Zoot Horn Rollo, one of my guitar heroes! He needs to be on every Top Ten Guitarists list, he's a brilliant musician. Great to see that he's so friendly and looking so healthy.
Respect to Samuel for shedding more light on the TMR material....you've done a massive service for all Beefheart fans. Than you, Samuel. Sincerely. And thank you Bill for your legendary contributions Fascinating interview
I addition to all this remarkable music was the actual performance and style of the performance. The way they looked. The way they moved. Rocket Morton explodes on to the stage for example. They are all unlike anything else. Zoom Horn almost falls off the stage and also moves in the most extraordinary way. Is hard to know which musician to watch. A drummer that moves and plays in a way like no other. Amazing rhythms. At the humble Locarno Ballroom in Stevenage Hertfordshire UK I saw the greatest performance I ever saw/heard/witnessed.
I'll never know how they created that inversion of the rhythm in Click Clack. The first time I heard it I assumed it was a happy accident. But i saw them live twice and they recreated it exactly like the record ! That track still blows my mind to this day.
Same thing here, Dennis. TMR was both exciting and baffling to me for the first year(s) that I owned it, but seeing them in concert made EVERYTHING fall into place!
I just finished reading the Lunar Notes book, got Amazon to deliver it to me here in my home in Thailand. It was fun, very interesting, I flew thru it in a day and a half, loved every minute of it! Thanks, what an amazing story.
Eleven and a half minutes in here, you get at what I think of as the key to this magic music. Don controlled the process as much as he could, but he wasn't a musician. I enjoy Zappa's work now more than I did when he was alive, but the degree of control he exerted made his music brittle to my ear. Captain Beefheart's process, though, required intelligent input from all the musicians because of his incompetence. "He kept control by ...waiting for something he liked, rather than something he intended." Bingo.
I've put 'My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains' on Repeat many times through the years. I could listen to Bill Harkleroad's clean, pure lead guitar on that forever. Mark Boston's rhythm guitar and Roy Estrada's bass are perfect, too. And as much as I admire Art Tripp's musicianship, I wish he'd just played drums and his marimba had been replaced with a piano or another lead guitar, maybe Jeff Baxter, for, oh, seventeen minutes or so of improvisation on all the perfect themes in that perfect song. Ted Templeman was right: "Don, get out of the studio because you're ruining your own music."
Such an interesting interview. With Clear Spot I think they got it absolutely right with regard to being commercial but retaining their unique sound. Although, I believe Clear Spot didn't sell as well as hoped, if the record company had kept that team together with Ted Templeman and produced more like Clear Spot then I think they'd have broken through to a bigger market eventually while maintaining the following they had built up with TMR.
Always remember the Albert Hall Gig passing Ry Cooder and Happy(or Art) Traum on the staircase.A cigar smoking Snake Skinned Rockette Morton then Strolls on Strumming and picking his Bass Guitar "(This Ones for the Rio Six)" followed by Bill(ZootHornRollo} plugging in and then pulling down the whole Amp Stack,Rest of the band then join them and Blow us all away . Unforgettable!!
Out of curiosity ... was it the Albert Hall? I was going to say the Rainbow. Thing is ... I remember the Rio Six comment (which was about the cigar) but not the stack collapse. Could have been a different tour of course. Brighton Dome was amazing too!
Great video, thank you. Harkleroad is one of my all time favourite guitarists, an absolute legend. You can tell he isn't kidding when he says he isn't too fond of The Spotlight Kid album because he misremembers its title, repeatedly referring to it as Grow Fins.
What Don Van Vliet did was establish himself and his band as the artists who created classic rock which explored the furthest boundaries of controlled chaos. By 1967, Captain Beefheart and company had all the marbles. I always compare every rock band or pop artist in terms of how less talented they are compared to Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. I hope his band mates know that Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band created the greatest recordings in human history. No joke at all.
mcbillygoat ! They aren't unaware of their influence, They even knew when recording the albums that a weird group of people were going to be influenced by this music.
mcbillygoat ! Haha, extreme sentiment there towards the end. Also happens to be true. Whenever I see one of those best guitarists lists, I always check for Zoot Horn Rollo to be on there, but he never seems to be. To me, Moonlight on Vermont is the closest thing to a straight ahead rocker on Trout Mask, and Bill's work on there is brilliant, as it is everywhere else.
