Captain Beefheart, a.k.a. Don Van Vliet, dies at 69
Avant-garde rock legend and visual artist Don Van Vliet, who performed under the name Captain Beefheart, passed away today at age 69. A representative of New York City’s Michael Werner Gallery, which showed his paintings, confirms the sad news to EW. Van Vliet died of complications from multiple sclerosis at a hospital in Northern California this morning.
Born in California in 1941, Van Vliet dubbed himself Captain Beefheart and began experimenting with eccentric rock’n'roll sounds in the mid-1960s. His first two releases with the Magic Band drew positive notice from some connoisseurs but failed to connect with the wider public. Van Vliet next forged a close creative partnership with Frank Zappa, a former high school classmate, who signed Beefheart to his Straight Records and produced 1969′s Trout Mask Replica. While the bizarre double album was not a major commercial success, it quickly became a cultural landmark. Van Vliet effectively redefined the frontiers of popular music, singing snatches of surreal imagery in disturbing tones over music that drew on blues, jazz, psychedelia, and a thousand other subgenres. Trout Mask Replica is still cited today as an essential art-rock document.
Van Vliet continued recording as Captain Beefheart with a rotating group of Magic Band members through 1982. (Read about his five best albums.) In later years, he shifted his primary focus to creating visual art, a world in which he won some acclaim. The Michael Werner Gallery displayed his work for decades, with their most recent Van Vliet show occurring in 2007. Earlier this month, one of Van Vliet’s paintings was reportedly being offered at an asking price of $40,000.
Why? Becuase we like you...and because we said so, that why
"Lonnie Burr's blond hair would be just so: the sides slicked back, the top a forever-cresting wave rising above his smooth forehead and breaking along the back of his skull. And then, as usual, one of the paunchy Mickey Mouse Club producers would come along and flatten the twelve-year-old Mouseketeer's coif with one glunk of his black-winged beanie straight onto the top of his head, suctioning it to his cranium and cutting a line across his eyebrows as if, perhaps, his brain might come off with it if squeezed tightly enough. A guy could have the coolest hair in town, but no one would know about it if he wore his Mouseketeer cap according to regulation. This fact alone made many of the older, teenage boys among The Mickey Mouse Club's two dozen cast members hate those ears that would become such icons of the 1950s. Pompadours were the rage. The guys had to have their waves out. And producers' demands that they wear the stupid hats way down on their heads wrecked everything. 'All the guys hated the ears,' Lonnie says now. 'They'd always want us to wear it like a monk.'
"The solution: the boys would act like they were going along with the producers' ridiculous rules until the last second before shooting started, then sneak the cap back two inches or so, just as cameras started to roll, pushing as much hair as possible forward with it to approximate a decent wave. After all, they'd spent most of their preparation time in the morning washing, drying, parting, combing, dovetailing, and applying a gooey wave-set product that would dry as hard as glue, just to do it all over again and again throughout the day as they sweated through their dance numbers.
"It was the dawn of the rock 'n roll era, and hair was a priority. So time and again, Lonnie and castmates Bobby Burgess and Tommy Cole would be there on the Mouseketeer soundstage, fidgeting a fraction of a second before the scene, doffing their caps to liberate their waves just as cameras started to roll. 'If you watch the show, you can see the different sizes of waves out front,' Lonnie says. 'All of us boys had full manes of hair, and they wanted none of it showing,' Tommy says. 'The girls all still looked pretty because they had these waves of hair flowing down, but they wanted to make the boys look like little bald people!'
"More than ten million children watched the first season of The Mickey Mouse Club, and two million Mouse ears sold in the show's first three months, proving that kids mattered in this new mass-communication-driven world. The Mickey Mouse Club demonstrated that a group of ordinary children could put on a crowd-pleasing show and that kids their age would tune in en masse to watch it. The series spoke straight to the prepubescent crowd at a pivotal time in their lives, when they were primed to fixate on anything they felt was just for them. The Mickey Mouse Club made a generation of kids feel like they belonged to their own elite group, a feeling that would lodge itself in their hearts and make them remember Mouseketeers Annette, Tommy, Darlene, Cubby, Karen, Lonnie, Sherry, Doreen, and the rest of the gang for the rest of their lives."
