If you have ever heard the 1972 debut album by Captain Beyond, you can attest to the magic and the greatness of this album. For over 40 years, Captain Beyond has been one of the best kept and most proudly shared secrets in rock n’ roll spawning an album that inspired many of my favorite modern hard rock bands such as Kadavar, Crobot, Riotgod, and Graveyard to name just a few.
On a whim, I reached out to legendary Captain Beyond drummer Bobby Caldwell about doing an interview and I was surprised and honored that he was willing to talk to me. Bobby was a really great, gracious, and funny guy to talk to and he shared stories with me about the writing sessions for the legendary debut album, how the Allman Brothers were instrumental in getting them signed, and taking Captain Beyond into the future with a new lineup to headline a show in Oslo, Norway on January 24th, 2015. Sit back and get to know the man, the legend that is Bobby Caldwell. Enjoy!
Bobby, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I’m very glad that the idea of doing an interview for a website called The Great Southern Brainfart didn’t have you blocking me from all contact with you.
[Laughs] Don, it’s not a problem at all. It’s great to talk to you brother. I’m glad you called Don!
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I discovered Captain Beyond back in 2008 the same way most people my age discovered them. A friend of mine came up to me and said, “Have you heard of Captain Beyond?” I said, “No” and he said, “Listen to this!”
[Laughs] I think the strange thing about Captain Beyond’s music is that it just seems to keep gathering another generation of fans. There’s a whole new group of ears, if you will. It’s about the music and I guess if it’s good enough it will stand up over time. I was recently hanging out with Jeff Pilson, who used to be in Dokken and is now in Foreigner, and he was telling me one night, “You know all those guys in Metallica are huge fans of Captain Beyond?” I had no idea and he said, “All these bands are huge fans. You wouldn’t believe it.”
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Hearing that debut Captain Beyond album changed my life as a music lover forever. It was definitely
a game changer for me.
That is very good to hear, Don. What kind of things would you like to talk about today, Don?
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Well, for starters, what are you doing these days?
I’m doing Captain Beyond [laughs]. We are about to re-emerge. We are going to playing on January 24th in Oslo, Norway headlining a music festival there.
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That is amazing. Can you tell me more about it?
Don, I wish I could tell you more but I don’t know more but that’s not unusual [laughs]. It’s going to be us headlining a festival of some type. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m trying to get Captain Beyond back on the map because there are an awful lot of people who want to hear this music so that’s what I’m in the middle of right now.
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Bobby, I’d love for you to tell me about your involvement with the Allman Brothers Band. Other than the fact that you are credited on the legendary Fillmore East album, I’m not aware of the extent of your connection.
Well Don, when I was playing with Johnny Winter And I would play with the Allman Brothers Band and go on the road with them because I just didn’t want to sit around New York. I would go out on the road with them and we just developed a long friendship. The Allman Brothers would play many shows opening for us and then we just became good friends. Did you know that for Live at the Fillmore East, Johnny Winter And was actually headlining that night?
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Wow. I really had no idea about that.
Yeah. Those four shows, Johnny Winter And was the headliner, the Allman Brothers Band were 2nd on the bill and the Elvin Bishop Group was the opener. I would play with the Brothers and then go back, change clothes, sit around for an hour and a half and then come back and play with Johnny Winter. This is what I did for the better part of those four nights.
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Bobby, I’m sure you’ve told this story a zillion times but I’d love to hear it from the source. How did Captain Beyond come to be? I’m sure you’re tired of telling this story.
[Laughs] Don, don’t worry about it, man. I don’t mind it at all. So just to digress slightly, Rhino (Larry Reinhardt) had known each other since the late 60’s. We lived in the same town in Florida. Rhino and Lee Dorman from Iron Butterfly sent me, I think it was a telegraph, that they’d like to talk to me about putting some band together. I told them that I’d love to do it but I didn’t know when I would be out in LA which is where they were living. When I did get out there, we started talking about it and by coincidence, a few months later Johnny Winter decided to take some time off. I just decided at that point that I would join forces with them to see what we could do.
So where did Rod Evans come into the picture with all of this?
