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17th September, 2008
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A Thought for Today
A
sunset missed is gone, but tomorrow’s promise lingers.
This
One Does It For Me!
Ken,
I've always considered the album "Rod McKuen Takes a San Francisco
Hippie Trip" to be wonderfully evocative of the period and it must
surely be a collectors item today.
Now I'm told it was a pirated album!
Say it isn't so!.
Simon Campbell
I'm afraid it is, Simon - probably one of the most famous (notorious?)
albums in recording history.
The good news is that the original, legal album, Beatsville, is still
available today, on Compact Disc to boot, and you can order it from
Stanyan House. The disc also
includes a free font.
The liner notes, by Kim Cooper, make for fun reading and there's even a
mention of the pirated version and some of the changes which were
implemented.
Tiptoe Thru the Beatniks with Rod McKuen
by Kim Cooper
It might surprise you to know that the disc you’re holding is one of the
great lost artifacts of late fifties popular culture, an insider’s
portrait of a Bohemain community delivered with all the wit, affection,
and stylistic confidence it deserved. Many people think they get the
“joke” of Rod McKuen. Do you?
It’s easy to feel superior to McKuen: schlockmeister extraordinaire...
self-made poet laureate of a sanitized Haight Ashbury... author of
innumerable gift poetry books that line the walls of America’s Salvation
Armys, their raw nerve ballpoint inscriptions a source of minor
amusement to you and your post sentimentalist pals. Well, I’ve got news
for you, buddy: Rod McKuen can wipe the floor with you when it comes to
sardonic cultural criticism and natural cool, to say nothing of manly
good looks. The evidence is clear, you’re just too busy cracking
yourself up to see it. Take a deep breath and another look. And consider
this...
It’s early 1958, and the theme of The Beatnik ( coinage vis S.F.
Chronicle columnist Herb Caen’s inspired fusion of Carrick’s “beat” with
Kruchev’s “Sputnik” ) is blanketing the American scene. And why’s that ?
Because sloth, dirt and self-conscious “hipness” is really funny. Sure,
an argument could be made that Squares choose to laugh at the Beatnik
because they were threatened by the implicit criticism of mainstream
values he embodied, but the fact remains that not since the stumblebum
drunk or the backwoods hayseed had there been an American icon better
suited for parody.
For a bit of light entertainment, and to quickly delineate the role that
they occupied in the popular imagination, here are a few Beatnik jokes,
guaranteed original and of the time:
Did you hear about the wealthy beatnik who hired a maid to keep his pad
dirty?
It was a gay, mad party in Greenwich Village. The women were mad
because the men were gay !
Then there was the East Village couple who had three children - one of
each.
Those beatniks are really something - hairy, smelly, wearing the same
sweater for weeks on end - and the boys are even worse!
Everyone has seen those “Guess your age” and “Guess your weight” stands
at the fair. In Greenwich Village they have a guy who’s introduced a new
version. For a quarter, he’ll guess your sex.
Before there were Beatniks, there were Beats. These are the cats whose
paperbacks and romantic brooding photographs are still held sacred by
people who aren’t from around these parts. The Kerouac - Ginsburg crowd
were articulating things in their writing that they’d experienced in
earnest in the immediate post war years, largely in New York,
occasionally in quasi-rural retreats like Texas, Mexico, Morocco, Big
Sur. By the time Ti-Jean found a publisher for his speed fueled
butcher’s wrap of prose and started making the rounds as TV’s favorite
wacky drunk guy, the original Beat Generation was settling into a
discomforted middle age. Thus the cliched image of the 1950's Beatnik -
that black clad, goateed, beret’d , ballet slipper wearing, be-boppin’,
pill poppin’, boo-huffin’, work shirkin’, free lovin’, bath avoidin’
denizen of SF, Venice, the Village and the Universal lot - represents
something entirely apart from the original cast of characters. And while
the literary output of the of the first Beats was certainly noteworthy,
and continues to hold sway over credulous young folks to this day, the
“Maynard G. Krebs” (cf. Bob Denver’s memorable character on The Many
Loves of Dobie Gillis) school of Beatnik has left us very little save
some amusing greeting cards and highly collectible decorative figurines.
A decade before San Francisco would serve as a beacon to a million
smelly hippies, it was already attracting those who naively responded to
the media’s skewering of the Beat lifestyle and sought to make that life
their own. These kids gravitated to North Beach, an old Italian
neighborhood that had recently seen the opening of a number of nudie
clubs, City Lights Books, and hep hangouts like the Co-Existence Bagel
Shop, The Cellar, The Hungry i, and The Place. It is this crowd that
McKuen, at 26 already a veteran on North Beach habitue and performer,
chronicles in his quietly parodic masterpiece, Beatsville (HiFi Records
Album R 419).
