Long-Shelved Captain Beefheart Album Set for January Release

Captain Beefheart performing in May, 1975.

Colin Fuller/Redferns

A long-shelved Captain Beefheart album is set for release January 15th, on what would have been the 70th birthday of the outre bandleader (born Don Van Vliet).

Bat Chain Puller was scheduled for release in 1976 but was caught up in legal issues between Beefheart's friend Frank Zappa, who produced the record, and his onetime manager, Herb Cohen. The album has long been popular among bootleggers, and some of its songs were eventually rerecorded for Beefheart's 1978 album Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).

Van Vliet, who was a highly regarded painter as well as a musician, died last year on December 17th. 

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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