I would’ve liked to see Dick Gregory’s fervent recitation of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence at an unbirthday party for LBJ, but I’m grateful for the inclusion of defendant David Dellinger saying “The power of the people is our permit” at the start of a march from the bandstand in Grant Park to the Amphitheater. And I would’ve liked to hear Phil Ochs’s song, “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore,” as the background music for that march, but I appreciate the use of Eminem’s rap “Mosh” as accompaniment instead. Rather than music from the ’60s, Brett preferred more contemporary groups, from Beastie Boys to Rage Against the Machine.
In fact, he had wanted to call the film Mosh, but Chicago 10 encompasses the eight defendants plus attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass. I was afraid people would think it was the ninth sequel to the musical Chicago. Whatever the title, athough Sundance may be a long way from Ramrod Key, the spirit of Yippie lingers on.
The defendants were found guilty, but that verdict was overturned by a judge who, ironically, had been appointed by Lyndon Johnson.
There was another screening a couple of days later, not intended so much for festivalgoers as for folks who live in Salt Lake City. I ate a chocolate candy loaded with psilocybin to enhance the experience, unaware that Brett planned to bring me onstage to speak to the audience and then join him in a Q&A session. Brett warned me, “This is the heartland.” Still, I began with a joke I’d heard in town: “A Mormon decided to go hiking in the beautiful mountains of Utah, but first he stopped to buy some equipment at a mom and mom and mom and pop store.” It got a really good laugh there.
One of the questions was, “What advice would you offer to young people today?” My mind was swirling like a multicolored whirlpool. I assigned my subconscious to come up with an appropriate answer, while I stalled for a moment, leaning on the lectern. “My advice to young people,” I said, “is, if you go to a restaurant and order a club sandwich, be sure to remove the toothpick before you take the first bite.” When my subconscious came through, I said, “Always remember that the political system acts as a buffer between the status quo and the force of evolution. Example: In order to get Republican votes for the children’s health care bill, Democrats agreed to fund $28 million to their abstinence-only program.”
Brett wanted Chicago 10 to open during the election year, so he was pleased that it opened in theaters around the country in February 2008 and was on PBS two weeks before the election. In October 2007, Chicago 10 opened the Austin Film Festival. Brett was unable to attend, so I went there as his proxy. In the morning, I was interviewed on radio station KLBJ. Cartoonist Ethan Persoff (who, incidentally, has been putting up a Web site, “The Realist Archive Project,” posting four issues at a time) had moved to Austin ten years earlier and recalls:
“The metal band Nashville Pussy was being interviewed. The DJ said, ‘Next up it’s Nashville P—well, what can we say? It’s a word we can’t say on air that’s a synonym for kitten. Welcome to KLBJ.’ Right off the bat, a member of the band asks, ‘KLBJ—Isn’t El B.J. Spanish for blow job?’ They must have had the delay button right in the radio booth, because you could hear someone slap something but miss, knocking over a coffee cup or bumping into a microphone. It all got on the air. The DJ cut to a station break too late. Actually, LBJ stands for Lyndon [Baines] Johnson. KLBJ is owned and controlled by the Johnson family.”
I decided to smoke a joint before I left my hotel for the screening that evening. However, I was in a nonsmoking room, and there was a notice on the desk: “Should you choose to smoke in a nonsmoking room, a $250 cleaning/deodorizing surcharge will be added to your room bill.” So I toked it in the bathroom with the door closed, sitting on the tub and exhaling into the toilet.
During the Q&A session, someone asked if we hadn’t provoked the police. Others in the audience berated him.
“Wait,” I said, “let him talk. It’s a fair question.” Focusing on the individual who asked it, I added, “Don’t worry, I won’t let anybody Taser you.” (This was a reference to the incident in September at the University of Florida, where, during a Q&A with the speaker, Senator John Kerry, a student peppered him with questions—about impeaching George Bush, why he didn’t challenge the 2004 election results, and whether both he and Bush were in the secret Skull and Bones society as undergraduates at Yale—and refused repeated requests by other students to leave the microphone after his allotted time was up. University police tried to remove him from the auditorium, and when he resisted, they Tasered him.) “Yes,” I answered, “the Chicago police were provoked—by police provocateurs. . . . ”
Another question dealt with the comparisons and contrasts between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and what was necessary to challenge the latter.
