Goodbye Captain Beefheart!

Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) recently died.

An old friend of mine has a father who is now a cremator in Torrance. He was a former sound engineer who worked with various acts in the music industry throughout the 70s and 80s. He also happened to do A LOT of cocaine with Fleetwoood Mac. I just had to throw that in there. Any ways, he told me the most bizarre person he ever worked with in the music industry was Captain Beefheart. He dealt with Mr. Beefheart recording Doc at the Radar Station along with his peculiar "sense of humor" and his tendencies just to do some flat out weird shit.

First of all, he would insist on using the AC to bring the temperature down to 40 degrees or below in the recording studio. Everyone would wear all kinds of shit because they were freezing their balls off and Don would be totally incredulous. He really loved the cold. He also had a set of magic markers and a sketch book handy, and he would give "autographs" sketching out random shit and give them to people whether they asked or NOT. Don also revealed to my friend's father he had a "falling out" with Frank Zappa. He was really pissed at Zappa for writing the song "Jewish Princess". I don't know what exactly offended Mr. Beefheart. He wasn't Jewish himself and Zappa was the one who was actually "semite" and the peculiar song was about literally fucking Jewish chicks. But I guess that's a good excuse to dump a highschool friend who happened to be a rich rockstar.

He had enough friends any way. His wife had a ton of cats and he would invite the studio guys over to his Arizona home to meet the UFOs who would land at his place. He was dead serious.



My friend's dad aptly put his experience in one statement saying, "That guy did too much fucking acid."