by Barry Miles
Bukowski was forty-nine but looked ten years older; an extremely severe case of acne vulgaris, which had often put him in hospital as a child, had left his face, neck and shoulders a battlefield of scars. His hairline was receding, and he wore a short, neatly trimmed beard and moustache. He was friendly and welcomed us in.
He explained that most people called him Hank. ‘Otherwise, it’s Buk,’ he said. ‘That’s “Buke” as in “puke”, not “Buk” as in “fuck”.’ He slipped out of the door, and we watched him half run down the block. He returned shortly with a six-pack of Miller’s in glass bottles. With a bottle in his hand he was able to relax. He had written so much that I let him decide pretty much what he wanted to record. There were a few short stories I had read in his Open City column that I liked, and I suggested them. One sticking point was that Buk refused point-blank to go into a recording studio: he was too shy, he said; he was sure he would mess things up and embarrass himself, even though I assured him it would just be me and my assistant and an engineer there. I later learned that he would also not pick people up from the airport in case he got things wrong and went to the wrong place. At this time he was still working the night shift at the Los Angeles Post Office – the subject of one of his best books, Post Office – and had not yet done a public poetry reading. He seemed completely exposed to life, at full strength, with no shielding or defence mechanisms. This gave him his valuable insight but left him vulnerable and open to being hurt.
The solution was to set him up with a recording facility at home. I returned with an Ampex 3000, a microphone, mic stand, headphones and twelve reels of tape. Once again he insisted that he must work alone. ‘Just show me how the machine works, and I’ll curl up on the rug with some packs of beer and my books and turn on the machine . . .’ We left him to it. He had made home recordings previously. Before we left he gave us both copies of his latest book, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. He wrote nicer things in Pat’s copy than in mine.
Nine days later I returned, this time with Valerie Estes, my assistant whom I hired when I reached San Francisco, in a blue rented Mustang. Buk was there with a bit of a hangover. A worn-out-looking woman with thick black hair, wearing black fishnet stockings with a few holes in them and a black slip, immediately retired to the bedroom in the back without introducing herself. She emerged shortly afterwards, fully dressed, and left. At the door Buk pressed some crumpled notes into her hand ‘for car fare’. Nothing in the room had changed, and at first I was alarmed. But it was done; every reel was used – six hours of material – and he had even attempted to record ‘on the other side’ before he realized that professional machines are full track and he was just wiping out what he had previously recorded. He said to be sure to listen to the story called ‘The Fire Station’ which he thought had come out well. This time I had brought a six-pack of Miller’s, so we talked a bit about his old car and his anxieties about giving up his job at the post office and going on to a retainer from his new publisher, John Martin at Black Sparrow Press. I thought it was a good idea, and shortly afterwards this is what he did, resulting in an explosion of work and his eventual fame. Back at the Capitol Tower we played the tapes. Buk was right. ‘The Fire Station’ was superb, and there was plenty of great material there for an album, including one interlude when Buk shouted abuse at his landlord from the window. The tapes were interspersed with the sound of bottles being opened, which was just the sort of thing I was looking for to get away from the formality of most poetry readings.
Miles’s sketches for Bukowski’s album cover; the concept was to pay homage to the influence the city had on Buk’s poetry.
This photograph was the one they chose to feature on the album.
He explained that most people called him Hank. ‘Otherwise, it’s Buk,’ he said. ‘That’s “Buke” as in “puke”, not “Buk” as in “fuck”.’
Richard Brautigan at Golden State Recorders during the making of Listening to Richard Brautigan. Brautigan had gone from being an unknown Haight-Ashbury poet to an acclaimed author on the publication of Trout Fishing in America.
Chapter 10
The First Trip: SF – Brautigan
IN SAN FRANCISCO IT had seemed most economical to block book a series of sessions at Golden State Recorders at 665 Harrison Street, three blocks south of Market between 2nd and 3rd Streets in what was then a run-down, slightly dangerous area. Golden State came highly recommended, and we were lucky to book in as they were the only recording studio in town comparable to New York or Los Angeles studios even though it was a four-track. San Francisco had not yet developed its recording industry, and most groups like the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane still went to Los Angeles to record, but four-track was fine for spoken word. Golden State had been there since 1964 and still had an original Ampex model 200, the first tape-recorder built in the USA. They already had a number of bookings, so I filled in the space around them, thinking that as I intended working on all three albums simultaneously there would always be work to do on one of them. We were fortunate in having a superb engineer, Mike Vance, who was sympathetic to what we were trying to do.