No doubt. It is an unfortunate reality that great suffering creates great art. Don Van Vliet knew precisely who he was and exactly where he was in space and time. He understood what rock music could be and how to compose using every tool and then some. Forever ahead of his time.
mcbillygoat ! Yah, true, you're right and I agree. The world may catch up someday, but it will be a long time from now, probably. On the other hand, western society presently might be on the brink of such chaos that the Captain and his music soon might make perfect sense. I know that sounds like sophomoric baloney, but it's a plausible theory.
Thanks for this. The great guitarist for the brain. I like the concept of “chunk” composition in TMR (1969), that they learned parts on the piano and then connected them in sections without notation. 🎸
Hi there, I still love Mallardś - In a different climate- album. Cannot believe that so many years have passed by since. Rediscoverd Bill Harkleroad upon the Bozo under the sea . Still that creativity ! kudos n regards from Allemania ( All maniacs? :) )
Inspiring stuff! Another great talk would be the latter Magic Band guitarist and manager Gary Lucas. He played for example the piece "Flavor bud living" utilising Don's "exploding note theory", which is something like every note being played like a bomb exploding in space, with no connection to the previous note or the following note.
It seems like putting the music together was more like dance choreography than typical music performance. Dance choreography is learning a collection of moves (parts) and then stringing them together, sometimes working against other dancers who are doing something different.
The bass on TMR and LMDB was a third guitar in lower register, as he says.. the songs are dense like there were 6 songs played at once.. And about Spotlight Kid being uninteresting ? Those sessions have material from SK to Clear Spot, Shiny Beast, Doc at the Radar Station, and Ice Cream for Crow. Here are 3 hrs of that (and tell me it was simple and uninteresting..) : ua-cam.com/video/NCdwDSfsVFY/v-deo.html
There's a question I would have interrupted with (this is why I'd be such an insufferable interviewer) about three minutes in here. There must have been moments for all the players at those rehearsals where they were performing their interpretations of what Don had given them - after the initial train-wreck phase - where it finally became clear that Don wasn't only jerking them around. Those must have been spine-tingling epiphanies for the musicians that made all the abuse and deprivation ...almost forgivable.
Interesting interview and yet another one where the main man had little regard for the musicians that put them on the musical map....I'm looking at you Bowie (RIP).
O.k. I just read some of the comments and somebody voiced what I really wanted to say: Complain all you want, boys, but there HAD to be a moment or three when you knew how amazing those songs are. It's those epiphanal moments I want to hear fer crissakes.
Having worked under tyrannical directors a handful of times, I can assure you that quite often, the effort involved in simply surviving the situation can easily obscure any sense of what the final product will be. It is only upon hearing/seeing the final product that any greatness might become apparent. Additionally, it is not uncommon that even the visionary artist is unaware of the potential of a creation. Greatness of a work of art is often only recognized after the fact.
@@JeremyWWWWW - Quite true, thank you. Gratitude is also timeless. I tore up some of my best drawings and a year later I wept with regret. Musically I have to be brilliant everyday so I do.
There is a long history in the performative arts that assumes, or even celebrates, the idea that truly visionary artists are by nature tyrants. It is, I believe, a toxic idea that both the artist (director, composer, choreographer...) as well as his collaborators (musicians, or dancers, or actors...) all too readily buy into. Having worked for several such tyrants, I think the whole thing is bull shit. Being an ass is not a prerequisite to being a great director. But oddly, the mystique of the abusive director lives on.
@@JeremyWWWWW completely agree. I think there is a type of surviorship bias with these kinds of narratives. First nobody likes hearing about the creative process that is fun and comfortable, because its not dramatic. Secondly we never hear about all the hellish productions that end up being total failures because they disapear to time, which would contradict the trope.
It is noteworthy that Bill describes "The Spotlight Kid" (or "Grow Fins" as he refers to it) as simple and uninteresting. I remember an interview where Don claimed that the pieces on that album were intended to be a gift to his musicians, to give them something to play without having to work so hard. In light of Bill's perspective, Don's comments sound like Beefheartian revisionist history. Whatever, I still think it's a great record.
@@samuel_andreyev: Thanks and thank you very much for these interviews. I'm a musician and I've been a Beefheart fan since Trout Mask came out when I was 15.
@@samuel_andreyev Sorry to litter up your comment Box with quotations but I think they're cool and I'm also gonna use them in a paper I'm writing.... Of course I'm gonna assign you correctly and I'll send you the paper when I'm done with it. It'll be sometime next year when it's published....
I used to have a Beefheart screensaver (remember those) and whenever it fired up, I would hear " a squid eating dough" etc. Eventually it got to to me and I turned it off. Fun for a while.
