Voot Zombo - Beefheart Tale "I Wanna Find a Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have to Go” Fast & Bulbous: The Cap'n Beefheart Society'

 This is worth a read for Beefeart fans . . . . 

"Shared this 7 years ago but worth sharing once again - a mad story! 

Don Van Vliet makes reference to this tale in the lyrics to "I Wanna Find a Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have to Go," from the album Lick My Decals Off, Baby.“ 

The Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band Appreciation Society page said:

This fascinating tale, just posted by Voot Zombo on the 'Fast & Bulbous: The Cap'n Beefheart Society' facebook group page concerning Don Van Vliet and his then good friend and fellow musician Gary Marker, is a wonderful read.  

Voot Zombo: 'This is a long read but worth your time. . .

Gary "Magic" Marker (pictured in the photo on the left, with Don Van Vliet on the right) passed away in December of 2015.

Gary was a bass player and recording engineer who was involved with Capt. Beefheart in his early recording days and was his friend.

This is an interesting tale “Magic” Marker tells about an incident that took place back in the 1960s.'

Gary Marker:

'Back in the late 60s Don’s appetite for LSD had been voracious, although it brought on panic attacks, which often resulted in him being taken to hospital. And on one particular occasion this was due to a chance encounter with a bag of yams.

These attacks were dubbed, ‘The Don Patrol’ by guitarist by Alex St

Clair, a play on words of the old war flick The Dawn Patrol, because,

In Marker’s words, “whenever Don decided to have some kind of freak-out or mental break, it was always around dawn, when most people were trying to get some sleep”.

He was offered prescription tranquillizers to calm him down, but

inevitably he refused to take them, fearing they would somehow blunt his creative drive.

Marker takes up the story: “I’d say, ‘You won’t take a prescription

drug that’ll make you feel better and might keep you from having your fake heart attacks, but you’ll take any sort of dirt acid that someone will hand you on the street – don’t you see a contradiction here?’ And he’d go off on some rant, a diversionary tactic to get you off of what was going on.”

Don came to spend a couple of days with me at my place in Venice, California. As usual, he popped some street acid someone gave him, with absolutely no knowledge about its quality or quantity. He got buzzed and for some odd reason I recall we watched an awful, unintentionally hilarious, late night film on TV called Legs Diamond – or something like that – starring the now mostly forgotten actor Ray Danton.

Anyway, Don started coming down off his peak, but was still

hallucinating somewhat and was feeling a tad paranoid. He wanted

something to drink. I reminded him he left his orange juice and

various alcoholic drinks in the fridge – he seemed to prefer even

whiskey well below room temperature. So he wandered into the kitchen, but didn’t turn on the light because he claimed acid made it possible for him to see in the dark – like a cat.

I could hear him opening cupboard doors, looking for a drinking

glass. As I was a bit buzzed on weed myself, it was too much of an

effort to tell him which cupboard the glasses were in. A couple of

months earlier I went to a friend’s big pot luck Thanksgiving Day bash and my task was to make a big, traditional baked yam/sweet potato casserole dish, and a couple of sweet potato pies.

So, for some reason I bought a huge 15 pound bag of yams - but of course couldn’t possibly prepare all of them, so when I finished, I

put the remaining potatoes, in their net bag, up in the cupboard. I

was seldom home then and forgot about the unused potatoes.

Don found them when he opened the overhead cupboard they

were in, while looking for a drinking glass. Any kind of tuber of the

potato family, left in the dark for a couple of months, will grow long

tendrils whilst seeking root space and/or sunlight. And that’s what

almost ten remaining pounds of yams did: grew lots and lots of two to three-foot long tendrils.

When Don opened the cupboard door in the dark, hundreds of long, thin white tendrils cascaded down on him. He let out a shriek like James Brown’s opening volley on ‘I Feel Good’, but about an octave higher.

Seconds later, he bolted out through the kitchen door, ashen, eyes

the size of boiled eggs, still screaming and waving his arms

frantically. Bits and pieces of severed yam tendrils were flying

everywhere and hanging from his hair. A huge cluster had plastered

itself to the front of his shirt, another hung from his pocket. He

started flashing that he’d been attacked by aliens hiding in my

kitchen cabinet.

It took me two hours to get him calm enough to understand what had happened. But by then he was in a full blown ‘heart attack’ mode, one of his frequent panic attacks. Pulse and respiration were way, way up.

This precipitated another episode in the ‘Don Patrol’ chronicles and

he had to be transported to the UCLA medical center emergency room at 4:30 AM, where they were becoming well acquainted with him.

"Back in town again, Mr. Vliet?" asked the intern/resident who had

already dealt with Don on previous occasions. "What is it this time?

Another heart attack, or were you attacked by space aliens?"

"How the hell did he know?" Don asked me, absolutely stunned. "Is he psychic?" I thought I’d gotten him to understand about the potatoes, even showed him a couple, but he was slipping back into some acid-induced haze and fantasy world. Don eventually calmed down - or got as calm as he ever got - and drove himself back home to the desert the next afternoon.

Several times after that, when the topic came up, he asked me

not to tell anyone that he’d been freaked out by a bag of yams.

Because, he explained, "It’s kind of embarrassing. You know what I

mean?”'

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - I Wanna Find A Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe [Till I Have To Go]

Album:  Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970)