Safe As Milk 6
Thing of milk
During the first singles, it’s hard to split Van Vliet from the band. He’s a distinctive part of it. History says The Magic Band started with Van Vliet as singer. History then says that before and during ‘Safe As Milk’ the band was a democracy. There is evidence of this, both personal story and known fact. Van Vliet ideas could and would be voted out. The guitarist on the recording,Ry Cooder, didn’t stay long but was partially credited with composition. History says Van Vliet gained influence, that by the time of ‘Trout Mask Replica’ he ran the band for his compositions and performance directions. But even then the band was a performance item, with a will of it’s own. Comments on the Clear Spot album are that the band had become able and quick so The Captain had difficulty at times fitting the words in.
What some in the band didn’t know, and became lost in time, is that most of the ‘Safe As Milk’ lyrics were not written by Van Vliet. He’d met a guy called Herb Bermann, heard Bermann’s poetry, was composing music to Herb Bermann’s words. Interviews from nearly fourty years later, in 2004, seem truth. What Bermann got from this is easy, he was a bit‐part actor, a stretch older than anyone in the band, who thought he may have a writer in him… and now, here was his work, dramatised on stage. In interview, he thanks Van Vliet for the chance, which lead to an obscure but by report satisfying life in scriptwriting. But here to ponder, why would Van Vliet, who could write a song as distinctive as ‘Here I am, I Always Am’ (a first single) want to collaborate? If you care to, reasons can be found. Herb Bermann’s lyrics have found rithm, allusive cut‐ups, sympathy, challenging shifts of view and a range of concern, so Van Vliet was likely to spring for that material as offloading a job… or as artistic progress. This has only come to light recently—see the interview with the guy involved. Far as is known, there’s no similar collaboration in any other Van Vliet output. There ought to be credits, but mostly they were lost.
However you figure, both Van Vliet and Herb Bermann entered into this thing voluntarily, and the process was hot. Herb Bermann says he and Van Vliet worked together for a year and a half, and that they wrote nearly sixty songs together. You do not get this intensity from capable artists unless there is a phantom between them. Aside from that, the Herb Bermann interviews suggest that the words stayed mostly as he wrote them, and that Van Vliet constructed the music. They also suggest that Van Vliet was mad to make things as good as he could, or just get ideas out of his head—the poet sat in on the recordings, and he reports Van Viet’s drive there too (but reports no trouble between himself and Van Vliet).
We can imagine what the poet was doing, doodling and shaping. What was Van Vliet up to? Well, I can tell you what I think—he was composing his lumps and variations. But he was also being sprung by the lyrics. Like his mate Frank Zappa, who evoked musical form for sarcasm, Van Vliet evoked musical form to match what he found in the words. Except Van Vliet is not referencing those musics, but reconstructing so he can add angles to the given lyrics. Let’s pick a few ‘Safe As Milk’ tracks where other musical styles seem to intrude,
‘I’m Glad’, Motown (there’s a thought from some that this song resembles ‘Ooo Baby, Baby’ by Smokey Robinson And The Miracles)
‘Call on Me’, Stax type R&B(ish, when the horns arrive)
‘Sure ’Nuff ’N Yes I Do’, some kind of electric Blues (Mike Barnes claims it goes back to Charlie Patton)
‘Yellow Brick Road’, verse melody is like a scene‐setter from a musical (predates, by a few months, The Beatles ‘Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds’)
‘Grown So Ugly’ reworked blues tune (blunt humour could be Van Vliet himself)
‘Autumn’s Child’ as example. A sad melodic phrase and comment that sounds like a Mammas and Pappas sarcastic nostalgia (yes, they were in the charts at the time, no, I’m not saying an ‘influence’, I don’t know where Van Vliet picked it up, or if he invented it), framed by what sounds like commentary from a musical, “Go back ten years ago!”.