The incarceration, the abuse, the malnutrition, the sleeplessness that the Magic Band experienced for all of those months, in that house in Woodland Hills (?) house and THEN...Don and the Magic Band recorded the album in three or four hours with Frank producing, whatever that means, and voila, Trout Mask Replica. Miraculous vision and commitment on everybody's part. What I have experienced (oh how I suffered for the music...) for a half century makes the band's story pale in comparison - I don't want to hear one shred of self pity from these guys. I do my own Trout Mask everyday and only myself and my invisible friends hear it. I do write the words down in notebooks, so there's about eighteen hundred songs. I have memorized a couple of dozen. I need a camera. If you are a musician and you play for the music and not for the ego then Trout Mask Replica will change you forever. That's the magic.
They recorded it in ONE take. Let that sink in... So incredible, that Zappa told his then (Mothers) musicians: If he can do it, why cant you ?? Btw, his "production" was just taking them to a studio and getting the reel rolling, nothing else at all. And yes, I so hate the self pity - while they should be forever proud of that achievement.. no pain, no gain.
Zoot Horn Rollo, one of my guitar heroes! He needs to be on every Top Ten Guitarists list, he's a brilliant musician. Great to see that he's so friendly and looking so healthy.
TMR is the best thing that happened in my life. Inspired me for ever
Respect to Samuel for shedding more light on the TMR material....you've done a massive service for all Beefheart fans. Than you, Samuel. Sincerely. And thank you Bill for your legendary contributions
Fascinating interview
I bought this man's 1958 supro amplifier.
I addition to all this remarkable music was the actual performance and style of the performance. The way they looked. The way they moved. Rocket Morton explodes on to the stage for example. They are all unlike anything else. Zoom Horn almost falls off the stage and also moves in the most extraordinary way. Is hard to know which musician to watch. A drummer that moves and plays in a way like no other. Amazing rhythms. At the humble Locarno Ballroom in Stevenage Hertfordshire UK I saw the greatest performance I ever saw/heard/witnessed.
I'll never know how they created that inversion of the rhythm in Click Clack. The first time I heard it I assumed it was a happy accident. But i saw them live twice and they recreated it exactly like the record ! That track still blows my mind to this day.
Same thing here, Dennis. TMR was both exciting and baffling to me for the first year(s) that I owned it, but seeing them in concert made EVERYTHING fall into place!
Really good interview Zoot is such a cool guy .
I just finished reading the Lunar Notes book, got Amazon to deliver it to me here in my home in Thailand. It was fun, very interesting, I flew thru it in a day and a half, loved every minute of it! Thanks, what an amazing story.
He signed my Trout Mask Replica album.
Eleven and a half minutes in here, you get at what I think of as the key to this magic music. Don controlled the process as much as he could, but he wasn't a musician. I enjoy Zappa's work now more than I did when he was alive, but the degree of control he exerted made his music brittle to my ear. Captain Beefheart's process, though, required intelligent input from all the musicians because of his incompetence. "He kept control by ...waiting for something he liked, rather than something he intended." Bingo.
I've put 'My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains' on Repeat many times through the years. I could listen to Bill Harkleroad's clean, pure lead guitar on that forever. Mark Boston's rhythm guitar and Roy Estrada's bass are perfect, too. And as much as I admire Art Tripp's musicianship, I wish he'd just played drums and his marimba had been replaced with a piano or another lead guitar, maybe Jeff Baxter, for, oh, seventeen minutes or so of improvisation on all the perfect themes in that perfect song. Ted Templeman was right: "Don, get out of the studio because you're ruining your own music."
Clear Spot..... Best Album ever
"That's what you're playing !?!" - haha
I seem to recall Don saying that he wanted to win a Grammy..this would have been at the time of 'Unconditionally Guaranteed'.
Such an interesting interview. With Clear Spot I think they got it absolutely right with regard to being commercial but retaining their unique sound. Although, I believe Clear Spot didn't sell as well as hoped, if the record company had kept that team together with Ted Templeman and produced more like Clear Spot then I think they'd have broken through to a bigger market eventually while maintaining the following they had built up with TMR.
great interview again! really interesting, and loved hearing about the background of clear spot. one of my favorite records.
Always remember the Albert Hall Gig passing Ry Cooder and Happy(or Art) Traum on the staircase.A cigar smoking Snake Skinned Rockette Morton then Strolls on Strumming and picking his Bass Guitar "(This Ones for the Rio Six)" followed by Bill(ZootHornRollo} plugging in and then pulling down the whole Amp Stack,Rest of the band then join them and Blow us all away .
Unforgettable!!
