JOHN FRENCH
"Now, we won't have to worry about Rockette Morton with any of those girls"
I have mentioned before how great it is to be in touch through Facebook with Magic Band legend and archivist of the group Captain Beefheart drummer and all around muso historian par excellence John 'Drumbo' French and he was reflecting the other day about Beefheart and his following amongst women and lost the thread so he wrote this again . . . . . . . .
Women Don’t “Get” Beefheart…
The other day, someone posted in The Drumbo Club that women don’t “get” Beefheart. He later qualified his statement by saying “most women” and then, I guess, because of getting a few misguided comments about misogyny, deleted his post, after I had spent a lot of time writing a comment. Dang! As someone mentioned, “I save my longer comments in Notepad” which is probably what I should have done, because I do think it’s an interesting topic.
I really don’t believe that the comment was meant to be taken as a slur against women at all. It could have been stated better to begin with, because I’ve actually read an article or two on this subject. It is a fact that there is a much larger ratio of men in any concert I’ve ever played – with Beefheart or later with The Magic Band. Pamela Des Barres comment was that she was a huge fan – but the fact that she was a close friend of The Mascara Snake may have had a lot to do with that.
Look at the membership of The Drumbo Club. 7% Female, 93% Male. That’s less than one in ten! I would wager that all the Beefheart sites have about the same ratio.
Don himself talked about this – especially after the release of “Decals.” He not only wanted to write more accessible music, but he wanted to appeal more to women in his music. Jan, his wife, seemed to be encouraging him in this direction during the creation of, and rehearsal for, “The Spotlight Kid.” “Simpler music” was the theme of that album. My personal opinion is that Don’s big mistake was that he never really asked for, or welcomed, any input from the musicians in the group choosing instead to bully us into the submission of recognising him as the “filter” of what was acceptable and what wasn’t.
Also, he blamed the group – rather than himself – for the lack of female fans – though he was the guy clearly in charge. One day in Felton (1971), he was listening to Creedence Clearwater to try to get an idea of what appealed to women. I walked by his cabin and did a “yeehaw” – which was, apparently, the wrong thing to do. “I’d like to see you play drums like THIS guy!” I countered with, “Okay! It sure would make my life easier. Write simpler music and I will!” This turned into a “must humiliate John” (as opposed to a “let’s humiliate Mark, or Bill”) session which lasted into the late evening. It was NOT a fun day. By the end of “The Spotlight Kid” sessions, I was “the bad guy” and the target of Don’s wrath more and more, and eventually, right after we finished up a short Canadian tour, fired, again. Fortunately, there were no stairs around…
One major lack of appeal -- guitar solos were basically forbidden, or severely limited to, “composed” solos. The demo version of “I’m Glad” (one of Don’s early rare, sexy romantic moments) was interspersed with great guitar work by Rich Hepner, and yet when the actual Safe as Milk recording was about to happen, I watched as Don whistled to Alex a sort of repetitive filler to replace the solo work. On “Woe is a Me Bop,” Bill’s solo is completely dictated by Don, and was the same solo every night when we toured – the same with the slide solo in “Hit a Man.” I mention this as one thing that may have subconsciously turned off more women. Women have historically been oppressed, and they don’t want to experience music that contains that kind of repression.
Someone mentioned in a business meeting in 1970 (I’m talking Grant Gibbs, manager; Al Liefer, accountant; and Mark Green, Attorney – wtf would THEY know?) that the music on “Trout Mask” and “Decals” was “fast and raucous” – and this is why the music didn’t appeal to women.
When I first heard this, I was thinking of Jerry Lee Lewis singing “Great Balls of Fire,” and Little Richard singing “Tutti Fruiti” – yeah, nothing “fast and raucous” about those pieces.
Suddenly, Don wanted to slow everything down to a crawl. To me, the best stuff on “Spotlight” was the stuff where he wasn’t thinking about tempo so much. “Grow Fins,” “Click Clack,” and “Glider” come to mind immediately as my personal favourites, with “Booglerize,” “White Jam,” “Alice in Blunderland” also having escaped the rule of “slow tempo.” My least favourites are “Blabber n’ Smoke,” and title song “The Spotlight Kid,” because of the deliberately slow tempo.
In my thoughts, one of Don’s neglected areas was actually speaking TO women instead of ABOUT women. He did the latter quite often, and the former barely ever, and the lack of exposure to his own vulnerability seemed to me a component in not attracting more women. He was addressing a woman in “Grow Fins” but in an amusingly critical manner and in the sense of traditional women’s roles in the fifties “pie on the wall, dirt on da rug, I come home late, and stumbled and swore – ya won’t even gimme a hug.”
“Click Clack” was talking about “mah baby on that old train” leaving the heartbroken first-person lover. “Glider” mentions a relationship with his woman, and speaks highly of her (pun intended) but doesn’t speak TO the woman, but ABOUT her. The Winged-Eel inspired “Booglerize” is a fantastic bit of narrative about heated sex in a car between two characters Willy and Millie. It’s a great euphemism, however.
The album “Clear Spot” came closer to having a hit in “Too Much Time” (which is, BTW, a title he got from my father) when Ted Templeman attempted to transform Don into Otis Redding -- complete with horns and backup singers. ( Maybe Otis is a bad example). The thing that RUINS the hit-potential is that odd tempo break with solo guitar when suddenly he sings about “beans, opening a can of sardines and dream about someone to cook for me.” Even in the seventies, women just weren’t that interested in a guy who wanted them to “cook for me.” It was like he missed the whole sexual revolution. Plus, there’s NOTHING sexy about beans and sardines. BTW – the original version of “Too Much Time” (written in 1967) was way better.
Later, Don did the “Unconditionally Guaranteed” album, in an attempt to appeal more to the commercial market. He even was groomed to look a bit like one of the guys in “Three Dog Night” (I always suspected that his wife, Jan, had a lot to do with this.) When I listen to the tracks, however, they seem to lack what I think was Don’s biggest appeal: his blues roots. It was trying to be more “Rock” than “Blues.” As a producer, I would have steered him more into the blues feel, as he certainly had the ability to create that kind of “swamp rock” feel that Fogerty had, and a great command of harmonica to boot.
Even going through track by track kind of misses the point. Like I wrote earlier, The Drumbo Club has a 7% Female membership. It has nothing to do with women not being able to “grasp” the music, it’s just that a majority weren’t attracted to it.
John French
"I always like to think around the blatant message of Clear Spot that the ‘Captain’ got women but who actually does?!
I loved the adoption of what we take to be Jan’s message to us mere males (mirror males?) that ‘all we ever do is blabber and smoke’! Much of Don’s writing is sexual metaphor and nothing wrong with that as music for time has tackled the subject from Ravel’s Bolero to Reggae to Rock ‘n’ Roll, Heartbreak hotel to Low Yo-yo Stuff!
Isn’t it all about trying to work this stuff out? Poetry, art, music all about the gender divisions, the muse and desire, lust vs love etc etc. My wife loved going to see him touring the Clear Spot material. She definitely ‘got’ the Captain whether she would have got Don is another question! Great article John! The perennial question! " Me!
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