Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

by Simon Warner

  Waits, the archetypal musical heir to that literary generation’s code, would be her romantic partner for a time, as well, as her premiere LP won her the Best New Artist prize at the 1980 Grammys. Such auspicious beginnings were darkened by her growing drug habits and the Waits affair would come to an end. Afterwards, she told Rolling Stone: ‘Tom and I were living like characters from the movies when we were together. Tom really wanted us to be poor Mexicans with our kids screaming on the back seat at a drive-in. And it was impossible. He really is a character, you know. It’s like the old bohemian poet who has to suffer and be broke, like Charles Bukowski.’16 But Jones, in the wake of the split, appeared to distance herself from this métier, remarking: ‘I don’t find it romantic being poor or being an alcoholic or a junkie or a whore. People think I’m a real down-and-outer, but it wasn’t a character I chose. It was the position I was in.’17 Yet this short period would pigeon-hole her, perhaps unfairly, perhaps not. Nonetheless, her career would continue through numerous collections, all marked by the same maudlin, streetwise nostalgia that had marked her first release. The boho wardrobe, the beret at cocky angle and the enduring recollection that she and Waits had been for a time the beauty and the beast of the Beat after-ball, have all continued to place her in that distinctive camp, 30 or more years and more than a dozen albums later, best distilled in the 2005 triple CD set, Duchess of Coolsville, an anthology that casts a torch on her musical interests – from folk to jazz, European chanson to Broadway ballad – and, in its title, frames the kind of Beat-flavoured legacy she has carried and maintains, willingly or not.

  More recent performers who may also carry a Beat badge, include Ani DiFranco – one of that small brigade of artists who usually adopt the lower case style in their name – who has led a resolutely independent course, as singer, guitarist, songwriter and label proprietor since she first came to wider attention in the late 1980s and has been prolific, from her eponymous debut in 1990 through remarkable live work captured on Living in Clip (1997), her well-received double CD collection Revelling/Reckoning (2001) to Which Side are You On? (2012). She represents various aspects of Beat consciousness: her autonomous artistic nature and fierce determination to resist the restraints of the corporate, symbolised by the DIY ethos of her long-running record label Righteous Babe;18 her frequent dependance on spoken word techniques within her song-writing structures; her publication of poetry alongside her lyrics in book-form; and her insistence that she plays out a confusing game of sexual ambivalence, winning huge support from women and the nascent riot grrrl movement when she appeared to pin her colours to the lesbian flag and then outraging many former followers by twice marrying men. Her own attachment to bisexuality reveals a level of sexual adventure, or at least a rejection of sexual convention, that certainly Beat men of the 1950s saw as a necessary part of their experience. As she told Lucy O’Brien: ‘People talk about […] the issue of queer sexuality. But to me they are not issues. This is my life. I’ve never felt like watering my experience down to make it radio-friendly.’19 Her self-belief in her art, in herself, and her resistance to compromise in this area has echoes of the same risks that Ginsberg, particularly, was taking with homosexual revelation half a century before. Comments Havranek: ‘Her intensely personal music, by and large, is situated at the threshold of folk and punk, reflecting a heavy dash of social consciousness with humour and self-righteousness thrown into the mix. In short, politics and art are inseparable for this artist.’20 She adds that DiFranco has offered an ‘open roadmap’ to her personal and emotional life and dubs her lyrics both ‘poetic’ and ‘stream of consciousness’.21

  Jason Ankeny dubs her ‘a folkie in punk’s clothing’ who ‘battled successfully against the Goliath of corporate rock to emerge as one of the most influential and inspirational cult heroines of the 1990s’. He adds that her songs tackle ‘issues like rape, abortion, and sexism with insight and compassion’.22 Such details – candour, confession, outspoken and empowering activism and the use of poetry formats, not to mention the support and promotion of other outsider, muso-poetic spirits like Utah Phillips through her own label – mark DiFranco as a recognisable heir to the Beat project with a potent dash of old-fashioned folk radicalism and more contemporary riot grrrl attitude.