Jennifer Armstrong, Why? Because We Still Like You
Grand Central, Date: Copyright 2010 by Jennifer Armstrong
Pages: 3-6
"The solution: the boys would act like they were going along with the producers' ridiculous rules until the last second before shooting started, then sneak the cap back two inches or so, just as cameras started to roll, pushing as much hair as possible forward with it to approximate a decent wave. After all, they'd spent most of their preparation time in the morning washing, drying, parting, combing, dovetailing, and applying a gooey wave-set product that would dry as hard as glue, just to do it all over again and again throughout the day as they sweated through their dance numbers.
"It was the dawn of the rock 'n roll era, and hair was a priority. So time and again, Lonnie and castmates Bobby Burgess and Tommy Cole would be there on the Mouseketeer soundstage, fidgeting a fraction of a second before the scene, doffing their caps to liberate their waves just as cameras started to roll. 'If you watch the show, you can see the different sizes of waves out front,' Lonnie says. 'All of us boys had full manes of hair, and they wanted none of it showing,' Tommy says. 'The girls all still looked pretty because they had these waves of hair flowing down, but they wanted to make the boys look like little bald people!'
"More than ten million children watched the first season of The Mickey Mouse Club, and two million Mouse ears sold in the show's first three months, proving that kids mattered in this new mass-communication-driven world. The Mickey Mouse Club demonstrated that a group of ordinary children could put on a crowd-pleasing show and that kids their age would tune in en masse to watch it. The series spoke straight to the prepubescent crowd at a pivotal time in their lives, when they were primed to fixate on anything they felt was just for them. The Mickey Mouse Club made a generation of kids feel like they belonged to their own elite group, a feeling that would lodge itself in their hearts and make them remember Mouseketeers Annette, Tommy, Darlene, Cubby, Karen, Lonnie, Sherry, Doreen, and the rest of the gang for the rest of their lives."
Jennifer Armstrong, Why? Because We Still Like You
Grand Central, Date: Copyright 2010 by Jennifer Armstrong
Pages: 3-6
This show is a hell of a lot funnier when you watch it as an adult
The end of the Civil War was near
When quite accidentally,
A hero who sneezed, abruptly seized
Retreat and reversed it to victory!
His Medal of Honor pleased and thrilled
His proud little family group;
While pinning it on, some blood was spilled
And so it was planned he'd command... F TROOP!
Where Indian fights are colorful sights
And nobody takes a lickin',
Where paleface and redskin
Both turn chicken!
When drilling and fighting get them down
They know their morale can droop,
As long as they all relax in town
Before they resume with a bang and a boom... F TROOP!
F Troop aired for two seasons on ABC-TV. It debuted in the United States on September 14, 1965 and concluded its run on April 6, 1967 with a total of 65 episodes. The first season of 34 episodes was filmed in black-and-white, but the show switched to color for its second season.
F Troop was in Fort Courage, Kansas (a fictional United States Army outpost in the Old West) shortly after the American Civil War ended in 1865. The commanding officer(Ken Berry) was Captain Wilton Parmenter who descended from a long line of distinguished military officers. He was awarded the Medal of Honor after accidentally instigating the final charge at the Battle of Appomattox. Only a private, he was ordered to fetch his commanding officer's laundry. As he rode away, pollen in the air caused him to sneeze repeatedly. A group of Union soldiers mistook his sneeze for an order to charge, turning the tide of the battle. His superiors, wishing to reward his action, promoted him to captain and—in view of his ineptitude—gave him command of remote Fort Courage, a dumping ground for the army's least useful soldiers and misfits. Of the three commanding officers at Fort Courage before Captain Parmenter, two of them deserted and one suffered a nervous breakdown. He was also awarded the Purple Heart after he was accidentally pricked in the chest by his commanding officer while receiving the Medal of Honor - "the only soldier in history to get a medal for getting a medal."
