John "Drumbo" French - Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic

He claims he also wrote Trust Us, Safe as Milk, Kandy Korn, Owed t'Alex, and Gimme Dat Harp Boy

http://www.beefheart.com/i-was-a-scribe-for-captain-beefheart-herb-bermann-speaks-part-1/
http://www.beefheart.com/herb-bermann-speaks-part-2/

best revive ever

Have made a little more progress. We're in the sunny uplands (comparatively) now and the band have just completed the recording of "Strictly Personal" and, apart from paragraphs of moaning about drum-related problems that not even another drummer would find interesting, Drumbo is being a mite upbeat about things, even about Beefheart himself. He actually seems to have enjoyed playing in London, and he hasn't enjoyed much of anything so far, it's all downhill from here.

I watched this doc on Amazon Prime recently about Frank Zappa's record labels. It featured some very in depth discussion with John French about Beefheart's early albums and covers all the other artists in a lot of detail as well.

You can also watch it in 5 minute chunks on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8flSFeCsFvL4TVFypWCptZ6mASDufeI2

Over halfway thru this now. (The story of the writing and recording of) Trout Mask Replica is a horror story and Spotlight Kid isn't much better (esp. not for Bill Harkleroad). Despite all that, ca. 1975 (which is where I've got to) John and Don are palling around again, swapping ancedotes about the mad old bad old days (and when I say mad and bad, believe me I mean mad and bad), like a pair of old geezers sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons (tho Beefheart would probably be feeding them LSD, if the portrait painted of him throughout this book is anything to go by). Anyway, something I didn't know is that after the Magic Band had split from Beefheart and were trying to make it on their own (by getting John French to sing "Dancing in the Streets"... no, seriously), Beefheart and Mrs. Beefheart (the radiant Jan, who Drumbo almost drools over whenever she's mentioned) were wont to come along to their gigs and they even asked the Not Good Captain up on stage to sing with them: not sure if that happened more than once but when it did it happened behind Alex Snouffer's back/ over dead body etc.

Millard?

Mallard?

Dear touchpad spelling corrector, why is "Mallard" considered an erroneous spelling for "Millard" ?

No, this was before Mallard, I assume they were still billing themselves as the Magic Band. Personnel was Harkleroad, Snouffer, Mark Boston with French on drums and vocals - pretty damn impressive line-up! This is about the time of, or maybe slightly before, the Tragic Band but, contrary to what I'd read before and as I implied in my previous post, there doesn't seem to have been that much animosity from the Magic Band towards Beefheart and vice versa. Then the lawyers got involved.

HI DERE

One of these days need to go see Gary Lucas. He is doing a free show next Wednesday. http://www.garylucas.com/

Never finished this btw, gave up ca.1976 when French started listing the various fast food restaurants he had eaten in with Don and (short-lived) Magic Band member, Greg Davidson. However I have since seen the French fronted Magic Band playing... underneath Chelsea FC's football pitch.

I saw Gary Lucas once. I thought it was bad but I am a disgusting savage probably.

Not dead, folks. Not dead.

One of the most ill-edited and organized books in history. I guess no reputable publisher would take it on? Or did French even try to go that route? A terse account of how that music actually got made would be something of interest. You have to wonder how much perspective French has on life, if he actually thought a book of that length would be the way to tell the story. Ironic that French says he edited Beefheart, in a sense, that he couldn't see the value in a hard-headed edit and trim of his book.