  We might also consider other women who, for a variety of reasons and connections, fit, or connect with, the Beat template. British singer Marianne Faithfull, who has enjoyed a bold recording career with collections of self-penned songs and tributes to European composers such as Brecht and Weill, also worked at Naropa in the 1970s and contributed to Gregory Corso’s 2002 album Die on Me. Nico, singer with the Velvet Underground, was involved also in experimental film and made albums that drew on the continental chanson tradition, and Debbie Harry, of Blondie, paid homage to Beat dress codes in various ways in the group’s early days, before extending her more experimental activities into art film productions by David Cronenberg and Jonas Åkerlund. Kathy Acker, principally a novelist and poet, also worked in a rock context and performed with British post-punks the Mekons, while Karen Finley, poet and performance artist, maintained the Beat spoken word style on stage and on record. Punk rocker Lydia Lunch, a member of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, emerged as a prominent performing poet and also appeared on albums that paid tribute to Kerouac and Burroughs. One time member of Nervus Rex, a punk band, Lauren Agnelli re-emerged in the 1980s as a central member of the post-beatnik/folk group the Washington Squares. Laurie Anderson, a major US performance artist since the 1980s, worked with Burroughs and, in her private life, married Beat follower and Velvet Underground singer and lyricist Lou Reed.

  Exene Cervenka of LA rock band X had spoken word interests and Kim Gordon, bass player with Sonic Youth, was at the centre of an extended new wave musical experiment which saw her and her colleagues Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo acknowledge various links with the Beat tradition. Singer-songwriter Julianna Hatfield appeared on Kicks Joy Darkness, while Natalie Merchant, lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, has maintained a boho demeanour as band member and, in more recent times, as solo artist and she was partially responsible for the group’s track ‘Hey Jack Kerouac’. Courtney Love, leader of the riot grrrl band Hole, would appear in the Joan Vollmer role in Gary Walkow’s 2002 Beat bio-pic Beat, singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz penned a Kerouac tribute in ‘Just Like Jack’ while British singer P. J. Harvey has pursued a career which links to a wide swathe of rock literati from Marianne Faithfull to Nick Cave and acquired something of a reputation as a UK version of Patti Smith.

  Another individual we have mentioned as a key connection between Beat and post-Beat, and to whom we should return, is the poet Anne Waldman, a woman who has seen important action at vital points in the story – from her role as early director the St. Mark’s Poetry Project through to her founding contribution to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, alongside a constant stream of poetry, essay, film and spoken word ventures over more than four decades. But she has also been consistently involved in music-making, too, collaborating with various composers over many years, including Ginsberg guitarist Steven Taylor and with her own pianist son Ambrose Bye. With Taylor, she continues work on an ambitious operatic re-telling of poet Ezra Pound’s controversial life and, with Bye, her latest collection of spoken word recordings with musical accompaniment, The Milk of Universal Kindness, was released in 2011. It joined a lengthy sequence of collections where the oral and melodic have been married-up dating back to the 1970s, well reflected in her collection of readings and performances, Battery: Live at Naropa 1974–2002, issued in 2003. We might see her as the one of the most direct heirs of the Beat poetry spirit carrying it forward in a range of revitalised jazz or rock or popular music settings.

  Waldman can certainly see a line of association between what Beat women may have done in the 1950s in a largely unreported sense and what later female artists and musicians managed to achieve in a more high profile fashion. She comments: ‘I agree that the Beat l
egacy – in many of its various possibilities and aspects – continued through the orality and performance of many women artists coming after and, in some cases, overlapping. It was as if a kinetic energy had been let out of the bag (a “high energy construct” in Charles Olson’s phrase), and the way for more assured women artists to ride it was through an expressive larger/grander poetics in forms that could be political, personal, improvisational, and also work alongside popular musical forms and structures – and instrumentation. And they were able to succeed in public spaces and flourish. The public spaces were opening in the sub-culture or counter-culture and you had those alternatives where you could get your start, test the waters.’23