These neo-beats certainly lent themselves to parody. Whatever the
reality, it appeared that individual interests were quickly absorbed
into a vast amorphous wash of “cool” behavior. Naturally all good
Beatniks wore black, dug jazz, were promiscuous, engaged in some
creative activity - usually with minimal skill - displayed nary a hint
of race prejudice, avoided honest labor and soap and water, smoked
reefer and owned at least one set of bongos.
It appears that to be a Beatnik required a certain level of commitment.
Even in those economically healthy times, the purchase of the requisite
equipment must have cost the newcomer dearly. While the girls were
keeping their local drug stores in business with regular orders of rice
powder and mascara, the boys were down at the art store stocking up on
big tubes of oil paint ( and sometimes vice versa ). Abstract
expressionism, baby: big canvases, big ideas, lots of lots of pigment.
North Beach beat doll Jay DeFeo’s famed The Rose was so caked in paint
they had to knock out a wall when it came time to move it out of her
pad. This was the first generation to seek out second hand clothing when
they could have afforded new things - and a few years later the hippies
would be raiding the thrift stores for “groovy” Edwardian morning coats
and Victorian gowns, hand painted ‘40's neckties to sew into skirts,
tiny silver spoons that they’d bend into bracelets and rings, all of
which they’d sport while dancing like retarded apes in the mud at rock
festivals and be-ins, the lousy crumbs... but I digress.
A fundamental change had occurred in America. The children of privilege
suddenly saw all their parents had worked to give them as nothing more
than a huge seductive rat trap. For a moment, at least, they rejected
the birthright that had been so hard won on their behalf. (Mostly
hurried back to reclaim it before long.) Certainly the Beatniks were not
the first Bohemians in America; but theirs’ was the first movement to be
so widely disseminated through the mass media, almost instantly
available for all to see and scoff.
Was there any truth to the cliches ? Did there exist a single soul who
betrayed all the classic Beatnik attributes ? Who knows ? The folks that
lived through it can’t be trusted to be objective in their
recollections, and such documentation as has survived paints an
inevitable vague and biased picture. This is why Beatsville is such a
valuable document. McKuen’s madcap and poignant verses, carefully
crafted to amuse both the locals and the slumming hoi polloi, have more
truth in them than any attempt at a just the facts ma’am reportage.
On the original LP cover, Rod retreats to the gentlemanly background,
where he broods on a candle flame and tragically empty glass.
Foreground’s full up with a slow eyed Beatnik gal, black bangs over
Cleopatra brows, pug nose betraying her freckly middle class origins.
The backdrop is a vast, lousy painting, low rent AbEx, traded, most
likely, for a spaghetti dinner and a jug of dago red.
This was McKuen’s second album, following Time of Desire. He’d been
working for HiFi Records as a producer, recording artists in label prez
Rich Vaughn’s state of the art home studio. Beatsville was conceived as
an affectionate send up of the beat scene in deliberate response to the
excesses of the mass media. McKuen brought in session cats Buddy
Colette, Paul Gray and Howard Heitmeyer and taught them the basic melody
lines; the whole thing was recorded in an evening.
Take the weighty HiFi vinyl out of its sleeve (or pop the CD out of the
jewelcase) and put on “Co-Existence Bagel Shop Blues”. Over a frenzied,
nervous drum, Rod talks about some of the people who knows. “I have a
friend named Phyllis who likes truck drivers and garage mechanics / she
had a black eye when I saw her yesterday, but she said it was worth it /
that’s all right baby, swing / some things are better than sleeping
pills.” Rough trade Phyllis is tame compared to the threesome that
swiftly develops between a fire eater (with sores in his mouth), a
“colored boy”, and some anonymously Beat girl. It isn’t easy to be a
Beat girl, either. Take the one with the mustache that Rod ran into one
day on Jasper Place (around the corner from The Cellar) who told him she
just came from St. Louis, and would he lend her a fin to get her furs
out of hock, in exchange for some “decent company”. He lent her his
razor instead, and now she gets more work than anybody. (Poor chick.)
Nor is it easy to be a Beat boy, especially if you’re sensitive and a
little passive, like Rod. Check out “Haiku Poems”, for its striking view
of the dark side of the lifestyle, and the surprising vision of
redemption in the normalcy of getting up to go to work in the morning.
Rod sounds a little nervous, but he plunges right in. For full effect,
imagine hearing this read in a cellar club, surrounded by characters
like those in the poem. The music shifts from tense, scary drums to sexy
bass and sweetest piano as a scene of drunken playfulness shifts
suddenly to violence and its existential aftermath.
That’s the tough stuff. Rod knows to follow it up with something quick
and funny. He calls this one “No Pictures, Please”.
“I try to be a good beatnik, but it’s hard ! I mean, like, I don’t dig
turtleneck sweaters, I can’t grow a beard, and I catch cold in sandals.
But I got a pad with a torn Picasso on the wall and a dirty red
tablecloth... and all the Lenny Bruce records. I even bought a book on
Zen. And if you come home with me I’ll give you a cheese sandwich and
wine in a cracked porcelain cup. (long, sad pause) Oh... my white bucks
gave me away.”
