Trout Mask Replica - Background

Background

Beefheart and The Magic Band had a history of difficult relationships with their recording labels. A&M released the group's first single, a cover of Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy", but dropped the contract after their first two singles failed to produce hits. Then Buddah Records released the band's (and the label's) first album, 1967's Safe as Milk. Soon afterward Buddah began specializing in "bubblegum pop", a style in which Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band clearly had no place, and the group again found themselves without a record label. In late 1967 and the spring of 1968 the group had several sets of recording sessions for what eventually became the Strictly Personal and Mirror Man albums, but due to contractual uncertainties they did not know if the material would ever be released. Around this time Van Vliet's high school friend Frank Zappa started his own pair of record labels, Bizarre and Straight, and offered Van Vliet, by then better known as Captain Beefheart, a name Zappa had given him, the opportunity to record an album with complete artistic freedom. The result was Trout Mask Replica.

The group rehearsed Van Vliet's difficult compositions for eight months, living communally in a small rented house in the Woodland Hills suburb of Los Angeles. Van Vliet implemented his vision by asserting complete artistic and emotional domination of his musicians. At various times one or another of the group members was put "in the barrel", with Van Vliet berating him continually, sometimes for days, until the musician collapsed in tears or in total submission to Van Vliet. According to John French and Bill Harkleroad these sessions often included physical violence. French described the situation as "cultlike" and a visiting friend said "the environment in that house was positively Manson-esque." Their material circumstances also were dire. With no income other than welfare and contributions from relatives, the group survived on a bare subsistence diet. French recounted living on no more than a small cup of soybeans a day for a month and at one point band members were arrested for shoplifting food (with Zappa bailing them out). A visitor described their appearance as "cadaverous" and said that "they all looked in poor health". Band members were restricted from leaving the house and practiced for 14 or more hours a day. Vliet once told drummer John French he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and thus he would see nonexistent conspiracies that explained this behaviour.