The Informers - If You Love Me (1965)
Captain Beefheart - I'm So Glad (early 1966 demo)
A pristine piece of doo-wop in the middle of one of rock’n’roll’s most iconoclastic debuts, “I’m So Glad” is often interpreted by Beefheart fans as another of the Captain’s pop music subversions. Sandwiched between “Dropout Boogie” and “Electricity” on Safe As Milk, it’s difficult for listeners to accept “I’m Go Glad” as much more than a punch line; like when the death metal band from from Wild At Heart suddenly breaks into that tender rendition of “Love Me.”
Beefheart fans like to envision the teenage outsider locked alone in his room with a stack of Howlin Wolf lp’s—Van Vliet himself did much to fuel this image in his later years. The reality is that Beefheart came of age in the late Fifties and early Sixties in far North Los Angeles, and spent his hours listening to DJs like Huggy Boy, Art Laboe, and Wolfman Jack broadcast from KRLA, where they played records that would go on to shape the Chicano soul sound of East Los Angeles. Beefheart had blues in his bones, but his first love was the angelic harmonies of Latino L.A.
Beefheart’s teenage pal Frank Zappa was raised on the same radio (surely they spent many a night listening together in Antelope Valley), but experiments with doo-wop like “Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder” and “How Could I Be Such A Fool?” (from 1966’s Freak Out) were part of a tongue-in-cheek pastiche. “If You Love Me” (a song by the Philedelphia quintet The Informers that remains a low rider favorite to this day) touched Beefheart somewhere deeper, and he could only respond with the utmost sincerity. “I’m So Glad” is not a parody; on the contrary, it’s almost unbearably sincere when removed from its context. For all his immense power, Beefheart was still an insecure 25-year-old at the time of recording. One can’t help but think that the only way he could comfortably release such a naked and heartbreaking vocal performance was to disguise it within the bombast of Safe as Milk, veiling it in a protective layer of irony.
Though it rarely reflected in his music, Bob Dylan wanted to be Little Richard. Even after he took Woody Guthrie for an idol, Richard’s rock remained lodged in Dylan’s heart, and I like to think that everything Dylan did from age 16 on was touched in a small way by Richard’s spirit. As much as Don Van Vliet blanketed it over a career-long obsession with furious commotion and abnormal pulses, I feel in even his most confrontational moments a warmth drawn directly from his roots as a late night radio disciple in early Sixties Los Angeles.
