Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

by Simon Warner

  Before the autumn dates were through, however, Ginsberg would sign off with an essay written for the cover of a new record which would see the light of day early in 1976. Desire would see Dylan’s reputation, substantially revived by 1975’s outstanding Blood on the Tracks, upheld: the dead-ends of the late 1960s, the unfulfilled intentions of the early 1970s, seemed now behind him, and the fresh material on the album would, of course, form a core ingredient in the live repertoire of the Rolling Thunder Revue as he played with the musicians who had been instrumental in recording the work. The notes that Ginsberg would compile were headed ‘Songs of redemption’ and we might wonder whose redemption or the redemption of what? Dylan tarnished status certainly seems to have been buffed up by the fresh body of work and the tour, too. The poet, not surprisingly makes reference to the Rolling Thunder adventure and to the new song ‘Isis’, which had become one of the highlights of the concert dates. In fact, the dateline he adds to his piece is 10 November, just a week after the Lowell trip. Says Ginsberg:

  ‘Isis’ here recorded. the singer later developed onstage sung for weeks whiteface, big grey hat stuck with November leaves & flowers – no instrument in hand. thin Chaplinesque body dancing to syllables sustained by Rolling Thunder band rhythm following Dylan’s spontaneous ritards & talk-like mouthings for clarity.110

  The poet also makes reference to his long-standing belief that a long-held dream of his – perhaps Dylan, too – that poems and rock music could somehow find a comfortable communion and reach a mass audience had been attained both on the album and during Rolling Thunder itself. He states: ‘Big discovery. These songs are the culmination of Poetry-music as dreamt of in the 50’s & early 60’s – poets reciting-chanting with instruments and bongos – Steady rhythm behind the elastic language. poet alone at microphone reciting-singing surreal-history love text ending in giant “YEAH!” when minstrel gives his heart away & says he wants to stay.’111

  The relationship between Dylan and Ginsberg, and by implication the broader Beat corpus, would not end in that autumn of 1975, but its zenith was quite probably struck during those months. The two would return to the recording studio in 1981 for smaller scale projects than had featured ten years before, as Dylan played bass on a small number of tunes, but the close encounters that saw the friendship peak in the decade from 1965 to 1975 would be barely repeated. In 1991, Dylan re-visited more than several of his back pages, when he released the song ‘Series of Dreams’, a pleasing, yet fairly routine, compositional work-out but one brought to vivid life by the black and white, occasionally colour-tinted, video that accompanied it. Among the many fleeting vignettes realised the in the short film, from all eras of the Dylan career arc, are evocative frames from the Kerouac grave episode, clearly a fragment of the past the singer holds in some regard, and the title of the piece has echoes of the novelist’s own 1961 experimental volume Book of Dreams.

  When Ginsberg died in New York City from complications linked to liver cancer in April 1997, Dylan was on tour in the Maritimes, the Eastern provinces of Canada. The night after the poet’s passing, he dedicated a version of ‘Desolation Row’,112 a song infused by the dense lines and interweaving themes, peopled by a menagerie of freaks and outsiders from present and past, reality and imagination, an extended work of contemporary verse for sure and a most appropriate tribute from one musician with high poetic ambitions to another poet with his own musical aspirations. ‘What they did share, ultimately,’ says Scobie, ‘was a conception of the poet as prophet. Both of them saw the poet’s role as far more than the expression of purely personal feelings, but rather as a public statement of a morally responsible position.’113

  Notes

  1Dylan quoted in Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (London: New English Library, 1986), p. 353

  2Van Ronk quoted in Shelton, 1986, p. 99

  3Michael Gray, 2006, p. 42.

  4Corso quoted in the film What Ever Happened to Kerouac?, directors Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams (New Yorker Films, 1986).

  5Quoted by Ann Charters, ‘Bob Dylan’, The Portable Beat Reader (New York: Viking, 1992), p. 370.

  6Joseph Wenke cited in Charters, 1992, p. 370.

  7Charters, 1992, p. 370.

  8Wenke, ‘Bob Dylan’, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 16, ‘The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America’, Part 1, http://www.bookrags.com/biography/bob-dylan-dlb/ [Accessed 24 August 2011].

