I must confess that when I first re-listened to this track from Beefheart’s 1972 album, The Spotlight Kid, I had severe doubts over whether to include it here. Click Clack is by no means an example of Difficult Beefheart, but I found the Howlin’ Wolf cosplay that Don Van Vliet engaged in here rather bothersome to deal with. The theme of the track - no good man finds that his woman has finally had enough and is on her way to the railway station to make good on her threat to leave him, at which point, he’s desperate not to lose her - wouldn’t win any points for originality either.
But what drew me back to the track was the way in which the performance served as a good example of what I call tactile audibility; the way that the musicality of certain tracks evokes an actual thing or experience. One of the best examples of this is in the “Dogs begin to bark/Hounds begin to howl” section of The Rolling Stones recording of Little Red Rooster, where Brian Jones uses his slide guitar to evoke both the barks and howls. In Click Clack, Beefheart and The Magic Band work the same trick using both a persistent three note piano figure and positively industrial rasps of harmonica to evoke the sound of the approaching train. I found that the effect of this wouldn’t leave my subconscious alone. And then as I listened to the song more and more times, I found myself being drawn into its groove and appreciating Beefheart’s vocal as more than just an imitation of Howlin’ Wolf, but a rawly, sincere moment of self-realisation about the consequences of treating your loved ones badly.
I found myself wondering whether the track had been any sort of influence on Jarvis Cocker when he was writing the lyrics for O.U. (Gone, Gone) some 20 years later. But whereas Pulp’s song ended on a superficially optimistic note, Beefheart finds himself staring after his lover’s handkerchief as it waves goodbye from the departing train to “Nawlins”, where she intends to find herself, and his breaking heart finds itself beating in sync with the metal of the railroad line as she heads away.
No such sadness for Peel, who was always delighted for any opportunity to play Captain Beefheart on his show. The playing of Click Clack took him back 22 years to a gig at Newcastle City Hall where he saw Beefheart and The Magic Band play this very song. He described it, as he was wont to do, as one of the great moments of his life.
Video courtesy of Revnalation.
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