Courtney Love, Amy Poehler Salute Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ in L.A. Ginsberg Reads “Howl”

Courtney Love, Amy Poehler Salute Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ in L.A.

Great minds come out for loose, ramshackle tribute to the iconic poem

By Tim Grierson April 8, 2015

Courtney Love and Amy Poehler saluted Allen Ginsberg’s epic, zeitgeist-channeling poem “Howl” in L.A. Future-Image/ZUMA Wire; Image Press/Splash News/Corbis

Nearly 60 years after its first public reading in October 1955, a concert was held in downtown Los Angeles to honor “Howl,” Allen Ginsberg’s epic, zeitgeist-channeling poem that wrestled with sexuality, creativity, drugs, capitalism and the contradictory forces that were shaping mid century America. Although not as consistently revelatory as the poem itself, A Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ could be as demanding, playful, funny, moving, defiant, overwhelming, exhausting and proudly idiosyncratic as its namesake.

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“This isn’t highbrow,” host and Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew explained early in the evening, welcoming the crowd on a rainy Tuesday night to the Theatre at Ace Hotel. “A Celebration” — which was a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker’s organization that provides scholarships to instructors of Transcendental Meditation — featured musicians, actors and comedians who drew from Ginsberg as inspiration for their performances, but not always in any obvious way. The man’s poetry and songs were covered throughout, but the assembled acts — everyone from Courtney Love to Van Dyke Parks to Amy Poehler — opted for a warm, relaxed vibe that left room for casual accidents. For proof, look no further than Lucinda Williams, who, after gingerly launching into a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” near the end of the three-hour-plus show, admitted to the crowd, “We’re winging it.”

That’s the vibe one expects from a star-studded concert curated by Hal Willner, the venerable music producer and frequent tribute-show organizer whose events tend to feature a varied list of performers and gigantic running times. (Audiences never leave a Willner show, such as his salutes to the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music compilations from 15 years ago, angry that they didn’t get their money’s worth.)

But if more than a few bleary-eyed audience members had already fled the theater by the time Nick Cave and Beth Orton came on to perform a sad-eyed piano-and-strings rendition of “The Ship Song” to cap off the night — and that’s not even factoring in the all-star sing-along to Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” encore — Willner and his acts’ generosity and loose-limbed performances paved the way for plenty of memorable moments.

Some of the night’s strongest sets attacked Ginsberg’s volatile, scabrous texts from fresh angles. Poehler and her former Saturday Night Live castmate Chris Parnell teamed up with laptop wizard Mocean Worker to transform the poet’s spoken-word-with-instrumentation “Ballad of the Skeletons” into a frenzied hip-hop track. Petra Haden dedicated Ginsberg’s organ-centric eulogy “Father Death Blues” to her own father, remaking the dirge as a lovely country ballad. And bracingly, Last Man on Earth star Will Forte joined electronic musician Peaches for a shout-y, dissonant take on Ginsberg’s punk-rock “Birdbrain” backed by Mocean Worker’s muscular beats and a wayward saxophonist following his own rhythm. Some in the crowd happily yelled out “Birdbrain!” at irregular intervals, adding to the song’s apoplectic sense of corrupt power run amok.

But “A Celebration” turned out to be more than a tribute to just Ginsberg. Parks honored Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the longtime proprietor of the Ginsberg haunt City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, by adorning one of his 1958 poems, the endlessly searching “I Am Waiting,” with a four-piece string quartet, adding extra layers of yearning to the writer’s hope for “a renaissance of wonder.” Meanwhile, actor Tim Robbins strapped on an acoustic guitar to play Warren Zevon’s 2000 song “Don’t Let Us Get Sick,” a paean to people’s capacity to discover their best selves while they still have time.

