BOOK REVIEW
Review by Roger Spoto

Captain Beefheart - The Biography
By Mike Barnes
Cooper Square Press

If you know the man and/or his music, there's not much I'll be able to tell you in this review since you've already been sonically nuked. However, for those of you not exposed to the man, myth, music, merriment or manifesto put forth by Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart, aka the White Howlin' Wolf), biographer Mike Barnes has unleashed a fascinating book about a blues-loving surrealist painter with a (reputed) 7-octave range voice from California's Mojave Desert who mercilessly drove his musicians to become one of the great 'outsider' bands of all time.

Exhaustively researched and written with attention to minute details rarely seen in books of this nature, Barnes follows Van Vliet's path from his blues roots through free jazz to dada passages and free-association lyrics that have influenced so many bands over the years that it's impossible to judge from a quantitative or qualitative basis. An early protégé of Frank Zappa, Beefheart launched his own musical satellite with the release of the legendary "Trout Mask Replica" album - a collection of poems about ego, the environment and animals set to a backdrop of African polyrhythms and atonal energy. Barnes describes one track from an earlier album "Safe As Milk" as ending "…with a passage of semi-free form, rim-clicking drums and splintered slide guitar, then into tom-tom depth charges, and thunderous rolls, heavy with reverb and fizzing with phrasing." For 1967, heavy indeed. Buy any of the Captain's albums and whether you understand the tunes is, ultimately, not the issue. What you will hear is the most intriguing avant-garde music ever made. Most of you blues and jazz hounds should be (at the very least) exposed to this major influence whose sound has never been duplicated - and never will.

That's also why this book is a must read, almost a primer to complement the music as Barnes takes you on a roller coaster ride from Vliet's childhood days as a sculpture prodigy to a master of creative language and poetry to his manipulative persona in getting musicians to interpret his ideas into soundscapes. He once said, "A little paranoia is a good propeller." Buy the book and a few of the Captain's CD's and you'll know why. You'll be amazed at what you hear….and learn.