by Simon Warner
The catalyst for the interview that follows was a project under consideration, to compose a soundtrack to a planned movie, based on ‘Howl’, by the eminent US film-maker Ronald Nameth. Here Nelson describes his attraction to the literature of the Beat Generation, how he approaches the process of composition, and offers some clues as to how he might deal with the challenge of creating a score to accompany Ginsberg’s most celebrated verse work.
SW You have taken an interest in the Beat writers for many years. How was your interest in these novelists and poets sparked?
BN I was an art student in the mid-1960s, a period of positively optimistic cultural discovery, despite the fears generated by the Cold War and Vietnam. English art schools provided the perfect environment for creative exploration back then. I remember that, during my first year there, I was at Wakefield Art School in West Yorkshire, and the older students were of the generation that venerated the Beats. I was straight out of secondary modern school and fairly naive about such things but I recognised that these more seasoned students fitted the popular image of ‘the beatnik’.
The senior students appeared as strong, independent characters to me, some of them colourful to the point of eccentricity. They often would stop what they were doing and recite strange poetry out loud and in a very dramatic, exclamatory fashion, oblivious to what anyone else might think of their behaviour. I was somewhat in awe of them, being little more than a shy schoolboy. Within a few weeks, however, I got to know some of them personally and picked up on their various influences and passions.
My own generation were mods, out of rock n’ roll and moving towards the cusp of psychedelia. Bit by bit, we found our way into the emerging ‘underground’ music and art scene. I remember ordering, from a little Wakefield newsagent’s shop, copies of International Times, the independently published countercultural newspaper, which regularly featured articles about Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. The publication was hardly known outside of certain circles at that time, at least in Wakefield, and reading it was like being let in on some exotic secret. I can recall reportage, in the publication, about the big poetry reading held at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1965. The event featured Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (amongst others) and created some interest and controversy in the mainstream media. I could only imagine, from the article and a couple of accompanying photos, how exciting it must have been. But it certainly kindled my curiosity even further.
William Burroughs had attended this event, although he hadn’t given a live reading, and it was his Naked Lunch novel that became my first Beat Generation purchase. Of course, I was both intrigued and shocked by the book. It was perhaps the most radical thing I’d ever read, but I thought that the cut-up technique brought a strange beauty to material that might otherwise, at that time, have seemed sordid and prurient. It was the subject of much discussion amongst my fellow art students.
As the British counterculture grew and consolidated itself, I was able to discover more about its roots, which were, to some degree it seemed, entrenched in American soil. I’d had a strong interest in American pop culture for some time, starting out with super-hero comic books when I was very young, and popular films and music of course. At art school, I came across books in the library that referenced American ‘underground’ cinema and avant-garde music. I’d been a jazz fan for a while, being a young guitar player, but suddenly read about people such as John Cage and Harry Partch. Their creative ideas inspired me and I could see how there was a connected-ness to the world glimpsed in the pages of International Times. Yoko Ono was another discovery and the Fluxus group. None of this was exactly Beat Generation but, in some ways, it felt like a complementary force. I could sense kindred spirits. The American film experiments of Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Ron Rice, Ken Jacobs, Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Maya Deren, Harry Smith and others seemed connected to the Beats in some way too, though, for me, seeing anything other than stills in obscure art publications proved difficult.
In more recent years, I’ve re-visited all of these artistic territories, as one often does when one reaches a certain age. Naturally, my understanding has deepened with the passing years but I still find fresh inspiration from the writers, musicians and artists of that era.
SW In what ways did they inspire or affect you?
BN It’s not always easy to pin-point exactly why some things make such an impact on one’s life. It goes deeper than liking something, I suppose. There’s definitely a feeling of kinship, of finding that one is not alone. A confirmation of sensibilities? There was also, for me at that time, a sense of being opened up to wider possibilities, an exciting, new-found freedom of expression. It was almost as if one had been given permission to dream in colour, instead of just black and white.
SW How do you feel the influence of the Beats may have fed into your musical and wider creative work?
BN In general terms, the influence is part of an entire era that opened up many of my generation to our creative potential. It’s a historical ‘passing of the torch’ that moves from one artist to another. But, in more specific terms, Jack Kerouac’s ‘first thought, best thought’ dictum is something I’ve held to for some time now. I’m a firm believer in allowing the subconscious a space within the work, a space in which it can make itself felt. I have to acknowledge the way that the Beat Generation’s exploration of mysticism, particularly the Eastern variety, laid the foundations for my own investigations into that territory, even though some of it came second hand via the hippy route pioneered by Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Not that I ever was brave enough to dabble with psychedelic drugs. I decided I had more than enough visions, dreams and nightmares to keep me awake at night without poking around in my even darker attic of demons!
SW Are you touched by the spirit? Or are you affected by the form? Do you owe any kind of lyrical debt, for example, to the kind of techniques that Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and other members of that literary community devised?
