Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

by Simon Warner

  7See Green, ibid., p. 74.

  8Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951), Miller’s The Crucible (1953), Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956), Mailer’s ‘The White Negro’ (1957) and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) exemplify some of these accounts. See also Chapter 1.

  9See, for example, Denselow, 1989.

  10Much longer, of course, if we include efforts that had crystalised in the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) founded as early as 1909 (see Wetterau, 1984, p. 540).

  11Hamilton, 1997, p. 294.

  12Ibid.

  13Quoted in Allen Cohen, The San Francisco Oracle, Facsimile Edition: The Psychedelic Newspaper of the Haight Ashbury, 1966–1968 (Berkeley, CA: Regent 1991), cited by Hamilton, ibid.

  14Hamilton, ibid.

  15David Farber and Beth Bailey, The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 249.

  16Farrell, 1997, p. 218.

  17Charles Perry, The Haight-Ashbury: A History (New York: Wenner Books, 2005).

  18Charles Perry, ‘The gathering of the tribes’, The Sixties, edited by Linda Rosen Obst (New York: Random House/Rolling Stone, 1977), pp. 188–92.

  19Ibid., p. 192.

  20Hamilton, 1997, p. 133.

  21Cited in Hamilton, ibid.; his italics in each case.

  22Hamilton, ibid.

  23Marwick, 1998, p. 482.

  24Marwick, 1998, p. 481.

  25Ibid.

  26Staged in London on 11 June 1965. See also Green, 1999, pp. 138–41.

  27Marwick, 1998, p. 481.

  28Lou Adler, ‘Music, love and promoters’, The Sixties, edited by Linda Rosen Obst (New York: Random House/Rolling Stone, 1977), pp. 204–7 (p. 204).

  29Ibid.

  30Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head, The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (London: Pimlico, 2005), p. 215.

  31Ibid., p. 216.

  32Ibid., p. 222.

  33Martin, 1995, p. 26.

  34MacDonald, 2005, p. 228.

  35Quoted in Hamilton, 1997, p. 133.

  36Ibid.

  37MacDonald, 2005, p. 240.

  38Interestingly MacDonald makes no mention of the word ‘high’. He also mis-names the track ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’.

  39See McCartney’s explanation in Heylin, 2007, p. 130.

  40See, for example, Coupe, 2007.

  41MacDonald, 2008, p. 244.

  42For background see Heylin, 2007.

  43MacDonald, 2008, p. 233.

  44Martin, 1995, pp. 1–2.

  45Hamilton, 1997, p. 133.

  46Andrew Goodwin, ‘Popular music and postmodern theory’, Cultural Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1991, pp. 174–90, explores issues of authenticity and artifice in various key rock acts including the Beatles.

  47MacDonald describes Lennon’s scorn at McCartney’s ‘novelist’ songs: ‘These stories about boring people doing boring things – being postmen and secretaries and writing home. I’m not interested in third-party songs. I like to write about me, cos I know me’ (2005, p. 239).

  48See Heylin’s comment on Abbey Road’s four-track recording facilities (2007, p. 10) but the ingenuity of the recording team stretched the technology’s potential to the limit.

  49A statement incorporated into EMI’s own logo; see cover of Sgt. Pepper.

  50See Brian Walden’s account at ‘The white heat of Wilson’, BBC News, 31 March 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4865498.stm [accessed 12 October 2007].

  51A card sheet featuring cut-out details from the Edwardian band outfits was included as an insert. The rear of the sleeve also included, for the first time, song lyrics.

  52See Natalie Rudd, 2003, pp. 54–7.

  53Farrell, 1997, p. 221.

  54Ibid.

  55Farber and Bailey, 2001, p. 249.

  56Ibid.

  57Ibid, p. 294.

  58Harrison’s visit occurred on 8 August 1967 (see Trynka, 2004, p. 263).

  59See ‘George Harrison: The quiet Beatle’, obituary, BBC News, 30 November 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/1432634.stm [accessed 18 February 2012].

  60Pattie Boyd interviewed on Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, 27 August 2007.

