Andrew Hickey
speaker
2,253 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 3 Sep
Andrew Hickey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Van Vliet's intent, which he would sometimes later state explicitly, though at other times would disavow, was
was to create music which essentially merged several different influences.
He wanted to combine the tombers of electric Chicago blues, particularly Hallen Wolf, the phrasing of the older country blues of people like Wolfe's influence Charlie Patton, which would be freer and less structured than the later Chicago musicians, and the sense of tonality and rhythm of free jazz musicians like Albert Taylor and Ornette Coleman.
And on top of all this, he wanted to put beat poetry in the tradition of people like William Burroughs.
While French was in charge of transcribing Van Vliet's musical ideas, Cotton was put in charge of transcribing his lyrical ideas and later reciting them back to the group.
This sort of thing was in the air to an extent.
As we talked about in the MC Fire episode, they were trying to do some very similar things.
But nobody took it as far as Captain Beefheart.
Partly this was because he colored.
Reading French and Harkel Rhodes' autobiographies is quite a distressing experience, as they talk about the abuse they were subjected to when living communally in the Magic Band House.
The band were earning no money at all.
They didn't gig while they were ahearsing the new material for a period of many months.
And they were surviving on a combination of shoplifting.
At one point Zappa had to bail the entire band apart from Van Vliet out of jail after they were arrested for this, and donations from Van Vliet's mother, most of which went to Van Vliet rather than to the band members.
They were suffering from malnutrition, and there were stories of band members being too physically frail to stand up.
Van Fleet would also turn the band members against each other, and would sometimes spend more than twenty four hours solidly trying to break down the psyche of a particular band member, telling him over and again that he needed to admit to hating his own mother or similar until he broke down.
By French and Harkel Road's estimate, the nine or so months they spent rehearsing the album could have been cut down to three months, had the vast majority of that time not been taken up by Van Vliet's attempts to break their wills.
Honestly, having read a great deal about both Captain Beefart and Charles Manson, there is almost no difference in the two men's approach to their acolytes, and if anything, Van Vliet seems to have treated his followers worse.
I have to be clear now.
None of what I am about to say is to excuse any of what I just said.
Showing 541–560 of 2,253 · page 28 of 113
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