Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel

by Sherill Tippins

  [>] “Glory be to God”: Baral, Turn West on 23rd, 81.

  [>] healing rhythm: Jeffs, Brendan Behan, 207.

  [>] “I’m a lonely”: Ibid., 298.

  [>] “I Should Have Been”: Ibid., 21.

  [>] L’Après-Midi d’un Faune: Baral, Turn West on 23rd, 80.

  [>] chasing the maids: Smith, “The Madcap Chelsea.”

  [>] she was shocked: Jeffs, Brendan Behan, 212.

  [>] engage passersby: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] occasionally asked an acquaintance of his: O’Connor, Brendan Behan, 300.

  [>] “natural high tenor”: Francis X. Clines, “About New York: The Chelsea Is Still a Roof for Creative Heads,” New York Times, February 4, 1978.

  [>] nothing but a phony: O’Connor, Brendan Behan, 299.

  [>] photograph of Charlie Chaplin: Jeffs, Brendan Behan, 214.

  [>] had a seizure: Ibid., 217–19.

  [>] like a “snake pit”: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 234.

  [>] to spot Nelson Algren: Drew, Nelson Algren, 318–19.

  [>] featuring Nubian warriors: Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham, 161.

  [>] two full-grown: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, November 30, 2007.

  [>] “Demolish Serious”: M. Oren, “Anti-Art as the End of Cultural History,” Performing Arts Journal (May 1993): 1–30.

  [>] “Everybody collapsed’: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 366.

  [>] Clarice Rivers watched: Clarice Rivers, interview with the author, November 27, 2007.

  [>] absent themselves: Special Agent in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Assassination Records Review Board, Document #124-10160- 10009 (November 26, 1963), http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/20th_Issue/arrb_13a.html.

  [>] told to report: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 366.

  [>] “Well, that’s”: Ibid.

  [>] “You’re like a god!”: Miller, After the Fall, 72.

  [>] one neighbor in the hotel: Scott Griffin, interview with the author, November 14, 2007.

  [>]a mere three weeks: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 376.

  [>] thoughtfully chain-smoking: Barbara Gelb, “Question: Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” New York Times, November 29, 1964.

  [>] shot a prostitute: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] detective’s quadruple-locked apartment: Ibid.

  [>] had once counted: Emma K. Penner, “Christian Dior and Charles James,” On Pins and Needles, Fashion Institute of Technology, September 27, 2010, http://pinsndls.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/christian-dior-and-charles-james/.

  [>] beautiful wife, Nancy: Turner, At the Chelsea, 90.

  [>] opposite temperaments: LoBrutto, Stanley Kubrick, 264.

  [>] gray Smith Corona: Ibid., 267.

  [>] breakfast with Miller: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] help of the U.S. State Department: Binkiewicz, Federalizing the Muse, 51–52.

  [>] Ellis Island: Marvin Elkoff, “The Left Bank of the Atlantic,” Show (April 1965): 58.

  [>] creating “trap” pictures: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 155.

  [>] erotic images: Weitman, Pop Impressions Europe/USA, 109.

  [>] created Chelsea House: Charles Sopkin, “The Chelsea Boys and How They Grew,” New York (March 2, 1970): 46–50.

  [>] startling Steinberg’s wife, Mary: Lingeman, “Where Home Is Where It Is.”

  [>] “What? You want shit”: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 133.

  [>] crying, “Ah!”: Bill Wilson, interview with the author, December 12, 2005.

  [>] “the most human”: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 150.

  [>] top two floors: Ibid., 145–46.

  [>] looked the other way: Ibid., 152.

  [>] Stanley had resented: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, May 15, 2006.

  [>] to see the world: Hamelcourt, “Oral Histories at the Chelsea Hotel: Margit Cain Interviews Juliette Hamelcourt” (audio recording), Juliette Hamelcourt Collection, SAAA.

  [>] letters of his first name: Oldenburg interview with Bruce Hooten.

  [>] “Why don’t”: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 148.

  [>] “You look”: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, May 15, 2006.

  [>] providing drop cloths: Lingeman, “Where Home Is Where It Is.”

  [>] “point men”: Miller, Timebends, 324.

  [>] Green Gallery representative: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 155.

  [>] “Artists’ Key”: David Galloway, “Arman—Made in America,” ArtPress, no. 371.

  [>] “odds of having fun are 104 to 1”: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 156.

  [>] “cheese pieces”: Ibid.

  [>] happily unrolled and read: Ibid., 157.

  [>] Southern arrived from Malibu: Hill, A Grand Guy, 139.

  [>] Village publication Fuck You: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] suitcase-size tape recorder: Randy Kennedy, “The Unknown Loved by the Knowns,” New York Times, June 27, 2010.