  9Richard Williams, Dylan: A Man Called Alias (London: Bloomsbury, 1992), p. 23.

  10Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One (London: Pocket Books, 2005), p. 235.

  11Quoted in Robert Shelton, 1986, p. 70.

  12Dylan, 2005, p. 9.

  13Gregory Corso’s poem collection Gasoline was published by City Lights in 1958.

  14Dylan, 2005, p. 34.

  15Ibid., p. 48.

  16Ibid.

  17Ibid., p. 94.

  18Ibid., p. 95.

  19Ibid., pp. 57–8

  20Quoted by Robin Denselow, When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop (London: Faber, 1989), p. 42.

  21Gray, 2006, p. 256. The Times They are a-Changin’ was recorded between August and October 1963 and released at the very beginning of 1964.

  22Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America (London: Bodley Head, 2010), p. 50.

  23Gray, 2006, p. 255.

  24Michael Schumacher, Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992), p. 405.

  25Ibid.

  26Wilentz, p. 69.

  27Schumacher, p. 405.

  28Stephen Scobie, ‘Ginsberg, Allen’, ‘The Bob Dylan Who’s Who’, Expecting Rain, 18 April 1997, http://expectingrain.com/dok/who/g/ginsbergallen.html [accessed 4 September 2011].

  29Gray, 2006, p. 256

  30Ibid.

  31Ginsberg told Seth Goddard in a c. 1994 interview in Life: ‘So those chains of flashing images you get in Dylan, like “the motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen and her silver studded phantom lover”, they’re influenced by Kerouac’s chains of flashing images and spontaneous writing’. The interview, ‘The Beats and the boom: A conversation with Allen Ginsberg’, was published at Life’s website, 5 July 2001. It can be found at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/ginsberg/interviews.htm [accessed 20 December 2011].

  32Wilentz, p. 69.

  33See sleeve notes on the LPs Another Side of Bob Dylan (Columbia, 1964), Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia, 1965) and Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia, 1965).

  34Richard E. Hishmeh, ‘Marketing genius: The friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan’, The Journal of American Culture, Vol. 29, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 395–404 (p. 396).

  35Dylan, 2005, pp. 113–14.

  36In this passage, rendered in lower-case, Dylan states: ‘why allen ginsberg was not chosen to read poetry at the inauguration boggles my mind’, sleeve notes, Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia, 1965).

  37Paul Williams, Bob Dylan – Performing Artist 1960–1973: The Early Years (London: Omnibus, 2004), p. 128.

  38Gray, 2006, p. 42.

  39Pennebaker’s film is actually, if ungrammatically, titled Dont Look Back.

  40Nat Hentoff quoted in Sukenick, 1987, p. 121.

  41Ibid.

  42Sukenick, 1987, p. 121.

  43Ginsberg quoted in Sukenick, 1987, pp. 121–2.

  44Steve Turner, 1996, p. 20.

  45See Dave Moore, ‘Was Bob Dylan influenced by Jack Kerouac?’, Dharma Beat, http://www.dharmabeat.com/kerouaccorner.html#Bob%20Dylan%20influenced%20by%20Jack%20Kerouac [accessed 29 August 2011].

  46Both from Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia, 1965).

  47The lyric appears in ‘Desolation Row’ and in Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels (London: Panther, 1972), p. 199.

  48The lyric appears in ‘Desolation Row’ and Kerouac, 1972, p. 363.

  49The phrase appears in ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ and Jack Kerouac, 1972, p. 163.

  50Dave Moore, indepe
ndent Beat scholar, personal communication, email, 26 August 2011.

  51Kerouac, 1972, p. 82.

  52Ibid., p. 289.

  53Allen Ginsberg, ‘Beginning of a Poem of These States’, The Fall of America in Collected Poems 1947–1980 (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1985), p. 369.

  54Ibid., p. 372.

  55Ginsberg, ‘Hiway Poesy: LA-Albuquerque-Texas-Wichita’, The Fall of America in Collected Poems, p. 390.

  56Ginsberg, ‘Wichita Vortex Sutra’, The Fall of America in Collected Poems, p. 409.

  57Ginsberg, ‘Crossing Nation’, The Fall of America in Collected Poems, p. 499.