“Imagination,” I replied. “Both wars were both based on lies and fear-mongering. They both resorted to euphemisms as a form of disinformation. In Southeast Asia, concentration camps were called strategic hamlets. In the so-called war on terror, torture is referred to as enhanced interrogation techniques. . . . One of the differences is that there was a draft during the Vietnam War. That personalized it, sadly. People wore buttons that said, ‘Not With My Body You Don’t.’ The Bush administration deliberately doesn’t have a draft now, because they know that whatever disconnect there is between the public and the horror that the government is conducting in their name, would dissolve. People would take to the streets in multitudes to demonstrate against the war. When Latinos marched through Los Angeles over the immigration issue, there were a million of them. What we need to do now is hire Mexican workers as guest protesters, so they can do the job that Americans don’t want to do. . . .”
At one point during the Q&A, I surrendered to an impulse. Pretending that my cell phone was vibrating, I took it out of my pocket and said hello, then told the audience, “It’s Rudy Giuliani’s wife.”
While Giuliani was speaking before the National Rifle Association earlier that month, his cell phone had rung. “Let’s see now,” he said to the audience. “This is my wife calling.” He pressed the Talk button. “Hello, dear. I’m talking to the members of the NRA right now. Would you like to say hello? . . . I love you, and I’ll give you a call as soon as I’m finished, okay? . . . Okay, have a safe trip. Bye-bye. Talk to you later, dear. I love you.” It seemed like a totally contrived gimmick, a blatant attempt to humanize himself, sucking up to the Republican base by emphasizing family values in the face of two failed marriages and being hated by his own offspring.
The Wall Street Journal estimated that, prior to this staged stunt at the NRA, it could have happened “more than forty times.” Giuliani explained that, since 9/11, he and his wife made a habit of calling each other whenever they get on a plane in order to “reaffirm the fact that we love each other.” He admits, “I’ve been married three times. I can’t afford to lose another one. I’m sure you understand.” When his cell-phone ploy occurred while speaking to a group of Cuban Americans in Florida, he said, “I just wanted to see that she was doing okay,” adding that his wife was learning Spanish.
In Austin, I noticed that another animated reenactment scene was missing. Abbie Hoffman got arrested in Chicago for having the word FUCK printed on his forehead with lipstick, an idea borrowed from Lenny Bruce, who, I told Abbie, had once printed FUCK on his forehead with strips of wet paper towel from a courthouse bathroom, in order to discourage photographers from taking his picture. Abbie might have gotten away with it if only he hadn’t tipped his hat to the police who were sitting in their car in front of the house where we were staying, waiting for us to start the day. They followed us to a restaurant, where they asked Abbie to take off his hat, and when he did, they told him he was under arrest.
“It’s the duty of a revolutionist to finish breakfast,” he replied, but the cops disagreed with his premise. They handcuffed him and proceeded to drag him out of the restaurant, forcing me to eat the rest of his breakfast.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD PLAY THE PYRAMIDS
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br /> September 2008 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s unforgettable concerts in Egypt. Although Rhino Records released a double-CD album with a DVD of the event, I was fortunate enough to be there with Ken Kesey and a bunch of Merry Pranksters. The Dead were scheduled to perform on three successive nights at an open-air theater in front of the Pyramids, with the Sphinx keeping close watch.
Bob Weir looked up at the Great Pyramid and cried out, “What is it!” Actually, it was the place for locals to go on a cheap date. The Pyramids were surrounded by moats of discarded bottle caps. A bootleg tape of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis doing filthy schtick was being used for a preliminary sound check. Later, an American general complained to stage manager Steve Parish that the decadence of a rock ’n’ roll band performing here was a sacrilege to 5,000 years of history.
“Listen,” Parish said, “I lost two brothers in ’Nam, and I don’t wanna hear this crap.”
