Captain Beefheart Remembered: 'Fast and Bulbous'

'Trout Mask Replica,' the band's third album, was released on Zappa's then-new Straight Records label. By this time, Beefheart had created something of a cult among his band members, giving them strange nicknames -- Drumbo, the Mascara Snake, Zoot Horn Rollo. By the early 1970s, Beefheart was "experimenting" with slightly more commercial music; his 1972 song 'Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles' was later used in the Coen Brothers film 'The Big Lebowski.'

After several band members left the group, Van Vliet rebuilt the Magic Band using musicians who were totally unfamiliar with his music. Beefheart's last three albums, with yet other backing band lineups -- 'Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller),' 'Doc at the Radar Station' and 'Ice Cream for Crow,' the latter featuring future Jeff Buckley collaborator Gary Lucas -- drew a new respect for the performer from punk and post-punk fans and musicians. Yet despite appearances on 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Late Night with David Letterman,' this would prove to be Beefheart's last commitment to the music industry.

In his later years Van Vliet dropped out of the public eye to concentrate on his painting, which would earn him considerable acclaim. Musically speaking, he was done giving blood. Though his music was too bizarre, too absurd to achieve anything like widespread success, Beefheart's influence has grown exponentially. The Pixies, Nirvana, Beck and the White Stripes are just a few of the bands who have acknowledged their debt to Van Vliet's music. Tom Waits once credited Beefheart with inspiring his own mid-career shift toward the avant garde. "Once you've heard Beefheart," he said, "it's hard to wash him out of your clothes."

If the outlandish, deliberately wrong-sounding recorded work of Captain Beefheart defies description, he himself didn't seem to think so. "Fast and bulbous," as he repeated so many times on 'Trout Mask Replica.' "Fast and bulbous."