Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side

by Sanders, Ed

  It was a Halloween costume affair, but The Fugs were already in Fugs costume, so we came as we were: On the Edge, Out There, a Bit Famished, but bearing with us a tender child, Deirdre, then almost fourteen months old.

  It was a wild night. The Fugs, Miriam, and young Deirdre slept on the gallery floor. Crashing on the floor of something called the Raped and Strangled Art Gallery made it certain, if certainty needed further certainty, that we were “down and out.” I remember as a kid in the dorm at Missouri University reading George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. Now I was there, Down and Out in San Francisco in an overloaded VW bus with hungry and very talkative Fugs, wife, daughter, sound equipment, Fugs Songbook, on the edge of panic. Miriam somehow lost one of her tennis shoes. And for a while we didn’t have the cash to get a new pair.

  As far as I know, Western civilization’s first legalize cunnilingus demo.

  Fugs Gig with Country Joe and the Fish and Allen Ginsberg

  Ed Denson, manager of a band just then forming called Country Joe and the Fish, contacted me about performing with Allen Ginsberg on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley on November 5. I agreed, and they put out a flier around Berkeley for the gig, held in a chemistry lecture room, whose central table, down in the front of the room, we used as a stage.

  We had a large crowd, given the scantiness of the prepublicity. First Country Joe and the Fish performed (it was their first performance ever!), then Ginsberg, sitting lotus position in the middle of the chemistry table stage. The Fugs closed the show, a highlight of which occurred when Steve Weber fell back off the stage, landing on his back while keeping the beat perfectly and not missing a note. I collected the money, dividing it exactly among all the performers, $20 each, which caused Allen to grumble a bit because his renown obviously (his image was featured prominently on the poster) had led to the crowd paying the $1 admission.

  Fugs set list, San Francisco, fall of ’65.

  Benefit for the San Francisco Mime Troupe

  The night after the gig with Country Joe and Allen Ginsberg, The Fugs performed at a benefit for the San Francisco Mime Troupe. A young man named Bill Graham managed R. G. Davis’s troupe. Its commedia dell’arte production of Il Candelaio was declared too smutty by the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Commission, but the Mime Troupe performed it nevertheless and was busted.

  Bill staged a benefit for the group’s legal defense fund. The Family Dog, a leading psychedelic-era concert promoter, offered its help, and Bill, who had been concentrating on his mime troupe duties and was not aware of the dance craze, listed The Family Dog as performers on the “Appeal” party poster, thinking they were a dog act.

  The November 6 fund-raiser was an eye-opener for Bill Graham. His goal had been to raise money for the troupe and to headline the censorship, but he was amazed by the highly energetic and artistically adorned throngs of youth who came to the Howard Street Loft, drawn there by the allure of the Jefferson Airplane, The Fugs, Sandy Bull, the John Handy Quintet, and the Mothers of Invention. Thousands arrived, inspiring Bill Graham, who put together two more “Appeal” parties in December and January.

  It was Bill Graham’s first concert production.

  Neal Cassady Driving Us to La Honda

  In early November Neal Cassady drove me and Peter Orlovsky from San Francisco to Ken Kesey’s place in La Honda. Neal drove our Volkswagen van very fast on the twisting Pacific Coast Highway, sometimes straying into the other lane on the curves, while talking nonstop. One curve Neal was rapidly negotiating while he was praising race driver Stirling Moss. “Moss,” he said, “can go into a power slide on a curve while adjusting his goggles at the same time.” Neal mimicked adjusting his goggles as we careened around the curve.

  The Fates were not ready to snip, so we reached La Honda safely.

  A day or so later The Fugs began to wend the packed VW bus back across the Great States. First to Los Angeles, where we stayed with the Mothers of Invention keyboard man, Don Preston.

  The Fugs in Placitas

  Next we traveled onward across the desert and visited Robert and Bobbie Creeley in Placitas, New Mexico, a small town north of Albuquerque, in November 1965. Bobbie and Bob graciously put us up for several days. Right after we arrived, Bob Creeley drove down to the store and purchased cigarettes for those who smoked in an act of instant analysis of the band’s impecuniosity.