In between, there was blues, rockabilly, classical, jazz, roots-rock, folk, even a little stand-up comedy. (At one point, John Mulaney came out to keep the crowd engaged while roadies quickly switched up instruments between acts. Identifying himself as a comedian, Mulaney joked that if his impromptu set bombed, “Then I’ll say I’m a poet.”) Devendra Banhart took a stab at Ginsberg’s folk-y “Vomit Express” (co-written by Bob Dylan) by turning it into a goofy sing-along, complete with backup vocals from those hanging around the stage, including someone wearing an oversized bull’s head mask. Love went full torch singer with her smoky, snarling rendition of Hole’s “Letter to God,” while Drew’s performance with pop oldie Andy Kim (with whom Drew has made an album, It’s Decided) was so freewheeling that Drew stopped the song at one point because he’d screwed up a transition: “Let’s take it from the whoooos,” he instructed the backup band before they dove right back into the tune.

True, “A Celebration” meandered and dawdled on occasion, but the evening’s clear highlight brought the focus back to the man (and the poem) of the hour. Willner came on stage with actress Chloe Webb a little more than halfway through the night to perform excerpts from “Howl.” (“Don’t worry, they’re not gonna do the whole thing,” Robbins said before Willner and Webb’s arrival, quickly adding, “although I know some of you would love that.”) Backed first by strings and upright bass before drums, pedal steel and guitar slowly entered the mix, Willner and Webb read Ginsberg’s infamous poem, letting the timeless power and mad swirl of his words create a panoply of dazzling mental images of a nation hurtling toward an exciting, uncertain future. By the time the two performers had gotten within spitting distance of the conclusion—”The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!”—there was a palpable energy in what was otherwise an often laidback, polite crowd. The marriage of music and words, even words that are 60 years old, made the room feel stirringly alive, random audience members letting out whoops of pleasure and approval throughout the reading.

Suddenly, “A Celebration” lived up to its name, honoring a community of artists profoundly altered by the work of Allen Ginsberg. In a different way, the moment was echoed by Williams, who invited musicians in the wings to join her band for the finale of “Pale Blue Eyes,” a loving sendoff to Lou Reed. One by one, string players, guitarists and drummers stepped on stage and started playing along. Williams looked very pleased. “That’s what it’s all about,” she said, approvingly.

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 GINSBERG READS “HOWL” 1959

Published on Mar 21, 2013

In 1959, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky accompanied Ginsberg to Chicago for a benefit reading for “Big Table” [named at Kerouac’s suggestion], a newly established literary publication born as a result of censorship of the student magazine the Chicago Review. The reading took place on 29 January, 1959.

https://youtu.be/WkNp56UZax4

DAVID AMRAM REMEMBERS JACK KEROUAC

from left to right: Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac,
David Amram, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso (with back to camera)

 

DAVID AMRAM REMEMBERS
(Originally written for Evergreen Review in 1969, published early 1970 at the request of publisher Barney Rossett as an obituary for Kerouac)

I used to see Jack often at the old Five Spot in the beginning of 1957, when I was working there. I knew he was a writer, and all musicians knew that he loved music. You could tell by the way he sat and listened. He never tried to seem hip. He was too interested in life around him to ever think of how he appeared. Musicians understood this and were always glad to see him, because we knew that meant at least one person would be I listening. Jack was on the same wave-length as we were, so it was never necessary to talk.

A few months later, poets Howard Hart and Philip Lamantia came by my place with Jack. They had decided to read their poetry with music, and Jack said he would join in, reading, improvising, rapping with the audience and singing along. Our first performance was in December of 1957 at the Brata Art Gallery on East 10th Street. It was the first jazz-poetry reading in New York. There was no advertising and it was raining, but the place was packed. Jack had become the most important figure of the time. His name was magic. In spite of the carping, whining put-downs by the furious critics, and the jealousy of some of his contemporaries for his overnight success (he had written ten books in addition to On The Road with almost no recognition), Jack hadn’t changed. But people’s reaction to him was sometimes frightening.

He was suddenly being billed as the ‘King of The Beatniks’, and manufactured against his will, as some kind of public Guru for a movement that never existed. Jack was a private person, extremely shy, and dedicated to writing. When he drank, he became much more expansive, and this was the only part of his personality that became publicized. The people who came to the Brata Gallery weren’t taste makers; they were friends.

A few months later, we began some readings at the Circle In The Square. Everyone improvised, including the light man, who had his first chance to wail on the lighting board. The audience joined in, heckling, requesting Jack to read parts of On The Road, and asking him to expound on anything that came into his head. He also would sing while I was playing the horn, sometimes making up verses. He had a phenomenal ear. It was like playing duets with a great musician.