  61Our World was a live television show linking 24 countries and screened on 25 June 1967. See MacDonald, 2005, p. 261.

  62Caroline Coon interviewed on Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, 27 August 2007.

  Q&A 4

  Levi Asher, founder of Beat website Literary Kicks

  Levi Asher is the founder of Literary Kicks, the world’s longest running book blog, and is the author of several new e-books including Why Ayn Rand is Wrong (and Why It Matters) and Beats In Time: A Literary Generation’s Legacy. Levi works as a technology consultant for arts, culture and government websites, and splits his time between New York City and Washington, DC.

  What do you feel rock music has taken from Beat culture?

  Lots of things – a sense of pure, radical aestheticism, an appreciation of spontaneous fun. Many themes including political protest, awareness of nature, satire of popular culture.

  Is there a lyrical connection there, a musical one or was it merely an anti-authoritarian stance?

  Both, for sure!

  Where do you see Beat influence in the rock music of the last half century?

  The most obvious connection is Bob Dylan. He has made it explicitly clear at many points in his career that he wants his work to be seen as part of the Beat Generation continuum. He’s proud of his Beat influence, and that says a lot.

  What do you feel the Beats’ take was on early rock ’n’ roll?

  As I understand it, Allen Ginsberg was an instant fan and ‘got it’ from minute one. Jack Kerouac was very fond of jazz and show tunes – his girlfriend Helen Weaver emphasises in her memoir how much the Original Broadway Cast recording of My Fair Lady meant to him.1

  What do you think the Beats made of that post-Dylan/Beatles rock world?

  Ginsberg was incredibly open-minded and agreeable by nature – and I admire this very much about him – and took to every kind of music. His recordings with the Clash are actually fun to listen to. His song ‘Birdbrain’, which to me resembles the clever work of Frank Zappa or solo John Lennon, is among his best work. Ginsberg totally got rock ’n’ roll, and rock ’n’ roll got him back.

  Other than Ginsberg, I can’t think of many examples to indicate that the Beats had a good understanding of rock music, though Ferlinghetti did appear in the Band’s movie The Last Waltz.

  Michael McClure has worked with Ray Manzarek of the Doors, and I caught one of their live shows at the Bottom Line in New York City. I think McClure is a great poet and a great Beat, but I was disappointed in this collaboration, especially when McClure read verses against Manzarek keyboard parts from actual Doors songs. This only emphasized the fact that McClure’s poetry was not actually music. Jim Morrison is a hard act to replace. This is one case where I thought the Beat/rock collaboration didn’t work.

  Neal Cassady hung around with the early Grateful Dead, of course. But is there any evidence to indicate that he actually enjoyed listening to them?2 He was a jazz fan, like Kerouac. Jerry Garcia had jazz chops, but they weren’t so sharp in the early years. Neal Cassady probably would have liked the Dead’s best work, which dated from the early to mid-1970s, if he could have lived to hear it.

  I also didn’t think Kurt Cobain’s collaboration with William S. Burroughs amounted to much. I’m not sure if there was much specific chemistry between the Beats and rock music, but the question can only be answered on an individual level. Every case is different.

  What drew Dylan to Ginsberg – and Ginsberg to Dylan?

  As I understand it, Dylan was mainly into Kerouac. I think he really identified with On the Road and the other Kerouac books. I know he appreciated Ginsberg and Corso, too.

  Burroughs seemed to have little affinity with rock music yet he was adopted as a guru from the early
1970s? Why was that?

  Because he was so weird and cool and stylish, and a few rockers had great taste!

  Who would you identify as the key rock musicians who have drawn on the Beat legacy?

  Again, definitely Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan, in his mind, he was a part of the Beat Generation – the Beats’ final phase. Interestingly, he eventually became even more popular and influential than any of the Beats ever did.

  Are there any particular tracks you feel personify this spirit in Dylan?

  I’d name ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, his great romantic song. There are no Beat references, yet I can only imagine that Dylan wrote this as a Kerouac novel. ‘I lived with them on Montague Street, a basement down the stairs’. When the song swoops suddenly towards a book of Italian poetry from the thirteenth century, I feel Gregory Corso coming through.