Before I left for the recording trip there had been quite a bit of correspondence between Richard Brautigan and myself regarding his album. He had told me he wanted to do an ‘album that would be my vision of life in America. It would be a kind of audio novel using words, music and sounds.’1 My secretary, Sarah Fenwick, replied, acknowledging receipt of his letter and saying, ‘Miles is in Italy at the moment but should be back shortly and will be writing to you then – I am sure he will like your idea of the record as that is exactly the type of thing he wants to do.’2 It was, and I wrote at once to confirm that I liked the idea. As his was the most worked out of the albums, I called him, then took a cab straight to his place at 2546 Geary from the airport. Richard Brautigan’s apartment occupied the entire first floor of a shabby three-storey, stucco-fronted clapboard house with a wooden pediment containing a diamond attic window. A three-window bay overlooked the busy street, and a steep stoop led to the entrance porch with two doors, one of which led to Richard’s entrance hall. His door had a small window set in it, on which were taped a Digger dollar and a feather; Richard had been closely involved with the Diggers, the Free Store and the Communications Company: all 1,500 copies of his book All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967) were given away free.
It looked like a typical bachelor pad. The big high-ceilinged living- room looked well lived in with posters for readings, handbills for the Fillmore West, drawings and memorabilia tacked on the walls, a round oak table, stained with coffee-cup rings, was surrounded by an odd assortment of chairs, some of which looked positively unsafe to sit on. A fishing pole was propped in the corner, and a museum of odd objects lined the mantelpiece of the non-working fireplace and shelves: a klaxon, feathers, collages, a printing card announcing ‘You have been assisted by a member of the Hells Angels’. I had one of those from Frisco Pete, given to me on his visit to Apple. The ceiling had been painted white, and the lining paper was peeling off in great sheets. The small kitchen still had its original bulky porcelain sink with a brass faucet, and the faded linoleum looked almost as old. The refrigerator contained little but beer. His bedroom was filled by a big brass bed.
Richard was tall and gangling, much taller than I expected, possibly six feet six inches, like Olson, only much thinner. He had startlingly white skin, long, fluffy shoulder-length blond hair that stuck out at the sides and a drooping moustache. His fingernails were bitten to the quick. His voice had a lilting, slightly strangulated quality making each sentence very precisely annunciated. He liked to affect an old-timer look, with a wide-brimmed hat and waistcoat as if he were a forty-niner. Although filled with objects, the apartment was tidy, with dust in the corners but none on the built-in bookcases, which were filled with mimeographed poetry magazines, slim volumes of verse and small press items. His IBM Selectric had a plastic dust cover over it, and on his big wooden desk he kept his pencil
s arranged in a neat row. Order and counting things were the subjects of many of his short stories.
His best pal, the novelist Keith Abbott, seemed to be always there. It was Keith who drove Richard around, as he did not drive. Richard’s girlfriend, Valerie Estes, was also there when I arrived, and at Richard’s suggestion I hired her as my assistant. I had asked if he knew anyone who could help me out, and it made sense for them to keep the money in the family. Similarly it seemed better to pay Valerie to stay at her apartment rather than pay for a hotel, so by the evening I had an assistant and a comfortable place to stay at 1429 Kearny, near Coit Tower in North Beach.
I had first been drawn to Brautigan’s work by his book A Confederate General from Big Sur, with its Larry Rivers reproduction on the dust wrapper. I liked his quirky, whimsical humour and the weird twists of his poetry. Richard and I had very similar ideas about how the album should go: poetry but with a public surface to draw the listener in. We didn’t want sound effects, but we thought it would be good to record the actual stream he wrote about in Trout Fishing in America and that miscellaneous sounds of everyday life in his apartment would make good fillers between the tracks. We wired up Richard’s kitchen, filled the fridge with beer and taped hours of his conversation with Keith Abbott, as well as Richard answering the telephone, brushing his teeth, opening beer, eating and going about his daily business; all in keeping with the title Listening to Richard Brautigan.
The tracks were all done in the studio, and for ‘Love Poem’ I suggested that he read it twice over, as it was so short. He had a better idea and assembled a group of his friends to read it. So, on the day of the recording, the studio was filled with people: his friend Bob Prescott, the poet Michael McClure (who was a great supporter of Brautigan’s work and whom I was also recording), the artist Bruce Conner (who was also the editor of Semina magazine), Richard’s friends Betty Kirkendall, Margot Patterson Doss and Michaela Blake-Grand, the legendary photographer Imogen Cunningham (who later taught Allen Ginsberg how to take pictures), San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen (who invented the word ‘Beatnik’), Peter Berg, Alan Stone, Antonio, Cynthia Harwood and Price Dunn. Valerie Estes read and brought along her old boss, the editor Don Allen who compiled the famous New American Poetry anthology. Don Allen read the poem alone and as a duet with David Schaff. Finally Richard’s eight-year-old daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, read, and I found out later that Richard paid her $11 for her performance; she spent it all on Cracker Jacks and Archie comic books. It was a great session, with everyone milling around in the control booth, waiting their turn.
Above and previous: The album sleeve for Listening to Richard Brautigan as finally released on Harvest Records. Note on the back sleeve Richard’s added sticker claiming co-production. The album is still available from Collector’s Choice Music on CD, the sleeve of which contains a detailed list of what Brautigan read track by track. This photograph of the LP is courtesy of Todd Gunderson; the artwork remains the copyright of Harvest Records.
Above and previous: Track listings for the Brautigan recording; the timings and order of each track were carefully edited.
