[1971] "As the duck says, '*Bill* me later.'" Don Van Vliet, as CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
[1975] "Mallard? Bunch of quacks." Don Van Vliet, as CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
[1975] BILL HARKLEROAD (Zoot Horn Rollo) talks about MALLARD: "I've always been interested in the musical possibilities of ducks. I think they're very musical creatures. And the other thing is, well...you've heard of folk musicians chicken-pickin'...well I *duck-pick*..."
From the first album by MALLARD (1975):
"SHE'S LONG AND SHE'S LEAN"
Lyrics by Ted Alvy [ASCAP]
Music by Bill Harkleroad and Mark Boston [ASCAP]
Too many times I've woke up on the floor
Defying gravity finding the door
Stumblin' on the street looking for some scene
Now I remember, she's long and she's lean
Don't know what hit me, I must like the pain
Think I'd know better, I'm in love again
Stuck in some barroom 'round closing time
Drinking straight tequila with salt and lime
She looked so hungry in her faded jeans
Dressed up for business, she's long and she's lean
Invited her home to my one room flat
Unbuckled my belt and I took off my hat
Did my best Bogart impression of mean
Undressed for pleasure, she's long and she's lean
Don't know what hit me, I must like the pain
Counting my lovers, is like counting the rain
My first real lovin' came to me that night
Come the sunrise, she's nowhere in sight
Searchin' all places, holy and obscene
Can't find my lover, she's long and she's lean
I know what hit me, I must feel the pain
She never was real, I must be insane
Alcoholic haze, perception unkeen,
Hand me the bottle, she's long and she's lean
Stuck in some barroom 'round closing time
Drinking straight tequila with salt and lime
Searchin' all places, holy and obscene
Can't find my lover, she's long and she's lean
COPYRIGHT 1975 TED ALVY
[Lyrics above were inspired by a fantasy about Cindy (the artist) at The
Palace, on
BILL HARKLEROAD (Zoot Horn Rollo) in GUITAR (English Magazine) September 1995:
"I was definitely a street blues player before I joined the Beefheart band. I knew the names of the chords but that was about it. I was very much a pentatonic player. The blues were the raw tools I came with, but almost everything changed when I joined Beefheart, even down to the way I played - using fingers, as opposed to a plectrum."
"I was aware of wanting my Telecaster or ES-330 to sound like, uh, shrapnel! Often I was literally torturing the guitar with these metal fingerpicks, and of course it made a difference whether I was playing 'steel appendage' or 'glass finger' - metal slide or glass. But I'm not so sure how much the sonics were an issue. It was always more of an issue of 'How in the hell am I going to play this?' That was the constant thought, so the sound kinda came afterwards."
"Stuff like the compound rhythms and the inversions of the chords, that's where the creativity came in. Some of the seven, eight, and nine-fret stretches I needed to make to get the intervals we were after meant that I had to have my whole hand in front of the fretboard with my thumb pressing down on the face for the bass note."
"Jeff Cotton [Antennae Jimmy Semens] and I were from a very similar school. Elliot Ingber [Winged Eel Fingerling] was from somewhere else totally. He'd been in the original Mothers Of Invention; he was an encyclopedia of blues licks, but at other times he could sound like Miles Davis - such an economy. But Elliot struggled rather more with our rhythmic concepts. Because he came from a more traditional guitar mindset it took a lot of work to fit into our format, but God, he could play some cool stuff."
Bill Harkleroad on MARK
"Mark was playing chords and stuff on his Danelectro double-neck with this clawhammer-like technique. At times it was quite scary! I think he was doing a whole different thing on the bass, much more so than what we were doing on the guitar, stuff that you hear more and more today now that technology has caught up."
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