Rod had left Deep Purple and had married an American girl and was living in LA. Rhino had been given Rod’s name or something by Iron Butterfly’s manager. Rod was there in LA so we all just conviened and it was really funny. I didn’t know Lee and Lee didn’t know Rod and Rod didn’t know me, Rod didn’t know Rhino [laughs]. We basically didn’t know each other in any real way. We were just four people coming together to talk about what we wanted to do. I didn’t know what to make of it really.
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What was the writing sessions like for the Captain Beyond album?
Well, that’s an interesting question Don. Once we all decided that we were going to do this thing, I was living with Lee Dorman at the time. I have to set it up a little bit. He had this beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills and was making unbelievable amounts of money with Iron Butterfly who were huge at the time. He wasn’t married so I moved in with him. Rhino decided that since he was building this home studio, we could just rehearse at his place. Lee and I would pick up Rod who lived a very short distance away and we would drive out to Rhino’s every single day, Monday through Friday from about 9:30 until about 5:30 and we treated this just like a job. There was no messing about. We just started getting into it. Rhino and I always enjoyed this communication where if I started telling him about a song idea that I had or something he would know what I was talking about. A lot of those songs were created just like that. We would get to his house and we’d spend the day just playing, jamming, and putting these songs together. Because of legal reasons, Rhino couldn’t be listed as a writer on the album.
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Probably my favorite aspect of the Captain Beyond album is the lyrics. If you really sit down, take it in, and listen, those lyrics are just mind blowing. Where were these lyrics coming from?
The music was written by Rhino and me. The lyrics were written by Rod and me. Rod and I would share the lyrics. I’ve always been a writer and I would be writing all of these books and books of lyrics. At one point, I always had this drum pattern that I would always play (mimics the drum intro for Dancing Madly Backwards). It wasn’t that big of a deal. I was playing it one day and Rhino came up with that guitar riff to go along with it and off we went. Then I showed the lyrics that I had to Rod and he put the melody to it. Rod wrote “Armwoth” himself. He wrote “Mezmorization Eclipse.” I wrote “Raging River of Fear”, “Frozen Over”, “Thousand Days of Yesterday.” It was just the process and we would just sort of move through it piecing it all together.
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So when that album was written and ready to go, how long did it take to cut the album?
Surprising it didn’t take that long. Initially, it didn’t take that long to do the basic tracks but there was a problem. The guy who was supposed to engineering the album at Sunset Recorders, let’s just say that there was a few mistakes that he made that had to be repaired. Other than that, it didn’t take too long. Well, we actually did a 20 minute demo that’s going to be on the Captain Beyond box set that we’re trying to put together that has some songs with Rod on them that never got released.
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So how did Captain Beyond end up getting signed to Capricorn Records?
Well, we didn’t really have to work on the record deal too hard. Duane and Gregg Allman freaked out when they heard this demo that we did. We had done the demo which was about 20 minutes of music and we had gone to a couple of people. Rhino and I went over to see The Allmans at their hotel and we played this little demo for Duane and Gregg and whoever else was there and they freaked out. Duane was out of his mind he loved it so much. He got on the phone with his manager Phil Walden and said, “You gotta sign these people right now.” Walden wasn’t about to let us get out of his sights which we should’ve let happen [laughs]. We should’ve got out of there then. Nothing personal against Phil but we really should’ve gone directly to a couple of other companies to see what they had to say. Everyone was so keen to get on with it. At some point, you just find yourself believing what the people say. You can’t just be so cynical that you never believe any one. We were also very young so you just say, “Well, this sounds good. I guess we’ll try it.” The Allmans were very instrumental in getting us involved with Capricorn Records.
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The debut album was released with two different covers. One had a 3-D kind of psychedelic cover and the other was just a plain image. Why the two different versions?
Well, honestly, somebody was just too cheap to put the original image on every cover [laughs]. It might have cost them an extra $0.50 or something. It sounds like a joke but really, it’s probably true. Fortunately it didn’t stop the buyers from buying the album but a lot of people probably wish they had that 3-D cover.
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When the album finally was released, was it embraced wholeheartedly the general public?
