8. Captain Beefheart & His Magic BandTrout Mask Replica
I had it for a long time and I would approach it every so often. I would think, is my mind ready for this? Can I handle it? And then I’d go, ‘Well, next month. Maybe I’ll try next month.’ Eventually, I got it, I think when I started playing drums because I started seeing how, from what on the outside seems totally chaotic and insane, was very carefully crafted music which was very carefully connected together. And, you know, once you can start to pick those things out in your mind, it becomes very beautiful.
Like I said, I didn’t get too much involved with my son’s musical education. But what I would do is I would put certain records and books in his room, and he said to me years later, ‘Thank you, dad – I was about two or three years ahead of my peers in that respect,’ because he’d already heard these things or read, in the case of authors like Ray Bradbury. Gray had to do Fahrenheit 451 at school for a book and Ray Bradbury was giving a talk at our local library, so I said, ‘Okay, let’s go along and talk to him,’ because he could then tell the teacher, ‘Not only have I read the book, I’ve met the guy who wrote the book.’ So that was good.
So I put Trout Mask Replica in his room. I told him, ‘It’s going take some time, but you’ll love it.’ And the same thing happened for him. But what he used to love to do, was his friends would come round and he would just put it on in the background, you know, just very low. And he said their reaction was always the same. People would say, ‘Oh my God! What is that? Are you trying to kill me or something?’ So you had a lot of fun with that!
[Former Cure multi-instrumentalist] Porl Thompson loved Captain Beefheart and he tried to buy his old house, I think, a few years back, where they had actually recorded that album. Robert liked him too. Out of all of the Captain’s albums, that’s the one I really like. The earlier ones, which are a bit more bluesy, they’re great, but there’s nothing that’s surprising me. To me, Trout Mask Replica is the Pornography of the Captain.
