Frank Zappa and Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, had been friends since their teens, when they bonded over a mutual love of black music and outsider art. Their relationship over the years had its ups and downs, perhaps because both were similar characters - martinets, control freaks.
However, in 1975 they toured together as a means to help Beefheart during a period of contractual woes, and from those shows was drawn most of the material on Bongo Fury. The third artistic component was the version of Zappa’s band the Mothers Of Invention, which included George Duke on keyboards