  When rock has expressed itself politically in the last half century has it owed something to the original idealism or activism of the Beats?

  Absolutely! And I’m so glad this influence was there. Imagine how much poorer our classic rock would be without the political angle.

  Is there a sense that the Beat spirit survives in rock music of today?

  I can only say – yes! The music of today that I hear from my kids, their teens and early 20s, is just as folksy, rambling, punk, anarchist and crazy – BEAT – as ever. I’m also very impressed by the aestheticism of hip-hop: the emphasis on spontaneity, the romanticised autobiographies, the collaborative spirit. These features seem very Beat to me. I’ve written on Literary Kicks that Jay-Z resembles Jack Kerouac more than anybody else I can think of: like Kerouac’s, his entire body of work adds up to a single never-ending autobiography.

  Notes

  1Dave Moore, personal communication, email, 28 May 2012, comments: ‘Helen Weaver, in her memoir, also writes about Jack’s love of rock ’n’ roll during the late 1950s’.

  2Dave Moore, personal communication, email, 28 May 2012, believes there is evidence that Neal enjoyed the rock music of the mid-1960s. In a letter of 30 August 1965 to Ken Kesey: ‘I forgot to mention that Sunday night, after seeing Hell’s Angel Frenchie, we, despite my protestations of fatigue, went to see a R. & R. group that Chan insisted on observing – well, who was it? that’s rite – Signe & The HiWires or the Sextones or the Jefferson Hi Bandits, our pals, ya know; & they sounded great, esp. on one about a “Hi Flyin’ Bird”’. (Note: The band would become better known as Jefferson Airplane). See Moore, 2005, p. 441. Also: ‘went bar-hopping to hear some great Rock & Roll …’, ibid., p. 447.

  INTERVIEW 5

  Ronald Nameth, Beat film-maker and director of the film of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable

  Ronald Nameth has worked in the field of experimental cinema in a career spanning more than 40 years, earning him an international reputation. Born in Detroit but today based in Sweden, Nameth’s activities as film-maker and promoter of the alternative film culture continue. In the 1960s, his ground-breaking incorporation of electronics and video to create ‘visual music’ established him as an important innovator. That aspiration, to test and extend the boundaries of the medium, persists. In 1966, Nameth became closely involved with perhaps the most high profile multi-media event of an extraordinarily creative decade. Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a performance piece combining a dazzling array of art-forms – visuals, sound and light, film, dance and rock music with the Velvet Underground a central feature – had already attained a significant status in New York City.

  When the production re-located to Chicago for a short residency, an opportunity arose to document the event. Nameth, by now based in that city, spent a week filming the show’s performances at a club called Poor Richard’s, eventually creating a widely acclaimed documentary that strove to capture the multiplicity of simultaneous features evident in the Warhol installation.

  Later technology – the emergence of digital formats, primarily – enabled Nameth to re-produce his multi-perspective recording of the installation and construct an environment in which the film could be experienced by the viewer on a series of screens at the same time, replicating the multi-sensory components of the original ‘happening’.

  I first encountered this remarkable presentation in Seattle at the Experience Music Project popular music conference in spring 2005. Shortly afterwards, Nameth’s documentary became part of a major touring exhibition celebrating the artistic explosion of the 1960s. Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era was initially seen at Tate Liverpool and would move to Frankfurt and Vienna during late 2005 and early 2006.

  It was at the Seattle screening of his documentary that Ronald Nameth and I first discussed the possibility of creating a film which might respond to the poem ‘Howl’ and its 50th anniversary in October 2005. The plan, to present a multi-disciplinary, commemorative event, Howl for Now, in the UK, provided a further catalyst to the film project which Nameth hoped to develop. While the celebration took place, as intended, at Leeds University and the event was filmed, the production process stands in abeyance. However, the discussions that arose as a result of this proposed collaboration were fertile.

