The Spotlight Kid
| The Spotlight Kid | ||||
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| Studio album by Captain Beefheart | ||||
| Released | January 1972 | |||
| Recorded | Autumn 1971 | |||
| Genre | Blues rock | |||
| Length | 35:54 | |||
| Label | Reprise | |||
| Producer | Captain Beefheart, Phil Schier | |||
| Captain Beefheart chronology | ||||
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| Allmusic |   |
The Spotlight Kid is the sixth album by Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) and the Magic Band, originally released in 1972. It is the only album formally credited solely to Captain Beefheart. Often cited as one of the most accessible of Beefheart's albums, it is solidly founded in the blues but also uses instruments such as marimba and jingle bells that are not typical of that genre. The incarnation of the Magic Band on this album was Bill Harkleroad and Elliot Ingber, guitars; Mark Boston, bass; John French, drums; and Art Tripp, marimba. Session drummer Rhys Clark substituted for French on one track, "Glider."
The music on The Spotlight Kid is simpler and slower than on the group's two previous releases, the uncompromisingly original Trout Mask Replica and the frenetic Lick My Decals Off, Baby. This was in part an attempt by Van Vliet to become a more appealing commercial proposition as the band had made virtually no money during the previous three years – at the time of recording, the band members were subsisting on welfare food handouts and remittances from their parents. Van Vliet offered that he "got tired of scaring people with what I was doing... I realized that I had to give them something to hang their hat on, so I started working more of a beat into the music." Magic Band members have also said that the slower performances were due in part to Van Vliet's inability to fit his lyrics with the faster instrumental backing of the earlier albums. This problem that was exacerbated in that he almost never rehearsed with the group.
The band members disliked the simple material and sluggish tempos. Drummer John French has said, "At the time I hated that album... A lot of that stuff was really boring to play, because it was so simple and it wasn't going anywhere. For another thing a lot of the tracks were just so slow... We just hated it." Guitarist Bill Harkleroad simply said "I hate that album. It sucks." He attributed the album's lackluster performances to the emotional toll of Van Vliet's behavior toward the band: "We were just emotionally beat to death by his particular environment...we were playing really anemically and it sucks because of that."
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