The Beatles and the Beat Poets

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PORTLAND COLISEUM
by Allen Ginsberg


A brown piano in diamond
white spotlight
Leviathan auditorium
iron run wired
hanging organs, vox
black battery
A single whistling sound of ten thousand children’s
larynxes asinging
pierce the ears
and following up the belly
bliss the moment arrived

Apparition, four brown English
jacket christhair boys
Goofed Ringo battling bright
white drums
Silent George hair patient
Soul horse
Short black-skulled Paul
with the guitar
Lennon the Captain, his mouth
a triangular smile,
all jump together to End
some tearful memory song
ancient-two years,
The million children
the thousand words
bounce in their seats, bash
each other’s sides, press
legs together nervous
Scream again & claphand
become one Animal
in the New World Auditorium
—hands waving myriad
snakes of thought
screetch beyond hearing

while a line of police with
folded arms stands
Sentry to contain the red
sweatered ecstasy
that rises upward to the
wired roof.


– August 27, 1965

 
Today in history: Jack Kerouac and The Beatles


On this date -- April 12 -- in 1963 The Beatles released the song, "From Me to You," in the UK. But, you ask, what does that have to do with Jack Kerouac? That is, what is the Kerouac-Beatles connection?

According to Ellis Amburn, in Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac (St. Martin's Griffin, 1998):
Kerouac told me that Ginsberg had recently been with Bob Dylan in London for Dylan's Royal Albert Hall concert, and that Ginsberg and Dylan were "thickern thieves." At a party after Dylan's concert, Ginsberg met the Beatles and lectured them about the Beat Generation. John Lennon subsequently contacted Kerouac, revealing that the band's name was derive from "Beat." "He was sorry he hadn't come to see me when they played Queens," Kerouac said, referring to the Beatles Shea Stadium concert in 1965. "I told him it's just as well, since my mother wouldn't let them in without a haircut." (p. 342)

Amburn has been criticized for his accuracy, but I've seen no evidence that discounts this story. The haircut comment definitely sounds like something Jack would say, and I can see Mémère barring the door to such longhairs.

How about Jack's own words? In a June 22, 1965 letter to Arabelle Porter of the New American Library bemoaning the unavailability of On The Road in paperback, Kerouac reminds her of the Beats-Beatles connection:
If you're in business be businesslike. Don't let incompetents tell you Road or anything connected with it is "dead." Beatles is spelled Beatles and not Beetles. (Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969, Penguin, 1999, p. 458)

For some connections between the Beat Generation and The Beatles, see this Beatdom story, or thisblog post by Stephanie Nikolopoulos.

 
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Neal Cassady's son, John:

"John Cassady: One story I do remember, my sister Jami and her friend Kim and I were hitchhiking up to Golden Gate Park for a Dead show or something. We’re in a little VW and the driver turns down one of those residential side streets and there’s the bus! It’s parked in front of this funky old looking church. The guy lets us off, so we knock on the bus and the doors open and Zonker, Steve Lambrecht, was sitting in the little couch seat. He’s got the headphones on and he goes, ‘Holy crap, Johnny. You’ve gotta hear this.’ He didn’t say hello or anything, he just put the headphones on me.

I could tell who it was. It was an acetate final mix of Sgt. Pepper. The reason they got it was because – I think it was John [Lennon], I don’t think Paul was as into acid as John was at the time – Kesey had sent the Beatles some Owsley Stanley LSD in film cans, 16mm or whatever. The Beatles were very happy with that and to say thank you, they sent an original acetate to Kesey!

I said, ‘This is good shit! This is The Beatles, right? and he said, ‘Yeah, give ’em back!’ Months later, the record came out and I thought, ‘I remember this song!’ Mountain Girl told us later that Kesey had sent the Beatles a bunch of pure LSD and John Lennon kept a vile of it on his mantelpiece.

So Jami and Kim ask, ‘Where’s my dad?’ and they told us he’s up in the church. Dad is sitting around with Kesey and a bunch of Pranksters, or friends, or whoever and they’re sitting in a circle doing nitrous. They really liked nitrous oxide. They knew a dentist in Santa Cruz and he got them as many cans as they wanted for free."

 
Neal Cassady's son, John:

"John Cassady: One story I do remember, my sister Jami and her friend Kim and I were hitchhiking up to Golden Gate Park for a Dead show or something. We’re in a little VW and the driver turns down one of those residential side streets and there’s the bus! It’s parked in front of this funky old looking church. The guy lets us off, so we knock on the bus and the doors open and Zonker, Steve Lambrecht, was sitting in the little couch seat. He’s got the headphones on and he goes, ‘Holy crap, Johnny. You’ve gotta hear this.’ He didn’t say hello or anything, he just put the headphones on me.

I could tell who it was. It was an acetate final mix of Sgt. Pepper. The reason they got it was because – I think it was John [Lennon], I don’t think Paul was as into acid as John was at the time – Kesey had sent the Beatles some Owsley Stanley LSD in film cans, 16mm or whatever. The Beatles were very happy with that and to say thank you, they sent an original acetate to Kesey!