  [>] four hundred separate rooms: Eugenia Sheppard, “The Lonesome Monsters,” New York Herald Tribune, March 1965.

  [>] a golden age: Hill, A Grand Guy, 154.

  [>] “change the curve”: Southern, The Candy Men, 246.

  [>] the “dead-beat mediocrities”: Hill, A Grand Guy, 128.

  [>] “like black worms”: Yevtushenko, Stolen Apples, 185.

  [>] “a jungle”: Miller, Timebends, 54.

  [>] “Listen all you boards”: Burroughs, Nova Express, 3.

  [>] “Hell consists of falling”: Burroughs and Hibbard, Conversations with William S. Burroughs, 11.

  [>] “no foundation”: Miller, Timebends, 514.

  [>] “I watched”: Ibid.

  6. A Strange Dream

  [>] invited him up: Rosebud Feliu Pettet, interview with the author, March 25, 2010.

  [>] Rivers had helped transform: Rivers, What Did I Do?, 343.

  [>] It was August of 1958: Bill Morgan and David Hale, e-mail to the author, July 26, 2011.

  [>] “this old guy”: Singh, Think of the Self, 2.

  [>] “alchemical magician”: Ibid., 3.

  [>] theosophist parents: Ibid., 212–13.

  [>] turn lead into gold: Perchuk and Singh, Harry Smith, 16.

  [>] Lummi Indian reservation: Ibid.

  [>] called “thought-forms”: Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-Forms, 3.

  [>] “hard-lipped”: Dylan, Chronicles, 6.

  [>] marijuana for the first time: Singh, Think of the Self, 16.

  [>] “decoy duck”: Raymond Foye, “Harry Smith: The Alchemical Image,” The Heavenly Tree Grows Downward (exhibition catalog), September 10 through October 19, 2002.

  [>] Fischinger’s abstract animations: Perchuk and Singh, Harry Smith, 23.

  [>] hand-painted simple shapes: Singh, Think of the Self, 133.

  [>] true “mystic”: Allen Ginsberg to Gregory Corso, August 27, 1958.

  [>] Ginsberg discovered, to his amazement: Singh, Think of the Self, 2.

  [>] hole in the elbow: The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (documentary film), directed by Rani Singh, 2006.

  [>] “upset or destroy”: Singh, Think of the Self, 83.

  [>] “Wife’s Logic”: Harry Smith, Anthology of American Folk Music (liner notes), Folkways Records, 1952.

  [>] to retune the world: Perchuk and Singh, Harry Smith, 29.

  [>] “small hunchbacked”: Singh, Think of the Self, i.

  [>] “tremblingly high”: Ibid., 4.

  [>] “exposition of Buddhism”: Dixon, The Exploding Eye, 152.

  [>] “an extraordinarily intelligent”: Allen Ginsberg to William Burroughs, October 29, 1960.

  [>] “totally awed”: Singh, Think of the Self, 4.

  [>] “the perversion”: Leland, Why Kerouac Matters, 33.

  [>] supply the still-legal hallucinogen: Schumacher, Dharma Lion, 347.

  [>] “The Revolution”: Allen Ginsberg to Neal Ca
ssady, December 4, 1960.

  [>] “I was beginning”: Interview by Paola Igliori, “Allen Ginsberg and Paola Igliori,” September 24, 1995; http://www.allenginsberg.org/index.php?page=paola-igliori-interview-on-harry-smith.

  [>] “Who is this”: Singh, Think of the Self, 4.

  [>] “We are concerned”: Sitney, Film Culture Reader, 79–83.

  [>] rebellious daughter: Cecile Starr, interview with the author, April 11, 2006.

  [>] Barbara Rubin: Jonas Mekas, interview with the author, September 10, 2010.

  [>] “From now on”: Pennington, History of Sex in American Film, 32.

  [>] “for an audience”: Perchuk and Singh, Harry Smith, 262.

  [>] backers’ screening: Singh, Think of the Self, 5.

  [>] yelling at the projectionist: Ibid., 137.

  [>] threw a projector: Jonas Mekas, interview with the author, September 10, 2010.

  [>] landlord had evicted him: Ibid.

  [>] searching with friends: Ed Sanders, e-mail to the author, July 29, 2011.

  [>] nicknamed Rosebud: Rosebud Feliu Pettet, interview with the author, March 25, 2010.

  [>] “would have been embarrassed”: Judith Childs, interview with the author, September 21, 2007.

  [>] “liberated zones”: Bey, Temporary Autonomous Zone, 100–102.

  [>] synergistic energy: Foye, “Harry Smith.”

  [>] “free enclave”: Bey, Temporary Autonomous Zone, 102.

