The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (401 page)

Outside of his professional life, however, Wolstenholme suffered from severe mental health issues for many years. In the last few months of his life, friends and family had noted a marked decline in the musician’s moods–although few seemed prepared for his eventual suicide at home in London.

Mel Pritchard died in January 2004.

Friday 17

Glen Adams

(Jones Town, Kingston, Jamaica, 27 November 1945)

The Upsetters

(The Pioneers)

(The Heptones)

(Glen & Ken)

(Various acts)

Internationally respected Jamaican musician, composer and producer Glen Adams was born into a prolific musical family–and his career moved quickly thanks to their encouragement. Adams performed several times on Radio Jamaica talent show
Opportunity Knocks
and the public exposure that this brought the barely adolescent teenager was enough to spark the enthusiasm of Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd. The legendary producer–at the vanguard of so many Jamaican success stories–recorded Adams as early as 1960, the track ‘Capo’ then providing an enduring if unlikely nickname for a man who was by-and-large known as a keyboard player.

Adams then courted even greater attention as half of the duo Ken & Glen (with later UK chart-topper Ken Boothe), before spending a short time with two up-and-coming vocal acts in the shape of The Heptones and The Pioneers (in place of Winston Hewitt) between 1965 and 1966. Adams clearly wasn’t one to rest on his laurels– within another twelve months, he’d moved on to a solo career, impacting with a series of singles that began with ‘Far Away’ (1967), while also finding time to record with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and produce with Duke Reid at Treasure Isle. By now a serious industry player, Adams–along with The Upsetters’ rhythm section–was selected by Bob Marley as backing artist for The Wailers, for whom he and Peter Tosh traded keyboard licks. Adams co-composed several songs for Marley, one of which, ‘Mr Brown’, he regularly played himself in later shows, always mindful to tell his audience for whom it was originally written.

Glen Adams, who in his later career moved to New York to produce rap and R & B, passed away at the University Hospital of the West Indies after falling ill while visiting family in Jamaica.

See also
Bob Marley (
May 1981); Peter Tosh (
September 1987); Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd (
Golden Oldies #19)

Golden Oldies #125

Captain Beefheart

(Don Glen Vliet–Glendale, California, 15 January 1941)

The Magic Band

(Various acts)

‘There are only forty people in the world. And five of them are hamburgers.’

The warped truth of Captain Beefheart

Like the possessed uncle of a disturbed pied-piper, the good Captain lurched forth from yonder swamp, his ever-changing party of bizarros in slipstream and his tune a disembodied wend through rivers of free-jazz and the avantgarde–yet it was all somehow destined to settle at the foot of the blues delta.

In the fluid world he’d created for Beefheart, Don Van Vliet allowed himself to be anything, say everything, yet the words and the sounds remained a language as impossible to learn as it was to resist. For this was an artist with expansive, eclectic tastes and no fear of presenting them in public.

The uninitiated won’t be surprised to learn that Van Vliet (he made the first, subtle name-alteration in the early sixties) was a teenage friend of fellow ‘one-off’ Frank Zappa. The pair traded their earliest ideas in the R & B ensemble The Blackouts before competing for the most
outré
musical stunts as each began to draw interest in his work.

Captain Beefheart: “Oh, my album? When you asked about a ‘release date’, I thought you meant the musicians!”

Beefheart–having taught himself saxophone and harmonica–finally discovered an outlet for his creativity: despite being a child prodigy, he’d previously been denied the chance to accept a scholarship to study sculpture in Europe. Vliet’s home life had been somewhat chaotic, the artist, his girlfriend, parents, grandparents and occasional extended family all sharing a house near the Mojave Desert. (The name ‘Captain Beefheart’ apparently derived from his uncle Alan’s propensity for exposing himself in front of Vliet’s girlfriend while using the bathroom, the description being one that he gave to his genitals.) Despite the crowded nature of his surroundings, Vliet was considered somewhat spoiled by his parents: ‘When he wasn’t working … [Vliet drove his dad’s bread van and once sold a vacuum cleaner to Aldous Huxley] … he’d spend the whole time listening to rhythm ‘n’ blues records while screaming at his mom to get him a Pepsi,’ recalled Zappa. (The artist’s love of the soft drink was later recalled in song.)

Although Zappa and Van Vliet moved to Cucamonga where they’d planned to shoot a movie, collaborations were temporarily ended by the former’s move away to start The Mothers of Invention in Los Angeles. An unperturbed Van Vliet then returned to Mojave and made his first tentative recordings with The Magic Band–Alex St Clair (Alex Snouffer, guitar–who had previously worked with Vliet in a band called The Omens), Doug Moon (guitar), Jerry Handley (bass) and Paul Blakely (drums). This version was an out-and-out blues band that proved sufficiently popular on the college circuit to earn a recording deal with A&M. This spawned The Magic Band’s ‘hit’ cover of Bo Diddley’s ‘Diddy Wah Diddy’ and a less-successful version of the David Gates song ‘Moonchild’ (both 1966). The group’s proposed
Safe As Milk
album was, however, rejected by the label–who promptly dropped them mid-contract. Buddah stepped in to sign The Magic Band, and the introduction of young guitar virtuoso Ry Cooder gave Van Vliet’s group a new lease of life. A fine, revitalised
Safe As Milk
thus emerged in 1967. By now, Antennae Jimmy Semens (Jeff Cotton) was in for Moon and John ‘Drumbo’ French for Blakely–but these were merely the first of many, many roster alterations over the years.

With this first release-proper, Van Vliet matched his brilliance as a writer with tight, innovative musicianship and remarkable vocal prowess. The label naturally expected The Magic Band to support their album with highprofile live performances, and they scheduled them a slot at Monterey Pop. But at this point, Van Vliet–who had been experimenting with LSD for some time–was starting to experience anxiety attacks and hallucinations during performance. One time at a concert, the front man walked right off the stage and landed on his manager, claiming to have seen a fish in the audience. (Cooder’s decision that enough was enough resulted in his departure from the band and the Monterey show being cancelled.) If this weren’t damaging enough, unapproved material then emerged in
Strictly Personal
(1968), and Beefheart/Van Vliet himself decided to retire from the scene, believing that his ‘reputation’ had been compromised.

But the return of Zappa into the Captain’s life changed matters forever. His old friend–now at the helm of his own label, Straight–offered Beefheart a record deal that, at last, enabled the maverick artist full control: a far-better employment of his over-active imagination was thus heard via the extraordinary, twenty-eight track
Trout Mask Replica
(1969). For many, this record featured what is considered the definitive Magic Band line-up of Van Vliet, Semens, Drumbo, Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad, guitar), Rockette Morton (Mark Boston, bass) and Mascara Snake (Victor Fleming, clarinet). However, rehearsals for the album were, according to members, torturous. Beefheart– certainly not at his sanest–had recently been studying brainwashing techniques and appeared to be applying these to his musicians. The Magic Band lived as a commune while they learned the intricacies of Vliet’s compositions, some of the group later claiming to have been berated and even physically assaulted, as well as forced to sleep in the corners of one room and, according to co-composer French, live on ‘nothing but a cup of beans a day’ (and presumably not the big-eyed, Venusian variety of Beefheart’s later work). Somehow, this near-criminal physical deprivation–and Beefheart’s unhindered mania–created one of the most inspirational records in rock-music history.
Trout Mask Replica
is to this day considered a high-water mark for both Beefheart’s work and much of that around him.