Out of curiosity ... was it the Albert Hall? I was going to say the Rainbow. Thing is ... I remember the Rio Six comment (which was about the cigar) but not the stack collapse. Could have been a different tour of course. Brighton Dome was amazing too!
excellent as always. thank you. a truly unique guy and perspective.
Great video, thank you. Harkleroad is one of my all time favourite guitarists, an absolute legend. You can tell he isn't kidding when he says he isn't too fond of The Spotlight Kid album because he misremembers its title, repeatedly referring to it as Grow Fins.
Thanks so much im hanging on every word!!!
Only just found this, great interview I love Clear Spot actually I like just about all of it. Bought Safe as Milk in the original import. ( GB)
Very insightful,thank you very much!! =D
What Don Van Vliet did was establish himself and his band as the artists who created classic rock which explored the furthest boundaries of controlled chaos. By 1967, Captain Beefheart and company had all the marbles. I always compare every rock band or pop artist in terms of how less talented they are compared to Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. I hope his band mates know that Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band created the greatest recordings in human history. No joke at all.
mcbillygoat ! They aren't unaware of their influence, They even knew when recording the albums that a weird group of people were going to be influenced by this music.
mcbillygoat ! Haha, extreme sentiment there towards the end. Also happens to be true.
Whenever I see one of those best guitarists lists, I always check for Zoot Horn Rollo to be on there, but he never seems to be.
To me, Moonlight on Vermont is the closest thing to a straight ahead rocker on Trout Mask, and Bill's work on there is brilliant, as it is everywhere else.
No doubt. It is an unfortunate reality that great suffering creates great art. Don Van Vliet knew precisely who he was and exactly where he was in space and time. He understood what rock music could be and how to compose using every tool and then some. Forever ahead of his time.
My sentiment is simply an attempt to tell the truth as you would agree. Nothing extreme. The truth stands on its own.
mcbillygoat ! Yah, true, you're right and I agree. The world may catch up someday, but it will be a long time from now, probably.
On the other hand, western society presently might be on the brink of such chaos that the Captain and his music soon might make perfect sense. I know that sounds like sophomoric baloney, but it's a plausible theory.
Thank you so much again, Samuel! Great to hear Bill open up while being so relaxed. It's a lot like the tone of the book.
Thanks for this. The great guitarist for the brain. I like the concept of “chunk” composition in TMR (1969), that they learned parts on the piano and then connected them in sections without notation. 🎸
wish Bill would break down in detail Peon - a brilliant composition. thanks Bill & Mark.
A. Octafish... could be a name, heh. Great interview man! Fasten bulb us!
Also tapered!
Hi there, I still love Mallardś - In a different climate- album. Cannot believe that so many years have passed by since.
Rediscoverd Bill Harkleroad upon the Bozo under the sea . Still that creativity ! kudos n regards from Allemania ( All maniacs? :) )
Great guitar player played guitar like a drummer at time's, great feel.
Oh yes, this is great Samuel. I didn't want it to end!
Inspiring stuff! Another great talk would be the latter Magic Band guitarist and manager Gary Lucas. He played for example the piece "Flavor bud living" utilising Don's "exploding note theory", which is something like every note being played like a bomb exploding in space, with no connection to the previous note or the following note.
Oo - excellent suggestion there!
I would love the Magic Band to get back together, and have different guest artists doing the vocals. Oh well we can dream I suppose.
It seems like putting the music together was more like dance choreography than typical music performance. Dance choreography is learning a collection of moves (parts) and then stringing them together, sometimes working against other dancers who are doing something different.
Thanks for these, a lovely and very enlightening stuff. Gotta check out his book.
The bass on TMR and LMDB was a third guitar in lower register, as he says.. the songs are dense like there were 6 songs played at once..
And about Spotlight Kid being uninteresting ? Those sessions have material from SK to Clear Spot, Shiny Beast, Doc at the Radar Station, and Ice Cream for Crow. Here are 3 hrs of that (and tell me it was simple and uninteresting..) : ua-cam.com/video/NCdwDSfsVFY/v-deo.html
I got Leyenda and Asturrias confused they are the same piece! The first part would be easy to learn by ear but the rest, wow.
There's a question I would have interrupted with (this is why I'd be such an insufferable interviewer) about three minutes in here. There must have been moments for all the players at those rehearsals where they were performing their interpretations of what Don had given them - after the initial train-wreck phase - where it finally became clear that Don wasn't only jerking them around. Those must have been spine-tingling epiphanies for the musicians that made all the abuse and deprivation ...almost forgivable.
I´d bet they had known
Samuel, I love these videos. May I ask you what your opinion is of Carla Bley? Do you appreciate her compositions? thanks.