I said, ‘This is good shit! This is The Beatles, right? and he said, ‘Yeah, give ’em back!’ Months later, the record came out and I thought, ‘I remember this song!’ Mountain Girl told us later that Kesey had sent the Beatles a bunch of pure LSD and John Lennon kept a vile of it on his mantelpiece.

So Jami and Kim ask, ‘Where’s my dad?’ and they told us he’s up in the church. Dad is sitting around with Kesey and a bunch of Pranksters, or friends, or whoever and they’re sitting in a circle doing nitrous. They really liked nitrous oxide. They knew a dentist in Santa Cruz and he got them as many cans as they wanted for free."

Not as good a story as the part in Visions of Cody where Neal assf***s the drifter in the motel bathroom while Jack has no choice but to listen from the outside. So I guess that's two things we know Neal loved: nitrous and other guys' asses.
 
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Allen Ginsberg's review of Sgt. Pepper is pretty interesting:

"Later, Allen Ginsberg engages in an informal track by track review of the album.“[Sgt Pepper’s] opens with a real interesting nostalgic recall of old vaudeville and good old times,” he begins, making reference to the record’s opening track. “It goes on ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, a statement of communal purpose – the next is like a statement of imagination, ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, as being elements of importance.

The next song,” he enthuses, “is making everything get better. The next song he’s dealing with his mind itself and ‘Fixing A Hole‘. Having discovered that open mind, the adolescent is leaving home.

The next is a kind of a magic show or acrobatic show,” he adds. “The next is a little statement about illusion and space itself and space between people’s minds. The next is a look ahead to ‘When I’m 64’, growing old. The next is appreciating the ordinary everyday lovely Rita meter-maid. And the next is like going to work and saluting the day and dealing with the everyday business of the day. Then there’s a reprise, reminding us that we’re still in the old tradition. The last is ‘A Day In The Life’ which I thought was the best poem.”"

 
I read "On The Road" when I was 13 or so and I liked it a lot and later I enjoyed William S Burroughs but I always felt that Allen Ginsberg was very lucky to keep a career going that long based on what I felt was so little. Maybe though it is impossible to feel the impact of what he was doing in the time he was doing his most well known work if you weren't around then. A whole group of people changed society from the 1950's to the 1970's and once it changed you can't really feel what it was like before if you weren't there.
 
I read "On The Road" when I was 13 or so and I liked it a lot and later I enjoyed William S Burroughs but I always felt that Allen Ginsberg was very lucky to keep a career going that long based on what I felt was so little. Maybe though it is impossible to feel the impact of what he was doing in the time he was doing his most well known work if you weren't around then. A whole group of people changed society from the 1950's to the 1970's and once it changed you can't really feel what it was like before if you weren't there.

All I can say to you is, read his poetry. The language he used isn't flowery. See the pdf I've linked to above, Allen Ginsberg Collected Poems 1947 - 1997.


Also, I've read something that Lennon said. He didn't get what Ginsberg was all about. He heard someone (could've been Ginsberg?) reading his poetry on the radio and it clicked for him. I'll try and find the article now.
 
I read "On The Road" when I was 13 or so and I liked it a lot and later I enjoyed William S Burroughs but I always felt that Allen Ginsberg was very lucky to keep a career going that long based on what I felt was so little. Maybe though it is impossible to feel the impact of what he was doing in the time he was doing his most well known work if you weren't around then. A whole group of people changed society from the 1950's to the 1970's and once it changed you can't really feel what it was like before if you weren't there.

Here's the article on Lennon getting Ginsberg:

"Finally, this, from a letter (to Barry Miles, circa 1976) – “I was passing by (the) Dakota Apartments last month, phoned upstairs and visited John Lennon and Yoko Ono for an hour. Lennon said he was retired temporarily from the L.A. music scene, staying home with baby and extreme clean diet..Said he was lying sleepless one night listening to WBAI (radio on) earphones and heard someone reciting a long poem, he thought it was (Bob) Dylan till he heard the announcer say it was (Allen) Ginsberg reading “Howl”…said he’d never read it or understood it before, (he’d eye’d the page but, “I can’t read anything, I can’t get anything from print”), but once hearing it aloud, he suddenly understood, he said, why Dylan had often mentioned me to him, and suddenly realized what (it was) I was doing, and dug it…said he didn’t understand (hadn’t understood) at the time. He’d seen me as some strange interesting American supposed-to-be-a poet hanging around but didn’t understand exactly what my role was. Now he said he understood how close my style was to Dylan’s, and how it influenced Dylan and also dug my voice reciting, the energy…It sure was nice hearing Lennon close the gap, complete that circle and treat me as a fellow artist as he walked me to the door goodbye”. Happy Birthday, John Lennon"

 
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