Beefheart Quotes

#1. I don't look like a desert person because I stay indoors most of the day and fool around at night. That's what the desert animals do - they don't have a tan either.

Captain Beefheart

#2. Johnny Rotten. He's a big fan of mine. I used to see him out in the audience in England and he'd stand up and holler. He's funny. Smart too, and a nice guy. Don't think he's a jerk because he isn't.

Captain Beefheart

#3. I don't even know what sound is, much less what it's for. It isn't to make money that's for sure. I've never made any.

Captain Beefheart

#4. May the Baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your mind.

Captain Beefheart

#5. We're all colored, or you wouldn't be able to see anyone.

Captain Beefheart

#6. It makes me itch to think of myself as Captain Beefheart. I don't even have a boat.

Don Van Vliet

#7. When I was a kid, I would go to the record store, where there was a bin of things they didn't know quite how to classify. Those were my choices. That's where you would find Captain Beefheart or an early electronic album.

Mark Mothersbaugh

#8. You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.

Captain Beefheart

#9. Most of modern rock and roll is a product of guilt.

Captain Beefheart

#10. I have no neighbours other than animals and Joshua Trees.

Captain Beefheart

#11. I don't like getting out when I could be painting. And when I'm painting, I don't want anybody else around.

Captain Beefheart

#12. I would never kill a living thing, although I probably have inadvertently while driving automobiles.

Captain Beefheart

#13. I was real into Devo, Pavement, Captain Beefheart, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Patrick Carney

#14. With my voice and my band, I can do anything.

Captain Beefheart

#15. There isn't an amount of money you could offer me to do reality TV. I would rather get my job back on the building site. Or I could own a construction business. Maybe I could retire to my house in Long Island and take up painting, like Captain Beefheart. A crazy recluse: I like that idea.

Dave Gahan

#16. Man has done a lot to make himself dangerous and animals get the worst of all of it. But then, man too is an animal.

Captain Beefheart

#17. I do like Captain Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica is a misunderstood masterpiece!) and I do have two kids but I've never written a prize winning novel called Oh, Bollocks!

Jon Edgell

#18. I don't know anything about music.

Captain Beefheart

#19. I think Shakespeare is really the one. Words as music and music as words. Everything he wrote was good, which is really frightening.

Captain Beefheart

#20. My wife, when I met her, she had a remarkable record collection. And they were all still in their sleeves! I couldn't believe it. She took care of her records. Rachmaninov, Beefheart. For me, most of my records were out of their sleeves and in a drawer somewhere. I married a record collection.

Tom Waits

#21. I don't think artists are made, I think they're born.

Captain Beefheart

#22. The wind is a very difficult sound to get. It's always changing.

Captain Beefheart

#23. I don't do lullabyes.

Captain Beefheart

#24. When I see a dolphin, I know it's just as smart as I am.

Captain Beefheart

#25. But I have been in some very beautiful churches, then I've looked outside and seen people starving to death.

Captain Beefheart

#26. The stars are matter, we're matter, but it doesn't matter.

Captain Beefheart

#27. November 18 ... I dig musicians, I feel they have the most to offer me mentally and emotionally because they think basically along the same lines that I do; extremely creative people. Music is Life. As Captain Beefheart once said 'God is a perfect musical note.

Pamela Des Barres

#28. That Sid Vicious was obviously a schizophrenic, kind of a mean one too.

Captain Beefheart

#29. You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.

Captain Beefheart

#30. Step out of a triangle, into striped light!

Captain Beefheart

#31. If you want to be a different fish, jump out of school.

Captain Beefheart

#32. Everyone's colored, or you wouldn't be able to see them.

Captain Beefheart

#33. I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.

Captain Beefheart

#34. We see the moon, don't we? So it's our eye. Animals see us, don't they? So we're their animals.

Captain Beefheart

#35. James Brown is important because he decorates the clock correctly and he's good with lower mathematics. Don't get me wrong - he's good.

Captain Beefheart

#36. People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

P.J. Harvey

#37. I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything.

Captain Beefheart

#38. Bob Dylan impresses me about as much as ... well, I was gonna say a slug but I like slugs.

Captain Beefheart

#39. I'm interested in playing, not working.

Captain Beefheart

#40. In 1979, I moved to England and photographed Joy Division and Bowie and Beefheart. At that time I got images that I felt had that special, well - power is a big word to say - more like intimacy and ambition that outlasted the photo shoot. I felt that they would have a longer life.

Anton Corbijn

#41. An audience can really lift you right up off the stage.

Captain Beefheart

#42. I think most people try to get others to see through their eyes.

Captain Beefheart

#43. I needed to purge myself of all the attention my parents had given me - I wasn't neglected enough as a child.

Captain Beefheart

#44. I live in a Mobile Home - I've never had a house, except once; I rented a log cabin.

Captain Beefheart