BN Both, but perhaps the underlying spirit of it is more important to me, although quite a few rock musicians have tapped into Burroughs’ – and, more accurately, Brion Gysin’s – cut-up techniques. I’ve used variants of this in my lyric writing of the 1970s and early 1980s. Methods, in essence, of introducing chance into the work.
Of course, John Cage devised various similar but different techniques to produce purely musical or sonic results, techniques aimed at bypassing the conscious mind of the artist. A different philosophical basis to Burroughs’ approach, perhaps, but essentially a way of working with what appears to be chance. During my career with my 1970s era band Be Bop Deluxe, I recorded a piece called ‘Futurist Manifesto’. It was, quite obviously, named after the document issued by the Italian Futurists at the beginning of the twentieth-century but the technique I used to create the lyrics owes a big debt to Burroughs and Gysin, rather than to Marinetti, Balla and Russolo.
I picked up a copy of Country Life magazine that was lying around in the studio where the band were recording the album Drastic Plastic and, from an article chosen by simply opening the magazine at random, took the first word from the first line, the second from the second line, and so on, right through the article, until I had enough words to fit the piece. It wasn’t a cut up or a ‘fold in’ as Burroughs and Gysin would think of it, but it was allied with their approach. It was also surprising what this technique threw up. There were some conscious adjustments on my part afterwards though, just to get it to flow more interestingly in certain places, but not too many. I then made three tape recordings of the resultant text, speaking the words, rather than singing them.
These recordings were then played back on three tape recorders, deliberately out of sync with each other. This produced random audio juxtapositions of the text. The three tapes were then dubbed, whilst in this out of sync fashion, onto the main multitrack machine on which I’d previously created a music bed, again, using Cage’s and Burroughs
’ concepts as inspiration to create the sounds. The finished piece had an otherwordly quality that might have escaped if I’d have used more orthodox means. The strangest thing was that it all appeared to have ‘meaning’. It resonated with an authenticity that suggested a conscious impulse or ‘hidden mind’ was operating behind the work.
In more recent years, I’ve actually written songs dealing with various Beat-inspired ideas and also a song loosely around Jack Kerouac’s celebration of the road journey as a kind of mythical quest. My 1995 solo album After the Satellite Sings provides the easiest reference to this kind of material, particularly tracks such as ‘Streamliner’, ‘Flipside’ and ‘Memory Babe’.
SW Have you drawn on literature in a wider sense when you come to compose? Are there characters or episodes, are there narratives or dramas on the printed page that have actually prompted you to pen particular musical or lyrical responses?
BN I don’t really use literature ‘literally’ in that respect. I generally don’t write about characters from books or adapt fictional scenarios, although there have been the odd exceptions. I’m more often inspired by an author’s honesty or willingness to open himself up to the experiences of his life, than any desire to take hold of his characters or subject matter and use it within my own work. I feel – and this is purely my personal approach here, no criticism intended of all those artists who adopt or appropriate fictional scenarios and characters – that I’m only properly equipped to comment on my own life and so my songs are, in the main, autobiographical, experiential, diary-like things. They are often loaded in symbolism or encoded in some way but, essentially, they are my life and dreams, hopes and fears, captured in sounds and words and pictures. Snapshots of a life. The music and form can become quite complex and multi-layered but the essence is simple and single-pointed. Perhaps selfish and self-obsessive sometimes too, I cheerfully admit. But this is what constitutes my ‘prima materia’, the stuff from which I attempt to transmute my philosopher’s stone.
So, aside from considerations of pure aesthetics, I use my work to try to reveal myself to myself: it’s an attempt to figure out some quite fundamental philosophical problems, often by examining the most ordinary and banal aspects of my existence. In this respect, Kerouac’s work has shown me that this is nothing to be afraid of. Ginsberg’s, too. His writing is as open and as direct as possible. Its honesty escapes the shackles of its beauty and stands naked and unashamed.
Every single person has a complex and emotional story to tell, or a song to sing. It’s ultimately deserving of the mystical wonder that Kerouac saw in so many things. Something to be revered and respected. Of course, whilst life is enriched by the pursuit of such ideals, they ultimately don’t save us from ourselves or our demons. If anything, this approach brings those demons into sharper focus. It’s a difficult confrontation. Seeing them face to face can be a dangerous thing. I think Jack Kerouac’s direct vision was a double-edged sword for him. It’s the same for all artists, to one degree or another. Part of the price we pay for the privilege of seeing, perhaps? Lots of available theories about this, Freudian, Jungian, Reichian and so on … it gets over-romanticised, too. ‘The ever popular tortured artist effect’ as someone once put it.
