Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

by Simon Warner

  Adrian Henri claimed that there had been some tension caused by the presence of the London-based Beat and jazz poet Michael Horovitz who ‘totally monopolised proceedings’.14 Horovitz responds to this accusation: ‘Adrian clearly resented that I […] should be there at all on his home turf and presumably somewhere he felt he might be more central, though “monopolising” was no part of my intention – for all that it may have looked like that to him and perhaps, via Adrian, to Allen.’15 Horovitz’s part in establishing links between the American Beats – like Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso, Burroughs, Creeley and others – and the UK throughout the early 1960s, via his publication New Departures and live readings, had been crucial. Horovitz stresses that both he and fellow London poet Pete Brown had been engaged ‘to provide substantial support performances’16 at

  Ginsberg’s Liverpool reading. He feels that audience members would have been as familiar with his and Brown’s work as with Ginsberg’s.17 But, despite these hints of discontent, Henri later enthused that the bookshop appearance ‘had been one of the best poetry readings I’ve ever been to, certainly the best I’ve ever heard Allen do. It was late spring evening, sunlight coming through the window, and he sat cross-legged and just read and it was totally intimate and beautiful and it just flowed out, not even preaching, just talking to you, but talking like some sort of prophet.’18

  Patten recalls a less meditative encounter, a more psychedelic one, during Ginsberg’s Liverpool sojourn. ‘I spent some time with Allen on acid,’ he reveals. ‘We both took a tab and spent hours and hours in the Walker Art Gallery walking around. We saw it in a new light, in fact many different lights’.19 What did he feel Ginsberg made of his time in the city? ‘He loved the excitement of the city, full of boy bands, sweaty, tiny stages. It was paradise. He was drawn to the energy of Liverpool – there was youthful buzz in the clubs, we were hearing lots of music, lots of groups. We went drinking in the Phil and the Cracke.’20 The visitor wrote to his lover Peter Orlovsky: ‘I spent all week in Liverpool home of the Beatles and heard all the new rock bands and gave a little reading and had a ball with longhair boys – it’s like San Francisco except the weather is greyer – lovely city, mad music, electronic hits your guts centres (sic)’.21 But Patten, in his reveries with Ginsberg, recalls a human and humane figure rather than a poetic superstar. ‘He was a genuinely accessible, nice man, friendly. Lots of people who were not interested in poetry found him quite fascinating, too.’22

  After initially staying at Patten’s tiny premises, Ginsberg transferred to the slightly more roomy surroundings of Henri’s home at 64, Canning Street. ‘It was more comfortable there,’ comments Patten.23 Ginsberg’s new host was slightly anxious at what to expect. Bowen reveals that fellow Beats Ginsberg and Gregory Corso had previously stayed at the home of the celebrated Liverpudlian critic, writer and jazz singer George Melly, who had been ‘appalled’ when ‘they behaved very badly’.24 But Henri need not have feared. ‘He duly arrived and was charming […] the morning after we’d been to the Cavern […] there was Allen washing the dishes and singing one of those Buddhist chants to himself. It really was an amazing revelation.’25

  While Ginsberg was in Liverpool, he was also taken to the city’s Art College by poet-painter Henri, who taught there and would, some years on, win the prestigious John Moores Art Prize in 1972. They later visited a church in Everton in Albion Street and the incident prompted Henri’s first poem of significance, ‘Mrs. Albion You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’, a piece that refers to William Blake, a crucial figure in the life of Ginsberg who believed he had heard the great English mystic in a supernatural encounter in the late 1940s.26 Henri later told interviewer Stephen Wade that ‘Allen noticed this street called Albion Street; and of course he was entranced, because it was a Blakean sort of sign’.27 Ginsberg spent time in other places – drinking dens and rock haunts, most famously the Cavern, where the sexually voracious and uninhibitedly adventurous American was said to have had a liaison with a drummer he encountered.28 ‘He jammed with Trevor, drummer with Faron and the Flamingos’, as the Liverpool émigré, now Baltimore-based, poet Christopher George says in his verse work ‘Allen Ginsberg in Liverpool’, a tribute on Henri’s death in 2000 and published online four years later.29 Henri said that the musicians thought Ginsberg was ‘great’30 and ‘the feeling was mutual’, Cook states in his book The Beat Generation.31

