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.
TORONTO: I was shocked to learn of Nandu Bhende’s untimely demise when he died at the very young age of 58 in 2014.
I had just met him a few months ago in December where he was hale and hearty, joking around and reminiscing about the past and telling me stories of his son studying in Germany, who was about to go to Israel for a two-week stint.
Nandu was Mumbai’s Maharaja of rock giving all us young fans countless hours of music from the counter-culture ‘dum maro dum’ days, performing covers of several big bands including Jethro Tull, the Who, The Beatles, the Doors, Steppenwolf, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix and of course The Moody Blues.
He perfected The Moody Blues’ ‘Nights in white satin’ to the very last cut and note and then put in his own heart and soul and took it to incredible heights! That became his signature tune at every performance. Even The Moody Blues would’ve been proud of it. In recent years he had it as the ringtone on his cell phone.
Nandu was an extremely shy personality and many fans mistook it for aloofness in the early 70s. He played in several bands (Velvette Fogg, Atomic Forest, Savage Encounter) at happening avenues like Hell in Worli, Blow-Up at the Taj Intercontinental and the famous Slip Disc. When Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin hit Bombay (Mumbai now) at the height of their career in the 70s , the owner of Slip Disc called on no less than Nandu to do the arrangements for their short but unforgettable performance. It was a night to remember!
A year or so before that fateful night, Nandu and his band performed at India’s version of the legendary Woodstock festival about a two/three hour drive from Bombay. After doing a set at Blow-Up in Bombay, they all piled into the car and arrived at the venue in the wee hours of the morning where everybody was crashed out. All fired up from their superb act at the Blow-Up, they woke everybody up , got themselves TURNED ON, TUNED IN and then split the mighty heavens into two! Everybody who was there till date says it was India’s equivalent to The Who’s scorching early morning performance at Woodstock!
Nandu in those days won several citations and awards including the well known SIMLA (after ITC’s cigarette of the same name) Beat Contest.
Besides being a super rock head, Nandu was extremely versatile, also acting in plays. His portrayal of Judas in Alyque Padamsee’s adaptation of the famous international play ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ won him many accolades.
His versatility led him to do work for Bollywood and he received a gold disc for his contribution to Mithun Chakraborty’s super hit Disco Dancer. He was a true champion well-versed in all genres.
In the early 2000’s he also revived memories of classic rock in India by writing a series of articles for Pune Times on various super rock groups of the 60s and 70s. He even included an article of mine on rock Goddess Tina Turner. He later joked that he was too smashed to write an article so he decided to just bindaas throw in mine and credit it to my email id ‘thenetpreneur’. He would sign off every article with the famous ‘Rock On!’
Nandu went on to start a studio in Mumbai for voice training which would have celebrated its tenth anniversary later this year. His has worked with the likes of Bappi Lahiri, Irrfan Khan, Kailash Kher , Amol Palekar, Frieda Pinto and more. He has also interacted with globally known musicians Talat Mehmood and Jagjit Singh.
He is one of the few international musicians from anywhere in the world to have performed in North Korea. Read that well- NORTH Korea- not South Korea.
Even though he excelled at several genres, his heart and soul was fundamentally into classic rock and he read up extensively and memorized details about the life of The Beatles, his first love outside his family. He grooved on them so much so that he pre-empted the world to pay tribute to the Beatles 50th anniversary of their American invasion when they performed for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show in Feb 1964. In January earlier this year, before the Grammys and the rest of the world paid homage, he performed a memorable tribute to the unparalleled Beatles at D’Bell Lounge in Lower Parel, Mumbai.
As the saying goes, ‘They have rock and roll in HEAVEN, and they have one HELL of a band!’ Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, George Harrison, Keith Moon, John Entwhistle, John Bonham, Freddie Mercury and now Nandu Bhende!
A great big chapeau to you Nandu bhai for rocking Mumbai! May your soul forever rest in peace!
(Lachman Balani is a financial advisor)
READ ALSO: Pandit Ravi Shankar: Remembering the Guru-vy godfather of world music on his birthday