The best. Thanks.
I get the feeling that Bill painted that painting behind the sofa.
Interesting interview and yet another one where the main man had little regard for the musicians that put them on the musical map....I'm looking at you Bowie (RIP).
Great interview. Interviewer needs a glass of water.
Help me afford one. www.patreon.com/samuelandreyev
O.k. I just read some of the comments and somebody voiced what I really wanted to say: Complain all you want, boys, but there HAD to be a moment or three when you knew how amazing those songs are. It's those epiphanal moments I want to hear fer crissakes.
Having worked under tyrannical directors a handful of times, I can assure you that quite often, the effort involved in simply surviving the situation can easily obscure any sense of what the final product will be. It is only upon hearing/seeing the final product that any greatness might become apparent. Additionally, it is not uncommon that even the visionary artist is unaware of the potential of a creation. Greatness of a work of art is often only recognized after the fact.
@@JeremyWWWWW - Quite true, thank you. Gratitude is also timeless. I tore up some of my best drawings and a year later I wept with regret. Musically I have to be brilliant everyday so I do.
The zen monk patience of these hermits to be sworn to the vow of poverty while having little musical respect for trout man bully is puzzling.
they believed in the music!
To work with a musical genius?
There is a long history in the performative arts that assumes, or even celebrates, the idea that truly visionary artists are by nature tyrants. It is, I believe, a toxic idea that both the artist (director, composer, choreographer...) as well as his collaborators (musicians, or dancers, or actors...) all too readily buy into. Having worked for several such tyrants, I think the whole thing is bull shit. Being an ass is not a prerequisite to being a great director. But oddly, the mystique of the abusive director lives on.
@@JeremyWWWWW completely agree. I think there is a type of surviorship bias with these kinds of narratives. First nobody likes hearing about the creative process that is fun and comfortable, because its not dramatic. Secondly we never hear about all the hellish productions that end up being total failures because they disapear to time, which would contradict the trope.
It is noteworthy that Bill describes "The Spotlight Kid" (or "Grow Fins" as he refers to it) as simple and uninteresting. I remember an interview where Don claimed that the pieces on that album were intended to be a gift to his musicians, to give them something to play without having to work so hard. In light of Bill's perspective, Don's comments sound like Beefheartian revisionist history. Whatever, I still think it's a great record.
Check out my comment on the top... 😉
Now and forever I will only say PRO CESS. Creative/Thought/How Art Thou Pro Cess This?
When Bill is talking about the time they did Grow Fins (17:25), does he mean The Spotlight Kid?
yes, he misspoke.
@@samuel_andreyev: Thanks and thank you very much for these interviews. I'm a musician and I've been a Beefheart fan since Trout Mask came out when I was 15.
It's very possible that was the albums working title and that's how Harkleroad remembers it.
"What's wrong with you why can't you play 7 notes at one time on the guitar?"
🤣
@@samuel_andreyev Sorry to litter up your comment Box with quotations but I think they're cool and I'm also gonna use them in a paper I'm writing.... Of course I'm gonna assign you correctly and I'll send you the paper when I'm done with it. It'll be sometime next year when it's published....
Looking forward to it
Relocating Dirt - Life's Work!
A squid eating dough in a poliethelyne bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
I used to have a Beefheart screensaver (remember those) and whenever it fired up, I would hear " a squid eating dough" etc. Eventually it got to to me and I turned it off. Fun for a while.
this is the guy that taught mike scheidt of yob to play guitar
Sam needs a better microphone setup.
Thingshave since improved
The incarceration, the abuse, the malnutrition, the sleeplessness that the Magic Band experienced for all of those months, in that house in Woodland Hills (?) house and THEN...Don and the Magic Band recorded the album in three or four hours with Frank producing, whatever that means, and voila, Trout Mask Replica. Miraculous vision and commitment on everybody's part. What I have experienced (oh how I suffered for the music...) for a half century makes the band's story pale in comparison - I don't want to hear one shred of self pity from these guys. I do my own Trout Mask everyday and only myself and my invisible friends hear it. I do write the words down in notebooks, so there's about eighteen hundred songs. I have memorized a couple of dozen. I need a camera. If you are a musician and you play for the music and not for the ego then Trout Mask Replica will change you forever. That's the magic.
They recorded it in ONE take. Let that sink in... So incredible, that Zappa told his then (Mothers) musicians: If he can do it, why cant you ?? Btw, his "production" was just taking them to a studio and getting the reel rolling, nothing else at all. And yes, I so hate the self pity - while they should be forever proud of that achievement.. no pain, no gain.