  She points to the folk legacy as a central bridge between these worlds and ‘obviously, the singularity of Joan Baez’, whose mark on that genre was large and deep even before she embarked on a two-year affair with Bob Dylan which anointed them, for a time, King and Queen of that musical scene. The fact that Dylan had a link to both folk and Beat communities is notable in itself but we should not forget that Baez’s younger sister Mimi was also embroiled in similar musical and literary groupings as wife of novelist Richard Fariña, whose comical and picaresque work, much in the bohemian campus mode, Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up to Me, was published in 1966, just two days before he was killed in a motorcycle accident. The inter-woven lives of Dylan, Fariña and the two Baez women is vividly related in David Hajdu’s 2001 book, Positively Fourth Street,24 revealing aspects of the merging muso-literary terrain in which Dylan was predominant and where Fariña would have prospered had he lived. All four of these people were engaged in folk practices yet all were informed and well-read, applying literary thoughts in musical settings, musical ideas in literary ones.

  With Baez and her oeuvre in mind, Waldman says she was familiar with the environment in which the folk community arose. ‘The small cafés and folk clubs – and you get links, too, back to Harry Smith’s anthology, too. I grew up on MacDougal Street and frequented the cafés and other music places. My brother was a folkie who used to hang out in Washington Square Park. I sat on Lead Belly’s lap as a child, went to Peter Seeger’s Hootenannies’, she remembers.

  She adds that ‘the Poetry Project, founded in 1966 and I was there from day one, was also an example of more public space and rhizomic possibility, where Laurie Anderson and Patti both read/performed early on. Then there was the Nova Convention, in New York City in 1978, where Laurie truly had her debut, on a programme with William, Allen, John Giorno, myself and others, where women could be heroic, as well – or heroine-etic. Taking a stance and, in my case, a more vatic stance. Orator, prophet, etc. Upping the amp, so to speak. Because Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Kerouac had galvanised the culture with a torqued vision that woke its audience to itself.’

  Waldman returns, too, to the seminal place of Dylan in this unfolding setting, as a specific inspiration for her own musical excursions. ‘And there was also Bob Dylan whose words you could always hear! That’s certainly what I wanted to do. What were the skilful means? A more encompassing panoramic voice, a body willing to take a stand. I always worked with musicians up and down the spiral over many years. The Kerouac School, established in 1974 was a place to also work in collaboration with the likes of jazz giants Don Cherry or Steve Lacy. And Steven Taylor, multi-gifted poet, musician, Allen’s accompanist, of the Fugs. Marianne Faithfull also a guest at Naropa, and consider her friendship with William, Allen and Harry Smith, too.’

  Yet she is disinclined to find a single cause for the changes and evolutions that occurred and opened gates to women that had appeared shut, if not bolted, for so long. ‘Rock and folk were involved here’, she adds, ‘but also experimental trajectories. And there are consociational overlaps here, too.’ Waldman stresses: ‘I would want to be very specific about the individual paths and directions this cultural explosion or intervention took, and not just lump the huge variety of talent and fruition to one cause or point, because you also need to reflect on what was going on in the culture: the anti-war movement and the liberating strokes of feminism. And all the other tides of the culture. Something had to give.’

  She adds: ‘Interesting to contemplate Patti watching Jim Morrison and thinking, “I can do that too”. Also thinking about Janis Joplin singing the Michael McClure-penned song, “Mercedes Benz”. So the influences from the guys but also very strongly from the women, as well. I met Diane di Prima when I was 18 or younger, saw her in her milieu, and also as activist, publisher, engaged with the Poets’ Theatre. Then there was Hettie Jones, too, as editor, memoirist. And I also think of the additional arenas that gave space and grace – historical literary and performance movements. Fluxus with Yoko Ono, the permission John Cage gave, and a sense of mantra through Allen. I had also studied Indian singing with LaMonte Young at one point. It seemed quite radical to combine mantra with political activism.’

  Women who did emerge also had contact and connection with Waldman. She recalls that ‘Joni Mitchell gave me a dulcimer when we were on the Rolling Thunder tour in the mid-Seventies and said, “It might work – be interesting –with your poetry”. She even gave me my first lesson but the sound was too mild and sweet for what I was vocalising at the time. I remember also that Carly Simon wrote to me as a fan of my work.’ In conclusion, she does believe that ‘the Beat thrusts are powerful triggers, alchemic, decidedly, and in many ways a reclamation for women of some original bardic place that’s also inherently there for us already. But also there was an invitation from the culture, needing its powerful women, setting the stage, asking us to stand up, perform and correct the imbalance.’