  So, beer and verse, LSD and art, sex and music, enjoyed in the rarefied atmosphere of a Liverpool glowing in its associations with the world power who were the Beatles and a swelling poetry scene that had not only pre-dated the Merseybeat boom but, by 1965, was maturing into a movement that would soon test the thesis that the regional could not take on the metropolitan – something the Fab Four had already effectively challenged in the musical sense but one the city poets would challenge in matters literary. In many ways, as Ginsberg toured the city streets, these literary aspirations were still to be made flesh – Lucie-Smith’s book would be two years in the publishing, as would The Mersey Sound – so, in early summer 1965, this American guest, we might propose, was tasting the early juice of the harvest before it passed to the lips of the nation. What though of this iconoclastic statement, this resounding comment, identifying the city as ‘the centre of human consciousness’? What made the great Beat bard deliver a sentence of such dogmatic certainty, a description of the place that seemed to ring of headline-seeking hyperbole? The comment has certainly been the subject of much conjecture since.

  Bowen suggests in saying what he said ‘Henri and others knew he was talking about the Beatles’.32 The ubiquitous power of the group meant, for a long time and perhaps well into the 2000s, that the name of the city and the name of the band had become synonymous: to praise Liverpool was to praise the Fab Four. The world’s gaze was so fixed on the most outrageously gifted of songwriters, the most prolifically productive act of the era, that the attention of the people of Planet Earth was plausibly, on that basis alone, focussed on that location; to know of the group was to know what the world was listening to during these times. Jonah Raskin of Sonoma University, California, leading Ginsberg scholar who penned the 2004 ‘Howl’ history American Scream, supports this analysis: ‘I would say that it was the Beatles that brought the comment. And [Ginsberg] was in the habit of making grandiose and global statements and wanted to sound like a sage and an oracle, all at the same time. The Beatles did put Liverpool on the map of the world for most Americans – even hip Americans.’33

  But there are other explanations, other interpretations. Melly in his much-praised account of the 1960s insurgence Revolt Into Style – a quote in itself from Thom Gunn on Elvis Presley – commented of Ginsberg’s remark: ‘A typical exaggeration, just the thing to set the middle-aged teeth on edge, and yet if you substitute “the young” for “the human universe” it was surprisingly accurate.’34 Poet, critic and Beat Scene contributor Jim Burns admits that ‘years ago I commented, probably a bit sourly, on Ginsberg’s remark and was taken to task by George Dowden, his early bibliographer, who reckoned I’d taken him too seriously and the comment was only meant lightly, perhaps a little variation on Jung’s statement about Liverpool being “the pool of life”’.35 There are still more grounded, maybe cynical, takes on the Ginsberg description. Some have suggested – even Patten has hinted at it – that the visiting poet may have been liable to make such sweeping claims for other places he went to, as well. Poet Christopher George understands that Ginsberg may have made similar remarks on at least two other cities36 – possibly about Milwaukee, maybe about Baltimore – unlikely candidates, it could be argued, in the pantheon of seminal, globe-shaping communities.

  Then there are the earthier, sexual spins on Ginsberg’s words, derived principally from the comments that follow the first section of the quotation: ‘They’re resurrecting the human form divine there – and those beautiful youths with long, golden archangelic hair’,37 recalling St Augustine’s reference to the Angles as angels when he visited
England on a Christian conversion mission in the sixth century. Although we must assume the poet is making no direct allusion to the Beatles on this occasion, the long-haired fashion and implied androgyny, that was part of that new age, must have had an appeal to the sexual inclinations of the arriving Ginsberg. In Bomb Culture, Nuttall makes a connection in a different, broader context: ‘American reporters thought that the Beatles were queer because of their hair-cuts.’38 Maybe Ginsberg, at this point, shared the view of those members of the US media. He may have known, too, about Brian Epstein’s submerged sexual preferences and the strong innuendo that he had been drawn to manage the Beatles, not because they were outstanding musically, but because he had found Lennon physically and compellingly attractive.39 Steven Taylor, who has taught at the Beat-associated Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and spent around 20 years as Ginsberg’s guitar player up to the poet’s death in 1997, hints strongly at the sexual sub-texts underpinning these matters. ‘Ginsberg would have said Liverpool was the centre of consciousness or whatever because of the Beatles,’ he states. ‘He had a crush on them, just as he had on Dylan. Young men of obvious talent and massive fame. Al was what we call a star fucker. And he was right. Liverpool was a vortex of consciousness, on account of Lennon, for my money.’40