This is not an easy process. Van Vliet must find or make music that explains what he wants to say about the lyric. He may or may not get it first time, he may try musics, or wait for inspiration. And it’s not done there—for most lyrics, like ‘Electricity’ or ‘Autumn’s Child’, Van Vliet creates different pieces of music for different sections of lyric. This being a music structure he creates, he may think he should compose musical bridges, or sections that add musical comment. I’m not in a position to know if Van Vliet composed by section, but it sounds like it. If so, now he has sections, he needs to fit these sections together. I don’t know if Van Viet’s sections worked together first time or if the musicians handled that, but it is possible work (in interview with Mike Barnes, Art Tripp (drums and percussion, band name ‘Ed Marimba’) says of a section in a later work, “I listened to a piano piece…. then embellished… I don’t believe it had ever intended to be a part of that song”).
I can only guess at what was happening there. But if what was happening was what I think was happening, then it’s important to know this. Because it makes ‘Safe As Milk’ different to other Van Vliet albums. It means conventional criticism of ‘Safe As Milk’ doesn’t fit. Allmusic says this of ‘Safe As Milk’,
…more doo wop, soul, straight blues, and folk‐rock influences than he would employ on his more avant‐garde outings.
I say ‘Safe As Milk’ is not ‘influenced’ by any of those those musics. It doesn’t try to imitate the dot‐piano or harmony vocals of Doo‐Wop tracks to, as Doo‐Wop would, express sweet yearning. Instead, within a full‐realized sculptural grind, it evokes or reconstructs those musics to, in reference, talk of other things.
Which makes sense of why Don Vliet is quoted as being “unimpressed by the Beatles”. Of course. It was The Beatles, and some of Bob Dylan, opened up the possibility of other‐music references. But The Beatles especially often use those references to move into reference evocation and statements. ‘When I’m 64’ by The Beatles is a music‐hall statement. Don Vliet would never do that. He’d have used such a reference to explore what love or being old may mean to him. It’s often noted that Van Vliet was a sometime friend of Frank Zappa. I recall in his book about Frank Zappa, (‘The Negative Dialectics Of Poodle Play’), Ben Watson figured that Frank Zappa hated Bob Dylan, and the proposed reason was because Bob Dylan had for a while written surreal music that Zappa admired, but then lapsed into evocation. Same again… Van Vliet used musical references—a Beatles tactic and a musical potential The Beatles had opened—but was unimpressed by The Beatles usage.
…and the band
Anyway, this isn’t a performable item yet. More to come. The band must play whatever Van Vliet has composed. At the time of ‘Safe As Milk’ Van Vliet was very limited in how he could explain a song to the band. He could/would only tap and whistle to the musicians, who then built the material into performable items. As far as I know, the band was at this time democratic, so this may have been an extended and difficult process. Later in the recording of ‘Safe As Milk’ John French arrived, so did Ry Cooder. John French became the guy who could write down, or memorise, then explain in conventional terms—as for Ry Cooder, he was handy always. But through the initial development of ‘Safe As Milk’ Van Vliet had no translator—perhaps the role came about because the process was difficult? No surprise this music, which formally uses basic materials, is so dense in intent and delivery. I found later confirmation in the Mike Barnes biography, when Ry Cooder talks about the ‘Safe As Milk’ sessions. Ry Cooder said his greeting was, “Another dammed thing… the bass player Jerry, he doesn’t remember the parts half the time. I told him…”, and Ry Cooder’s work was, “In a selection of notes, first he [Van Vliet] wanted this and he wanted that… it’s just that he wanted a sound… he’d look at music in this real un‐linear way.” Much later, on a different project, Ry Cooder locked Van Vliet in a bathroom, “‘Just sing… the song”. Jesus Christ!… You sing—then you can come out.’ (Laughs) He put me through a lot of hell in the Safe As Milk days (Laughs)… I got him now!”
And then the record was assembled. Someone, Van Vliet/the band/the producers selected and sequenced songs. Likely this was not Van Vliet auteurism. Herb Bermann said that of the sixty or so songs they wrote, songs popped up early—‘Triple Combination’ was a Bermann lyric—and later—Bermann claims ‘Trust Us’, ‘Owed T’Alex’ and others— and then there were those producers who worked for the record company. So ‘Safe As Milk’ may be a first ‘stage‐post’ in an ongoing auteur process, but that’s only part of the story. It was made by a one‐off process never repeated, with plenty of collaboration. It is an outlier.