Are you still playing the horn? Oh, I am, I am. You said on Bob Ness's radio show you felt like a harp this year. I do, but occasionally I will pick up the horn -- but it's the same as somebody picking up a rock and throwing it, making it skip across the water. It's not that important to me. Do you know what I mean? I like to sing more than I like to play the horn. They got real serious about me blowin' the horn. Who did? Well, Downbeat, all the jazz people. Those guys were serious, man, and when they get that serious, forget it. I'm not that serious, because getting that serious defeats the purpose of playing the horn. Can you imagine a fish that would be serious about it's bubble? It would choke to death. That's what it sounds to me a lot of singers and musicians have been doing for the last 150 years. What are you reading? The first book I ever read in my life was just recently. (I got all Fs in school; of course, I only went to see the girls. I mean, what can they teach you? You want to be a different fish, you've got to get out of the school. And seeing the way the other fish were going I sure didn't want to be in there. I didn't want to murder Indians and Black people. And eat white sugar, and advocate all that ridiculous political... uh... what is it? If you don't mind stupid people in high places, you don't mind government. So I didn't really go to school, you see. Because I'm a painter, really, and a sculptor, so what good would it have done me to go to school? Just to have somebody move my hand the way somebody did for years, real stiff, and then tell me to look through thousands of eyes and then try to find my own at the end of it. That's bullshit. It's good for some people, depending on what you want to do. If you want to be a filing clerk, well, there's lots of ways of being a filing clerk. You know what I mean?) I read a book recently called Sting Like A Bee and it's one of the first things this guy's ever written, and it's written about Muhammed Ali, who's my favourite percussionist. I like him a lot. He's a nice fellow. I like his timing; I don't listen to his poetry. What are you: entertainer, artist, or regular fellow? I never think about that, to tell you the truth. But now you've got me thinking about it. I think I'm a ... uh... I don't know what I am. I'll tell you the truth. They have these fellows who have nets, right? Butterfly nets. If I were a butterfly, I'd want a net with just the hoop to go over me. Do you know what I mean? I don't like chewing gum, it sticks you up. You like puns. I talked with you before you went onstage the last time you were here, and your puns were better. They're better before or after? Before you go onstage. The thing is, my wife told me not to pun anymore, because it was making all these people money, and she says that we should make the money. So, I'm writing books and not putting them out for publication. If I'm to eat my hat, Zappa's whole lyrics were written by me, fifteen years ago. Yeah, you should have written them down. I did. That doesn't mean anything in this business. I've got about 45,000 songs written and I have at least 150 full-length novels (whatever a full-length novel is). I've got some as big as a phone book. I get up and do 150 pages a day like you get up and do a push-up. I have to -- it's my exercise. Otherwise, I get too intellectual and I don't like it... it gets too ridiculous. I find myself watching my bubbles like a crazy fish. Men do that. Women usually aren't too intellectual. Women are right -- men are the ones who have the trouble. You know what I'm saying. Possibly because of our society. Women can usually flow a lot easier than men. It does depend on the individual, but more women are not watching their footsteps. You see more men watching their footsteps. Men like to trip themselves... they get a thing out of it. What's your vocal range? Seven and a half octaves. On a piano I go off the bass. It doesn't register where I go. It happens naturally, but people who work at it usually have two, two and a half. I can do every note in those seven and a half octaves. I was going to do it during the show, but they got me all out of key and out of time. I was ready to do it, too. I was going to go into it, but... it just takes you being loose, really loose. Then again there's not much to be tight about. You're concerned about whales? I write a lot of things about the environment. I'm really mad about what they're doing to whales, for instance. I'm not mad, I'm infuriated. Those things are brilliant and I think they're bums for doing that. I've heard their music, and it's past trigonometry, calculus, past polygraphs and beyond that. They're smart, and it's frighening that we're killing them. I think the people who are killing them are not as smart as they are. No way are they as smart as a whale, or even a dolphin. I think their IQs are way higher than the average person's, from what I hear of their music. Have you ever read A Whale For The Killing? My wife read that to me. I got it in Newfoundland when I was up there. You played Newfoundland? Yeah, it was good. I liked it. You making good money? You know I'm going to make a lot of zeroes. You know that, don't you, you can tell. You heard the group tonight and you know they're really commercial. Let's face it. We're as commercial as the Rolling Stones when they first started, before they got above their belt. These guys are still below their belt, soundwise. And that's what makes money. We're going to be doing $300,000 worth of business in Europe. That's after taxes. There's a lot of money in this business. I've never really been hurting, you know. They say this, but I haven't. I can't stop them from saying it. I'll survive. I've got a lot of property in Northern California, and when I get to the point I have a lot of money from this corporation -- I sink it mostly into my corporation, God's Golfball -- then I'm going to help... first animals, then people. You're concerned about animals? You can help animals -- people are very hard to help. When The Beatles were singing I Want To Hold Your Hand I was singing to watch out for Strontium 90, let's put it that way. And you see how big they made it, compared to me. But I'm still going. All of Trout Mask Replica was about ecology. Is Blabber And Smoke aimed at ecology freaks? I think a lot of them are shucks. And I think they're doing it to identify themselves into something they thought was lame a week ago. All of a sudden they like animals. It's more important that they help them, rather than like them. It's important that they like them, but why don't they help them, rather than talk about how bitchin' they are because they like them. Ever thought about getting actively involved in the environment? Well, I'm doing all I can about it. And I'm growing more and more accessible. Then I'll be able to say more. And the people I think are involved directly will be able to do it, and I don't think it's important for me to go and wave a banner in the middle of Washington or something. But I hope it helps. Usually they take whatever trend at the time there is, and they put the thing away. Then they go to the next thing. What are your feelings on dope? Like Garcia, I don't dig anybody who tells little kids to take poison when they listen to their music. What the hell has that got to do with music? Nothing I've even thought of. Not only acid, but worse than that all the way... AMA drugs and all that. Go buy the drug store, choose your favourite narcotic. All that crap -- you know what I mean? This interview was found in the vaults by Harold Colson, an ace Librarian at the University of California at San Diego. Harold is researching the Stones 1972 North American tour, and he's found a bunch of my lost stuff in some special collections of underground newspapers. Thank you, Harold!
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