“Pena” (1969) – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band * Written by Don Van Vliet * LP: Trout Mask Replica * Produced by Frank Zappa * Label: Straight
In his 1998 memoir Lunar Notes: Zoot Horn Rollo’s Captain Beefheart Experience, Magic Band guitarist Bill Harkleroad gives a song-by-song overview of the Trout Mask Replica album that probably ought to be considered by anyone who’s about to write the next indictment of the divisive sixties-rock milestone. It will, at very least, remove a few layers of fog. His words about “Pena” have a lingering effect in that they discuss contributions by guitarist Jeff Cotton (aka Antennae Jimmy Semens). He was the adroit slide guitarist who would quit the band after getting his ribs broken in one of the band’s many Beefheart-manipulated melees (and who would later recover with Merrell Fankhauser’s sun-streaked band Mu). “Pena” is among the rare recitations not handled by the gravelly-voiced Captain himself. It’s Cotton we hear, who—after some preliminary “fast and bulbous” words by Beefheart and Victor Hayden (aka The Mascara Snake)—also does the disturbing background shrieks. “It hurt [Cotton’s] voice so bad he’d be in tears at the end of making whatever that sound was,” writes Harkleroad. “He had barely made it and was almost choking by the end” (p. 44).