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.
By our reporter
Priyanka Chopra may be India’s most famous international film star today, but her Bollywood career seems to be in the doldrums.
Post her marriage to Nick Jonas in 2018, her first Bollywood film The Sky is Pink has not done well at the box office. Her earlier Bollywood film Jai Gangaajal too was a flop.
In fact, her last Bollywood hit was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2015 film Bajirao Mastani which also starred Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone.
But The Sky is Pink, which is directed by Shonali Bose and premiered at the just concluded Toronto International Film Festival, has marked a new low for Priyanka. The film collected only Rs 2.5 crore on its first day – which is the lowest box-office collection for any of her films.
Priyanka is seen by many – mostly in the huge Indian diaspora – as a global Indian star after her three seasons with the ABC’s thriller series Quantico – from 2015 to 2017 – where she won the People’s Choice Award for two consecutive years for her role.
But apart from this role, her career in Hollywood has been lacklustre. She didn’t shine in Baywatch. And she played ordinary roles in two other Hollywood films – A Kid Like Jake and Isn’t It Romantic.
So where is Priyanka headed as an actress?
Let us be honest. She was never an A-lister in Bollywood. All her hit Bollywood films had strong male stars.
“Priyanka is not Madhuri Dixit or Sridevi who can draw audiences. She is beautiful, but she hasn’t that intensity as an actress that Madhuri or Sridevi had. Deepika comes close to them, not Priyanka,’’ says an Indian film critic.
According to this film critic, Tabu or someone else should have been chosen for Priyanka’s role in The Sky is Pink. “The very reason that this film has not done well is Priyanka. She cannot do intense roles. Tabu would have done a much better job in The Sky is Pink.’’
The film critic says Priyanka is an overhyped actress. “She was never among A-listers in Bollywood and she is a C-grade actress in the West.’’
So is her career finished in Bollywood?
“In Bollywood, only a male star can pull crowds on his own. Bring in Salman Khan and you get a hit film. But that’s not the case with actresses – barring Madhuri, Sridevi and a few others in the past. The current crop of Bollywood actresses needs a strong male star to deliver successful films,” says the film critic.
But many current A-list actors in Bollywood won’t work with Priyanka because of her past history with them – Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, etc.
Salman Khan could have helped her, but she pissed him off by walking out of his film Bharat at the last minute before her engagement to Nick Jonas in 2018.
After she walked out of Bharat, an angry Salman Khan told a Mumbai newspaper that Katrina was the first choice for the film, not Priyanka.
Salman said, “It was sweet of her (Priyanka) to tell us five days before the shoot that she couldn’t do Bharat. I’m glad Katrina is part of the film. She was Atul’s (producer Atul Agnihotri) first choice, but Priyanka called Ali (Abbas Zafar, director) and said she wanted to do Bharat. So we considered her.’’
Looks like Salman Khan will probably never work with Priyanka again. And Aamir Khan is the kind of actor who chooses his films carefully.
So is there any A-list actor with whom Priyanka can work and revive her Bollywood career?