  58Ginsberg, ‘Ecologue’, The Fall of America in Collected Poems, p. 542.

  59Clinton Heylin, Revolution in the Air – The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 1: 1957–73 (London: Constable, 2009), p. 329.

  60Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (London: Picador, 1997), p. 259.

  61Ginsberg states that Peter Orlovsky and he had come to San Francisco ‘some time early in mid ’65’ in his article ‘Coming to terms with the Hell’s Angels’, The Sixties, edited by Lynda Rosen Obst (New York: Random House/Rolling Stone Press, 1977), pp. 160–3 (p. 160).

  62Peter Doggett, There’s a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and the Rise and Fall of ‘60s Counter-culture (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007), p. 24.

  63Another Beat poet, Gary Snyder, also attended the demonstrations. See Doggett, p. 24.

  64Allen Ginsberg, 1977, pp. 160–3 (p. 161).

  65Ibid.

  66Ibid.

  67Ibid., p. 162.

  68Dylan played Berkeley on 3 and 4 December. The next night he performed at the Masonic Memorial Auditorium in San Francisco. See Clinton Heylin, A Life in Stolen Moments – Day by Day: 1941–1995 (London: Omnibus, 1996), p. 87.

  69Jerry Rubin was a Berkeley student and campaigning activist. He would later found the radical political hippy wing, the Yippies (the Youth International Party), with Abbie Hoffman, in 1967.

  70Ginsberg, 1977, p. 162.

  71See Steve Turner, 1996, p. 212.

  72See Carl Nolte, ‘Kerouac Alley has face-lift’, San Francisco Chronicle, 30 March 2007, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/30/BAG4NOUONC1.DTL [accessed 29 September 2011].

  73Miles, 1990, p. 381.

  74‘San Francisco poets were poor in 1965 and it was an impressive present and it committed me to music’ says Michael McClure, ‘Bob Dylan: The poet’s poet’, Lighting the Corners: On Art, Nature and the Visionary – Essays and Interviews (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), p. 26. He would later write the song ‘Mercedes Benz’.

  75Peter Doggett, 2007, p. 28.

  76See Alex Houen, ‘“Back! Back! Back! Central Mind-Machine Pentagon …”: Allen Ginsberg and the Vietnam War’, Cultural Politics: An International Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3, November 2008, pp. 351–73 (p. 355).

  77The following spring Dylan faced new controversy when he took his amplified tour to the UK. Cries of ‘Judas’ greeted him at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in May 1966.

  78Hishmeh, 2006, p. 396.

  79Miles, 1990, pp. 391–2.

  80Shelton, 1986, p. 375.

  81Oliver Trager, ‘Tarantula’, Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (New York: Billboard Books, 2004), p. 606.

  82Ibid.

  83Shelton, 1986, p. 235.

  84Ibid., p. 238.

  85Gray, 2006, p. 651.

  86Kenneth Patchen (1911–72) was ‘typical of the jazz-influenced […] generation of writers who ended up being called the Beat Generation’, Gray, 2006, p. 529.

  87Gray, 2006, p. 651.

  88Ibid.

  89Ibid.

  90Schumacher, 1992, p. 557.

  91Ibid.

  92Ibid.

  93Scobie, 1997.

  94Gray, 2006, p. 257.

  95John Lennon is thought to have provided funding towards this recording project. See Peter Doggett, 2007, p. 460.

  96Happy Traum quoted on the sleeve notes to the Ginsberg compilation Holy Soul Jelly Roll (Rhino World Beat, 1994).

  97Note that the book, First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs 1971–74, (New York: Full Court Press, 1975), by Ginsberg, includes lyrics to songs recorded with Dylan in November 1971, among them ‘Vomit Express’. It also includes the poems ‘On Reading Dylan’s Writings’ and ‘Postcard to D----‘.

  98Williams, 1992, p. 135.

  99The entire Lowell performance, from the night of 2 November 1975, can be heard at the live concert website Wolfgang’s Vault. Visit: http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-rolling-thunder-revue/concerts/technical-university-november-02-1975.html [accessed 5 September 2011]. It was posted in early 2011.