San Francisco’s a great town, but it’s always been a little
claustrophobic. Any smart Beatnik knows how to stick out his thumb over
by the bridge to hitch a ride to Sausalito. Rod does, and gets picked up
by a gloomy preacher who takes him along to sally Stanford’s Club.
That’s a famous bordello, dig ? The preacher’s nearly cottoning to the
idea of Zen when a cute little gal comes along and interrupts Rod’s
monologue. The preacher gets lucky and our Beat narrator hits the road,
pausing to recall his own Sausalito gal.
“There was this folk singer chick I was hung on who was getting alimony
from her first husband. Between her alimony and my unemployment checks,
we had enough bread for steaks twice a week. (Sadly) No use looking
her up, though... she’s AC / DC now, and those kind aren’t so hot.”
You can learn a lot about Rod McKuen from listening to Beatsville. In
the seemingly autobiographical “The Bird Boy”, Rod confesses “I and
unhappy unless I am in love, and unhappy”. Later he ruminates on a cute
blonde being leered at on the street, and wishes he too might get some
extra attention for wearing too tight dungarees. That’s nerve, kiddo.
Rod was also worried about the hangers on that were buzzing around the
North Beach scene, trying to find ways to make money off his friends.
The freedom that had been so hard won by his crowd must have seemed in
real danger of being destroyed by an influx of clueless newcomers, their
vision of Beat reality hopelessly skewed by the media’s willful
distortions. “Steer clear of that chick - she’s writing an expose called
“Beat Time U.S.A.” and she plans to sell it to MCA for a television
spectacular. They’re already talking about June Allyson and Charlton
Heston starring in it. Y’know, when the last article has been written,
the last movie made, and the final rock and roll hit turned out about
the Beat Generation - somewhere around 1965 I should think - will they
finally let us out of the cage?”
‘Fraid not, Rod. Guess you’ll have to go to Paris and adapt some Jacques
Brel songs if you ever wanna taste that free air again.
Actually Beatsville does close with a suggestion that it might be a good
idea to get out of town, although not quite that far out of town:
“Whaddaya say for kicks we hop in your VW and tear off for Watsonville?
I mean, can you imagine a more Out place for two In people?” It’s a
perfect image with which to close out a wonderful disk.
There’s typically a built in obsolescence to records that relate to a
trend or fad. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Beatsville came and
went in its season and represents nothing more than an amusing time
capsule. But there’s just a wee bit more to the story, and it happens to
be a hoot.
Just consider if you will Exhibit B: Rod McKuen Takes a San Francisco
Hippie Trip (Tradition / Everest 2063 S-3446). Dumbass Art Nouveau cover
art, Rod’s freaky face mirrored in a swishy swirl of pink, lime, canary
and peach. Vaginal badge between his two sets of lips; far out and
psychedelic. The record, however, is nothing less than our old favorite
Beatsville, re-sequenced and bowdlerized for a less innocent time.
Yes, bowdlerized. The original version was actually more libidinous than
the free lovin’ late sixties re-issue. Here’s much of the text of the
centerpiece of both releases, the fabulous “R.S.V.P.” (called “Kranko’s
Hippie Party” on the second version) - the boldface lines are those that
have been excised from the latter.
“Kranco’s having a party. At his pad on August Alley. With genuine
imported Beatniks from Los Angeles and everything. Bring your own
refreshments - as long as they wear leotards. It should be a gas. The
last time he had a party it was raided and they carted off two
policewomen making it in the back room. Get there early though,
because there won’t be enough rollaway beds to go around. You might have
to ball with somebody you’ve already balled. Kranko knows everybody
- including Frieda, who strips at the drop of a bennie, and Raffia the
poet, who is not only an angry young man, but a dirty old man as well. I
like Kranko - he has wheels. He once told the proprietor of The
Renaissance he was Woody Guthrie - had him selling tickets for a
folk-song concert... the cat’s not commercial or anything, it’s just
that even that hole he lives in costs money. Sometimes he lends his
pad to people to ball in and hides in the closet to watch - when he
doesn’t join in. Anyway, he’s having a party and you’re invited. If
you have and Leadbelly or Bird records you don’t have to bring any
wine.”
Delivered in a pristinely affectless all American drawl, this is Rod at
his sardonic peak. It makes you simultaneously ache for a pad in ‘58
Frisco and laugh your ass off that anyone ever took this goofy behavior
seriously. I wouldn’t trade one Beatsville for a dozen Howls.
Rod McKuen. Too earthy for the hippies. Too honest for his own good.
Poet. Gentleman. Millionaire. One time teenaged disc jockey. Orphan.
World class character. Genius ? He’s strong, but he likes roses. He’s
not afraid to appear ridiculous, and he doesn’t. But the kids who laugh
at him look faintly absurd now, don’t they?
Long Live Rod McKuen - The King of the Beats!
- quotation credits
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