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tricked into improvising the lyrics. “Without being kicked in the butt, he would never have started singing,” Zappa explained.
    For most of his career, Zappa’s musical satire was largely based on his interest in documenting the unusual fixations of those normally not commemorated in pop songs—or for that matter, in classical music, too. For example, before his death, while working with the Ensemble Modern, he provided story material from
PFIQ
magazine—a magazine devoted to genitalpiercing—in order to create an orchestral composition. In “Lost in a Whirlpool,” it was the peculiar story of a man being flushed down the toilet by his girlfriend where—to his horror—he encounters an eyeless brown fish. “There are few areas of basic human activity that have not been dealt with in rock ’n’ roll, but a song about being pursued by a giant stool stands in a field of one,” wrote Mike Barnes. But the idea of building a blues song around such questionable material was in keeping with a tradition much bigger than a field of one.
    The blues has a long history embroidered with sexual slang and swagger—whether it was the Mississippi Sheiks’ down and dirty “Ram Rod Blues” in 1930, Blind Boy Fuller’s 1939 ode to cunnilingus, “I Want Some of Your Pie,” or Hattie North’s “Honey Dripper Blues.” “Lost in a Whirlpool” plays havoc with that legacy by adding a touch of the preposterous. As the song opens, Bobby Zappa rhythmically starts strumming the melody, while brother Frank picks out the lead notes as if digging for gnats hiding in his guitar. Meanwhile, Don Vliet clears his throat. Once they establish the tune, Vliet bursts in with an uncharacteristic high falsetto reminiscent of Skip James in his 1931 “Cherry Ball Blues.” “Weellll, I’m lost in a whirlpool,” Vliet cries out in a mock despair, “Yeah, baby, my head is going round / Well, ever since my baby flushed me / Ohhh, been goin’ round, yeah, round and round.” As the singer swirls deeper and deeper into the commode, he quickly encounters the stool, that eyeless brown fish staring right back at him. Vliet momentarily slips back into his husky baritone, as if the shock from the rendezvous suddenly transforms him from this aggrieved lover into that of an outraged suitor. “He ain’t got no eyes!” he stammers loudly before stating the obvious: “How could that motherfucker possiblysee?” Vliet pleads for his lover to save him, perhaps with some Drano, or possibly a plunger, because, “I’m gettin’ tired of all this pee.” As the song concludes, Vliet lets loose with an improvised pun that, by the time of
Trout Mask Replica
, would be effortlessly supplied. “Don’t go strangle Mother Goose,” he warns. “Ooh, my head’s in the noose.” While the Zappa brothers continue to unfurl their endless chord progressions, Don decides to cap the tune with a quick “deedley-wee-wop.” If “Lost in a Whirlpool” didn’t produce anything astonishing, or terribly memorable, it did reveal something of the sensibilities of both men. You could clearly see the early origins of Zappa’s penchant for bawdy humour, along with Vliet’s style of inspired vamping. On that day, Frank Zappa officially began his quest to turn the history of popular music into a kaleidoscopic farce, while Don Van Vliet started to consider ways to transform the blues into an expressionist canvas for his own obsessions.
    Since all his blues idols gave themselves names, often fierce ones chosen to live up to the force they would become in the world, Vliet wanted one himself. Chester Burnett had turned into Howlin’ Wolf. McKinley Morganfield one day became Muddy Waters. But Don Van Vliet? He became Captain Beefheart. Vliet claims he coined it himself because he had “a beef in his heart” for the world. In truth, it was Frank Zappa who actually gave it to him, as part of a failed oratorio called
I Was a Teenage Maltshop
. This teenage “rock opera,”