Peter's music has been heard on hundreds of radio stations and has been on SiriusXM rotation for over a decade. As a multi-award winning artist, Peter's music has also topped Billboard's Classical and Crossover charts.
For Captain Beefheart, a maverick-artist-musician, who was not just a complicated man but highly demanding and by most accounts very difficult to deal with. It was appropriate that Beefheart's Magic Band was to prominently feature a bassist as accomplished, bold and adventurous as Mark Boston, a.k.a Rockette Morton.
Born on July 14, 1949, Mark began life in the small town of Salem, Illinois before his family moved out to Lancaster, California when he was 13. With a bassist and steel player for a father, Mark gained a great appreciation for country and bluegrass along with the R&B and rock’n’roll that was on the rise. Within a year of the Boston clan moving out to Lancaster, Mark befriended a young guitarist by the name of Bill Harkleroad.
At a time when the bass guitar was seen as the dummy’s instrument, Mark left quite an impression on Bill with his talent and equipment, leading to the two joining forces to form BC And The Cavemen. With Mark’s mother sewing some outfits for them, the band developed a decent reputation, and the two would also play in a band with Jeff Cotton and John French known as Blues In A Bottle. And then a local hero came calling. Or perhaps screaming and howling!
In that same Lancaster scene, Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band were making a big splash as a top flight blues rock outfit, with 'Safe As Milk' having made a strong impression and 'Strictly Personal' being a strong record as well. But even with a sound that was speaking to people, one that perhaps would have been a more pragmatic one as far as a career goes, Don Van Vliet just wasn’t meant for conventional norms.
The Captain had all these ideas, ideas far too out for many, including early members. He needed new musicians, younger and more impressionable ones that wouldn’t object to his ideas. Already having John and Jeff in the band, now 'Drumbo' and Antennae Jimmy Semens, he then recruited Bill, dubbed Zoot Horn Rollo. And on bass, he found Mark Boston, who took the name Rockette Morton due to his love of outer space. And the classic Magic Band was born.
Trout Mask Replica (TMR) wasn’t an easy album to make. Yet even with all the bizarre ideas and the difficulty in preparing those ideas into music, Mark was a total champ through it all. The Beefheart sound is one of great dichotomy, and Mark can capture all of it. He’s so tight and precise, and yet there’s this raw grit and dirt. He’s highly intelligent and sophisticated in his playing, and yet there remains this childlike sense of wonder and curiosity.
He takes after all the great traditional American music, yet out into a whole other realm of time and space. The bass traditionally serves the role of grounding the harmony while locking in with the drums to provide a foundation, yet Mark’s playing often serves as another melody line in the music. In a lot of ways, he’s like a third guitarist that just happens to be playing bass.
The TMR on its own is a legacy few can compete with, and yet Mark contributed to more classic records like "Lick My Decals Off, Baby", "The Spotlight Kid", and "Clear Spot". There on Decals, you get the equivalent of Godfather II. With Mother Art Tripp on marimba and drums rather Jeff on guitar, you get an album that captures a great deal of TMR's brilliance while being brilliant in its own unique way.
Then you get to 'The Spotlight Kid', with bass godliness on cuts like “When It Blows Its Stack”, resulting in a bass solo that often opened shows, yet Mark proves himself just as talented on traditional in-the-pocket styles as demonstrated on cuts like “I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby”. And that thing about bassists being failed guitarists? In the 'Clear Spot', with Mark taking guitar and the rhythm section now being a mini Mothers reunion of Art and Roy Estrada, yet nobody missed a beat. Throughout the record, Bill and Mark’s kinship really shines, their weaving right there with what Bill and Jeff had done, or what was done with Alex St Clair early on.
Of course, dealing with Don was quite a task of its own, so it’s inevitable that Mark and the others would all end up departing by 1974. He and Bill soon formed a group of their own called Mallard. For two albums, the first with Art and having some writing help from John French 'Drumbo', Mallard showed itself a pretty decent blues rock outfit. And giving that it was Mark who finally had a chance to create something that was truly his own rather than helping some achieve their vision, it’s understandably the work that he takes pride in. And over time, he’d end up making a solo record and create some cool artwork of his own, as well as performing with 'Drumbo' in the reformed Magic Band, allowing the music to live and breathe on stage again.
