5. Captain Beefheart & His Magic BandThe Mirror Man Sessions
I first found him in about 1968 when I was hanging around with the art students and getting stoned in drug dealer’s flats. It wasn’t a destitute situation, everyone was tripping and stoned. When we watched Withnail & I and saw Danny the dealer I thought ‘I knew someone like that!’ There was no desperation, even if you had no money, you felt free to just be yourself. It was the craziness of the time that I recognise in this, he was the epitome of it. The connection for me was that he’s an artist coming in to express music, he ignored the rules but still kept the love of a certain aspect of the music that he wanted to explore, the blues, harmonica, beautiful guitar and the voice, which is so guttural, you just go straight in there with him. I liked how the lyrics didn’t make sense – I wasn’t into love songs back then, life isn’t like that, life isn’t a love story and a dream every day. There’s all these other things going on.
