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 Gurmukh Singh TORONTO: I have tons of memories of my friend and India’s comedy king Jaspal Bhatti who died in a road accident on Thursday in Punjab while promoting his film Power Cut. The first time I met Jaspal Bhatti was at his Chandigarh residence when I went from Delhi to interview him for the Sunday Times of India. I think that was in 1996, and we used to have a page called People in the STOI (the Sunday Times of India) looked after by Sumita Paul (now Sumita Mehta after her marriage to Outlook editor Vinod Mehta). When I went to meet Jaspal, he was not at home but his wife Savita was there. Soon he came and we had a great time talking about how he got the offer from India’s government-owned Doordarshan TV network to make Ulta-Pulta in the 1980s and later Flop Show. Those were pioneering shows in Indian TV. And as we were talking about his days as an engineer (he was an electrical engineering graduate from Punjab Engineering College , Chandigarh), the electricity went off. Laughing loudly, he said, “That’s why I quit being an electrical engineer because people would have thrown stones at me for this kind of power failures.’’ Then he talked about his cartooning days for The Tribune from Chandigarh and how cartooning hobby led him to adopt comedy as a profession. His half-page interview appeared in the Sunday Times of India, and he became friends with me. That interview also appeared in the Sunday Times edition of Bombay. After this, he came to Delhi before his film Mahaul Theek Hai was released in 1998. I think I was going to meet Gulzar Saab who was in Delhi that day and staying in a South Delhi hotel. So I asked Jaspal to come with me and meet Gulzar Saab as he had never met him. As we were driving in Jaspal’s friend P.S. Bright’s car from the Times of India office at ITO to the hotel where Gulzar was staying, Jaspal said he wanted to eat something. So we stopped at Nathu’s Sweets in Sundar Nagar. When we went inside, Nathu’s staff recognized Jaspal and pampered us with their choicest dishes. And when we went to pay at the counter, the guy refused to accept money from us. He said: “Everything is free for Bhatti Saab.’’ I cannot forget that incident. Another incident involving Jaspal Bhatti I cannot forget is when he was shooting some film and staying at the Intercontinental Hotel near Bengali Market in New Delhi. I went to meet him with a friend of mine. Jaspal ordered food, snacks and other things. As we were having fun, someone from his crew noticed that an unknown guy had come, eaten their food and disappeared. When this guy was eating, each one of Jaspal’s crew thought that he was a friend of someone among them. After Jaspal’s crew failed to find this free-loader, we had a great laugh. That was such a hilarious incident. Then another incident involving Jaspal I cannot forget is the launch of my book titled The Rise of Sikhs Abroad by then Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh in May 2003. After the release of the book, we went to the Chandigarh Press Club or somewhere to have drinks. It was getting late and all food shops were closing. So my friend-classmate Diwan Manna, who is a known artist in India, Jaspal Bhatti, Major-General Himmat Singh (brother of former election commissioner of India Manohar Singh Gill), journalist Swaraj Chauhan and I went to a roadside dhaba in Sector 19 or 27. When we reached there, the dhaba guys were closing as police were forcing them to down shutters after 10 pm or 11m. But when the police guys saw Jaspal, they just disappeared, and the dhaba guys treated us to a very delicious dinner. Mind you, the dhaba remained open till past midnight and no policeman was seen around. Such was Jaspal’s clout with everyone – from a dhaba owner to policemen to minsters. And when his film Mahaul Theek Hai (a comedy about police highhandedness in Punjab) was released, I remember meeting him on January 1, 1999, at his Chandigarh residence. He took me to the Batra Theatre which was showing the film. Both of us entered the movie hall from the backside and sat at the back so that nobody recognized Jaspal Bhatti. After the film was over, we slipped out quietly as Jaspal didn’t want to create a commotion at the theatre. That was Jaspal Bhatti – a friend’s friend. A down-to-earth human being. In 2008, when I was planning to have a website, I asked him to suggest a few names. And Jaspal wrote me this email: “Sorry for being late. Here are few names that i could think of…. gapshap.com canadanonstop.com punjabcanadanonstop shotcut2punjab canadiangossip canadanewsmix desiheadlines e-bukhar e-akhbar’’ Jaspal was the top artist to emerge from Chandigarh and he never abandoned his city to settle in Mumbai. There won’t be another Jaspal Bhatti. He was unique. Rest in peace, my friend. We will always miss you. Alas and Alack! READ NEXT: My memories of telegram as it says goodbye to India after 163 years
