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.
___________________
Patrick Moore is a freehand drawing artist and freelance music writer.
TORONTO: In keeping with the trend of celebrating double shot anniversaries like the 11th, 22nd , 33rd and so forth, let us celebrate the 44th anniversary of the release of one of rock’s watershed album — Led Zeppelin — that was made available to the public on Jan 12, 1969.
It wasn’t till more than a month later that I heard of the album after receiving a letter from my brother who was studying in the UK. He wrote that a friend of his had brought the album from the US (it hadn’t been released in the UK as yet- even though Led Zeppelin is a British band) and everybody was ranking the band up there with Cream, The Who and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. In April, after the album was released in the UK, my brother sent it to me through a relative.
As soon as I received it, my friends and I huddled together and listened to this ground-breaking album. Our minds were totalled with the first track “Good times , bad times”. The whole album was superb and that is an understatement! Their track “Dazed and Confused” definitely rendered us completely dazed and confused. And on the flip side we got a bonus- a short instrumental including the tabla called “Black Mountain Side”.
[caption id="attachment_78610" align="alignnone" width="800"]
Page with violin bow.[/caption]
By then I had received my early admission letter to Cornell University in the US and I knew I was definitely going by September. I made it my resolve to see this band when I landed there. In October that year, the band released their second album – Led Zeppelin ll – which was more widely acclaimed and influential than its predecessor with their opening track “Whole Lotta Love” receiving unparalleled praise and airtime from all DJs.
However it was not until August 15, 1970, on the 1st anniversary of the fabled Woodstock festival that I got to see them at the Yale Bowl in Connecticut. What struck my friend’s and my eyes were that three members of the band - Robert Plant (frontman), Jimmy Page (guitarist extraordinaire), John Bonham (wild drummer) - all sported beards and looked unlike any photos we had seen of them. Only John Paul Jones (organs) was clean shaven. It was a mind-blowing experience as we heard live for the first time Plant gutting out his immortal lyrics “gonna give you EVERY INCH of my love” and “squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg” making lewd gestures at the same time.
Every person showed off his musical prowess, with Page famously playing the guitar with a VIOLIN BOW and creating unreal psychedelic sounds and Bonham smashing away on his drums! My friend and I were transported to rock and roll heaven!
We were so taken in by that awesome experience especially with Jimmy Page’s wizardry on his axe(guitar), that when we got back to campus we told all our friends about how he rivalled Hendrix (who we had seen just a few weeks before) and 5 of us decided to go see them at Madison Square Garden the following month.
[caption id="attachment_78608" align="alignnone" width="800"]
When Led Zeppelin came to Bombay (now Mumbai).[/caption]
On September 19, the day after the greatest guitar god, Hendrix, passed away, we drove down from Ithaca, New York, to New York City. On the six-hour drive, we put on all the radio stations possible to hear who the DJs said would replace Hendrix as the next Zeus of guitars. We were so sure we would hear Jimmy Page mentioned but not one of the radio stations we tuned into (and we tuned in to several) blurted his name. Most of the time we heard Pete Townsend of The Who and Eric Clapton (who was the original God until Hendrix took over). Even Carlos Santana, Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead) and Alvin Lee (Ten Years After) were bandied about.
Anyways, that did not stop us from enjoying Led Zeppelin that amazing evening as we were once again transported into nirvana as the band started with the hard driving ‘Immigrant Song’ from their yet to be released 3rd album! Plant’s singing, Bonham’s drumming and Page’s guitar freak-outs did not fail to impress the 50,000 strong crowd as the whole auditorium went wild with not one soul sitting down throughout the concert, not even for their exceptional ballad tune ‘Thank You’ that saw standing couples making out with French kisses galore!
Even though I saw Led Zep several times after that, it wasn’t until a short visit to Bombay, India in 1972 that I had my 3rd super memorable encounter. My friends and I were sitting on the wall behind Radio Club enjoying the sea breeze and rock music- Clapton, Jethro Tull, The Doors etc.- blaring from cars, when a friend comes running up to us yelling – ‘hey man, Page and Plant are at Slip Disc, come on, yaar!’ We tore down the road and around the corner where Slip Disc, Bombay’s (Mumbai now) most happening disco (as clubs were called then) was and there in front of us like 10 feet away were Led Zeppelin’s defining members- Jimmy Page and Robert Plant! Then followed the most amazing impromptu concert that Bombayiites (as we were called then) ever saw as both Page and Plant let it all hang down and jammed with a couple of Bombay’s musicians on the drums and bass. This was as magnificent as it gets!
Led Zeppelin went on to be noted as the world’s greatest rock and roll band ever, staging their most memorable concerts over three nights at the Madison Square in 1973 which has been documented on DVDs, CDs, video tapes and vinyl as ‘The Song Remains The Same.’ After John Bonham the drummer passed away in 1980, the band decided not to tour as Led Zeppelin ever again.
However, in December 2007, they got together with John Bonham’s son, Jason, on the drums for a one-off concert in London at the O2 arena. That concert broke all records for solicited tickets. There were 20 million plus requests for tickets for a venue that holds a maximum of 23,000!
That alone speaks volumes for the band’s enormity and popularity. ‘Nuff said!
(Lachman Balani is a Toronto-based financial consultant)
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