January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010), best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist. Sometimes collaborating with his teenage friend Frank Zappa, Van Vliet's musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called the Magic Band, with whom he recorded 13 studio albums between 1964 and 1982. His music blended elements of blues, free jazz, rock, and avant-garde composition with idiosyncratic rhythms, surrealist wordplay, and his wide vocal range, commonly reported as five octaves. Known for his enigmatic persona, Beefheart frequently constructed myths about his life and was known to exercise an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians.
After his retirement from music, Van Vliet rarely appeared in public. He resided near Trinidad, California, with his wife Janet "Jan" Van Vliet. By the early 1990s he was using a wheelchair as a result of multiple sclerosis. The severity of his illness was sometimes disputed. Many of his art contractors and friends considered him to be in good health. Other associates such as his longtime drummer and musical director John French and bassist Richard Snyder have stated that they had noticed symptoms consistent with the onset of multiple sclerosis, such as sensitivity to heat, loss of balance, and stiffness of gait, by the late 1970s.
One of Van Vliet's last public appearances was in the 1993 short documentary Some Yo Yo Stuff by filmmaker Anton Corbijn, described as an "observation of his observations". Around 13 minutes and shot entirely in black and white, with appearances by his mother and David Lynch, the film showed a noticeably weakened and dysarthric.
Van Vliet died at a hospital in Arcata, California, on Friday, December 17, 2010, about a month before his 70th birthday. The cause was named as complications from multiple sclerosis.
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