Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2009 2:38 am
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Location: Centerville, Norway
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Dark Clothes wrote: In 1996, Gary Lucas talked to Seconds Magazine about Bat Chain Puller, Don and Frank: SECONDS: He and Frank Zappa had a pretty famous feud...
LUCAS: I have a story about that. When we came to do "Ice Cream For Crow," the last Beefheart record, Don wanted to use some tracks that had been produced by Frank and recorded a couple of years earlier for a record that never came out called "Bat Chain Puller," the forerunner of "Shiny Beast." So when Don was doing "Ice Cream For Crow" for Virgin, the idea was, "Why don't we get some of these tracks back and then we can save money on this record? They're great tracks and Frank probably won't want them." I was acting as his manager at this point—as well as his guitar player—which was a role I never relished [being the manager, that is]. So we tried to get these tracks and I called up Frank's manager and he said, "I'll talk to Frank." He then called back and said, "Frank says 'okay.'" As the project approached, I would call the manager back to ask if he would send us the tapes and he stopped taking my calls. Don was really mad, "Shit, Frank's jerking us around." So I said, "Why don't we just find him? What does he want them for?" This is like the summer of 1982 and we called and we still couldn't get Frank on the phone. Then we talked to his wife and found out he was rehearsing on a soundstage that Zoetrope—Francis Ford Coppola's studio—was renting out to Rock groups. So we said, "Let's go visit Frank." Don and I drove down to this studio and there is Frank with his fifteen-piece band about to leave the next day on a tour of Europe. In the audience watching the rehearsal are all of these ex-Mothers and ex-Beefheart musicians all hoping that Frank would give them the nod and say "I want to work with you again." It was really sad. I saw Dweezil Zappa there hanging out. From the corner of his eye, Frank saw Don and he kind of whirled around to confront him. Don said, "Frank, you know what we want, don't you?" in an authoritative voice. Frank said in a hostile voice, "No Don, what do you want?" I was like, "Oh man...I thought these guys were childhood friends." Don just said, "Gary?" and I went into my schpiel, which was, "Frank, we've been trying to get ahold of your manager because he promised we could get these tracks that you have the rights to for our record we're doing for Virgin." He said, "That's right. I heard about that...I changed my mind. Unless you buy all the masters back from me, it's not worth it for me to split up the set. It won't be worth that much out there in Beefheart-land." I was thinking, "What a disrespectful thing to say, 'Beefheart-land'. He looks at it like a freak show." I said, "Look, you promised us those tracks. We've got a fifteen-minute hole on this record that was predicated on getting these tracks to fill the time and now you're telling us we can't have the tracks. You really put us in a bad spot." Frank wouldn't look me in the eye. He kept studying the ground. He was embarrassed because he fucked us. Then he said, "How many minutes do you need?" and I said fifteen and he said, "Well, I've got a track called 'Do You Want A Pepsi?' Don sings on it but it's my tune." I said, "Do you really think we want to put a Frank Zappa tune on a Captain Beefheart album?" Don, meanwhile, is chanting the lyrics to "There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evening Stage," which is a song about, among other things, show business. He just started chanting it, like "I'm oblivious to this bullshit." We walked away and it was like, "Great to see ya..." I got out in the car and I was really crestfallen. I said, "Don, this is terrible." He was like, "Gary, that was great. I'm really proud of you. That's the best thing any manager ever did for me. The way you talked to him, and he was so embarrassed he couldn't look you in the eye...thanks a lot." What are we going to do?" He said," Don't worry." That night, we went back to the studio for a rehearsal. He took a hit of pot, which is something I didn't see him do too much, and he just came up with all the music for the last track on the record, which was called "Skeleton Makes Good." It was beautiful. He came up with the goods under pressure. That story was later recounted by Frank in a book called "The Real Frank Zappa." He has a thing in there like, "The last time I saw Don, he came to a rehearsal." It doesn't mention what went down at all. It was kind of patronizing. I love Frank though I never knew him that well. I met him a couple of times with Don and both times I thought he was not very nice. His whole credo was "I don't have any friends, you can't have any friends in the music business"—he really believed that. Don had a much bigger heart.http://www.garylucas.com/www/rvw/seconds.html
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We make a special art in an environment hostile to dreamers. Frank Zappa, 1971
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They should do pre order of it on vinyl for a couple of hundred or more then I laugh.
