Trivia / Trout Mask Replica

• Denial of Digital Distribution: The album was unavailable on streaming services until 2021.
• Troubled Production: Hoo, boy...
  • Captain Beefheart wanted the band to "live" his music, and so, he got all the musicians living in a small, dilapidated rented house for eight months. The house had only two bedrooms, one (bigger) was occupied by Beefheart, the other shared by the remaining four musicians, who were strictly restricted from leaving the house and forced to practice for at least 14 hours a day.
  • The composition itself was difficult. Beefheart had no musical education and could not read notes - on purpose - so his "compositions" were actually, in many cases, little more than piano chords created by Captain hitting ten different keys simultaneously. Sometimes, it took weeks to transpose the chord onto a guitar and figure out a way to play it properly. In the end, although the other musicians played a key role in arranging all the songs, all music, lyrics and arrangements were credited to Beefheart alone.
  • The recording was an ultimate nightmare. Beefheart demanded an absolute submission from all his accompanying players, and so, at various times one or another of the group members was "put in the barrel", with Van Vliet berating him continually, sometimes for days, until the musician collapsed in tears or in total submission. The musicians were so broken spiritually that, when Beefheart started attacking one of them, they joined in just not to be the next to face the anger. Drummer John French recalled an accident where he didn't play a drum break the way the boss wanted; first Beefheart scolded him and punched him in the face, then the other musicians started beating him just to calm the Captain down (including beating the drummer with a broomstick until it broke), and finally Beefheart told him that the next time French would be thrown out of a window.
  • The financial situation (of the musicians, but not Beefheart) was dire to say the least. French remembers living on a small cup of beans daily for at least a month. A friend who visited their house stated that the musicians were looking cadaverous. Eventually they resorted to shoplifting to survive; on one occasion, when they got caught, Frank Zappa (who served as the album's producer) had to bail them out (at Beefheart's request - just because the sessions had to be put on a halt had they remained in jail).
  • At one point Jeff Cotton (the guitarist) escaped for a few weeks after a heated argument with French; the drummer, who had thrown a metal cymbal at Cotton, ran after him yelling that he too wanted to get out. Both of them later felt compelled to return. The bassist Mark Boston at one point hid clothes in a field across the street, planning his own getaway.
  • By the end of the sessions, John French did dare to play something not the way Beefheart imagined it. He was fired from the band and, despite playing a major role in converting Beefheart's loose and foggy ideas into music, he was not credited on the album cover either as a musician or as an arranger. Oh, and Beefheart announced his firing by kicking French down a flight of stairs.

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