  [>] far east end of the seventh floor: Bill DeNoyelles, “Subduing the Demons in America: An Interview with John Giorno,” 2003, in Brick by Brick, July 5, 2008; http://billdenoyellesbrickbybrick.blogspot.com/2008/07/john-giornosubduing-demons-in-america.html.

  [>] “virus power”: Hibbard, Conversations with William S. Burroughs, 12.

  [>] “It was very exciting”: Randy Kennedy, “The Unknown Loved by the Knowns,” New York Times, June 27, 2010.

  [>] impact on Arthur C. Clarke: McAleer, Arthur C. Clarke, 184.

  [>] neighbors’ psychedelic experiences: Clarke, The Lost Worlds of 2001, 35.

  [>] “it gives you”: Perchuk and Singh, Harry Smith, 121.

  [>] “underground movement”: Daniel Belasco, “Barbara Rubin: The Vanished Prodigy,” Art in America (December 2005).

  [>] “spiritualization of the image”: Mekas, Movie Journal, 144.

  [>] John Palmer: Jonas Mekas, interview with the author, September 10, 2010.

  [>] “the most beautiful”: Belasco, “Barbara Rubin.”

  [>] “religious” film: Mekas, Movie Journal, 145.

  [>] “I cannot in good conscience”: In “December 7, 1964: Andy Warhol Receives the Independent Filmmakers’ Award,” Andy Warhol Chronology, June to December 1964, http://www.warholstars.org/chron/andy_warhol_1964b.html.

  [>] “He couldn’t take”: J. Stein, Edie, 228–29.

  [>] tapped her cigarette ashes: Ibid., 230.

  [>] a virtual prisoner: Ibid., 105.

  [>] the psychiatric unit: Belasco, “Barbara Rubin.”

  [>] treated everyone to dinner: J. Stein, Edie, 167.

  [>] “There must be”: Singh, Think of the Self, 288.

  [>] “I would like to make”: Ibid., 64.

  [>] “pleasure city”: Sadie and Macy, Grove Book of Operas, 53.

  [>] “Oh moon of Alabama”: Brecht, Rise and Fall, 34.

  [>] “It wasn’t just”: Rani Singh, interview with the author, November 12, 2009.

  [>] aided now by Peggy Biderman: Raymond Foye, e-mail to the author, July 29, 2010.

  [>] wandered off to Haight-Ashbury: Rosebud Feliu Pettet, interview with the author, March 25, 2010.

  [>] Ochs, his neighbor: Foye, “Harry Smith.”

  [>] “anarchist folk-rock”: Perchuk and Singh, Harry Smith, 32.

  [>] Crazy Crystal: Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, “Border Radio,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ebb01.

  [>] “wildness and weirdness”: Dylan, Chronicles, 33.

  [>] “the way I explored”: Ibid., 18.

  [>] “underground story”: Ibid., 103.

  [>] “power of spirit”: Ibid., 14.

  [>] “All those songs about roses”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 248.

  [>] it seemed natural to: Rebecca Leung, “Dylan Looks Back,” 60 Minutes, June 12, 2005, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/02/60minutes/main658799.shtml.

  [>] that “Civil War period”: Dylan, Chronicles, 89.

  [>] “America was put on the cross”: Ibid., 86.

  [>] he saw things: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 54.

  [>] “I had a heightened”: Dylan, Chronicles, 9.

  [>] “go past the vernacular”: Ibid., 51.

  [>] “chilling precision”: Ibid.

  [>] “You hear Bob Dilon?”: Allen Ginsberg to Peter Orlovsky, November 20, 1963, Allen Ginsberg Collection, HRC.

  [>] annual Bill of Rights dinner: “Bob Dylan and the NECLC,” Half-Moon Foundation, estate archives of Dr. Corliss Lamont, http://www.corliss-lamont.org/dylan.htm.

  [>] “rebellion songs”: Dylan, Chronicles, 83.

  [>] “governing me”: “Bob Dylan and the NECLC.”

  [>] “lived where”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 158.

  [>] “There was an undercurrent”: Dylan, Chronicles, 26.

  [>] “I had a feeling of destiny”: Ibid., 73.

  [>] “change my inner thought patterns”: Ibid., 71.

  [>] “start believing possibilities”: Ibid.

  [>] “change the world”: Schumacher, There But for Fortune, 82.

  [>] “politics is bullshit”: Ibid., 83.

  [>] “It was looking”: Dylan, Chronicles, 22.

  [>] “They were so easy”: Ibid., 204.

  [>] “The Poet”: Rimbaud, Illuminations.

  [>] “stare at for hours”: Dylan, Chronicles, 34.

  [>] “Strike another match”: Dylan, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”

  [>] “cuneiform tablets”: Dylan, Chronicles, 84.

