'All this week, one song off Trout Mask Replica kept playing in my head: "Orange Claw Hammer", an unaccompanied field holler-like poem about a man who's been away at sea for years and catches first sight of his daughter since she was in swaddling. He grasps her hand and offers to "Take you down to the foamin' brine 'n' water, and show you the wooden tits on the goddess with the pole out full-sail that tempted away your pegleg father. I was shanghaied by a highhat beaver-moustache man and his pirate friend. I woke up in vomit and beer in a banana bin, and a soft lass with brown skin bore me seven babies with snappin' black eyes and beautiful ebony skin, and here it is I'm with you my daughter. Thirty years away can make a seaman's eyes, a roundhouse man's eyes flow out with water, salt water."
'Now if that isn't pure true American folklore then you can throw everything from Washington Irving to Carl Sandburg and beyond in the garbage. I'm saying Don Van Vliet, "Captain Beefheart", is on that level. But what I realized this morning, the reason why it was this song stuck out from 26 others: because it's not about the "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish", but something that happened between people.'
"Captain Beefheart's Far Cry", The Village Voice, October 1, 1980
