TV & Ads: Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band; Lick My Decals Off, Baby - 1970

Lick My Decals Off, Baby is a record by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band released in 1970 on Frank Zappa's Straight Records label.

The followup to his Trout Mask Replica, it is regarded by some critics and listeners as superior to the famous 1969 recording, and is Van Vliet's personal favourite. Don Van Vliet has said that the title is an encouragement to "get rid of the labels," and to evaluate things according to their merits rather than according to superficial labels (or "decals").

Musicians on the album were Don Van Vliet, vocals; Elliot Ingber and Bill Harkleroad, guitars; Mark Boston, bass; Art Tripp, marimba, drums, and percussion; and John French, drums. French had been arranger and musical director on Trout Mask Replica. Van Vliet ejected French from the group – both figuratively and literally, by throwing him down a flight of stairs – shortly after Trout Mask Replica was completed, and these roles passed to guitarist Bill Harkleroad. French returned to the group shortly before recording began.

Most of the songs began as piano improvisations by Van Vliet. He would record extended improvisation sessions on a cassette recorder. Harkleroad then listened to these improvisations, picked out the best parts, and pieced them into compositions.  The musical lines on Decals tend to be longer and more intricate than the assemblage of short fragments that characterized much of Trout Mask Replica.

The record contains some of Captain Beefheart's most experimental music and remains memorable for both the marimba playing of Art Tripp and for its concise instrumental work. An early promotional music video was made of its title song, and a bizarre television commercial was also filmed that included excerpts from "Woe-Is-uh-Me-Bop," silent footage of masked Magic Band members using kitchen utensils as musical instruments, and Beefheart kicking over a bowl of what appears to be porridge onto a dividing stripe in the middle of a road. The video was rarely played but was accepted into the Museum of Modern Art, where it has been used in several programs.

Critic Robert Christgau said of the record: "Beefheart's famous five-octave range and covert totalitarian structures have taken on a playful undertone, repulsive and engrossing and slapstick funny." Lester Bangs noted the maturation of the musical styles and lyrical concerns of Trout Mask Replica, writing that Beefheart's music was "one of the most rewarding musical experiences available today."

Due to John Peel's championing of the work on BBC radio, Lick My Decals Off, Baby spent eleven weeks on the UK Albums Chart, peaking at number twenty. This remains Beefheart's highest-charting album in the UK.

Like many releases on Zappa's Bizarre and Straight labels, Decals has been out of print since the early 1990s on CD. Enigma Retro released a CD edition in 1989 which now goes for high prices among record collectors. More recently Decals has also been re-issued as a 180g vinyl LP, which is still in print. Both Rhino Records and Warner/Reprise have announced CD rereleases of the album several times in recent years but have not moved past the planning stage.

Don Van Vliet was an American musician and visual artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12 studio albums. Noted for his powerful singing voice with its wide range,  Van Vliet also played the harmonica, saxophone  and numerous other wind instruments. His music blended rock, blues and psychedelia with free jazz, avant-garde and contemporary experimental composition.  An iconoclastic mix of complex instrumentation, atonal melodies, and often humorously surreal lyrics, it was crafted through dictatorial control over his musicians and creative vision.

During his teen years in Lancaster, California, Van Vliet acquired an eclectic musical taste and formed "a mutually useful but volatile" friendship with Frank Zappa, with whom he sporadically competed and collaborated. He began performing with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the original Magic Band in 1965. The group drew acclaim with their first album in 1967 on Buddah Records, Safe as Milk. After being dropped by two consecutive record labels, they signed to Frank Zappa's newly formed Straight Records. Zappa as producer granted Beefheart the unrestrained artistic freedom to create and release 1969's Trout Mask Replica, ranked fifty-eighth in Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.  Having not been paid for a European tour, and worn out from years of Beefheart's abusive behavior, the entire "Magic Band" left him in 1974. A brief and critically panned flirtation with more conventional rock music resulted in two albums he later disowned. Beefheart then formed a new Magic Band with a group of younger musicians and regained contemporary approval through three final albums: Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978), Doc at the Radar Station (1980) and Ice Cream for Crow (1982).

Van Vliet has been described as "one of modern music's true innovators" with "a singular body of work virtually unrivalled in its daring and fluid creativity".  Although he achieved little commercial or mainstream critical success,  he sustained a cult following as a "highly significant" and "incalculable" influence on an array of New Wave, punk, post-punk, experimental and alternative rock musicians.  Known for his enigmatic personality and relationship with the public, Van Vliet made few public appearances after his retirement from music (and from his Beefheart persona) in 1982 to pursue a career in art, an interest that originated in his childhood talent for sculpture. His expressionist paintings and drawings demand high prices, and have been exhibited in several countries.  Van Vliet died in 2010, after many years suffering from multiple sclerosis.