No, because the initial reaction from people was that they really didn’t know what to make of it. It really didn’t sound like an American band. The English were known to be a lot more experimental and they could be a little more out there. We got on this huge tour with Alice Cooper and we weren’t anything alike at all but night after night we played and everyone dug it. It wasn’t until we started playing out more and more. The more we played out the more it started to sink into the consciousness of people. We would get to places and people would be lighting their lighters and standing up for us. It really grew from a word of mouth.
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What was it like touring with Alice Cooper? Were the crowds generally responsive to Captain Beyond?
I think they were. The band was really good. I’m not saying that because I was in it because if I thought it stunk I’d tell you that too. The band was really good but even if you didn’t understand what we were doing, you had to appreciate how we approached it and how we played live. I’m sure there were some people out there that couldn’t stand it but most of the time, by the time we were done playing they were all warmed up and into it.
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The follow up album to the debut, Sufficiently Breathless, was such a different album. I love that album but I also know that you weren’t involved with that album. What lead to you leaving Captain Beyond?
I’ll tell you exactly what happened. Rhino and I had some differences about something stupid. I know this is going to sound very typical but I knew what I was saying at that moment was correct. We were just having a disagreement over the direction and that’s what happened. I just said, “Ok. You guys do what you’re going to do and we’ll talk later.” That was it. After about 5 months or so we kissed and made up and we were back at it again [laughs].
So did Captain Beyond tour for the Sufficiently Breathless album at all and if so were you involved with that tour?
I was involved with the tour, yes.
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I have to ask, Bobby. Are you a fan of that album? I mean, I know that it’s so different from the debut but I find it to be such a great album in its own right.
The problem I had with it was that it just wasn’t Captain Beyond. Captain Beyond, in that sense, could only be the four of us. At that time, you just couldn’t take out one person and just plug someone else in. It just wasn’t going to happen. I actually really like the album a lot. I like the song but it’s just not a Captain Beyond album. I mean, had it been called The Fairyland Monsters or something, I would’ve loved it [laughs]. In the new band we do “Sufficiently Breathless.” We do “Starglow Energy”, we do “Distant Sun.” I really like those songs.
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I always assumed that Sufficiently Breathless was just Captain Beyond’s attempt to try and reach a more mainstream, maybe even commercial audience. Was this maybe even a case of strong arming from the record company to do so?
You know, Don, there’s always a gallery of people with no brains trying to tell you what they think you should do. It doesn’t matter whether it seems to be going swimmingly well, they just think that they need to mess with the formula. It’s always there. Is there some merit to that argument? Probably. That is if you are attempting to be a radio records kind of band. Captain Beyond was never that “play it on the radio” type of band. It wasn’t that we were opposed to it. I would’ve loved to have had a top 10 record but things were just not geared toward that with this band. I think that first album is very melodic and very musical. I think the 2nd album was very melodic as well because Rod was involved with that. There probably was some discussion as to how to broaden the listener base but I can’t swear to it.
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I consider that album one of the most perfect albums ever made. Is there anything you would go back and do differently if you could?
Oh shit. I’m sure there are a lot of things I would do differently if I could repair them but a lot of that has to do with not so much the playing part because I think the performance was really good. I think some of the mixes we could’ve done better. There’s this one part in “Thousand Days of Yesterdays”, every time I hear it I wish the vocal line would’ve carried out longer. I wish we would’ve had that gone longer but that’s just something I wish we would’ve done differently [laughs]. I mean, it’s not critical or anything but it’s just something I think of every time. You could be talking to Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, or Ringo Starr and if you asked them that same question they’d say, “Yeah.” Unfortunately, it’s rare for anyone to be able say, “Every part of this record is the way I envisioned it.”
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I heard someone say that a song is never truly done. Even after it’s been recorded and pressed you’re still always going to think of things that could’ve been.
You’re absolutely right, Don. I think that’s exactly how it is but you just keep doing the best you can.
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Bobby, you were working on some new songs with Rhino before he passed away correct?