The general retreated in the face of those imaginary brothers. There were a couple of real injured veterans, though. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann had fallen off a horse and broken his arm, but he would still be playing with the band, using one drumstick. And faithful Deadhead Bill Walton’s buttocks had been used as a pincushion by the Portland Traiblazers’ doctor so that he could continue to play basketball even though the bones of his foot were being shattered with pain he coudn’t feel. Having been injected with painkilling drugs to hide the greed rather than heal the injury, he had to walk around with crutches. Maybe Kreutzmann and Walton could team up and enter the half-upside-down sack race.
An air of incredible excitement permeated the first night. Never had the Dead been so inspired. Backstage, Jerry Garcia was giving final instructions to the band: “Remember, play in tune.” The music began with Egyptian oudist Hamza El Din, backed up by a group tapping out ancient rhythms on their 14-inch-diameter tars—pizza-like drums—soon joined by drummer Mickey Hart, Garcia ambled on with a gentle guitar riff, then Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Donna, Keith, and as the Dead meshed with the local percussion ensemble, basking in total respect of each other, Weir segued into the forceful opening chords of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”
“Did you see that?” Kesey shouted. “The Sphinx’s jaw just dropped!”
Every morning, my Prankster roommate, George Walker, got up early and climbed to the top of the Pyramid. He was in training. It was to be his honor to plant a Grateful Dead flag on top of the Great Pyramid. He would attach it to a pole at the peak of the pyramid where the stone block that should’ve been the final piece was missing.
Pranksters Mountain Girl Goldie Rush and I decided to score some hashish at a courtyard in the oldest section of Cairo. It came in long thick slabs, and we eagerly sat down on benches to sample it. The official task of a teenage boy was to light the “hubbly-bubbly,” a giant water pipe that used hot coals to keep the hash burning and us sweating like crazy.
Later, I found myself sitting and chanting in a tublike sarcophagus (burial tomb) with fantastic acoustics, at the center of gravity in the Great Pyramid, after having ingested liquid LSD that a Prankster had smuggled into Egypt in a plastic Visine bottle. It was only as I breathed in deeply before each extended Om that I was forced to ponder the mystery of those who urinate there.
There was something especially magical about the third concert on Saturday. I had a strong feeling that I was involved in a lesson. It was as though the secret of the Dead would finally be revealed to me, if only I paid proper attention. That night would feature a full eclipse of the moon, and Egyptian kids were running through the streets shaking tin cans filled with rocks in order to bring it back.
“It’s okay,” I assured them, “the Grateful Dead will bring back the moon.”
And, sure enough, a rousing rendition of “Ramble On Rose” would accomplish that feat. The moon returned just as the marijuana cookie that rock impresario Bill Graham gave me started blending in with the other drugs. Graham no longer wore two wristwatches, one for each coast. He now wore one wristwatch with two faces. There was a slight problem with an amplifier, but a sound engineer said that it was “getting there.”
“Getting there ain’t good enough,” Garcia replied. “It’s gotta fuckin’ be there.”
This was a totally outrageous event. The line between incongruity and appropriateness had disappeared along with the moon. The music was so powerful that the only way to go was ecstatic. That night, when the Dead played “Fire on the Mountain,” I danced my ass off with all the others on that outdoor stage as if I had no choice.
“You know,” Bill Graham confessed, “this is the first time I ever danced in public.”
“Me too,” I said.
That was the lesson.
4. SEVERAL DEAD ICONS
GINSBERG’S LAST LAUGH
Our paths had often crossed—at civil rights marches, antiwar rallies, marijuana smoke-ins, environmental demonstrations—he was always on the front lines, especially when it came to gay rights. Long before Ellen DeGeneres came out on a sitcom, Allen Ginsberg came out in the streets. On those occasions when we both performed at a benefit, I could hear his laughter reverberating from backstage like a Tibetan gong.
