1973 Captain Beefheart gig at Rainbow – Finsbury Park

Posted on by Opher

1973 Captain Beefheart gig at Rainbow – Finsbury Park

Right up there with the greatest gigs I’ve ever been fortunate enough to be part of! Up there with Jimi Hendrix, Son House, Cream, Roy Harper, Led Zep and Pink Floyd. Excitement was palpable!

Quite often when your expectations are high the gig doesn’t live up to expectations. Not in this case. They blew me away.

Having seen the original band at Middle Earth in 1968, which still rates as one of the most exhilarating gigs ever, I went to the Rainbow with heart in mouth.

The Rainbow was just around the corner from where I was living so I strolled around early. The fact that it was seated was a bit of a turn off but we were near the front.

Rockette came out clutching his bass with a long coiled lead. He was wearing what looked like a space helmet. A great cheer went up! He introduced himself – ‘Hello. I’m Rockette Morton’ another great cheer. He then mumbled something about starting with a toast that went straight over my head at the time. I asked Rockette about this on the 2011 tour. He explained that it wasn’t a space helmet at all; it was a big American toaster that he’d pulled open and wore as a hat. That made the toast comment more understandable. Rockette laughingly told me that the band had flown in all wearing their stage garb (probably, given the politics of Don’s rigid leadership, the only clothes they had) and Rockette had worn the toaster helmet as they trooped past a bemused customs man.

Someone yelled out ‘What do you run on Rockette Morton’ and he proceeded to show us. Using his steely fingers to set up the incredible intricate rhythms of the instrumental that started all those 1973 gigs a very fit and wiry Rockette proceeded to pogo around the stage madly like the stage was molten lava. Those laser beans sure had energy!

The rest of the band sloped out behind him and plugged in. I can still picture the tall lanky figure of Zoot Horn Rollo, with long fair hair flowing over his skinny face and voluminous shirt, plugging in his guitar and turning the volume up. Alex Snouffer plugged in and Ed Marimba took his place behind the drums. As the crowd clapped and roared their appreciation of Rockette’s amazing efforts, the band roared in with the instrumental Suction Prints. The guitars weaved their magic as the bass and drums set up a thunderous beat. It plunged and roared through changes of rhythm and tempo as the guitars duelled. Fabulous! I knew we were in for a storming night!

Still no sign of the Captain but towards the end of Suction Prints some harmonica came in.

When the number finished there was a pause. The crowd roared its approval. Atmosphere electric. I was already zooming!

The band started up again with a familiar intro. It was loud! The sound was pounding through my body. The whole audience were melded into a single bouncing body riding those incredible vibrations. Then, impossibly, the Captain’s powerful vocal erupted over the top sending my eardrums pulsating. So loud yet clear. Coming in like a jet plane. It’s funny how your mind plays tricks with you. I would have put my house on that first song being Electricity. It wasn’t until Steve Froy gave me a bootleg of the concert many decades later that I registered that it was in fact Mirrorman.

At the time Don was standing invisibly in the wings as the band projected the force and that astounding voice bellowed over the top Miiiiirrrrrrrroooooooorrrrrrrrrr  MMMiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrooooorrrrrrr!!

Then he strode out as the band launched in and he picked up the vocal. Everything impossibly went to a different level. The excitement surged. Audience and band melded, riding on waves of electricity.

After that it was one great surging blend of intricate polyrhythms, changing tempos, wailing harp, searing, stinging guitar and a driving rhythm section with Don’s voice and poetry roaring over the top. The barrage of sound was physical, the bombardment sending endorphins into overdrive. The visceral thump sending all the cells in my body throbbing in time to the driving beat. This was how rock music should be experienced – the perfect combination of mind and body – fused into one pulsing entity, carried away on a wall of sound, the poetry and dynamics of that voice blending with the complex rhythms of that primitive powerhouse. This was it!

They just kept coming- Low Yo Yo Stuff, Nowadays a Woman, Crazy Little Thing, Sugar and Spikes, Peon, Grow Fins, Abba Zabba, Electricity, Veteran’s Day Poppy, King Bee, Big Eyed Bees From Venus, Golden Birdies. The barrage was relentless! Everything just perfect, powerful, moving. The words resonating; the music brought to life by the power of performance. The whole audience caught up in the fervour of the moment.

You had to be there! The bootlegs are a weak insipid substitute compared to this. In that moment the energy was a tumbling tsunami.

This was it! This was it! Pure joy! I dissolved into the magic of the Magic Band. Nothing surpassed that. Nothing.

Great 5* Reviews for Captain Beefheart On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Thanks Guys! Really Appreciate it!

Posted on by Opher

Great 5* Reviews for Captain Beefheart On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Thanks Guys! Really Appreciate it!


