afe as Milk is the début album by Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, originally released in 1967. It is a heavily blues-influenced work, but also hints at many of the features—such as surreal lyrics and odd time signatures—that would later become trademarks of Beefheart's music. The album is also notable for the involvement of a 20-year-old Ry Cooder, who plays guitar and wrote some of the arrangements. Before recording Safe as Milk, the band had previously released a couple of singles through A&M; Records, and it was to this company that the group first proposed their début album in 1966. They presented the label with a set of heavily R&B-influenced; demos, which the label apparently felt were too unconventional, and A&M; decided to drop the band. (Beefheart later claimed the label dropped them after hearing the song "Electricity" and declaring it "too negative." This is very probably untrue, since the song had not been demoed at the time.)