Zappa and Van Vliet began collaborating on pop song parodies and a movie script called Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People,   the first appearance of the Beefheart name. It came from a term used by his Uncle Alan. Alan had a habit of exposing himself to Don's girlfriend, Laurie. Alan would urinate with the bathroom door open and, if she was walking by, mumble about his penis, saying "Ahh, what a beauty! It looks just like a big, fine beef heart."   In a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, Van Vliet requests "don't ask me why or how" he and Zappa came up with the name.   He would later claim in an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman  that the name referred to "a beef in my heart against this society."

Van Vliet enrolled at Antelope Valley Junior College as an art major, but decided to leave the following year. He once worked as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, during which time he sold a vacuum cleaner to the writer Aldous Huxley at his home in Llano, pointing to it and declaring, "Well I assure you sir, this thing sucks." After managing a Kinney's shoe store, Van Vliet relocated to Rancho Cucamonga, California, to reconnect with Zappa, who inspired his entry into musical performance. Van Vliet was quite shy  but was eventually able to imitate the deep voice of Howlin' Wolf with his wide vocal range.  He eventually grew comfortable with public performance and, after learning to play the harmonica, began playing at dances and small clubs in southern California.

In early 1965 Alex Snouffer, a Lancaster rhythm and blues guitarist, invited Vliet to sing with a group that he was assembling. Vliet joined the first Magic Band and changed his name to Don Van  Vliet, while Snouffer became Alex St. Clair (sometimes spelled Claire). Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band signed to A&M and released two singles in 1966. The first was a version of Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy" that became a regional hit in Los Angeles. The followup, "Moonchild" (written by David Gates) was less well received. The band played music venues that catered to underground artists, such as the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.

Sometime in 1966 demos of what became the Safe as Milk material were submitted to A&M. Jerry Moss (the "M" in A&M) reportedly described the new direction as "too negative"  and the band was dropped from the label. By the end of 1966 they were signed to Buddah Records and John French had joined on drums. French had the patience required to translate Van Vliet's musical ideas (often expressed by whistling or banging on the piano) for the other players. In French's absence this role was taken over by Bill Harkleroad.  The lyrics on the album were written by Van Vliet in collaboration with the writer Herb Bermann, who befriended Van Vliet after seeing him perform with his wife in Lancaster in 1966. The song "Electricity" was a poem written by Bermann, who gave Van Vliet permission to adapt it to music.

The Safe as Milk material needed much more work, and 20-year-old guitar prodigy Ry Cooder was asked to help. They began recording in spring 1967, with Richard Perry producing (his first job as producer). The album was released in September 1967. Richie Unterberger of Allmusic would call the album "blues-rock gone slightly askew, with jagged, fractured rhythms, soulful, twisting vocals from Van Vliet, and more doo wop, soul, straight blues, and folk-rock influences than he would employ on his more avant-garde outings". Among those who took notice were The Beatles: John Lennon and Paul McCartney were known as great admirers of Beefheart.   Lennon displayed two of the album's promotional bumper stickers in the sunroom at his home.  Later The Beatles planned to sign Beefheart to their experimental Zapple label (plans that were scrapped after Allen Klein took over the group's management). Van Vliet was often critical of The Beatles, however. He considered the lyric "I'd love to turn you on", from their song "A Day in the Life", to be ridiculous and conceited. Tiring of their "lullabies",   he lampooned them with the Strictly Personal song "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones", that featured the sardonic refrain of "strawberry fields, strawberry fields forever". He spoke badly of Lennon after getting no response from him after sending a telegram of support to him and wife Yoko Ono  during their 1969 "Bed-In for peace". Van Vliet did meet McCartney during the Magic Band's 1968 tour of Europe, though McCartney later claimed to have no recollection of this meeting.

Doug Moon left the band due to his dislike of the band's increasing experimentalism. Ry Cooder has recounted Moon becoming so angered by Van Vliet's unrelenting criticism that he walked into the room pointing a loaded crossbow at him, only to be told "Get that fucking thing out of here, get out of here and get back in your room", which he obeyed.  (Other band members have disputed this account.)

The group had been scheduled to play at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. During this period Vliet suffered severe anxiety attacks that made him convinced that he was having a heart attack. These attacks were likely exacerbated by his heavy LSD use, and the fact that his father had died of heart failure a few years earlier. In a performance at Mt. Tamalpais shortly before the scheduled Monterey festival, the band began to play "Electricity" and Van Vliet froze, straightened his tie, then walked off the ten-foot stage and landed on the manager. This undid any opportunity of breakthrough success at Monterey in the vein of others who performed. Ry Cooder immediately decided he could no longer work with Van Vliet.