In the summer of 1982, there was a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road at Naropa, a Buddhist college in Boulder, Colorado, where presumably they refer to his book as On the Path. I was invited to moderate a discussion, “Political Fallout of the Beat Generation.” The panelists: Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary. We were all asked to sign posters for the event. Hoffman wrote his signature extra large, with great care.
He explained, “The guy who shot John Lennon complained that Lennon gave him a sloppy autograph, so I ain’t takin’ any chances.”
During the panel, Ginsberg said, “I think there was one slight shade of error in describing the Beat movement as primarily a protest movement. That was the thing that Kerouac was always complaining about. He felt the literary aspect or the spiritual aspect or the emotional aspect was not so much protest at all, but a declaration of unconditioned mind beyond protest, beyond resentment, beyond loser, beyond winner—way beyond winner—beyond winner or loser . . . but the basic thing that I understood and dug Jack for was unconditioned mind, negative capability, totally open mind—beyond victory or defeat. Just awareness, and that was the humor, and that’s what the saving grace is. That’s why there will be political aftereffects, but it doesn’t have to win because having to win a revolution is like having to make a milliion dollars.”
As moderator, I asked, “Abbie, since you used to quote Che Guevara saying, ‘In a revolution, one wins or dies,’ do you have a response to that?”
HOFFMAN: “All right, Ginzo. Poems have a lot of different meanings for different people. For me, your poem Howl was a call to arms.”
GINSBERG: “A whole boatload of sentimental bullshit.”
HOFFMAN: “We saw in the sixties a great imbalance of power, and the only way that you could correct that imbalance was to organize people and to fight for power. Power is not a dirty word. The concept of trying to win against social injustice is not a dirty kind of concept. It all depends on how you define the game, how you define winning and how you define losing—that’s the Zen trip that was learned by defining that you were the prophets and we were the warriors. I’m saying that you didn’t fight, but you were the fighters. And I’ll tell you, If you don’t think you were a political movement and you don’t like winning, the fuckin’ lawyer that defended Howl in some goddamn obscenity suit—you wanted him to be a fuckin’ winner, I guarantee you that. That was a political debate. . . .”
Ironically, Ginsberg was very insecure about Howl, and he questioned the big fuss over it. “There shouldn’t be a trial over this poem,” he once lamented. In fact, a biography of Ginsberg—American Scream by Jonah Raskin—has a surprising revelation: “In the mid-1970s, in the midst of the counterculture he had helped to create, he promised to rewrite How
l. Now that he was a hippie minstrel and a Pied Piper for the generation that advocated peace and love, he would alter Howl, he said, so that it might reflect the euphoria of the hippies. He would include a ‘positive redemptive catalogue,’ he said.”
The much-repeated opening line of Howl was, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. . . .” Hoffman sure would’ve been shocked to learn that Ginsberg had planned to rewrite Howl, this time beginning with an upbeat line: “I saw the best minds of my generation turned on by music.”
Indeed, Ginsberg sought out musicians—the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Clash, Jello Biafra, Beck—exulting in their talent and status, and wrestling with his own ego in the process. In fact, a few days before his death, Ginsberg wrote to Bill Clinton, revealing that his days were numbered, and asking the president, “If you have some sort of reward or medal for service in art or poetry, please send one along.”
Ginsberg once asked his father if life was worth living. His father answered, “It depends on the liver.” This was a touch of inadvertent prophecy; Allen died of liver cancer on April 5, 1997. He had lived his life to the hilt and beyond, balancing with dignity and grace on the cusp of rationalism and mysticism, one individual, with curiosity and compassion for all. On April 7, Michael Krasny hosted a memorial for Ginsberg on his radio program, Forum, over KQED-FM in San Francisco. The panel included novelist/Prankster Ken Kesey, poet/publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Digger/actor Peter Coyote and me. The following is excerpted from that conference call.
KESEY: “I was at a party one time, when I first knew Ginsberg, and he was standing by himself over by the fireplace, with a wine glass in his hand, and people milling around, and finally some young girl sort of broke off from the rest of the crowd and approached him and said, ‘I can’t talk to you—you’re a legend.’ And he said, ‘Yes, but I’m a friendly legend.’”
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