Things began to go wrong when I was seventeen. My band’s twenty-year-old lead guitarist earned seven years in jail for a drug-fuelled spree of violence. The other band members were quick to let go of their musical dreams, but I never did. They did the ‘mature’ thing: after writing off the band as a teenage fantasy, they got real jobs and made some money. They called it growing up. I called it giving up.
ROCK STATE OF MINDThe lights go outDarkness takes over my mindI can see only the unreal…The sound of the pianoWhispers in my earsProvoking the sea of tearsBreaking down the stringsAttaching me to my fearsThe violin wakens the dreamsCreating the willDetaching from the groundLifting me upTo be one with the dark cloudsTo feel the storm whelming up insideThe strings of the guitar cinchesThe cords binding me to youLuring me to the ends of the galaxiesGluing me to an inaccessible timeWhere time stands stillAnd pain continuously spillsBut your voice slithers in betweenRising with each beatStretching out its wingsSheltering me from the windFighting my warsRisking it allSilence…..The pulsation of the drumsJoin with the beats of my heartStating their case in syncAwakening me to your presenceAnd in a flash of lightningHeaven and earth become oneThe piano severing the strings to my fearsThe violin forging a stormThe guitar freezing timeYour voice fighting my warsThe drums breathing life into meThat’s rock for meThe rock state of mind
Like almost all of Beefheart's recorded work, it was not even "ahead" of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole genres eclectic as walking Christmas trees, constituting a genre unto itself: truly, a musical Monolith if ever there was one.
German is a much more precise language than English. Americans throw the word love around for everything: I love my wife! I love all my friends! I love rock music! I love the rain! I love comic books! I love peanut butter! The word you use to describe your feelings for your wife should not be the same word you use to describe your feelings for peanut butter. In German, there are a dozen different words that describe varying degrees of liking something a lot. Germans almost never use the word love, unless they mean a deep romantic love. I have never told my parents I love them, because it would sound melodramatic, inappropriate, and almost incestuous. In German, you tell your mother that you hold her very dear, not that you are in love with her.