Captain Beefheart's music blended elements of blues, free jazz, rock, and avant-garde composition with idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist wordplay, a loud, gravelly voice, and his claimed wide vocal range, though reports of it have varied from three octaves to seven and a half.
51 Facts About Captain Beefheart
Captain Beefheart began performing with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the original Magic Band line-up, initiated by Alexis Snouffer, the same year.
Captain Beefheart eventually formed a new Magic Band with a group of younger musicians and regained critical approval through three final albums: Shiny Beast, Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow.
Captain Beefheart pursued a career in art, an interest that originated in his childhood talent for sculpture, and a venture which proved to be his most financially secure.
Captain Beefheart said that he was descended from Peter van Vliet, a Dutch painter who knew Rembrandt.
Captain Beefheart's subjects reflected his "obsession" with animals, particularly dinosaurs, fish, African mammals and lemurs.
Captain Beefheart said that his parents discouraged his interest in sculpture, based upon their perception of artists as "queer".
Captain Beefheart later claimed that the experience made him so bitter that he never listened to music and abandoned his art until he was twenty-three.
Captain Beefheart had dropped out of school by that time, and spent most of his time staying at home.
Captain Beefheart's girlfriend lived in the house, and his grandmother lived in the house, and his aunt and his uncle lived across the street.
Captain Beefheart's associates said that he only dropped out during his senior year of high school to help support the family after his father's heart attack.
Captain Beefheart spent most of his time locked in his room listening to records, often with Zappa, into the early hours in the morning, eating leftover food from his father's Helms bread truck and demanding that his mother bring him a Pepsi.
Captain Beefheart's parents tolerated such behavior under the belief that their child was truly gifted.
Captain Beefheart said it made him sad and put "a beef in his heart".
Captain Beefheart eventually grew comfortable with public performance and, after learning to play the harmonica, began playing at dances and small clubs in Southern California.
Captain Beefheart considered the lyric "I'd love to turn you on" from their song "A Day in the Life" to be ridiculous and conceited.
Captain Beefheart later claimed he had seen a girl in the audience turn into a fish, with bubbles coming from her mouth.
On January 27,1968, Captain Beefheart performed in the MIDEM Music Festival on the beach at Cannes, France.
Captain Beefheart had been conceptualizing new band names, including 25th Century Quaker and Blue Thumb, while making suggestions to other musicians that they might get involved.
Captain Beefheart admits complicity in similarly attacking his bandmates during "talks" aimed at them.
Captain Beefheart replaced French with drummer Jeff Bruschel, an acquaintance of Hayden.
Captain Beefheart was getting more into that part of who he was instead of this blues singer.
An early promotional music video was made of its title song, and a bizarre television commercial was filmed that included excerpts from "Woe-Is-uh-Me-Bop", silent footage of masked Magic Band members using kitchen utensils as musical instruments, and Captain Beefheart kicking over a bowl of what appears to be porridge onto a dividing stripe in the middle of a road.
Captain Beefheart toured in 1970 with Ry Cooder on the bill to promote the album.
Clear Spot production credit of Ted Templeman made AllMusic consider "why in the world [it] wasn't more of a commercial success than it was", and that while fans "of the fully all-out side of Captain Beefheart might find the end result not fully up to snuff as a result, but those less concerned with pushing back all borders all the time will enjoy his unexpected blend of everything tempered with a new accessibility".
Captain Beefheart later disowned both albums, calling them "horrible and vulgar", asking that they not be considered part of his musical output and urging fans who bought them to "take copies back for a refund".
Raggett of AllMusic called the album a "last entertaining blast of wigginess from one of the few truly independent artists in late 20th century pop music, with humor, skill, and style all still intact", with the Magic Band "turning out more choppy rhythms, unexpected guitar lines, and outre arrangements, Captain Beefheart lets everything run wild as always, with successful results".
Captain Beefheart placed his paintings, often reminiscent of Franz Kline, on several of his albums.
Captain Beefheart was interviewed on Granada regional television standing in front of his bold black and white canvases.
Captain Beefheart was inspired to begin an art career when a fan, Julian Schnabel, who admired the artwork seen on his album covers, asked to buy a drawing from him.
Captain Beefheart exhibited only few of his paintings because he immediately destroyed any that did not satisfy him.
Captain Beefheart resided near Trinidad, California, with his wife Janet "Jan" Van Vliet.
Captain Beefheart is credited for naming Tepper's 2010 album A Singer Named Shotgun Throat.
Captain Beefheart often referred to Earth as "God's Golfball" and this expression can be found on a number of his later albums.
Captain Beefheart provided vocals for "Willie the Pimp" on Zappa's otherwise instrumental album Hot Rats.
Captain Beefheart is the vocalist on "The Torture Never Stops " on Zappa's You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol.
Captain Beefheart adapted to and pushed the boundaries of genre throughout his career.
Captain Beefheart was a pioneer of art rock and experimental rock.
Captain Beefheart's music has been cited as an influence on punk rock, post-punk and new wave music, and Captain Beefheart himself has sometimes been classified as a proto-punk musician.
Van Vliet has been the subject of at least two documentaries, the BBC's 1997 The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart narrated by John Peel, and the 2006 independent production Captain Beefheart: Under Review.
The Minutemen were fans of Captain Beefheart, and were arguably among the few to effectively synthesize his music with their own, especially in their early output, which featured disjointed guitar and irregular, galloping rhythms.
Michael Azerrad describes the Minutemen's early output as "highly caffeinated Captain Beefheart running down James Brown tunes", and notes that Beefheart was the group's "idol".
Captain Beefheart later declared Trout Mask Replica to be the greatest album ever made.
Captain Beefheart considered the appeal of the Magic Band as outcasts who were even "too weird for the hippies".
Captain Beefheart is considered to have "greatly influenced" new wave artists, such as David Byrne of Talking Heads, Blondie, Devo, the Bongos, and the B-52s.
The 2002 LCD Soundsystem song "Losing My Edge" has a verse which James Murphy says, "I was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band".
Joan Osborne covered Captain Beefheart's " Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles", which appears on Early Recordings.
Captain Beefheart cited Van Vliet as one of her influences.
Harvey's first experience of Captain Beefheart's music was as a child.
Captain Beefheart's parents had all of his albums; listening to them made her "feel ill".
Captain Beefheart cited him as one of her greatest influences since.