Don Van Vliet talking in November 1977 about Samuel J. Hoffman (pictured) who played theremin on 2 tracks (Electricity and Autumn's Child) from the Safe As Milk album, recorded in early 1967:
Do you write your music down?
"I don't write it down. Well, i do write it down sometimes, but the way i write it most people can't read it. Like paintings. I actually do, like in 'Electricity' (from 'Safe As Milk'): the theremin fellow that played that was about 65, had a little pencil thin moustache, conservative suit, black, very, ummm...no, what is it? Bela Lugosi - no Boris - ummm, Bela Lugosi: 'tonight we fly' (waving a pointed finger toward the sky). No, he looked like that, played a theremin and was an apprentice of Dr. Theremin and i wrote it on a blackboard and he played it note for note. I mean, i wrote it advanced music - and he played it note for note. I am talking about shapes: he did it note for note, and he didn't miss what i thought. I mean, he was fantastic."
Dr Hoffman (no no not that one!) played the Theremin parts on both Electricity and Autumn's Child. Bob Krasnow, one of the three (!) producers of Safe as Milk discussed this with Don afterward. "It's too weird!" Bob stated. "Let's erase it and I'll hire some 'opera broad' to sing the parts!" I thought it was brilliant, and apparently Bob was unaware of the fact that the Beach Boys had used the instrument the year before on the song, "Good Vibrations." Hoffman rolled this very same theramin into the the studio covered with a brown cloth with light-brown piping and opening with a zipper in the back. I recall it well, because the same cloth and style of case was used for snare drum cases when I was a kid. The two "cabinet doors" visible in the front was where the two antennae were housed on little snap-on clamps. They were threaded, I seem to recall, and he screwed them into position. The vertical rod was for pitch, and the horizontal was for volume. It had a speaker in the front and he wore old, OLD headphones similar to the ones my brother used to use for a crystal radio. The "morse code" -- sounding effect near the end was the result of him actually touching the vertical rod. The low sounds were made with his hand about three feet away and then brought in quickly. Most of the playing was done with hands in space, not touching anything, which is what made it such an eerie magic-trick like performance. Hoffman was responsible for several Sci-Fi soundtracks and also "Spellbound." Ironically, he died of a heart attack in December of the same year -- 1967. We were all, pardon the pun, "spellbound" by this anachronistic performance. He looked just like this in 1967 and was such an open-minded pro. I think this piece was MADE for him!
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