Actually, there are some songs on YouTube by Captain Beyond that Rhino and I did as demos. One is called “Night Train Calling (Crystal Clear)” and there are a few others. They’re just demos that we were working on. They were never supposed to be posted but some genius did that [laughs]. They’re just demos. They’re not even finished but have a listen to them and see what you think. It’s not Rod singing, it’s me singing. I mean, if you’re a Captain Beyond fan, you should enjoy them because they sound like Captain Beyond, especially the song “Be As You Were.”
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Is there a way people can keep up with you and the next chapter of Captain Beyond online?
Yeah. You can follow me at my website http://www.theofficialbobbycaldwellsite.com and we are working on the official Captain Beyond website. It’s www.officialcaptainbeyond.com.
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Captain Beyond disbanded in 1974 or so and you guys reunited in 1976 but without Rod Evans on vocals. Why was Rod no long involved with Captain Beyond from then on?
Rod just had decided that he just didn’t want to play music any more. He had just had enough of whatever it was.
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It’s always seemed to be a mystery as to what happened with him. Have you been in touch with him over the years?
Yeah and he’s doing just fine these days.
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Do you know if he’s actually aware of just how much Captain Beyond’s music has reached and affected people over the years?
That’s a really insightful question. I think he’s really becoming more aware but I don’t think he really gave two hoots to be honest. It’s not that he didn’t like it or wasn’t proud of it, he’s just been doing different things. He’s been working in the medical field for a long time as a respiratory therapist and that’s a whole other world away from music. I think he’s appreciating more and more now though, to be honest. Rod is an intellectual giant. He’s a fantastic singer, or at least he was, and he’s a terrific lyricist. If you listen to “Starglow Energy” or “Drifting In Space”, there are some very clever lyric lines and melodies. When you’re a singer, it’s not about getting out there and just squawking some fucking melody that just doesn’t work. It’s about crafting the right melody with the right message and he could do that. I just can’t say enough about him.
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Since running this website, you’d be surprised how many young, up and coming bands that I hear 
that Captain Beyond influence in. When I ask them about it, they all get excited and say, “Yeah! Captain Beyond is definitely an influence.”
That’s fantastic, Don. I really think that it’s because of the performances as well as the songs. Musicians know what great playing is. Again, I’m not saying that we were the greatest but we were good players. People know. Other guitarists know when they’re hearing something really impressive. It’s just one of those kinds of things that there’s no denying that Captain Beyond was something different. We were just trying to make something different. We didn’t want to sound like every other band or every other type of music.
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Cleopatra Records recently released on vinyl what was for a long time the Frozen Over bootleg. Was this something you were happy with?
No, not really [laughs]. They came to me and asked for my blessing to put it out. Well, the bootlegs were already out and they just wanted to sort of make it official so that I could get paid a little and they could make a little money off of it. It was really no big deal. I had no control over the quality nor did they. They couldn’t really fix it much at all so it just is what it is.
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Were there ever any quality soundboard recordings of any Captain Beyond performances?
I’m sure there is but I haven’t heard them. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. In those times, people didn’t video tape shows. There was audio theft where people would record shows with a tape recorder down their pants or something but other than that, we didn’t have those things. Matter of fact, did you know that there wasn’t even any merchandise in that period for the bands.
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Finally, what is the future of Captain Beyond?
Well, we’re going be playing out with the new band we’re going to record some music, and we’re going to try and bring this music to the people that are the big fans. A lot of people never got to see the band originally. Back in about 1999, with Rhino we played the Swedish Rock Festival and there was just a staggering amount of fans. Unfortunately the band didn’t play very well. We’re hoping to get the word out and just do some other dates. It’s not about nostalgia for me and it’s not about playing some shows for money. That doesn’t interest me at all. It’s more about trying to bring this music that have heard it and want to hear it again, bring it to people who’ve never heard it live and want to hear it, and to try to do some new music as well. When the people mention Captain Beyond, I want people to think that it’s a great band and that the standard is very high. We’ll see what happens.
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Bobby, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to me. This is been a real honor and this really made my day to get to talk to you.
Don, I appreciate that sincerely and I’m really happy that you called and that we had this time to talk. I really enjoyed this and I’m glad we did this. Please stay in touch and I’ll do the same. God Bless you my friend and thank you for a really wonderful interview. I thoroughly enjoyed it as well and let’s keep in touch.
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