' dad suggested he take up playing the guitar. Although he followed his dad's suggestion,
focused more on the French horn that he played for his elementary school band and continued to play, until getting kicked out of his high school's band.
then focused wholly on the guitar, and played in various groups throughout the '60s. As a campus station music director during his second year at Yale,
's unique band more than anything. Shortly thereafter, he interviewed and got to know
Lucas soon performed as a soloist in the European premiere of
Bernstein's Mass (From the Liturgy of the Roman Mass) (1973), and after graduating from college, moved to Taipei for two years. During that time, he led a locally popular group, the O-Bay-Gone-Band, until a chaotic 1976 show broke out into a brawl that seriously injured many people. Upset,
Lucas promptly returned to the States, hooked back up with
Beefheart, and was finally invited to join the band. He appears on
Doc at the Radar Station, and was a full member of the group by the time of the
Ice Cream for Crow album. After
Beefheart retired in the early '80s to pursue painting,
Lucas couldn't imagine topping his experience of playing in a group he considered the number one avant-garde rock band in the world, so he switched over to the production end of music, producing albums by
Peter Gordon and
Tim Berne, among others.
In 1988,
Lucas returned to live performance with a highly acclaimed solo set at N.Y.C.'s Knitting Factory, and continued to play shows and tour for more than a decade to follow. Shortly after his return, he collaborated with longtime friend
Walter Horn on a score for The Golem (a 1920 German Expressionist film) as a commission for the 1989 Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival. That same year,
Lucas formed his rock band
Gods and Monsters. Over time, the band's lineups included
Jeff Buckley and
Matthew Sweet. By 1999, the
Gods and Monsters' lineup was in trio form with ex-
Swans drummer
Jonathan Kane and former
Modern Lovers bassist
Ernie Brooks; the LP
Improve the Shining Hour appeared in early 2000. In addition to
Gods and Monsters and various solo projects,
Lucas formed
the Du-Tels in 1994, a psychedelic folk duo with
Peter Stampfel. In 2008, he joined with jazz and blues vocalist
Dean Bowman to form Chase the Devil, and the duo explored the spiritual and secular roots of the blues without sounding too revivalist, releasing the self-titled
Chase the Devil on Knitting Factory in 2010.
Lucas was back with
Gods and Monsters for The Ordeal of Civility, produced by Jerry Harrison and released by Knitting Factory in 2011.
–
Joslyn Layne & Steve Leggett, Rovi