  Michael Horovitz, a key catalyst of the period who would also help assemble the renowned Albert Hall poetry event a week and a half after Ginsberg’s Mersey trip, brings his own first-hand insight to the poet’s remark. ‘It seems quite likely that Allen was asked for a quote by one or more of the bevy of media folk he attracted wherever he went, sometimes by his own design’. Horovitz adds: ‘I suspect the geographical and relatively provincial aspects of parallelism between Merseyside/Lancashire (in relation to London), and the Bay Area/California – where Ginsberg hit his major-key voice and big-time stride – (in relation to New York City), seemed related to the delight he took in tracing trails and haunts of the Beatles et al. while hanging out around Liverpool those May 1965 days and nights.’ Horovitz also recalls the sexual charge the visiting American seemed to be experiencing in the city with such enormous and endearing relish. ‘He had been drawn to Lennon in particular from way back, and swiftly came to fancy and adore Patten and various longhairs, musos, popsters, beatniks and dope-freaks who came his way via the Merseybeat/Liverbard wavebands, worldwide, so the city from where many of them sprang was bound to be a sort of Mecca.’41

  Surviving Beat, Bay Area-based poet and musician David Meltzer, a friend and collaborator with Ginsberg over many years, suggests that the ‘consciousness’ quote may have had its roots, in part, in a volume of prose published that same year by the Black Mountain College poet Charles Olson. His Human Universe and Other Essays came out close to that time and Meltzer thinks that this fragment may have fed into Ginsberg’s remark in an inter-textual way. Adds Meltzer: ‘In 1965 Allen was still amazingly tone-deaf and rhythm-challenged but was always alert to the “new thing” – certainly the Beatles were and remain a one-of-a-kind revolution that will not be repeated. In a couple of years they advanced from a cover band to a banal song-writing duo into something that changed, forever, pop music. I honestly don’t know how “musical” Allen was. I remember playing behind him in Allendale, Michigan and realising that, curiously, he didn’t get it, he didn’t swing, even though his desire was strong. Allen, McClure and Ferlinghetti were caught up in the fantasy of rock stardom. Yet Dylan told me early on that it was the poets who “had it” not the songwriters. The real movers were the Beatles who opened up the sizzle of a “scene” that the Liverpool Poets like Henri easily affiliated with.’42

  Perhaps, though, the final reflection should fall to Edward Lucie-Smith, a significant commentator and critic who was deeply influential in placing the poetry of the city in a wider context, lifting it from the parochial to a nationwide readership through his edited volume The Liverpool Scene. He believes that Ginsberg’s comment arose on two counts: ‘The rise of the Beatles, and the sense that Adrian Henri and the other Liverpool poets represented a commitment to Modernist, internationalist values missing from the British poetry being written elsewhere at that time. Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis thought all that was rubbish and, of course, they much preferred jazz to rock. You’ve got to remember that Adrian was interested in popular culture, including rock, but also very much interested in the whole early Modernist culture represented not only by the Cubist Picasso, but also by Apollinaire, the Dada writers in Zurich and so on.’43 Ultimately, however, we might speculate that in the heady rush of rock music and popular verse immersing the city at the time, the consciousness most raised during the visit to the shores of the Mersey in 1965 may well have belonged to Ginsberg himself.

  Author’s note: I am indebted to the letters, emails and conversations shared with me on this subject during July and August 2006. Thank you to Jim Burns, Royston Ellis, Christopher George, Michael Horovitz, Edward Lucie-Smith, David Meltzer, Brian Patten, Jonah Raskin, Steven Taylor and Mike Chapple (features writer, Liverpool Echo).

  Notes

  1Ginsberg quoted in Edward Lucie-Smith (ed.), The Liverpool Scene (London: Donald Carroll), p. 15.

  2Michael Schumacher, 1992, p. 446.

  3Simon Warner, ‘Sifting the shifting sands: “Howl” and the American landscape in the 1950s’, Howl for Now: A Celebration of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Protest Poem, edited by Simon Warner (Pontefract: Route, 2005), pp. 25–52 (p. 29).

  4Warner, 2005, p. 48.