  Bobby shot some footage of us as we came out of our VW van, including Miriam Sanders and our fifteen-month-old daughter, Deirdre.

  Miriam and I wandered out in the open fields. She was looking for cacti near their house and found antique Native pottery shards.

  Ed cleaning his Bell and Howell, Steve, Bob Creeley, by The Fugs’ VW van, Placitas. Photo from footage shot by Bobbie Louise Hawkins.

  (Left) Steve, Lee Crabtree, Ken, Placitas. (Right) Tuli and Steve.

  Deirdre, Miriam, in shadows, Placitas. Photos from footage shot by Bobby Louise Hawkins. (Right) Some 1965 shards found near the Creeley house in Placitas.

  Two Letters to Charles Olson

  I wrote my mentor on the return trip to New York City. The first note was dated November 9, 1965, when we stopped at Los Angeles:Dear Charles—

  Well, the Fugs have been on a coast to coast concert tour—stayed in the Berkeley-S.F. area for three weeks. Ginzap was on a couple of concerts with us—the Zap is now billed as Folk Rock Mantra-ist. We are on the way to the Creeley conspiracy in Placitas. Traveling w/ wife, daughter Deirdre, and the 4 other Fugs. It’s been a great month touring, although I sometimes feel like I’m traveling with Albanian hillsmen storming Byzantine nunneries.

  Ginsberg, with the Orlovsky brothers, in the microbus soon to travel around the states. Michael McClure writing Rock Message Units for the local S.F. singing groups. He and Ginzap & Bruce Conner practicing daily on rhythm mantras. Some of it pretty good. Why don’t you write a song for the Fugs: Olson message to the young & humm the tune into a tape recorder—send tape and text. We’ve done a lot of Blake: Ah Sunflower Weary of Time; How Sweet I Roamed from Field to Field; Oh Rose Thou Art Sick; Swinburne Stomp (a chorus from Atalanta in Calydon “Before the Beginning of Years.), Ginzap, etc.

  Next I proposed that Olson hook up with Panna Grady:

  2 days later—

  Now at Creeleys’. Extremely hospitable, kind, generous. 6 fug maniacs on the Placitas set. Now to the real reason of letter.

  A very elegant lady on the N.Y. literary scene with a large opulently furnished apartment at the Dakota on 72nd and C. Park West, living alone, I believe an Esterhazy countess with Rockefeller money, has on several occasions mentioned interest in having you stay with her for a while—to meet you, etc. She has a maid or two—incredible apartment. (I filmed part of mongolian cluster fuck there) very large with lots of phones & whole sections I’m sure you could be alone in.

  She’s an excellent cook the type who’ll spend 8 hours making Hungarian horse radish with income from scads of stocks—she entertains on the highest social levels & throws the most interesting of the N.Y. literary in-bashes. Why don’t you bop in to N.Y. and spend some time there. I’d be glad to like handle any details, arrange the date, or help in whatever way. In any case, you now have a N.Y. base on the most comfortable level, with $, lots of those Kennedy/Shriver/ freaks all around.

  Send me some poetry for an issue? How about any prose you may have written, a message from the big O to the young Turks, for the prose issue of F.Y./?

  Terrence Williams [KU rare books curator] mentioned with joy and delight that you might freak in to K.U. for a two week scene. The Cree is not too far away—he could come & be someone to talk to, maybe. Let me know if anything I can do in N.Y. for you.

  Instant publication of course, of any project you have in mind.

  Love,

  Ed

  Onward to New York City

  After visiting and replenishing our vim in Placitas, there followed a long, nonstop surge across the prairies. We arrived back in
New York City broke, beat, metaphysically distressed, yet full of grit and determination. The lights had been turned off at Peace Eye, and we needed to pay rent on the store and on our pad on Twenty-seventh.

  One good mote of news: Our record was out! The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction (later known as The Fugs First Album), on the Broadside label. The cover featured a Dave Gahr photograph taken in an empty lot down the street from the Peace Eye Bookstore. At least we weren’t listed as The Fugs Jug Band.

