Is this Captain Beefheart’s most chaotic concert?
The mid-1970s were not a good time for Captain Beefheart. For some time, Don Vliet had faced accusations of “mellowing out”, a suggestion that wasn’t helped by the failure of two albums aimed squarely at a mainstream audience. Following the cancellation of his 1974 UK tour, Vliet could no longer keep the good ship Beefheart afloat and embraced a period of self-imposed exile. In 1975, however, he resurfaced and joined his old comrades Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention on a new tour, which included a particularly memorable show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
Following the tragedy that was 1974’s Bluejeans & Moonbeams, most people expected Don Vliet’s exile to be permanent. Not only had he failed to tap into America’s soft-rock listenership, but he’d also alienated his original fanbase, leaving him thoroughly sold out but with none of the money to soften the impact. It was only after a chance meeting with a college student called Jeff Moris Tepper that Vliet stepped back into the music industry. There were, of course, numerous technicalities that made this rather difficult. While Vliet was keen to start playing music again, he had no Magic Band and was still under contract to Mercury and Virgin. Somewhere along the way, he’d also managed to sign away his power of attorney while drunk on cognac. Let’s not forget that Vliet had a habit of signing any contract that was put under his nose.
Vliet’s temporary solution was deceptively simple: he called his friend Frank Zappa, who, realising that the only way of helping his friend out of this tight spot was to give him gainful employment, allowed him to join The Mothers of Invention on tour. The pair’s relationship was, by this point, incredibly complex, with the invitation serving as something of a balm. After completing his subsequent tour for Bongo Fury, Beefheart took a few of the Mothers and reformed his Magic Band, with the outfit reforming old Captain Beefheart classics in support of Zappa.
Sadly, the outing was not always successful. Take the band’s December 27th gig, for example, which saw Vliet engage in a heated exchange with an incredibly hostile crowd. Many years later, Magic Band member Denny Waley recounted the Winterland Ballroom show: “That [gig] was memorable to me because that was the one where the audience started booing and throwing things at us, after Don had given the finger to somebody. Somebody had given the finger to him. Frank was the headliner. We had opened for him. Frank used to give the finger a lot—to the audience—it was a way of saying ‘Hi!’ To Don, it was a way of saying, ‘Fuck You!’ So, he got pissed off and got right in the guy’s face with it, and the next thing you know a lot of people were angry, and they started booing and throwing shit.”
Magic Band musical director John French, on the other hand, had a slightly different take on the events of that night: “Don ‘gave the finger’ to the guy in an insulting way, got right in his face and started hurtling insults to the audience. The objective of this behaviour seemed to be to intentionally provoke the audience. People were throwing objects at the stage. I was upset with Don for not just ignoring the guy and performing. Don eventually left the stage. We played “Alice in Blunderland” and appeased the crowd a bit, but as soon as Don came back up, they became hostile again.”
You can hear a first-generation cassette recording of the band’s Winterland Ballroom performance – recorded by none other than The Simpsons creator Matt Groening – below.
