Despite being a big Frank Zappa fan in the late 60's and throughout the 70's, it took me until the 80's to really discover Captain Beefheart and I have just delved into his music compulsively over the last decade or so. This book has been a bit elusive due to the price but my wonderful wife bought it for me for Christmas. The enormity of the tome - well over 800 pages - caused me to put it aside while I tackled a few other assorted gifts, but I have finally found the time for this.
While French speaks from his personal point of view, he also interviews damn near everyone involved with the Captain (those who consented to interviews, of course) and does his best to give a unbiased overview of the man, the band and the music. The members tended to come from the outskirts of LA, where Vliet (the Captain) and Zappa grew up, and the outsider-ness adds a certain aura to the characters. But, they were close enough to LA to be influenced by the new sounds of the 60's and to look for outlets for their music. The Magic Band went through numerous personnel changes even before French joined as an impressionable teen who had played'n'sang with local blues/garage bands before entering the world of Magic. This book gives a bit of an insight as to why there was so much turnover and the reasons for some of Vliet's difficulties. While French did imbibe in some illicit substances himself - this was the 60's, of course - he is pretty much anti-drug, due to his own experiences (which seem to be fairly extensive, ironically enough) as well as the issues that his friends, including Beefheart, had due to ingesting illegalities. French also seems to have no patience with the trappings of the psychedelic era in general and comes off fairly straight-laced considering the music he was making.
Although he appears to have had a real affection and friendship with Vliet at the time, in hindsight French is quite critical of the man and notes his various idiosyncrasies, anxieties and paranoias, which caused rifts in the band, cost them some important gigs, made them lose members, and caused innumerable problems during rehearsals and recording sessions, among other things. Of course, the rehearsal sessions for
Trout Mask Replica are legendary - stuck in a house in the Los Angeles Valley, with no money, few friends and even little food, the band was literally tortured by Vliet and they now consider him to have behaved like a cruel cult leader. It's sounds maddening and frustrating, but they did end up producing a truly unique piece of art which, while not financially rewarding (I can't imagine that they could possibly have thought that it would be), is now considered a true classic.
French does repeat himself at times, either forgetting that he had mentioned something in a previous chapter or just reminding the reader. He also occasionally seems to forget to finish his thought, but with all of the detail that he goes into here, that's forgivable. Along with some spelling, typing, structural errors, maybe an editor might have been a good idea?
Despite everything that he went through, he can still appreciate Vliet's talents (although he has no reluctance with explaining his weaknesses) and he doesn't think much of many of their peers, other than an appreciation for Frank Zappa. I do find it amusing that he doesn't see how people can find
Trout Mask Replica as insane as, say, Wildman Fisher - I think they are both works of mad geniuses, although in quite different ways.
Due to the overlap, French does give a lot of info about Zappa along with Van Vliet, from his own standpoint, from interviews with members of Zappa's band as well as the Magic Band and from quotes from Zappa's autobiography. He does compare and contrast the way the band members are treated (in Zappa's favor) but funnily enough, he never ends up working with Frank. He does leave and then return to Beefheart numerous times - just when I think that he would never go back, he does again and again just because he never accomplishes anything else serious in his life.
He finds religion, as many lost souls from the 60's did, and, just when you think that there is no chance that he would return to Beefheart, he does yet once more, but this time on guitar, an instrument that he barely played! But he ended up playing both slide and "regular" guitar on one of my fave albums,
Doc at the Radar Station. He leaves again, for the final time finally, and dives head first into religion, deliverance religion to be precise, and literally has his demons exorcised! He becomes a stay-at-home father and leaves us there.
Post scripts include a detailed examination of each song that he recorded with Beefheart (at one point listing at least 6 different parts within 60 seconds of a song that sounds like pure cacophony to most people) , which results in a bit more repetition, and also some ramblings, as if he was simply talking into a tape recorder while listening to the recordings, which is certainly possible. I find it super humorous that he complains that Vliet did not have a sense of timing and didn't know when to come in properly with his vocals - as if anyone could tell in the midst of this cacophony! I'm not even sure what French is basing that on since he says that Beefheart did not practice with the band so how would he know what Vliet meant to do?!
There's a fair amount of French simply complaining about nearly everything, but he does have some insight into his own foibles as well as those of the others in the cast of characters. Of course, as with any biography, this is subjective, but he really does try to get other points of view from the people who were there, which means that this is a pretty damn informative, if daunting, tome. I can't imagine that anyone who wasn't a fan would slog through all of this, but for those that are fanatics, it is a good read and he does his best to keep things moving.