Barry Snaith

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb companion guide for every Beefheart nerd

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 September 2022

Verified Purchase

Firstly, reader, I’ll tell you what this book is like: You know when you go into an art gallery or museum and have an accompanying guide book explaining a little about the art or artefacts? Well, this is very much like that.
A companion piece for every track.
The author has lovingly reviewed and described every song and it is also full of little facts and interesting information.
If, like me, you are a Beefheart and The Magic Band aficionado (and I’m guessing that you are) then you’ll appreciate this book.
We’ve all read John French’s definitive horse’s-mouth and meticulous account, Bill Harkleroad’s equally valid (but not so obsessively detailed) story and we’ve also read Mike Barnes’s fantastic and accurate outsider view. There are a couple of other tomes too but those three are the glorious triumvirate of Beefheartian history.
This book isn’t trying to be that.
What it does is makes you revisit the albums. Not with a different perspective – we all have our own, as does this, but with another incentive; to listen to the most original, influential, unique music in rock history.
It’s a book for Beefheart lovers, nerds and obsessives.
If you don’t agree with some of the author’s viewpoints on the music it really doesn’t matter.
The purpose of the book is as a companion to this vast and broad decade of sheer creativity, originality and music-as-art from a genius/tyrant/eccentric and the supremely dedicated and unique musicians who helped to realise the vision, even taking a backseat to his ego for the sake of the art.
I love it and so will you.


Mr. Phil Secretan

5.0 out of 5 stars Every track of every album reviewed.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 September 2022

Verified Purchase

This is another book in the fabulous On Track series. Opher Goodwin has a forensic knowledge of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Beefheart was active in the years 1964 to 1982 but his influence is still felt 40 years later. Mr Goodwin knows his subject inside out and each track from each album is described in great detail. The author goes into the background to the recordings and lists the musicians on each album. I can thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who!s interested in music of the 60s and 70s.

The Release Date Sept 30th in the USA

The book is available through Burning Shed (The publisher’s own distribution site) Captain Beefheart On Track (burningshed.com)

Or through Amazon:

Captain Beefheart On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789522358: Books

I do have a batch of copies that are available signed (including post and packaging) for: £17 – UK     £20 – Europe   £23 – USA

If you are interested please message or email me with your address. Payment through paypal – opher.goodwin@gmail.com

Captain Beefheart – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius.

Posted on by Opher

IMG_1631I’ve see most of the world’s greatest bands from Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones to Stiff Little Fingers and Ian Dury & the Blockheads but right up there with Jimi for excitement and brilliance is Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.

Don Van Vliet came out of the desert with his acid drenched blues poetry in 1967. I saw them play at Middle Earth and it blew me away. I’d never heard anything like it. The beat was incredible, complex and heavy. The guitars weaved in and out of each other, swapping riffs, spikey and jagged and that voice growled and boomed over the top of it all with such range and intensity. Then we get to the lyrics. You can talk of poetry but there is nobody who plays with words and sounds like Don Van Vliet.

At first hearing the sound is so different to anything you’ve ever heard that it appears discordant. That soon passes when you get into it. The power drives you forward and what appears at first to be clashing guitars rapidly clarifies into complex mesmerising brilliance. There is nothing subtle of simple about it and that is what makes it so interesting. I never grow tired of listening to the music or lyrics because the complexity yields more and more pleasure and insight. This is the classical music of Rock. This is when it all came of age. There is an emotional and intellectual depth to it.

I think one of the problems people sometimes have with Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band is that it is so opaque at first that it is difficult to find a way in. I was fortunate because that first album was less complex and so more accessible and I also got to see them perform live. When you experience the band in a live situation in a small club you cannot help getting sucked into their spell. It is so pulsatingly powerful that it overwhelms you. It is loud, aggressive, raw and yet sophisticated at the same time.

I’d bombarded my youngest son with Beefheart most of his life and he hated it. Then I persuaded him to go to a Magic Band concert and he was as blown away as me. He came out saying that it was the best thing he’d ever heard. It is. It was as exciting as Hendrix!

One of my best concerts ever was seeing Beefheart at the Rainbow around 1973 with Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Drumbo and Alex St Clare. The band was steamin’.

There were lots of stories surrounding Don Van Vliet and the band. It’s all part of the mythology. He supposedly took on a bunch of people who couldn’t play instruments and taught them from scratch. That wasn’t true. He didn’t teach them to play but he certainly taught them to play differently to anyone else. He could neither read or play music and hummed and sang his stuff so that Drumbo (John French) could interpret it and teach it to the band. That is as maybe. You might think that John French was the force behind it all – and there’s no denying the man played a major part – if it wasn’t for the fact that (with the exception of the mediocre Tragic Band of 1974) he took on a series of musicians and got them all to perform in the same extraordinary manner. Don was a genius on many fronts. I even love his saxophone playing which wails and screeches perfectly with the music. He might be an untutored musician but he had an ear for perfection.

While the band did not achieve the commercial recognition it should have done it did gain a huge reputation and has had an influence well beyond their financial success. Many great artists cite Don as a major influence.

Don became ill and stopped producing music in 1981. That was a tragedy. But he left us with a string of outstanding albums, incredible poetry and stupendous sounds. He went on to produce equally impressive art. Fortunately for us John French went and put the Magic Band together with Rockette Morton, Denny Walley and Eric Klerks and it is brilliant. It keeps the music alive.

Check out more at the Radar Station. Which has lots and is run by a good friend of mine!!

http://www.beefheart.com/category/music-info/live-performances/shows/

Or check out my books on Rock. You’ll love ’em! :