.................................the blog nobody reads: The Last Beefheart Song? | Morris Tepper ‘Ricochet Man’ (Head Off 2004) - More information from around the Interweb!

Sunday, July 09, 2023

The Last Beefheart Song? | Morris Tepper ‘Ricochet Man’ (Head Off 2004) - More information from around the Interweb!

This is the story behind Ricochet Man, the final track to feature a co-writing credit for Don Van Vliet. It was released in 2004 on former Captain Beefheart guitarist Moris Tepper's album Head Off. Here is an extract from a 2004 interview with Moris Tepper for Now Toronto’s 'Music Feature' in which he explains the backround to the track and how Don Van Vliet came to write the lyrics for it. -

'No doubt part of the interest in Tepper’s Head Off will be the track Ricochet Man, co-written with the reclusive Captain himself, Don Van Vliet, who hasn't released any new music in 25 years. Van Vliet’s characteristically oblique lyrics were evidentally inspired by events surrounding the troubled life of Arthur Lee, formerly of Love.'

Moris Tepper: "Don and I talk on the phone every week, so as I was recording the new album he was in on it, listening to new tracks as they were finished. I had a song where I wasn't really happy with the lyrics I'd written, but he loved the backing track.

While we were talking one day, I mentioned that I'd run into Arthur Lee at a studio. When Don asked how he was, I told him how Arthur had been in jail for three years for firing a gun in his apartment while no one else was around. Right then he started coming up with what became Ricochet Man. But that’s not unusual. Each time I talk to him he’s singing something or reciting a new poem."

'It sounds like an album waiting to happen, but Tepper doesn't seem overly eager to push ahead with a full-on Captain collabo concept. That’s understandable considering Tepper is only now beginning to make a name for himself.'

Moris: "I guess there’s a chance of doing a collaborative album," allows Tepper as if the idea had never occurred to him. "We've done enough stuff together over the past 10 years that we could easily fill up two or even three records.

Right now I'm pretty involved with what I'm doing, and likewise with him, so it isn't something we're working toward. But should we decide to do something, the material is definitely there."