The Captain and the Clown
Actually, Don¹ seemed to be around quite a bit over the three months or so we took to record Hot Rats. Him and Frank had been peers and then friends for a while. There weren’t many people swimming in their pond at the time so I guess it was inevitable that they would be drawn to one another.
Don had a reputation for being this mystic recluse character, Frank was typically portrayed as an extrovert jester. There’s no smoke without fire I guess, but in reality they were a lot more similar than their public personas suggest. They were both fiercely intelligent, educated, well spoken. They were both charming. Not in a smart-ass way but, well I guess they didn’t feel like they had anything to prove. Don was quieter, or Frank was louder, depending on how you looked at it but they weren’t that far apart and man did they talk. I had my family with me at the time we were recording the album so I wasn’t partying as much as they were but whenever they were out together, as part of the same group, invariably they’d be together, heads down, oblivious to the drink, the music, the girls around them. Well, that's how it seemed to me.
Like everyone at the time, Zappa carried his scene round on his back. There was always this circus around him. Some were equals, various musicians, friends, people like Don. Then there was always this crowd of hangers on, groupies, journalists, wannabes. Man, it felt like there were hundreds of them. And Frank loved them all, he didn’t care. They stayed in his hotels, he bought them drinks, he got stoned with them. It was an instant party, just add Zappa and it was all good, so long as they stayed outside the studio.
Frank didn’t have his own band² but there was this kind of travelling troupe of musicians with him. Not only musicians, but technicians too. He brought his own keyboards and homemade effects pedals. He had this kind of musical paintbox which he could pick and choose colours, people from. He was like, let’s try this tune with that guitarist there, and the same keyboard player but with this keyboard instead. Man, we’d try the same tune a thousand times, jamming it through until it was unrecognisable and then Frank would say stop and it’d go in the trash and that was that. I guess the process was as important as the finished record, no matter how often I told them that process won’t make a dime and some of us hoped to feed our kids when the record was finished.
So at some point Don made the move from one side of the soundproof glass to the other. It wasn’t obvious when. You see, everyone spent as much time on one side as they did the other, even Frank. The drummer would be in the booth, I’d be on the desk, then there’d be half a dozen musicians loitering behind me humming and tapping and figuring stuff out. Then we’d record the bass, the guitars. Keyboards, percussion. Vocals. Then we’d record a new drum track. Then Frank would want to re-record his solo. Round and round and so on. Things grew, it was much more like some kind of science project than musical endeavour. Don probably contributed to half a dozen different tracks, but there was just Willie the Pimp that ended up on the album. Go figure.
¹ Don Van Vliet, more commonly known as Captain Beefheart
² The Mothers Of Invention were disbanded a year before serious work began on Hot Rats.
Don had a reputation for being this mystic recluse character, Frank was typically portrayed as an extrovert jester. There’s no smoke without fire I guess, but in reality they were a lot more similar than their public personas suggest. They were both fiercely intelligent, educated, well spoken. They were both charming. Not in a smart-ass way but, well I guess they didn’t feel like they had anything to prove. Don was quieter, or Frank was louder, depending on how you looked at it but they weren’t that far apart and man did they talk. I had my family with me at the time we were recording the album so I wasn’t partying as much as they were but whenever they were out together, as part of the same group, invariably they’d be together, heads down, oblivious to the drink, the music, the girls around them. Well, that's how it seemed to me.
Like everyone at the time, Zappa carried his scene round on his back. There was always this circus around him. Some were equals, various musicians, friends, people like Don. Then there was always this crowd of hangers on, groupies, journalists, wannabes. Man, it felt like there were hundreds of them. And Frank loved them all, he didn’t care. They stayed in his hotels, he bought them drinks, he got stoned with them. It was an instant party, just add Zappa and it was all good, so long as they stayed outside the studio.
Frank didn’t have his own band² but there was this kind of travelling troupe of musicians with him. Not only musicians, but technicians too. He brought his own keyboards and homemade effects pedals. He had this kind of musical paintbox which he could pick and choose colours, people from. He was like, let’s try this tune with that guitarist there, and the same keyboard player but with this keyboard instead. Man, we’d try the same tune a thousand times, jamming it through until it was unrecognisable and then Frank would say stop and it’d go in the trash and that was that. I guess the process was as important as the finished record, no matter how often I told them that process won’t make a dime and some of us hoped to feed our kids when the record was finished.
So at some point Don made the move from one side of the soundproof glass to the other. It wasn’t obvious when. You see, everyone spent as much time on one side as they did the other, even Frank. The drummer would be in the booth, I’d be on the desk, then there’d be half a dozen musicians loitering behind me humming and tapping and figuring stuff out. Then we’d record the bass, the guitars. Keyboards, percussion. Vocals. Then we’d record a new drum track. Then Frank would want to re-record his solo. Round and round and so on. Things grew, it was much more like some kind of science project than musical endeavour. Don probably contributed to half a dozen different tracks, but there was just Willie the Pimp that ended up on the album. Go figure.
¹ Don Van Vliet, more commonly known as Captain Beefheart
² The Mothers Of Invention were disbanded a year before serious work began on Hot Rats.
posted by Sookraj at 10:49 pm
4 Comments:
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ARG! dammit.
i was trying to completely remove myself from your blog. i don't want the spam monsters to track over to my side...
:/
Sorry :(
ok well let's just pretend i never tryed to delete my messages then :D
just make sure you make this blog non-public (in blogger) or your going to end up with vacuums, printer ink, penis enlargement pills, furnaces and tvs in your comments... i've safe guarded all my blogs now - so unfortunately only blog posters original to that blog can post (which is really annoying cause passengers on boats want to interact on the blog too).
If you don't take steps, your going to get so frusterated with it that you will eventually. and you might even have to turn your comments off depending.
flippin spam man!
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