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By Root 587 0

is reading this, I will make a plea that Don would never make or ask anyone else to make for him: support a real artist.) I’m not sawing violins in half— Don certainly doesn’t feel sorry for himself, and in late 1977 when he reappeared at the Bottom Line with a new band and Shiny Beast in the wings, he had the distinct air of a, well, I don’t even feel “survivor” is the word. A patriarch, perhaps, a high priest, born again from Ancient Egypt smiling like the spuming headwaters of the Nile, long weathered body holding just that many mysteries, arcane secrets from half-apocryphal texts of hoodoo mojo Coptic canebreak healings of the kind Ishmael Reed likes to dream up.

Next to him, Dr. John looked like Gary Glitter: all soot, no zoot. He could go fifteen rounds brainwave-to-brainwave with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and judges who know nothin’ anyway call it a draw. Might be the white Leadbelly Too much in love with living to be Robert Johnson. In the late Sixties, some hotshit young hitpicker got famous by proclaiming that Don Van Vliet, if he wanted to, could be “the greatest white blues singer in the world.” That would have been as dumb as settling for a moosehead over the fireplace when you’ve lassoed the Loch Ness Monster and taken it to dinner, highballs, and dancing. Like van Gogh doing pasteup for Bloomingdale's. Make no mistake, Captain Beefheart is an absolutely authentic chunk of taproot Americana on a Mark Twain level with Paul Bunyan stature.

But today an artist is expected to market him or herself as a commodity to be generally recognized. So in that sense it's no wonder Don retreated to the Mojave Outback. On the other hand, the old garret routine doesn’t exactly work anymore either. And Don has pretty much been through his phase of living out the Artist-as-Genius/Idiot-Savant cliché. On the phone the other day I mentioned Andy Warhol, and Don said, “He soups things up. But isn’t it nice, being able to say that we’re not like him?” At the time I thought this was a shopworn verbal popper combined with an absolutely childlike attitude: “Isn’t it nice, being able to say that we’re not like him?” Well, yes, it is, and Mr. Rogers will be here at 3:30. This plus the fact that artists know how much they can get away with, how much we in fact expect of them, can lead to truly sick situations, disastrous for all concerned: “Isn’t it nice, being somebody's pet?” I feel like even the word “genius” should be put in quotation marks because the very concept has a way of getting out of hand, like an unruly child. Artists often end up conspiring with their adoring audiences to insure their own isolation. Once, a very long time ago, I saw Don go sweeping imperiously in and out of hotels until he found one that met his aesthetic specifications, entourage (including me) trailing embarrassedly behind while he wore a cape and doodled on a pad the whole time.

Still, there is something ingenuously natural about him. I don’t think, for instance, that he necessarily “tries” to “create” these things, they just sort of… happen to (through?) him. In the course of this process, he has managed to practically reinvent both music and the English language. And if you think that's a thorny thicket of defenses to try and hack through so as to get to the actual person back there, you’re right. He embarrasses you with his effusiveness, he feels misunderstood and craves desperately to talk with anyone who, he's satisfied, understands what he's trying to do. I don’t know why he thinks I understand it. I only understand a little part of it. A lot of it is Sanskrit to me too. But you’ll never miss the feeling however obtuse the structure, because this man is almost 100 percent feeling, can be feverish with it, leads with every open nerve end till sometimes you wonder if he has a mind at all, or just threw the one he had away one day because every pore in the body is a knowing little eye fiercely darting at experience.

Now, there is no reason on earth why such a creature should be articulate. Except that he is. But on his terms, most of the time. And