Forrest Tucker (February 12, 1919 – October 25, 1986) stood 6'4"l and weighed 200 pounds began his performing career at age 14 at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, pushing the big wicker tourist chairs by day and singing "Throw Money" at night. Lying about his age, Tucker then joined the United States Army cavalry. He was stationed at Fort Myer in Virginia, but was discharged when his age became known. He returned to stage work and then moved into films and finally to TV
Larry Storch attended the same school in New York as Don Adams, the two remained his lifelong friend. Storch served in the U.S. Navy during World War II on the submarine tender USS Proteus (AS-19), along with future actor Tony Curtis. A voice
Kenneth Ronald "Ken" Berry (born November 3, 1933) was a dancer and singer before TV. His army sergeant was Leonard Nimoy, who urged him to return to California after the war for television auditions
Melody Patterson (born April 16, 1949 in Inglewood, California) was 16 years old when she debuted on the show. She was married to James MacArthur ("Danno" of Hawaii Five-O.)
"Chief Wild Eagle", chief of the Hekawi tribe, Frank Dekova (March 17, 1910 – October 15, 1981) was an Italian-American character who was born in New York City and taught school (primarily languages) before joining a Shakespeare repertory group. He made his Broadway debut in Detective Story, and was discovered by director Elia Kazan.
William "Bill" B. Lava the shows musical composer also sang the theme to the western series Cheyenne.
It was thirty years ago today
It was thirty years ago today..........
John Winston Lennon
October 9 1940 –8 December 8 1980
"Laurel and Hardy, that's John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise… Because all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot."
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
"I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another"
"When you're drowning you don't think, "I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I'm drowning and come and rescue me." You just scream."
Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.
Everything is clearer when you're in love.
If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
It doesn't matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman or a man.
It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
Would those of you in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.
As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity.
I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.
If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.
He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride. on his son Sean
I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?
I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.
Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.
The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?
The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.
The more I see the less I know for sure.
The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.
Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.
We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.
Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.
You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!
You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.
You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate.
"There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life."
"Count your age by friends, not years Count your life by smiles, not tears."
"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality."
"One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside."
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."
"Make your own dream. That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story, that's what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.
That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be.
There's nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you."
"How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?"
"It's Wierd not to be Wierd."
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life."
"Time wounds all heels."
"When I was about twelve I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn't I don't care."
"Avant-garde is French for bullshit"
"Before Elvis there was nothing."
"Love is the greatest refreshment in life."
"There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme."
"It came in a vision - a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, 'From this day forward you are Beatles with an A.' Thank you Mister Man, they said, thanking him." —
"Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there, when you're everywhere-come and get your share."
"I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence." —
"My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple." —
"There are no problems, only solutions."
"I've never really been wanted."
"It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think "Wow how did I get here?" —
"People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie ``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different
I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher"
"Without Jimmy (James) Dean the Beatles would never have existed."
"I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry."
"When his rolls royce was mobbed by fans the chauffeur said: ''do you want me to get them off the car?'' and Lennon replied: ''No - they paid for it, they can wreck it" —
"Paul and I know each other on a lot of different levels that very few people know about."
"Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, ‘I am the carpenter.’ But that wouldn’t have been the same, would it? ‘I am the carpenter…."
Q: "Is the haircut an act by accident or design"
JOHN: "Accident."
Q: "You didn't have time to get your hair cut in the first place"
JOHN: "No, it just happened, you know. Ringo's was by design because he joined later."
RINGO: "Yeah, I designed it."
('Twist And Shout') "I always hate singing the song, 'Twist And Shout' when there's a colored artist on the bill with us. It doesn't seem right, you know. I feel sort of embarrassed... It makes me curl up. I always feel he could do the song much better than me."
Q: "John, it's said that you have the most 'Goon-type' humor of the four Beatles."
JOHN: "Who said that"
Q: "I think I read it in one of the newspapers."
JOHN: "You know what the newspapers are like."
Q: "What are they like"
JOHN: "Wrong."
Q: (laughs) "This is going wrong... I want to get a nice 'Personality' bit."
JOHN: "I haven't got a nice personality."
Q: (laughs) "Is this evidence of Goon-type humor"
JOHN: "No, I don't think I really have Goon-type humor. That's just an expression people use."
