Terry Bozio on Beefheart | Louder Sound

 

Terry Bozzio, the award winning drummer, talks about his experience of being around Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart in the mid 1970s when he was working with Frank Zappa during the Bongo Fury album and beyond.

'The big revelation (about Captain Beefheart) came when we were in Austin, Texas recording Bongo Fury. Frank asked me to come over to his room. He’d sent someone out to buy a portable record player and he put on Trout Mask Replica. I listened to this stuff and it was just out. I mean completely random noises happening that was unbelievably… out there. It didn’t seem organised in any way. Frank said, “You know they played this exactly the same way every time.” And then I went, “Oh my fucking god!” [Laughs] and then I began to realise that on a whole other level, Beefheart was just as deep as Frank, y’know? I think Frank told Don how shocked I was at his music – I’d never heard it and didn’t know anything about it – and Don and I became more friendly. I got into the drawing thing and he encouraged me and that was really sweet. He’d say, “I really like the freedom of what you’ve got going on here”, and it helped me move into more abstract areas.'

He’s still regarded as something of an enigmatic figure, isn’t he?

'As a person, you need a thesaurus of mythological and symbolic and maybe even jazz bebop terminology to even understand what he was saying. He spoke in symbols. And they were very idiosyncratic symbols. It was really a journey and adventure to be around the guy. One time, in my second year with Frank, Beefheart had finished his stint and was forming his own thing. Frank rented a suite at the Beverly Hilton hotel where there was a record company convention going on. He was trying to sell and do his deals. We got into the elevator. There was Patrick O’Hearn, who’s got an amazing sense of humour; myself; Frank, who is just on another level of being able to say something that’s really funny; Gail, his wife, who’s really smart and capable; and there’s Beefheart. We’re in this elevator and out comes Herb Alpert’s muzak version of A Taste Of Honey. The space in there was electric, everybody’s eyes were darting around, wondering who was going to say something first, whose gonna rip this music. Beefheart jumps in and says, “Y’know there’s only one kind of thing you can do with this music.” He snaps his fingers and shouts, “Dig it!” [Laughs].'

Louder Sound article here . . . .