Magic Man

As guitarist in an early incarnation of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band when they made career-defining albums such as Trout Mask Replica, Jeff Cotton, aka Antennae Jimmy Semens, had a first-hand view of the bizarre and often terrifying and traumatising working methods of the artist formerly known as Don Van Vliet. He lived to tell the tale just and went on to create more heady psychedelia with Mu. He then dropped off the rock'n'roll radar... until now, as Cotton returns with a solo album that draws on many of the ideas and unfinished songs he began work on back in the early 70s. "I love the guy," he tells Mike Barnes about Beefheart. "But it took years of hindsight to be able to process it." 

- Mike Barnes

Jeff Cotton has just released The Fantasy Of Reality, his debut solo album and the first release with his name on it since 1971. Then the guitarist was in West Coast post-psychedelic guitar band Mu and prior to that he played in Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band on Strictly Personal, Mirror Man and Trout Mask Replica. Since Mu broke up in 1974, he has remained elusive and refused interviews – until recently. This prompted all sorts of rumours as to what had happened to him. But like the majority of the population, he was just living his life happily outside the music business.

“I heard a voice very clearly in my head, even before Mu broke up, saying, ‘Jeff, it’s time for you to start living,’” Cotton explains via Zoom from his home in Hawaii. “And as time went on, it became clearer and clearer to have a well-rounded life, have a family, have the joy of community.

“I was in merchant services; I had a little ATM business of my own,” he furthers. “And thank God, it’s helping me to make it through and be able to spend my time doing the music, because I’m full on that now.”

Cotton grew up in Lancaster, California, on the edge of the Mojave Desert, and was initially drawn to country music, particularly Marty Robbins, but in early 1964, while in his mid-teens, Cotton formed The Exiles with singer and guitarist Merrell Fankhauser. Influenced by British Invasion beat groups, Buddy Holly and The Ventures, they released their first single Please Be Mine – as Merrell and the Exiles – within six months and went on to have a number of local hits.