  100Andy Bershaw, ‘Concert summary’, The Rolling Thunder Revue Concert, Technical University (Lowell, MA), 2 November 1975, Wolfgang’s Vault, http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-rolling-thunder-revue/concerts/technical-university-november-02-1975.html [accessed 5 September 2011].

  101Ibid.

  102Nat Hentoff, ‘The pilgrims have landed on Kerouac’s grave’, Rolling Stone, 15 January 1976, p. 36.

  103Sam Shepard, ‘Singing on the grave’, Rolling Thunder Logbook (New York: Viking Press, 1977), p. 95.

  104Schumacher, 1992, p. 603.

  105Hishmeh, 2006, p. 401.

  106Ibid.

  107Shelton, 1986, p. 455.

  108We must assume that it was Nat Hentoff, the great jazz and culture critic, who was present as Rolling Stone feature writer to witness the graveside events. The magazine appears to carry no other contemporary, first-hand reportage of the occasion.

  109Scobie, 1997.

  110Allen Ginsberg, ‘Songs of redemption’, album sleeve notes, Bob Dylan, Desire (Columbia, 1976), sourced at ‘Bard on bard’, 9 June 2011, The Rock File: Notes on the Rock Life, http://therockfile.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/bard-on-bard-1975/ [accessed 6 September 2011].

  111Ibid.

  112Scobie, 1997.

  113Ibid.

  INTERVIEW 2

  Michael McClure, poet and author of The Beard

  Michael McClure is a poet, playwright, novelist and essayist who was at the heart of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance and a key player as the Beat flame grew in the city with the Six Gallery poetry event in 1955, an occasion at which he read. He has issued many poetry collections including The New Book/A Book of Torture (1961) and Love Lion Book (1966), published writings and essays gathered in Scratching the Beat Surface (1982) and Lighting the Corners (1994), penned a novel The Mad Club (1970) and his 1965 play The Beard attracted both critical praise and official sanction. He has various links to some of the leading rock names of recent decades. He was a friend of Dylan – he famously gave the poet an autoharp – and also Jim Morrison, wrote ‘Mercedes Benz’ which Janis Joplin sang and has developed a long and successful working relationship with ex-Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek. Together they have toured and recorded their collaborations in music and poetry.

  I spoke to McClure at his home in the Oakland Hills in July 2004.

  SW I’m trying explore the similarities and the dissimilarities between the Beat culture of the 1950s into the 1960s and the rock culture that followed in various forms: original rock ’n’ roll and then this more sophisticated style that emerged in the mid-1960s from Dylan and the Beatles and so on. I want to try and establish what continuities there were and what discontinuities there were.

  The Beats might be described as having a certain apolitical side whereas the rock culture had pinned upon it, at least, a politicised condition and maybe we could touch upon those things. The Beats seemed less willing to use, in a sense, mass media techniques to disseminate their material, whereas rock culture gripped the mass media opportunity with both hands and reached a global audience. There are all sorts of connections and maybe disconnections, but if I could start off by asking you this question …

  In the mid-1950s when the Six Gallery gathering happened in 1955 when Kerouac�
��s On the Road was published, and so on, there was, alongside, this the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll as a recognised national phenomenon and I just wondered, Michael, whether you could say a few words about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll culture alongside what you were doing as a poet, what you and your fellows were doing. What impact did that have on your work, did you tune it out or did you tune into it?

  MM There was a group in England, four young men called the Beatles. I believe, at first, they were called the Silver Beatles and played basement venues. They were profoundly aware, among other things, of American black music. This was a movement that was going on, of young men forming groups that were playing music that was roughly based on black music from earlier in the century. This particular group, the Beatles – the B-E-A-T-L-E-S [spells out the word] – shifted from the word, spelt Beetles, B-E-E-T-L-E-S, because clearly as we watched them and listened to them, we could see that they were taking advantage and using the great openings provided to them by what they were hearing in Beat poetry and it changed the nature of their lyrics. Probably the same is true of the Stones though the Stones didn’t take the name the Ginsbergs or something! So, from the very beginning I see the black music and Beat poetry, which I see as highly political – if you had been at the Six Gallery you would have found five readers, five of the most radical, outspoken, politically directed people you are ever likely to meet, in that age group.