Peter Hook: “Trout Mask wasn’t a work of untutored genius, it was untutored crap”
A lot of what makes an album a ‘classic record’ is simple perception. Great albums are released every day, but it is unleashing something that captures the hearts and minds of the population, snatches the buzz of the zeitgeist, and blusters in something fresh that decides whether it transcends the ‘good new music’ tag and becomes something larger. Joy Division bassist Peter Hook knows that all too well.
With the seminal Unknown Pleasures, Hook’s plucky little band produced something so iconic that you can still hear the refrains of its haunted sound in much of what has followed. In fact, the late DJ John Peel argued that he heard more of that album in all the tapes that subsequently got sent to his desk than any other in music history.
Its stormy and brutalist tones sounded as though Fydor Dostoyevsky was being summoned by séance to the industrial edges of 1970s Manchester, and the greatest beauty of all is that this divination was falling into place without too much thought and almost no pretence. By and large, the band were simply working-class punks playfully pranking their touring partners, The Buzzcocks, by unleashing mice into their van. They were not mopy poets, darting around in the mist, seeing who could snap up the shittest trench coat.
Lesser informed folks might, therefore, put the enigmatic magic that they captured on their albums down to ‘ironic’ luck. But that’s not the case at all—it never is when it comes to classic records. The band might not have lived and breathed the macabre mysticism that they put forth so masterfully, but it did linger somewhere in their ranks, so when they tapped into it, it was as though they were indulging in an alternative universe within themselves.
However, there are other records that are so throughout in advance, so studiously set up to be ‘iconic’ in one way or another that you can’t help but feel the ‘originality’ is actually an orchestrated attempt at something that could more realistically be called ‘a selling point’. Hook certainly thought that was the case with the manic Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart.
“Steve Morris, New Order’s drummer, was a great fan of his, but Beefheart was one of those things I found unlistenably boring. I desperately wanted to like it because Steve loved it so much, but I had to admit defeat. Ian Curtis found it easier to convert us to the Doors, put it that way,” the bassist comically quipped regarding what many would call a love-it-or-hate-it masterpiece, much the same can be said for the oft-maligned Doors—a band whose leather pants have surely put more people off than their music.
Captain Beefheart, on the other hand, is genuinely musically divisive. Trout Mask Replica is as tricky a first listen as you’re ever likely to find. In fact, I’d argue it may well have faded into obscurity entirely if it wasn’t for the allure of its backstory.
With the keys to creative oblivion tucked firmly away in the back pocket of his jeans and a lucrative record deal handed down from his old friend Frank Zappa, the Captain himself, Don Van Vliet and his merry band of musical brethren absconded to a small, rented house in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.
Therein, a commune was formed, and at the heart of it was the Captain’s insane whims. At times, he seemed to have lost sight of the album entirely—sending his troops out to steal lentils as money ran dry. For eight months, the band remained in this stuffy abode, and everything seemed to unravel. After years of being passed around labels like the cornetto of a joint, he was determined to craft an album that would make Zappa proud, although it’s hard to see how that led to The Barrel—a wooden drum that any member who made a mistake would be forced to enter, only for Vliet to strike it with a stick.
These stories are now well known, and the album’s lore proceeds it, perhaps imbuing it with the vital ingredient for a classic album more so than the music: perception. At least, that’s what Hook figured. “Trout Mask wasn’t a work of untutored genius, it was untutored crap,” he told the Guardian. Why the likes of Tom Waits might hail it as “the roughest diamond in the mine”, Hook figured it was a lump of coal polished up after the fact thanks to the cool points scored by its quirky backstory.
“When you’re beginning as a musician, people try to educate you with music like this, but I never understood the allure of Captain Beefheart. I certainly didn’t last all four sides. There are very few records I gave up on, apart from Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Trout Mask Replica. It sounded like somebody was taking the piss. But then, I’ve never been a great fan of jazz, and this erred on the selfish side of jazz,” he said, indicting the record for the dreaded sin: self-indulgence.
Hook comically concluded: “It sounds like you feel when you’ve taken the wrong drugs, like going to your mate’s dope party on speed. I’d listen to it with my head in my hands. Trout Mask was highly regarded by post-punk bands because of its idiosyncratic approach to rhythm and song construction – but those bands were full of shit, weren’t they?”
