Don Van Vliet, as Captain Beefheart, built a reputation of near unmatched lunatic creativity via uncategorisable brain melting classics like "Trout Mask Replica." His retirement to the Mojave desert in 1984 - to devote himself to his painting career - merely added to his legendary status and the world reluctantly resigned itself to never hearing his unique music played live again.
Twenty years on however, five members of his Magic Band reconvened to once again perform Beefheart’s music. Although news of this unlikely reunion was initially greeted with a little trepidation, the subsequent live performances silenced any critics.
Guitarist GARY ‘Mantis’ LUCAS only appeared on one full Beefheart album, 1982’s swansong "Ice Cream For Crow", but in that time he also acted as Beefheart’s manager and is an integral part of the legend. In the years since the Magic Band’s split he has pursued a diverse solo career, including his band Gods and Monsters and work with Jeff Buckley, while his latest solo release The Edge Of Heaven comprises covers of Chinese pop songs from the 1930s.
A small, black clad, figure with a wide-brimmed hat and a permanent beatific grin on his face, as though still remembering some bizarre Beefheart anecdote, Lucas speaks engagingly to W&H of the Magic Band’s past, present and future.
How did the idea of reforming the band come about?
“It really got going because of John French, the drummer, Drumbo. He’d wanted to do some sort of tribute, possibly a reunion you could call it, for a long time. There was an attempt to do it before I was asked to join. At that point he was trying to do it with Zoot Horn Rollo, but he did one rehearsal and felt he wasn’t up for it, so I was working in Atlanta and Denny Walley, who’s the other guitarist in there, saw in the newspaper that I was in town and tracked me down to the hotel I was staying at. So I went and had dinner with him and his wife and he said, ‘look, we’ve got this idea to do a reunion, and we really think you would be great in it’. I was flattered and interested, so I guess I completed the picture. Then they had a line-up that was workable.
"That’s how it all came about, but also I gotta say though the efforts of Barry Hogan, who was the guy behind All Tomorrow’s Parties, he was a key prime mover in this and also Elaine Shepherd who works for the BBC who did this documentary about Beefheart that was on the BBC a few years ago. Through their push really, and also Matt Groening, the guy behind The Simpsons, I’d say they were the triumvirate of angels who made it possible for John to really start realising this dream.”
How was the line-up chosen?
“I guess (John) wanted a representative line-up that would span some eras. He had been in the band for a longer amount of time for anyone. His drumming is really the key. As great as Artie Tripp was, and other people in there, John is the signature drum style for Beefheart.
"I know he always loved working with Mark Boston – Rockette Morton – who he made some seminal records with, including "Trout Mask Replica", and Denny he knew in there for a period where they did a record called "Bat Chain Puller." Me, I’d never played with John before, or any of these guys actually. I just knew them. But I respected them and they respected me, so it seemed a good fit. We have a certain chemistry, I think, that keeps us a very coherent, cohesive unit so that the music is just…ecstasy to play.”
How was the first rehearsal?
“Oh, it was great. We loved it. Because right away we knew that we could really pull it off. But first we had to decide the repertoire that we were going to tackle.”
Were there many arguments about that?
“I wouldn’t say arguments, but we were trying to do it democratically, so there were a few votes of proposed material. Then we winnowed it downed to about twenty pieces. I got really busy. I was putting in 3, 4 hours a day because a lot of the music I had never played. I knew it – but knowing it or listening to it is certainly different to playing it (laughs), but I have a very good ear and did it the old fashioned way, which was just to hunker down to the recordings and pick out the parts by ear."
"There was some music that John came up with and a few of the Trout Mask songs, some of it was a little bit different from the way the recordings go – he said that was down to people making mistakes in the old days. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But anyway, we got it about as close as we could possibly, humanly do on our own, and then Denny and I got together, first in New York, and that was a joy, just to hear the two guitars clanging against each other, that was cool, and then I went down to Atlanta and did a couple of days with them, and then we all went out to the desert, where John still lives after all these years, down in the Mojave area, and we got in the studio, and the tapes started rolling and boom, we did it. Most of the versions on the record "Back To The Front" that came out on the All Tomorrow’s Parties label – that’s usually the first take. That’s the rehearsal. And for a rehearsal it came out pretty damn good, there was no messing about.”
How did the decision come about to have John do some of the vocals?
“We wanted people who had never seen Beefheart to also get a feel of Beefheart’s lyrical side, because to me he was as great a singer and a poet as he was a composer of music and a painter, so John proposed trying to see what it would be like. He spent a lot of time practicing singing these songs in a very Beefheartian style, and I honestly had been a little wary of doing this, because over the years I’d been approached by people wanting to do some tributes that would have had vocals, and I thought, well if you can’t get Beefheart himself there’s no point in doing it, or it might just sound really ugly to have someone shred his vocal chords that way."
"So I was a little bit – I wouldn’t say sceptical – but I was just kinda of the opinion that it would be difficult to pull off, but I went in there with an open mind, and John blew my mind farther open because he was so great. And I thought, god, this guy really has been inhabited by the spirit. I think as lot of it is because he worked alongside him so closely from the early days. He knew all the inflections and he’s got a really good voice on top of it. He sings a lot of gospel, and he’d been in a lot of rock bands before joining Beefheart, as a singer. So he’s got the chops. People loved it. He’s got gestures – kind of acts out the songs.”
And the inevitable question – has anyone heard from the Captain himself?