Jack was proud of his knowledge of music and of the musicians of his time. He used to come by and play the piano by ear for hours. He had some wonderful ideas for combining the spoken word with music. A few weeks later, jazz-poetry became ‘Official Entertainment’, and a few months later was discarded as another bit of refuse, added to the huge mound of our junk culture. It was harder to dispose of Jack. The same journalist and radio and TV personalities who had heralded him were now ripping him to shreds. Fortunately, they couldn’t rip up his manuscripts. His work was being published, more widely read, and translated.

In early 1958, all of us went to Brooklyn College, where Jack, Phillip and Howard read. Jack spent most of the time answering the student’s questions with questions of his own. He was the down-home Zen master, and the students finally realized he wasn’t putting them on. He was showing them himself. If they wanted to meet the Author Jack Kerouac, they would have to read his books.

His public appearances were never to promote his books. They were to share a state of mind and a way of being. The only journalist who picked up on this was Al Aronowitz. He saw Jack as an artist.

In the spring of 1959, the film Pull My Daisy was made. Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers and myself – the Third Avenue All-Stars as one wit described us – appeared in it. Alfred Leslie directed it and Robert Frank filmed it. Jack had written the scenario, and after the film had been edited, Jack saw it. Because it was a silent movie, Jack was to narrate it, and I was to write the music afterwards. He, Allen, and Neal Cassady also wrote the lyrics for the title song Pull My Daisy, for which I wrote the music and was sung in the film by Anita Ellis. Jack put on earphones and asked me to play, so that he could improvise the narration to music, the way we had done at our readings. He watched the film, and made up the narration on the spot. He did it two times through spontaneously, and that was it. He refused to do it again. He believed in spontaneity, and the narration turned out to be the very best thing about the film. We recorded it at Jerry Newman’s studio. Jerry was an old friend of Jack’s from the early forties and afterwards we had a party-jam session that lasted all night. Jack played the piano, sang, and improvised for hours.

In the early sixties I used to see Jack when he would come in from Northport to visit town. Once, he called up at one in the morning and told me I had to come over so that he could tell me a story. I brought over some music to copy, and Jack spoke non-stop until 8:30 a.m., describing a trip he had made through North Africa and Europe. It was like hearing a whole book of his being read aloud, and Jack was the best reader of his own work, with the exception of Dylan Thomas, that I ever heard.

“That’s a fantastic story.” I told him. “It sounds just like your books.”

“I try to make my writing sound just the way I talk.” he said. His ideal was not to display his literary skill, but to have a conversation with the reader.

I told Jack about an idea I had for a cantata about the four seasons in America, using the works of American authors. He launched into a travelogue of his voyages around the country, and referred to writers I might look into. I took notes, and ended up reading nearly fifty books, to find the texts. I included a passage from his book Lonesome Traveler. The concert was at Town Hall [in New York City], and Jack wrote that he couldn’t come. It was the Spring of 1965, and he didn’t like being in New York.

Sometimes he would call from different parts of the country just to talk, and we continued to write to each other. In one letter he said “Ug-g-h. Fame is such a drag.” He wanted time to work, but found that success robbed him of his freedom. At the same time, he felt that he was forgotten. I told him that all the young people I met when I toured colleges loved his books. To many, he was their favorite writer. But writer meant something different now. It was what was being said, not how it was said. It was content that counted, not style. Jacks’ message was a whole way of being, and he was becoming more an influence than ever.

Truman Capote dismissed Jack’s work as “typing.” I never heard Jack put down another writer. He went out of his way to encourage young writers. His work reflects this spirit of generosity, kindness and love. This is why his “typing” is so meaningful to young people today. Jack was ahead of his time spiritually. Like Charlie Parker, Lenny Bruce and Lord Buckley, his work is constantly being rediscovered.

Through knowing Jack, I wrote some of my best music. Without knowing him, I never would have written my book. More important, young people all over the world are reading and rereading his work. His death only means the beginning of a new life for everyone who shares in the joy of knowing him through his books.

David Amram, October 24th. 1969