Q: "You were interested in poetry in school."
JOHN: "Who said?"
Q: "It's printed in a book compiled by the Beatles and entitled, 'The Beatles.'"
JOHN: (laughs) "I haven't read that book."
JOHN 1963
(a recorded Christmas message sent to Fan Club members-- regarding fan mail, concerts, and recording)
JOHN: "This time last year, we were all dead chuffed because 'Love Me Do' got in the top twenty. And we can't believe that so many things have happened in between already. I'd like to say thank you to all the Beatle people who have written to me during the year. I'd love to reply personally to everyone, but I just haven't enough pens."
"When I was a Beatle I thought we were the best fucking group in the goddamn world, and believing that is what made us what we were." -
"I was too scared to break away from the Beatles, which I'd been looking to do since we stopped touring. And so I was sort of vaguely looking for somewhere to go but didn't have the nerve to really step out into the boat myself, so I sort of hung around, and when I met Yoko and fell in love, my God, this is different than anything before. This is more than a hit record. It's more than gold. It's more than everything...When I met Yoko is when you meet your first woman, and you leave the guys at the bar, and you don't go play football anymore. Once I found the woman, the boys became of no interest whatsoever, other than they were like old school friends." -
"People want peace. And you've got to sell it and sell it and sell it. So we do the bed-ins and they say, 'What They're in bed What's this' And all we're doing really is donating our holiday. We get tired and it's ... more convenient for us to stay in one spot than go around doing press conferences." -
"Before Yoko and I met, we were half a person. You know there's an old myth about people being half and the other half being in the sky, or in heaven or on the other side of the universe or a mirror image. But we are two halves, and together we're a whole." -
"Everything is clearer when you're in love" -
"We've broken down a few barriers between us. which we had to do because we had two big egos. two individual artists - and with love we overcame that." -
"I'd never met a woman I considered as intelligent as me. That sounds bigheaded, but every woman I met was either a dolly-chick, or a sort of screwed-up intellectual chick. And of course, in the field I was in, I didn't meet many intellectual people anyway. I always had this dream of meeting an artist, an artist girl who would be like me. And I thought it was a myth, but then I met Yoko and that was it." -
"We are both sensitive people and we were hurt a lot by it. I mean, we couldn't understand it. When you're in love, when somebody says something like, 'How can you be with that woman' you say, 'What do you mean I am with this goddess of love, the fulfillment of my whole life. Why are you saying this Why do you want to throw a rock at her or punish me for being in love with her' Our love helped us survive it, but some of it was pretty violent. There were a few times when we nearly went under, but we managed to survive it and here we are. [John looks up] Thank you, thank you, thank you." -
"We haven't been apart for more than one hour in two years. Everything we do is together, and that's what gives us our strength." -
In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was. That meant I think people should get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of it. But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell -- if that's a paradox, then I'm a socialist. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. That's why I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing myself to be screwed by so-called managers.
"We're all in a bag, you know... I was in a pop bag, going round and round, in my own little clique. And she [Yoko] was in her own little avant-garde clique, going round and round...So we just came up with the word. If you'd ask us what bagism is, we'd say, 'We're all in a bag, baby." -
"We've broken down a few barriers between us, which we had to do because we had two big egos, two individual artists - and with love we overcame that." -
"When [Yoko and I] got back together, we decided that this is our life. That having a baby was important to us, and that everything else was subsidiary to that, and therefore everything else had to be abandoned. I mean, abandonment gave us the fulfillment we were looking for and the space to breathe." -
"Why don't people believe us when we say we're simply in love" -
"With us it's a teacher - pupil relationship. That's what people don't understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one. I'm supposed to know everything. But she taught me everything I fucking know." -
"Yoko was the only one who didn't put me down through that period, because
a) she knew I was suffering, and
b) she said, 'You didn't kill anyone. You didn't abuse anyone.' And I thought, Okay, okay, she doesn't mind it, so I'm not going to give a damn whether the reporter likes it or not." -
"We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once" -
"I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically -- any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace." Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster. -
"The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all his things. But he is my biggest pride." -
"If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright..." -
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