Captain Beefheart

Captain Beefheart biography

Biography

Early life and musical influences, 1941-1962

Van Vliet was born Don Glen Vliet in Glendale, California, on January 15, 1941, to Glen Alonzo Vliet, a service station owner of Dutch ancestry from Kansas, and Willie Sue Vliet (née Warfield), who was from Arkansas.

Van Vliet began painting and sculpting at age three. His subjects reflected his "obsession" with animals, particularly dinosaurs, fish, African mammals and lemurs. At the age of nine he won a children's sculpting competition organised for the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park by a local tutor, Agostinho Rodrigues. Local newspaper cuttings of his junior sculpting achievements can be found reproduced in the Splinters book, included in the Riding Some Kind Of Unusual Skull Sleigh boxed CD work, released in 2004. The sprawling park, with its zoo and observatory had a strong influence on young Vliet, as it was a short distance from his home on Waverly Drive. The track "Observatory Crest" on Bluejeans & Moonbeams reflects this continued interest. A portrait photo of the school-age Vliet can be seen on the front of the lyric sheet within the first issue of the US release of Trout Mask Replica.

For some time during the 1950s Van Vliet worked as an apprentice with Rodrigues, who considered him a child prodigy. Vliet made claim to have been a lecturer at the Barnsdall Art Institute in Los Angeles at the age of eleven, He claimed that his parents discouraged his interest in sculpture, based upon their perception of artists as 'queer'. They declined several scholarship offers, Van Vliet later admitted personal hesitation to take the scholarship based upon the bitterness of his parents' disencouragement.

Van Vliet's artistic enthusiasm became so fervent, he claimed that his parents were forced to feed him through the door in the room where he sculpted. When he was thirteen the family moved from the Los Angeles area to the more remote farming town of Lancaster, near the Mojave Desert, where there was a growing aerospace industry and testing plant that would become Edwards Airforce Base. It was an environment that would greatly influence him creatively from then on. were later featured on several of his own albums. Meanwhile he developed his taste and interest in music, listening "intensively" to the Delta blues of Son House and Robert Johnson, jazz artists such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor, and the Chicago blues of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. During his early teenage years Vliet would sometimes socialize with members of local bands such as The Omens and "The Blackouts, although his interests were still focused upon an art career. The Omens' guitarists Alexis Snouffer and Jerry Handley would later become founders of "The Magic Band" and The Blackouts' drummer, Frank Zappa, would later capture Vliet's vocal capabilities on record for the first time. This first known recording, when he was simply 'Don Vliet', is "Lost In A Whirlpool" - one of Zappa's early 'field recordings' made in his college classroom with brother Bobby on guitar. It is featured on Zappa's posthumously released The Lost Episodes (1996).

Biography from , the free encyclopedia.
It may not have been reviewed by a professional editor, and recent changes may not show up straight away. See the latest version of this article. Used under licence. Subject to disclaimers.