  The impact was almost instantaneous. The sequence I chose, from those two early sessions, with the help of Harry Smith, which we edited on a tape machine at Folkways Records before leaving for the cross-country tour, was to catch on and become, some say, a classic American folk recording.

  The Founding of the East Village Other

  While The Fugs were on the cross-country road trip that fall, an underground newspaper called the East Village Other, and more often just referred to as EVO, founded in the summer, was beginning to flourish. It set up shop in a storefront at 147 Avenue A, between Ninth and Tenth, across from Tompkins Square Park. It was in a perfect spot to monitor that part of the Lower East Side.

  I had followed EVO since its planning stage. In fact I was offered an ownership position by Walt Bowart if I’d get involved. I knew Bowart as an artist and a bartender at Stanley’s. In later decades he became an important scholar in the field of robowash and hypnotic/narcotic behavior modifications and wire-ups of programmed agents.

  I meditated seriously about jumping into the EVO project. In the end I turned it down because of all my obligations—filmmaking, publishing, Peace Eye, The Fugs, my family, and poetry.

  Early East Village Other contributors included Ishmael Reed, Allan Katzman, John Wilcock, and Bill Beckman, with his Captain High cartoon panels. Beckman would soon design The Fugs’ stage set at the Astor Place Playhouse.

  How much did EVO cost back then? Twenty-five cents a copy. A feature of each EVO issue was a Slum Goddess pictorial, inspired by The Fugs tune.

  Around the nation were web presses, sturdy printing machines with large rolls of newsprint attached, which normally were used to print used car brochures, college newspapers, and the like. There was always a slot in the production schedules for these web presses to print almost anything anybody wanted, including the burgeoning underground press.

  Other underground newspapers began to flourish as well, including the Los Angeles Free Press, Chicago Seed, San Francisco Oracle, Milwaukee Kaleidoscope , Detroit’s Fifth Estate, Berkeley Barb, Georgia Straight, and Great Speckled Bird. They were part of the glory of the ’60s brought to us by the unused portions of the Great Bill of Rights.

  These newspapers were in good part paid for by ads from the zones of psychedelic commerce (plus movies, concerts, head shops, record companies, and “personals”), which the National Security Grouch Apparatus disliked intensely to the point of breaking them up. Red Squads were ever busy scheming to stomp the undergrounds to death, and the CIA itself chomped its tweedy fangs into the underground press movement later in ’67.

  Another Letter to Charles Olson

  Olson sent text for the upcoming prose issue of Fuck You and had replied in the positive regarding meeting Panna Grady, so I immediately wrote back on December 2:Dear Charles, Joy to get all your letters. Called Panna G. today—she’s planning elegant dinner parties for you—you can stay I hope for a while? Just let me know a few days in advance so I can set things up. Ok. Thanks for the wonderful piece for F.Y. Hard to transcribe on the typewriter. I’ll send thee a dummy copy for your proofreading.

  Love,

  Ed.

  I was determined to fulfill a role as a bardic matchmaker.

  Peaceful Life on East Twenty-Seventh

  No matter how weird and freaky it was out there on the streets of New York City, we tried to keep it fairly normal at home. We decided to wall off the weirdness, believing that children should be protected from creepiness, dirt, and maelstromism. In December Miriam and I were visited at our new pad by distinguished Italian writer Fernanda Pivano, translator of Hemingway and the Beats. She wrote of it in her book C’era una volta un beat: “Un’immag ine della pacifica casa di Ed Sanders, dove il turbolento poeta viveve con la moglie Miriam e la bambina. Si era fatto dei classificatori con grosse scatole di cartone e tutta l’organizzazione della casa era molto improvvisata e a sfondo nomadico. Ogni tanto doveva traslocare in fretta per evitare che la moglie venisse coinvolta negli arresti.”

  After returning from the cross-country tour, we started playing again at the Bridge Theater at midnight and at the Cafe Au Go Go on Bleecker Street, where Lenny Bruce had been arrested!

  I printed a flier at Peace Eye when we were held over at the Au Go Go: “The Fugs held over, Cafe Au Go Go, 152 Bleecker through Dec. 26.”