  In this interview, the film-maker discusses the impact of the Beats on his life as a teenage American, the emergence of an alternative film culture in the US of the Sixties, his involvement with the celebrated Warhol installation, and his thoughts on the creation of a film work which might reflect the spirit and energy of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’.

  SW How did the idea of a film linked to the ‘Howl’ anniversary emerge?

  RN It was really raised by our meeting in Seattle, when we were both attending the 2005 conference, at the Experience Music Project. You mentioned your plans for a project called Howl for Now, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the inaugural reading of Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’. Your description of this celebration brought up a lot of old, almost forgotten memories of my own experience of reading ‘Howl’ for the first time, in the late 50s.

  I was about 16 years old, living in Detroit, USA, and was in full rebellion. I had found in the writings of the Beats, a perfect mirror of my intense feelings at that time. They inspired me – primarily by the way they gave themselves the freedom to experience life intensely. Their search for themselves ‘in the now’ touched my own yearnings and I eagerly devoured everything I could read. As they threw themselves into their lives without reservation, their experiences opened the door in me to the possibility of a life lived fully.

  Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg had an especially strong impact on me. Their total abandonment to life was in stark contrast to the tied down, fear-filled life of middle-class society in the 1950s. Ginsberg’s rage in that decade against the numbing and dumbing of society was a perfect mirror of my own feelings. Later in the 1960s, Ginsberg’s presence and his activities became a major element in the emerging alternative life style. It was incredible to see his clear stance and lack of fear in facing off to the establishment. His actions were a powerful message to many people.

  SW The Beats clearly impacted on you but how did you become involved in the creative arts yourself?

  RN As the Beat was transformed into the hip, and the hippy and alternative movements expanded through the expanded consciousness of LSD, I became involved with making experimental films in Chicago. Working together in collaboration with other artists and musicians, many films were made as well as numerous trips to Mexico and San Francisco.

  Some years later, I moved to the Champaign-Urbana area south of Chicago, into a community filled with creative people of all types. The new emerging technology of electronics was utilized to create visual music. Working all night at the university’s Electronic Music Studio (after the electronic music composers had gone home to sleep), electronically-generated sounds were utilized to create moving forms with colour. These were then transferred to film.

  This creative environment resulted in many collaborations with many creative people such as Steve Beck, the electronic synthesis engineer, Al Ha
ung the Chinese Ta’i Chi master and dance performer, composer Salvatore Martirano, poet M. C. Holloway, John Cage, the musical inventor, the musician Michael Lytle, and many others.

  SW There was evidently a hot-house of artistic talent gathered in Chicago but, of course, Andy Warhol’s links were principally with Manhattan. How did you come to connect with his Exploding Plastic Inevitable project?

  RN As I got involved in multi-media performances and light shows for music performances, I also created multiple-screen film environments – in particular for John Cage’s first Musicircus and the Cage/Hiller HPSCHD music event in with 9,000 people participated. This work led to a contact with Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which was Warhol’s most developed multi-screened multimedia environment.

  To create the EPI, Warhol collaborated with some of the most creative people in their fields. In music, he collaborated with the Velvet Underground, composed of some of the most advanced rock musicians of the time, including Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Mo Tucker, and the singer/actress Nico. Once adjusted to the initial sonic blast of the Velvet Underground, the listener could hear the undertones of R&B, improvisations of free jazz as well as the musical avant-garde and the mystical drone of LaMonte Young.

  In November 1965, after completing several films in the dual-screen format, Warhol undertook to create his first multi-screened, multimedia environment for the Expanded Cinema Festival at the Film-makers’ Cinematheque in New York. Warhol then recruited the professional film editor, Danny Williams, who later became involved in the design the light environment for the EPI.

  It was in April 1966 that the first manifestation of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable took place at the Dom, a former Polish dance hall turned club in New York, attracting many people and a great deal of publicity and media. The film-maker Barbara Rubin and poet Allen Ginsberg were among the personalities participating, as was the well-known news anchorman Walter Cronkite, who came by to see what was happening, as did Jackie Kennedy and much of New York’s society. It became a major culture happening as news crews reported on the scene.