Willie DeVille strolled into Don Van Vliet's dressing room at The Bottom Line in 1978 after Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band had delivered a fantastic return-to-form performance in NYC. This was two years before I joined Van Vliet to play on Doc at the Radar Station. I was working at CBS Records as a copywriter at the time, and I was backstage as Don's good friend.
After introducing himself to a relatively friendly Beefheart, Willie gushed:
"Hey Don — I got your tunings off your guitarist — and they're beautiful!!"
Don sprang up, fuming:
"You mean... the tunings I INVENTED??"
"Exactly!! Hey man, I gotta take a leak..."
Willie waltzed into the little toilet off to the side of the dressing room, the door closed, and Don said in a hushed, theatrical voice:
"Up, Simba!"
Loud sounds through the door of Mink as he is relieving himself.
"Down, Simba!"
Willie came out all smiles, said his goodbyes, shook Don's hand (he was a big fan), and stumbled out into the night.
I left with Don shortly thereafter. We took a taxi to an all-night coffee shop, where, over multiple cups of java, he continued fuming about DeVille's brazen thievery and his guitarist's apparent betrayal — and then we went back to his room at the Gramercy Park Hotel, where the band was staying.
Around 3 am, having worked himself into a lather over this supposed treachery, he rang the offending guitarist's room and woke him.
"HEY MAN!" he hollered into the phone. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, giving my tunings away to Mink DeVille??"
"Don, those are standard blues tunings — Drop D, open A, open E..."
"Man, don't you understand? I've been ripped off so much! People are like CROWS!! They'll just PECK AWAY!!"
"Okay, sorry, Don. I gotta go back to sleep..."
That was my cue to leave. It had been quite a night.
I went home to crash for a few hours before heading up to Black Rock for yet another boring day working for the Man (who, as everyone knows, "can't bust our music" — in the words of a famously tone-deaf CBS Records ad of the late '60s).
But that day I was all smiles. I always loved hanging with Don.
Who once stated as a Beefheartian axiom:
"A little paranoia is a good propeller."