  [>] “one of the loveliest”: Ibid., 127.

  [>] “constant commotion”: “Bob Dylan and the NECLC.”

  [>] “just two holy”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 225.

  [>] “all determined”: Dylan, Chronicles, 180.

  [>] the fat lady: Richard R. Lingeman, “Where Home Is Where It Is,” New York Times Book Review, December 24, 1967.

  [>] the Preacher who roamed the halls: Arthur Miller, “The Chelsea Affect,” Granta 78 (Summer 2002).

  [>] Patti Cakes and Cherry Vanilla: Turner, At the Chelsea, 24.

  [>] solitary woman: Ibid.

  [>] pretty West Indian maid with her hair dyed bright red: Elaine Dundy, “Crane, Masters, Wolfe, Etc. Slept Here,” Esquire (October 1964).

  [>] Santa Claus: Ibid.

  Larry Rivers chatting up: Eugenia Sheppard, “The Lonesome Monsters,” New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1965.

  [>] Peter Brook rushing out: Dundy, “Crane, Masters, Wolfe.”

  [>] Arthur Miller walking his basset hound: Ibid.

  [>] Alphaeus Cole hobbling: Turner, At the Chelsea, 78.

  [>] “I have these”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 232.

  [>] Sara had met Richard Leacock: Beattie, Pennebaker, 97.

  [>] “right back”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 241.

  [>] the artist Brice Marden: Charlie Finch, “What Becomes a Legend Least,” Artnet (October 27, 2006).

  [>] closer to the surface: Brice Marden, Audio Guide interview, “Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective,” Museum of Modern Art (January 2007).

  [>] “No one went to bed”: Bob Dylan 65 Revisited (documentary film), directed by D. A. Pennebaker (New York: New Video Group, 2007), deluxe-edition DVD.

  [>] “They were all”: Faithfull, Faithfull, 42.

  [>] “long piece”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 239.

  [>] “It’s like a ghost”: Dylan, Chronicles, 212.

  [>] shouted “Traitor!”: Shelton, No Direction Hom
e, 306.

  [>] “city songs”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 249.

  [>] “New York type period”: Ibid., 248–49.

  [>] “great art”: Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 75–76.

  [>] “biggest transatlantic”: John Ashbery, Warhol show review, New York Herald Tribune, May 17, 1965.

  [>] “a retired artist”: Jean-Pierre Lenoir, “Paris Impressed by Warhol Show,” New York Times, May 13, 1965.

  [>] “frightening and glamorous”: J. Stein, Edie, 250.

  [>] “such assholes”: Ibid., 280.

  [>] “Andy Warhol would not be”: Richard Burnett, “John Giorno at Festival Voix d’Amériques: Buddy, You’re a Poet,” http://hour.ca/2008/01/24/buddy-youre-a-poet/.

  [>] “I don’t know”: J. Stein, Edie, 243.

  [>] “not be a spokesman”: Ibid., 282.

  [>] “supreme hip courtier”: Faithfull, Faithfull, 43.

  [>] on a snowy night: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 287.

  [>] “a hang up”: Ibid., 274.

  [>] “a lot of medicine”: Shelton, No Direction Home, 341.

  [>] “the undertaker”: Bob Dylan, “I Wanna Be Your Lover.”

  [>] “the rainman”: Ibid.

  [>] carnival-like atmosphere: McCandlish Phillips, “Blackout Vignettes Are Everywhere You Look,” New York Times, November 11, 1965.

  [>] “You’ve got to”: Dylan, Chronicles, 219.

  [>] “they’re not gonna”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 297.

  [>] “taste for provocation”: Dylan, Chronicles, 48.

  [>] “terrific girl”: J. Stein, Edie, 166.

  [>] “exciting girl”: Scott Cohen, “Bob Dylan: Not Like a Rolling Stone,” Spin (December 1985).

  [>] “a tremendous compassion”: J. Stein, Edie, 167.

  [>] “called me up”: Rhoda Koenig, “Edie Sedgwick: The Life and Death of the Sixties Star,” Independent, January 9, 2007.

  [>] first images: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 294.

  [>] “The one thing”: Dylan, Chronicles, 201.

  [>] “Sad-eyed lady”: Bob Dylan, “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”

  [>] “I keep a close”: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 211.

  [>] “Dylan’s band”: Shelton, No Direction Home, 334.

  [>] stuck to his resolve: Schumacher, Dharma Lion, 455.

  [>] Sedgwick herself had turned up: Heylin, Revolution in the Air, 288.

  [>] searching for his superstar: Nick Patch, “Robbie Robertson Gets Personal on New Album, His First in 13 Years,” Brandon Sun, online edition, March 29, 2011.