  5Examples of these collaborations include: Ginsberg’s recording sessions with Dylan in 1968, 1971 and 1981 gathered on the compilation Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs 1949–1993; an informal musical gathering with John Lennon at the ex-Beatle’s birthday party of 1971 and on-stage with Lennon in New York in 1972 (see Schumacher, 1992, pp. 556–7, 569); and Ginsberg’s own collection The Ballad of the Skeletons (1996) which would involve contributions by Paul McCartney, on record and on stage.

  6Miles, 1990, pp. 362–8.

  7Schumacher, 1992, pp. 445–6.

  8The precise days Allen Ginsberg spent in Liverpool are a matter of certain conjecture, but the poet did write to his father Louis on 1 June 1965 saying, ‘I spent the last week in Liverpool where the Beatles come from’, which helps to place the date of the trip with some accuracy. See Allen Ginsberg, Louis Ginsberg, Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and a Son, edited by Michael Schumacher (New York: Bloomsbury, 2001), p. 236.

  9Phil Bowen, A Gallery to Play to: The Story of the Mersey Poets (Exeter: Stride Publications, 1999), p. 62.

  10Brian Patten, personal communication, telephone conversation, 6 July 2006.

  11Ibid.

  12Bowen, 1999, p. 63.

  13Patten, telephone conversation, 2006.

  14Bowen, 1999, p. 63.

  15Michael Horovitz, personal communication, email, 24 July 2006.

  16Horovitz, personal communication, email, 29 July 2006.

  17Ibid.

  18Bowen, 1999, p. 6.

  19Patten, telephone conversation, 2006.

  20Ibid. Note that the Philharmonic and Ye Cracke are both famous city hostelries.

  21Quoted in Miles, 1990, p. 371.

  22Patten, telephone conversation, 2006.

  23Ibid.

  24Bowen, 1999, p. 62.

  25Ibid.

  26See Miles, 1990, pp. 99–105.

  27Stephen Wade, Gladsongs and Gatherings: Poetry and Its Social Context in Liverpool since the 1960s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), p. 90.

  28Bowen, 1999, p. 63.

  29Christopher George, ‘Allen Ginsberg in Liverpool’ (For Adrian Henri 1932–2000), poem at http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net/Poems/AllenGinsberginLiverpool.htm, originally published in Electronic Acorn 16, September 2004 [accessed 21 July 2006].

  30Edward Lucie-Smith (ed.), The Liverpool Scene (London: Donald Carroll, 1967), p. 17.

  31Cook, 1971, p. 154.

  32Bowen, 1999, p. 67.

  33Jonah Raskin,
personal communication, email, 5 July 2006.

  34George Melly, Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in the 50s and 60s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, orig. pub. 1970), p. 238.

  35Jim Burns, personal communication, letter, 15 July 2006.

  36Christopher George, personal communication, email, 6 and 7 July 2006.

  37Schumacher, 1999, p. 446.

  38Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture (London: Paladin, 1970, orig. pub. 1968), p. 229.

  39Albert Goldman, The Lives of John Lennon (London: Bantam Press, 1988), pp. 139–42.

  40Steven Taylor, personal communication, email, 5 July 2006.

  41Horovitz, personal communication, email, 7, 24 and 29 August 2006.

  42David Meltzer, personal communication, email, 9 July 2006.

  43Edward Lucie-Smith, personal communication, email, 4 July 2006.

  Q&A 1

  Michael Horovitz, poet, publisher and British Beat

  Michael Horovitz has been a tireless publisher and promoter of poetry in the UK for well over half a century. He published work by Beat writers in his magazine New Departures – Kerouac and Burroughs were in early issues – and then took the project on the road as Live New Departures, combining poetry and jazz in performances reminiscent of American spoken word experiments. He read at the legendary Albert Hall poetry event in London in 1965, joining Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Corso, has published numerous collections of his own – including Bank Holiday: A New Testament for the Love Generation (1967), Growing Up: Selected Poems and Pictures 1951–1979 (1979), Wordsounds and Sightlines: New and Selected Poems (1994) and the epic A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium (2007) among them – and edited a landmark anthology of the new British underground poetry Children of Albion (1969). In 1980, he launched the Poetry Olympics which, for more than three decades, has seen him continue to present, project and anthologise verse by writers of all backgrounds and often in settings where popular musicians participate. His own gigging William Blake Klezmatrix Band reflects his passions for Blake, jazz and Jewish klezmer.