  Playing the Au Go Go was real eye-opening; we were performing at the same venue as the Blues Project, Jesse Collins Young and the Youngbloods, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Paul Butterfield, Howlin’ Wolf, Richie Havens bent down close to his guitar and doing Dylan as well or better than Dylan, and others. I learned many things hanging out at the Go Go. It exposed me to a level of musicianship that made me realize I was going to have to bump up The Fugs to a much more elevated mode in order to survive in this zone of the Music Game.

  For me the weeks The Fugs played the Cafe Au Go Go were a time of wonderment. We met Dylan’s and Haven’s manager, Albert Grossman, there. He checked out our act but decided not to manage us. I’d seen Josh White at Grossman’s Gate of Horn in Chicago the spring vacation of 1958, when I was at Missouri University.

  The Fugs and Richie Havens, Cafe Au Go Go, December 10, 1965. Ed Sanders collection.

  Singing “Slum Goddess,” December ’65, at the Cafe Au Go Go. Ed Sanders collection.

  Also performing at the Cafe Au Go Go, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band! Photo courtesy of Bill Keith.

  Rastignac at the End of Balzac’s Pere Goriot

  I was determined to survive and thrive. I felt Jean-Paul Sartre’s apothegm “We are alone, with no excuses,” through every fiber of my youthful identity. In the slight rise of ground between Avenues C and B, in front of the Peace Eye Bookstore, I felt like the character Rastignac at the close of Balzac’s Old Goriot, who, faced with defeat, calamity, metaphysical distress, poverty, the smashing of dreams, and an obstinate caste-based system of haves and have-nots, took a vow at the hilltop of Père Lachaise cemetery: “Rastignac walked a few steps to the highest part of the cemetery, and saw Paris spread out below on both banks of the winding Seine. Lights were beginning to twinkle here and there. His gaze fixed almost vividly upon the space that lay between the column of the Place Vendome and the dome of the Invalides; there lay the splendid world that he had wished to gain. He eyed that humming hive . . . and said with defiance, ‘It’s war between us now!’”

  The original draft of Ted Berrigan’s tune.

  I felt the same way. I was determined to make a living from my art. There was no turning back. No graduate school. No quietude of scholarship. No Quaker and Catholic Worker–inspired peace work. It was Fugs. Fugs and Counterculture, LeMar and the Mimeo Rev! And getting our brains on tape! I was determined to improve The Fugs’ music, making it better and thus more impactful, while at the same time not changing our lyrics, our level of satire, our bite and humor.

  Meanwhile, Pot Martyrdom continued: Tim Leary was arrested on December 23 in Laredo for grass. (He went on trial on March 9, 1966, and was given thirty years in the slams!)

  It was a harsh time for the arts because the arts were assaulting some of the Power Zones of the right-wing culture and demanding the freedoms of the U.S. Constitution. I’d already had a taste of this time a few months earlier when police undertook a warrantless search of my Secret Location.

  I was extremely determined to put The Fugs on a firm financial footing. I sensed that there was an audience willing to plunk down cash to view our Spectacle a
nd hear our music. I always thought that The Fugs WERE their tapes. The best investment, I felt, was to try to record The Fugs as much as possible and to keep the tapes. Under the adage “Tapes don’t lie.” The Fugs, to me, were the tapes of their musical pieces.

  December 20

  I read poetry at Israel Young’s Folklore Center with Ted Berrigan. (It had already moved from 110 MacDougal to 321 Sixth Avenue, on the second floor next to the Waverly Theater, west side of the avenue.)

  In late ’65 Ted wrote a song for The Fugs, “Doin’ All Right,” which went on our second album.

  As leader of The Fugs, I found myself in the unenviable position of hiring and firing. Steve Weber was becoming a problem. He had missed our triumphal performance at Carnegie Hall back in September, so we were forced to perform before a sold-out crowd with just a bass and Weaver on the conga. Weber was loath to practice. I was determined to morph and mutate our music into the level of the bands I had been watching intently at the Cafe Au Go Go.