  Sharon Mesmer is from a later generation, a more recent figure in this landscape – an acclaimed New York-based poet who studied with Ginsberg in the early 1990s. Born in Chicago, she has lived in Brooklyn in more recent times and includes the verse collections Half Angel, Half Lunch (1998) and Annoying Diabetic Bitch (2008) and the short fiction volumes The Empty Quarter (2000) and In Ordinary Time (2005) among her publications. She has been in rock bands – the Mellow Freakin’ Woodies who issued the album In a Mellow Freakin’ Mood in 1994 – and has an enduring connection to that popular musical culture. If women were marginalised in the original Beat community of the 1950s, did the Beat spirit eventually energise or galvanise later women to use popular musical forms – rock, folk and so on – to carry that earlier legacy forward? Says Mesmer: ‘Well, certainly for me the women who were part of the original Beat community, like Diane di Prima, for instance, inspired me toward creating a means of expression for myself, and I’m talking when I was 14, which is when I started reading and writing poetry and actually thinking of myself as a poet. That said, I should say that when I was 14, I wasn’t aware of women being marginalised in the arts – that came later, for sure! For me, the women “in the arts” were the women in rock ’n’ roll, the very individuals under consideration here.’25

  So who were the women music-makers most significant to Mesmer as younger rock ’n’ roller and later as writer and how did that musical and poetic impulse connect in her particular case? ‘First of all, there were the women singer-songwriters like Carly Simon – I loved “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” – and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. They were, you know, sensitive and poetic, and appealed to that part of my brain that responded to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Then there were performers like Suzi Quatro and the band Fanny; Quatro’s sister Patty was in Fanny. They played tough, sexy, rockin’ guitars, low-slung and cool, and I wanted to be them. Carly Simon’s beauty was kind of too much to aspire to. Also Maggie Bell of Stone the Crows and Genya Ravan of Goldie and the Gingerbreads and, of course, Janis Joplin. They weren’t beautiful but they had those strong presences, great songs, great voices and, probably even more important, great clothes and cool. Later, Nico. When I discovered Patti Smith – in a tiny article in 16 magazine, of all places – she eclipsed all of them. She connected the poetry with the rock ’n’ roll, and pl
us she was skinny and weird-looking, and that appealed to me immediately.’ Does she feel that some kind of transgenerational influence or force passed from that under-recognised colony of Beat women to the next three generations of sister artists and feed their musical art in some fashion? ‘Certainly in the person of Patti it did, since she had exposure to the Beats. And there was no way she was going to be marginalised because she had written for Creem magazine and had friends within the music journalism community who, by the way, were also inspirations to me – people like Lisa Robinson, Lillian Roxon,26 for example.’ Did the lack of recognition for women writers in the earlier era find some compensation in the emergence of independent creative females in areas such as rock and folk, punk and riot grrrl? Mesmer comments: ‘I don’t know about in the 1970s, which was my “coming of age” era – I don’t know if the lack of recognition in the field of writing spilled over into rock ’n’ roll then, though I’m sure it was a factor later, with women like Karen Finley and Kathy Acker and Anne Waldman.’

  Was the liberating power of Beat, plainly hibernating for women originally, somehow made available, in a delayed, alchemic manner, to subsequent female performers? ‘There’s a parallel here, a funny one, I think: artists take over “bad neighbourhoods” because the rents are low and the spaces are big, and then a couple of years later the affluent people move in because the area has been made “safe”. And the artists move out because the low rents have become way too high. It used to be that what you were seeing happening in the arts was a bellwether for what you’d be seeing soon in the general culture, though in a watered-down way, of course. It always seemed to me that trends in the arts would filter into life in general, and I do agree that the liberating power of art, made available to, or claimed by, women – “claimed by” being the phrase that rings true to me – had a huge influence on the culture, emboldening teenage girls to claim power.’