6. Captain Beefheart ran his band like the Manson Family
Captain Beefheart was the even cooler, less-famous, drug-taking version of his childhood friend, Frank Zappa. Although he never achieved mainstream success, Beefheart’s magnum opus, Trout Mask Replica, is a staple of ‘greatest albums ever’ lists. To prepare for the challenging and boundary-pushing release, Beefheart ran his band like a religious cult, exercising terrifying levels of control over their emotions and creative input, and feeding them a cup of soybeans a day for eight months of solid rehearsing. Although Beefheart maintained that he did not take drugs, listening to Trout Mask Replica and interviews with his surviving bandmates suggests otherwise.
Drummer John French recalled how he was ‘screamed at, beaten up, drugged, ridiculed, humiliated, arrested, starved, stolen from, and thrown down a half-flight of stairs’ by Beefheart. The Captain also drank heavily, which may lie behind some of his unusual methods of band management. His eccentricity will never be equaled: he had a four-octave range, and thousands of record company executives thirsting to sign him, but Beefheart marched to the beat of his own drum, and instead released baffling songs like ‘Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish’. After releasing Ice Cream for Crow in 1982, Beefheart became a reclusive painter.
