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Captain Beefheart - Safe As Milk

One of the most important rock albums was ill-fated from the start.

By Ljubinko ZivkovicPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Never ventured into the magical world of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band? Where do you look for the entry point? With many artists and bands, it could be anywhere, with others it is in the middle, with some it is actually at the end. While quite a few listeners are mystified and a bit hesitant with all the stories of his truly avant-garde masterpiece Trout Mask Replica and a few other albums, as well as his idiosyncratic character and studio/live/private life stories, the entry point into his music is quite simple. You start at the beginning. And the beginning, the ‘official’ one, as if the word official can be stuck in front of the good captain’s name (his real name is either Don Vliet or Don Van Vliet - he stuck to the latter) is with his album Safe As Milk.

It is not the best Beefheart album. That title is being split between his ‘hardest’ album duet Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off Baby. It is neither his most accessible album - that goes to another album duo the all boogie/blues (of sorts) Spotlight Kid and all soul/r&b (of sorts) Clear Spot. Forget the fiasco of the two albums done for Virgin when somebody tried to tell Beefheart he should do pure pop (Unconditionally Guaranteed and Moonbeams and Bluejeans).

Still, with all that made Safe As Milk one of the most ill-fated albums around, it is still one of the most important rock albums around. Not solely because it is the first official Beefheart album (the so-called Legendary A&M Sessions that preceded it was actually a set of demos that came out later anyway), although that has a part in it too, nor because it gave the first wider exposure to guitar talents of a certain guy that goes by the name Ry Cooder. It is so because it showed all the directions that rock music could and would go from that point (1967) on, with all its skewed blues variations showing all those musician fans of the real stuff how it should be (re)interpreted (the opener “Sure ’nuff’n yes I Do”), where Beefheart also came from (the doo top of “I’m Glad”), the state of psychedelia (say, “Zig Zag Wanderer”), and the direction(s) it can develop in (“Electricity” and “Abba Zaba”). It is actually a true precursor of anything that could be called progressive rock, without all the deviations that genre went through, particularly in the Seventies.

As far as the ill-fated tag is concerned, working with Beefheart at any point in his musical (or art, or private life) career was always ‘interesting’ to say the least. John ‘Drumbo’ French, the drummer on practically most of his albums, recalls that during the recordings for this album he had to collect all the napkins, scraps of paper, notebooks, whatever Beefheart scribbled his lyrics on and then transcribe them into lyric units. And that was the easy stuff. There’s that famous story of Beefheart forcing the band to practice Trout Mask Replica incessantly for months and then making them record the whole double album in a matter of two or three days.

But then there’s the fact that this album ended up being recorded for Buddah Records, a record company that at the time was set on coming up with top ten hits. And they end up with Beefheart. What happened is that Beefheart was set on recording a double album. Probably to match his best and the same time most hated friend Frank Zappa and his double debut album Freak Out! As could be expected, Buddah rejected the idea, particularly when they heard some of the material, like the title song. Which, along with the other more daring material, ended up on the supposed follow-up album Strictly Personal. The actual second album was Mirror Man, which itself never saw the light of the day before 1971, Beefheart well underway with his Warner Brothers contract.

Buddha attempted to rectify the whole mess with its remastered re-issue of the album in 1999, but the damage at the time was done. Based on the critical buzz and some incredible live shows (a Beefheart staple throughout his musical career), Captain and the band were set to play the original, legendary Monterey Pop Festival. A week before the event, Ry Cooder left the band. Beefheart was so shaken that he canceled the appearance. Everybody else who played not only made fame, but also a fortune.

Not that Beefheart didn’t make a fortune either. As a painter, and only after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis of which he died in 2010. Still, as a musician, he left behind an incredible array of albums of which at least five, including this one, need to be on everybody’s best of lists.

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About the Creator

Ljubinko Zivkovic

A former, well, a lot of things: journalist, diplomat, translator and then journalist and writer again...

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