''Captain Beyond'' is the debut album by Captain Beyond, an American rock supergroup featuring former members of

Iron Butterfly Iron Butterfly is an American rock band formed in San Diego, California, in 1966. They are best known for the 1968 hit " In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", providing a dramatic sound that led the way towards the development of hard rock and heavy metal musi ...

, Deep Purple,

Johnny Winter John Dawson Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014) was an American singer and guitarist. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also produced three Grammy Award-win ...

. Released in 1972, the album cover for the U.S. release included 3-D artwork (using

lenticular printing Lenticular printing is a technology in which lenticular lenses (a technology also used for 3D displays) are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as they are viewed from different angles. Ex ...

). The album was dedicated to the memory of

Duane Allman Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an American rock guitarist, session musician, and the founder and original leader of the Allman Brothers Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame i ...

, who Captain Beyond drummer

Bobby Caldwell Robert Hunter Caldwell (born August 15, 1951) is an American singer, songwriter and musician. He released several albums spanning R&B, soul, jazz and adult contemporary. He is known for his soulful and versatile vocals. Caldwell released the ...

had played with in an informal capacity. ''Captain Beyond'' is unique among guitar-driven hard rock albums in that it contains a wide range of influences, including Latin and jazz, often with various time signatures and a broad range of dynamics within the same song. Most of the album consists of three

medleys Medley or Medleys may refer to: Sports *Medley swimming, races requiring multiple swimming styles * Medley relay races at track meets Music * Medley (music), multiple pieces strung together People *Medley (surname), list of people with this na ...

of tightly arranged interconnected songs. The first starts with "Dancing Madly Backwards (on a Sea of Air)" and ends with "Myopic Void". The second starts with "Thousand Days of Yesterdays (Intro)" and ends with "Thousand Days of Yesterdays (Time Since Come and Gone)". The third starts with "I Can't Feel Nothin' (Part 1)" and finishes the album. Songs flow directly into each other without any lag time between selections, a feature that is shared with other more progressive bands of the era such as

The Moody Blues The Moody Blues were an English rock music, rock band formed in Birmingham in 1964, initially consisting of keyboardist Mike Pinder, multi-instrumentalist Ray Thomas, guitarist Denny Laine, drummer Graeme Edge and bassist Clint Warwick. The g ...

and Jethro Tull. All of the songwriting was credited to lead vocalist

Rod Evans Roderic Evans (born 19 January 1947) is a British former singer. In the late 1960s, he began his professional career in The Maze, formerly MI5, after which he was a member of the original Deep Purple line-up, who produced three studio albums ...

and drummer Bobby Caldwell. However, the songs were in fact written by the group as a whole. Due to their still binding contracts with Iron Butterfly, guitarist

Larry Reinhardt Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt (July 7, 1948 – January 2, 2012) was an American rock guitarist who played with Iron Butterfly and Captain Beyond. At one time Reinhardt was known by the nicknames "El Rhino" and "Ryno". Early history Born in Florida, Un ...

and bassist

Lee Dorman Douglas Lee Dorman (September 15, 1942 – December 21, 2012) was an American bass guitarist best known as a member of the psychedelic rock band Iron Butterfly. After replacing Jerry Penrod following Iron Butterfly’s debut album, Dorman had f ...

could not be listed as songwriters on this record for legal reasons.

Track listing

Personnel

;Captain Beyond *

– lead vocals * Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt –

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

s *

– bass,

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

– drums,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

, bells,

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist ...

, backing vocals, piano

References

Album Design - Pacific Eye and Ear

External links

The Deep Purple Podcast - Episode #23 - Captain Beyond - Captain BeyondCaptain Beyond
on

Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the ...

{{Authority control Captain Beyond albums Capricorn Records albums 1972 debut albums