If you’re a Beefheart fan, how can you not love Rockette Morton? Not only a uniquely talented bass player but such a great stage presence full of joy, along with a lovably quirky personality and such a sweet guy. Easily one of my favorites from Magic Band members, you can’t help but smile when thinking about Mark. He’s been through some rough weather, including his health scares, and yet he’s still the same Mark we’ve known and loved all the years.
Happy birthday Mark! Thank you for all you have given us and look forward to more.
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Patrick Moore is a freehand drawing artist and freelance music writer.
Mahatma Gandhi’s letters to his son Harilal written in 1935 may trigger storm as they reveal that Mahatma’s eldest son was as an alcoholic and child molester.
These disclosures that threaten to blacken the reputation of members of Mahatma Gandhi's immediate family are due to be made public later this month in the UK.
These are contained in three letters written by Gandhiji to his oldest son, Harilal, who died of liver failure in 1948, and who is revealed as a debauched alcoholic, child molester and possible rapist of his own daughter, Manu.
Harilal was one of Gandhiji's four sons. The others were Manilal — who stayed behind in South Africa — Ramdas and Devdas.
One letter from Gandhiji also refers to Harilal's 'illicit' relations with his dead wife's sister, Bali. "According to Anandlal, Bali was suffering from syphilis, then how can you escape it?" Gandhiji writes to his son.
All these never-before-seen letters hand written in Gujarati in Gandhiji's own hand and sent from Vardha near Nagpur in June 1935 have been authenticated by a leading Gandhian scholar, Professor Tridip Suhrud, current director of the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation Memorial Trust.
Professor Suhrud, who describes the content of the letters as "disturbing", is a recipient of a Sahitya Akademi Award for his translation of "Harilal Gandhi: A Life."
[caption id="attachment_74861" align="alignnone" width="800"]
Gandhi's letters.[/caption]
The most controversial content of one letter sent on June 19, 1935, starts: "Chi (long live) Harilal" before going on to talk about the arrival in Vardha of Harilal's 16-year-old daughter (and Gandhiji's grand daughter) Manu.
In a translation from Gujarati provided to The Tribune Gandhiji writes, "Manu is telling me a number of dangerous things about you. She says that you had raped her before eight years and she was so much hurt that medical treatment was also to be taken. She permits anyone to ask about this incident. I am getting more and more pained by this."
At the end of this same letter Gandhiji goes on to say, "I would wish that you better die than resort to alcohol in any manner. May God save you from lack of peace. Bapu's blessing, Vardha, 19-6-1935."
In a separate, second letter, Gandhiji again addresses the issue of his son's alcoholism, saying, "Please let me have pure truth, please tell me if you are still interested in alcohol and debauchery."
Harilal's troubled life and tense relationship with his father have been well documented. He was born in 1888 and hoped to go to England to qualify as a barrister, but this was opposed by his father.
Suhrud accepts the possibility that Harilal physically assaulted Manu, and there is a reference to that in Harilal's biography, but whether Manu was actually raped by her father is open to interpretation because of Gandhiji's use of the word 'balatkar'.
"The word 'balatkar' means rape, but in Gujarati it also means 'use for force' ", explains Suhrud. "So I'm not trying to defend, I'm just saying there is the possibility of a different kind of usage."
Asked to comment on the contents of Gandhiji's letters, Suhrud told The Tribune: "They were written at the most disturbed time in Harilal's life. He had gone through conversion to Islam, a re-conversion to Hinduism and he had been working as a Vedic missionary for the Arya Samaj. So in his own personal life this is perhaps the most traumatic period. Also a time when his son Kanti is growing up and aspiring to become a doctor, but doesn't become a doctor." (Courtesy The Tribune)
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CHAUHAN HIRENSINH: Have you any other things about gandhi? Or anything about anti national celebrities than Please send me that documents, books, Latter etc. 