The other material was straightforward; Richard was a good public speaker, although his deep, slightly cartoonish voice sounded a bit precious at times. However, we rattled through without too many takes. In the end we recorded thirty poems from his book The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, parts of A Confederate General from Big Sur, Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar, and five short stories that were subsequently published in Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962–70. I left it up to Mike Vance to record the stream and the actual telephone he referred to in the text that were to be used to animate the poems, as getting a lifelike recording of a stream is very technical stuff.
I loved the lifestyle of San Francisco, which was very small-town friendly and a bit cutesy – the population was only about three-quarters of a million and Silicon Valley had not yet been invented. There was a bohemian atmosphere and a general goodwill among the people, although I perceived a definite pecking order in action among the poets. I was also delighted by the recently introduced FM radio, particularly when Valerie suggested we call up KSAN and make a request. I did, and they immediately played ‘Only a Northern Song’ by George Harrison, recorded during the Sgt Pepper sessions but recently released on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine soundtrack. Apple had just sent me a box of new releases, but Valerie’s record player was broken. We visited her neighbour, V. Vale, who later became a major force in Beat Generation and counterculture publishing with his RE/search series of books, in order to play some of them on his hi-fi.
Golden State Recorders was quite often busy, and so I made use of the time when I was unable to do any recording by asking Valerie to drive around and show me the sights. I got Apple to hire me a car, and we set out over the Golden Gate Bridge. We climbed Mount Tamalpais (part-way), and walked among the giant redwoods of Muir Woods, about twelve miles north of San Francisco. We walked on Stinson Beach in the rain and drank in a waterfront bar by the houseboats in Sausalito. It was inevitable that we would have an affair.
So that Richard would not find out, we took several trips back to Los Angeles, where we stayed at the Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica, a home away from home for rock bands. The ‘queen-size’ bed took up most of the room and the plumbing left a lot to be desired, but it was the Los Angeles equivalent of the famous Hotel Chelsea in New York, where ‘anything goes’ was the rule. It was on the first trip that we collected the tapes from Charles Bukowski. We drove back up US 1, and I remember spending my birthday in a motel called the Knight’s Rest in Pismo Beach, just north of Santa Barbara, overlooking the Pacific. I was falling in love with both Valerie and California.
Above and previous: Expenses receipts from being on the road with Valerie.
Richard did of course find out, but fortunately I had finished the actual recording process by then. He didn’t need to be in the studio for the mix-down from two-inch to quarter-inch tape or the initial sequencing of the material. In keeping with the original concept of Zapple, Richard had complete control over the contents of the album and the cover art. Mike Vance and I made a rough assembly of the album, literally making sure each side was basically the same length and trying to get an interesting dynamic in the order that the tracks were sequenced. I timed all the tracks3 so that I would know the side lengths when Richard decided upon his final order and arranged for Golden State Recorders to send the tapes directly to Apple in London, rather than to Capitol. I made a 15 ips safety copy of the album to take with me, a normal precaution in any production in case the masters got lost or damaged.
Meanwhile, on 7 March, the slow bureaucracy of Apple’s accounts department finally sent Richard a cheque for $200 as an advance on royalties, and Ron Kass promised to send a contract to him in a few days. Meanwhile Richard began working on the sleeve. He wrote and told me, rather pompously, ‘The title of the record is going to be Listening to Richard Brautigan. It is direct and to the point.’ This was something we had already agreed. He continued, ‘I like the idea of black and white photographs. I may use two or three photographs on the record, but I am not going to send negatives. I am going to send prints, because the developing is very important and I always like to have it done in a way that pleases me.’ He thought the title should be set in a very clear and simple type and that the other text on the sleeve should be in a typeface with the ‘same design value’.
Brautigan got his friend Edmund Shea to take the photographs to be used on the cover and for publicity purposes, for which he charged $300 – a huge amount in those days (about three times the average weekly wage). Prints and contact sheets cost extra. In fact this was more than any sleeve had cost so far at Apple (aside from the Beatles’ own records), let alone Zapple, and the photographs weren’t even very good. There was muttering from the accounts department, and I can’t say I blamed them. Valerie received $50 as a model. I can only assume that Richard did it as a f
orm of revenge for Valerie and me having had an affair, but it was not as if he was monogamous. Golden State sent the tapes but there was a slight problem; a leader tape had come unstuck or something happened and I had to cut about one inch of twisted tape off the ‘Sounds of My Life’ track and splice the leader back on. For some reason I informed Richard of this, who insisted that a new copy of the tape be used. ‘I am very interested in the timing of that track and want it just the way we recorded it in San Francisco.’4 Golden State subsequently airmailed a new copy from the USA. As one inch of 15 ips tape – fifteen inches per second – amounted to only one-fifteenth of a second, an inaudible amount, and as the new tape would be second generation, rather than the master, I ignored this instruction. It mattered little, anyway, because by then the fragmentation of Apple, and consequently of Zapple, had already begun.
Above and previous: Valerie Estes, photographed in her apartment, which Miles stayed in while working on the Brautigan album. She was Brautigan’s girlfriend at the time of the recording and featured on the cover of Brautigan’s album.