This is another interesting thing about the Beats’ work for me: it explores the nature of the artist, the role of the imagination, the nature of vision. It seems perfectly natural that Ginsberg and Kerouac should find solace and inspiration in Buddhism – Tibetan in Allen’s case, Zen in Jack’s – and that Burroughs should be drawn to occultism. In their own ways, these were deeply spiritual men, the holy trinity of the Beats. Gary Snyder was, perhaps, the most ‘authentic’ in this respect though. At least initially.
SW What are your feelings about a poem like ‘Howl’? When did you initially encounter it?
BN I can’t remember exactly when I first read ‘Howl’. It could have been the late 60s. I certainly remember reading about it before I actually read the work itself. Even back then, its opening lines were often quoted in alternative publications. When I actually got to read it, what initially came across was the sheer energy of the piece, the torrent of passion, anger and beauty that leapt from the page. For all its epic length, it was tight and focused, for all its sense of outrage and horror, it was elegant and aesthetically seductive, an undeniable masterpiece and a turning point for poetry in general at that time. God knows how it must have appeared to the uninitiated when it was first published. It’s almost impossible to imagine the shock and controversy it would have caused back then, so much have public sensibilities changed in the intervening years. But it was, without a doubt, a revolutionary work. It’s also a work that continues to resonate, that rewards re-investigation. I think you could easily say, ‘timeless’, despite the clearly defined cultural signifiers of that period.
SW What approaches might you take if you compose a musical work which references a literary work in some fashion?
BN The approach is generally dictated by two things, the work itself and my personal reaction to it. It’s impossible to always ‘get’ the author’s intention in its purest sense; one can only work from one’s response to the writing. But the piece’s history along with received knowledge about its author’s inspiration are bound to colour one’s responses to some degree. Essentially though, it’s a subjective exercise. It’s best if I’m moved in some way, emotionally, aesthetically, by the work. The intellectual content may or may not interest or connect with me, but if I can somehow ‘feel’ the core of the piece, then this isn’t such an essential consideration.
With poetry, the spoken word is key to much of the music’s composition. Meter, inflection, timing, tonality all contribute to the musical experience of a poem. Different readers will bring their own persona to bear on this, in much the same way that different musicians will interpret an individual composer’s work. It’s a little like jazz or improvised music in this respect. Until the actual performance, it’s difficult to predict the final result.
I like to include hidden layers of meaning, reference points to time and place, the environment surrounding the creation of the poem, little signifiers that might be picked up by those who have studied the piece in more depth than the casual listener. At the same time, there needs to be an emotional, visceral charge that connects with and illuminates the work for even the most casual listener. It’s tricky and can be hit and miss. You can spend a very long time trying out various avenues of possibility before hitting on the most appropriate approach. Then again, you can simply just ‘go for it’. First thought, best thought!
SW How might you attempt to make a musical response to a piece like the Ginsberg poem?
BN Read and re-read the piece, make rough notes as to possible instrumentation and tonality. Research the circumstances surrounding the poem’s birth, the music of the time, Ginsberg’s own musical tastes, the political/social impulses that inform the poem’s content. Try to see how much of this can be used as inspiration but not necessarily portrayed in a literal sense. It’s a form of abstraction, a reduction of things to essentials without losing the plot, you might say.
It would also be good to use recordings from the era, music, sounds, news broadcasts, as background ‘interference’. These could even be manipulated live by others at the appropriate points in the piece.
Ideally, there should be an opportunity to compose the music directly to a recording of the spoken word. The most effective way would be to record the poem being spoken by the actual person chosen to read it at the eventual public performance, then use their ‘guide’ voice as a template to create the music and assemble the sounds. My own preference would be to use a pre-recorded music bed with just a few live improvisations, rather than attempt a totally live, real-time musical score. There could certainly be elements of live improvisation though. Whilst the eventual public reading might vary to some degree (compared to the guide vocal), the recorded music would offer an appropriately structured response and also a ‘map’ of sort
s for the reader to work with. I find that, no matter what plans one makes as to method, technique, etc., the end result is always something else, something that emerges through the moment by moment response to the materials at hand and the prevailing winds of the imagination. It’s simply a matter of throwing oneself overboard and trusting that the muse will guide one to the shore. Sometimes, too much thinking and planning can close off more interesting and rewarding avenues of exploration. It should be a joyful adventure, not a scientific exercise or surgical dissection.
Author’s note: Howl for Now was presented on 7 October 2005 at the Clothworkers’ Centenary Concert Hall, School of Music, University of Leeds. The event, which took place half a century later to the night of Ginsberg’s first reading of ‘Howl’ at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, featured a reading of the poem and six new musical works composed in tribute to the verse work. Although a DVD record of the occasion was produced, film director Ronald Nameth’s scheme to adapt the material for a more ambitious, multi-screen production remains on the drawing board, as does Bill Nelson’s soundtrack to the piece, discussed in the interview above.