“I don’t think any of us directly have - he’s been very incommunicado. I’m told he has health problems. I wish him the best. I certainly love him and respect him, and am very honoured to have played with him. I learned so much being with him. To me it was always my goal. It was like running away to join the circus. It was the coolest band on the planet, and I wanted to be part of it.
"I saw him in 1971 in New York when "Lick My Decals Off" was out, and it just changed my world – it was like, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen and heard. They were attacking their instruments and it looked so great. I went away thinking , if I ever do anything in music I want to play with this group, so I was really lucky to get my wish, although you know what they say – be careful what you wish for (laughs).
"To get in there took a few years. and what happened was, he came up to Yale University when I was a student there studying, but also working at the radio station as a DJ, so they gave me the task of interviewing him. I thought, Oh man, this is going to be weird. I have a tape somewhere that I’ve saved in my collection of the first conversation I had over the phone with him, and you can tell I’m a little nervous. My voice was trembling because I had my idol on the other line, but he was really sweet, very jovial, so we hooked up and I met him and the band when they came up to play.
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"I’d always make a point of going to see them whenever they came to play in the New York area. I saw them with Billy Joel opening for them, Bob Seger…a lot of people who went on to become much more successful. So it was great, but I never told them I played guitar – I was shy about my artistic abilities, and I was always one of these guys who wanted to make sure they could win any game before I played. I was secretly studying, in the back, learning the parts on the sly."
"I was always playing guitar – I started when I was 9 years old, and in fact played with Leonard Bernstein at a Catholic mass in Vienna in ’73, so before I joined Beefheart I had a lot of experience with high school bands and professionally with Bernstein, I’d studied a bit of classical music and I was quite a fluent rock guitarist, but generally I was coming out of British Blues of the ‘60s – Jeff Beck was my god, Clapton and Page, Peter Green was also really fantastic, and I liked psychedelica, Syd Barrett, Davy O’List in the Nice. But Beefheart’s thing was a whole different can of worms to get into – he himself once said ‘the guitar is merely a stand-up piano’.
"That was basically his approach to it, and often he’d give me music of him banging something out on the piano, and he could only probably have played it once because he was not really a technical player but he was a good improviser, he had a vibe, so he’d make these cassette recording of some crazy improvisation and send it me and say ‘learn that, man’. And I’d go, ‘hey, sure, but (laughs) using all your ten fingers, there’s only six strings on a guitar’. So he’d say, ‘well, you’d better find another four!’ You know, it was always impossible demands, but then I learned how to get really deep into his music just by ear, figuring the pieces out as I went along – about five seconds a day would take a few hours. It was like my meditation. That was how I got to do my first guitar solo pieces, "Flavour Bud Living" and later "Evening Bell." That put me on the map as a guitarist.”
The Magic Band are revered now – is that important, as you weren’t that successful at the time?
“Sure, because there was never really a lot of popular support or money coming in, so to get critical acceptance was crucial, so at least it validated the work in everybody’s eyes. We were all convinced it was important anyways historically, but then to see it written about in glowing terms really just made it all worthwhile. Somewhat (laughs). I can’t say a hundred percent!”
How far can the new band go?
“I’m not sure. I hope it would continue, because I think certainly we’re playing at a level and a spirit that’s as strong as anything out there. To me it’s very intense music. But I would think it’s the kind of thing that we could periodically continue to tour with. We have a live DVD that was put together by Elaine Shepherd, of the Shepherds Bush Empire show, which was one of our earliest shows. So we’ll see. I think we’ll continue as long as it remains to be fun for everybody.”
Would it be possible to write new material without the Captain?
“I tell you, we’ve discussed that and we’re staying away from that right now. We’re certainly capable of it. John has written some really cool pieces in other projects that he’s done like Mallard, and I’m a Grammy nominated songwriter for work I’ve done with Jeff Buckley and Joan Osbourne."
"But I never personally tried to write in a Beefheart idiom – I stayed away from it. I put out about 12 of my own solo records, with Gods and Monsters, alone and collaborations with some other people, but I deliberately shied away from it because I didn’t want people to think I was riding the coat tails of Beefheart, who really forged the sound, and the last thing I wanted to do was to be considered an imitator." S
"So I’m going forward as Gary Lucas, which is what I’ve done full time since 1990. It’s difficult, because we (The Magic Band) all live in different places in the US. We don’t often get together to rehearse as a band except before these tours, so to work up new material in an organic way is not that easy. So to answer your question, it doesn’t seem likely, although I would encourage these other guys to do their own music, and perhaps they will.”
Is it still in part of everyone’s mind that maybe one day Don Van Vliet will come back?
“Well I don’t know…it would be nice wouldn’t it? (laughs) But none of us are really holding our breath, because I think when he made the decision to leave music it seemed pretty definitive to me. I stopped working with him in early ’84, and he said ‘I’m never going to do this again, I’m finished and I just want to do my painting’, and I was disappointed, and that’s one reason I stopped working with him right there, because I was like, I love your paintings but it was your music that brought me into this in the first place."
"And he was adamant – both he and his wife felt that it would take away from his credibility as a painter, which is something they really wanted to get established. If he continued in music they just thought it would confuse the issue and art collectors might not take him seriously. So yeah, it was a big disappointment back then. Now, especially due to reports of his ill health I just can’t imagine it."
"But who knows? Stranger things have happened. But I think in lieu of that happening, to be able to go out and represent the music as authentically and as committed, as emotionally and spiritually the way that we do, is, I think, a good way to keep his music alive, y’know? To keep it before the public as active music, living music, rather than mouldering in somebody’s record collection.”
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