Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side

by Sanders, Ed

  Baleful Words from Charles Mingus

  On January 8 there was a benefit for the New York Free Press at the Fillmore East. There was an excellent lineup, featuring Norman Mailer in his triumph for Armies of the Night; Charles Mingus with David Amram and Jeremy Steig; Nico; John Hammond; and the Joshua Light Show. The Fugs performed, even though it would kill any paid performances at the Fillmore East for about a year. I was the master of ceremonies.

  When it came time to introduce Charles Mingus, I shouted into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, Charlie Mingus!”

  Big applause. He didn’t come on. I trotted off stage to find out why.

  He was glowering and sulky. He said, “Young man, you go back out there and introduce me as CHARLES! Mingus.”

  Yes, sir. So I went back before the microphone, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, our next performer is CHARLES Mingus.”

  More “Win a Dream Date with The Fugs”

  Reprise Records continued its “Win a Dream Date with The Fugs” ad campaign in the trades and in the underground papers as well. Included was one in Billboard:

  The Fugs at the Fillmore East, January 8, 1969.

  The Reprise VP in charge of these “campaigns” was Stan Cornyn, who had a humorous streak and wrote film scripts as well. He was very blunt, but fair, and always supportive of The Fugs. In his memoir, Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes, and Hustlers of the Warner Music Group, which he wrote with Paul Scanlon, Cornyn filled us in on who won the Dream Date competition. Here is her letter:Dear Sirs (or whoever you are)

  I would like to go out with Tuli because I would like him to fuck me.

  —Barbara

  P.S. Even if I don’t win, I would still like it.

  Dream date reply from Reno, Nevada.

  Dream date ad in Billboard.

  Gig with the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead

  February saw the final Fugs concerts of the 1960s. On February 7 we performed with the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh. We used the Grateful Dead’s sound system, and I was determined that the words to Fugs tunes be heard, so I kissed the microphone very closely. There was a party at the Grateful Dead’s various rooms at the hotel afterward, although after a few initial elevators full of partyers, the hotel called a halt to further fans.

  On February 20 we performed at Rice Memorial Center, Rice University, Houston. Luckily for us, the concert was recorded fairly well, and we have used various tunes from that reel-to-reel tape on several Fugs compilations. There was further nonstop partying, and then we traveled from Houston to Austin for concerts at the Vulcan Gas Works, Friday and Saturday, February 21–22.

  Poster for The Fugs by Jim Franklin, well known for his armadillo motifs.

  In Austin I stayed with my friend Bud Shrake and his wife, Doatsy. Shrake was already a well-known writer, a member of a group of Texas authors who called themselves the Mad Dogs and included, besides Bud Shrake, Bill Brammer, Larry L. King, and Dan Jenkins. At the time Shrake was a staff writer for Sports Illustrated. He spent considerable time in New York and used to come to openings and book parties at the Peace Eye Bookstore. One was the previous November’s party for the release of Abbie Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of It. The six-foot-six-inch-tall Shrake sat on a stool by the cash register for hours, then invited us up to Elaine’s for further partying. Back in ’63, at the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Bud was writing a column for the Dallas Morning News and going out with a woman named Jada, a stripper at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club. He wrote a well-received novel, Strange Peaches, set in Dallas during the era of the assassination.

  He told me an anecdote about Nelson Bunker Hunt. He was writing a piece for Sports Illustrated on Hunt’s involvement with thoroughbred horses. Hunt was a famous right-wing activist and had paid for a hostile anti-Kennedy ad in the Dallas Morning News the morning of the assassination. There were rumors that he knew quite a bit about the how and why of the hit.

  It turned out that while working on the Hunt piece, Shrake had Hunt in a car with him while driving back into Dallas from Hunt’s horse farm. They were on the very roadway past the Dallas Book Depository in the exact location of John Kennedy’s limousine when the shots killed him. “We stopped at a red light in Dealy Plaza,” Bud Shrake told me, “right by the School Book Depository, and I said, ‘Okay, Bunker, after all this time, you can go ahead and level with me, who really did it?’ And Bunker just kind of chuckled, but didn’t say.” It was a question that took guts to ask—Shrake had the writer’s Prime Rule in mind: Never let the opportunity to ask a choice question pass you by.

  Shrake took me around to the sights of Austin during The Fugs’ visit. We drove past the sight of an automobile accident. Nearby, in a liquor store window, was a woman who stood weeping, holding a baby. Was it alive? It looked injured. She must have been waiting for an ambulance. It was a stunning reminder of the fragility of all our paths.

  Retiring

  The gigs at the Vulcan Gas Works in Austin were the last shows of the 1960s Fugs. There wouldn’t be another one for over fifteen years. Ahh, I was so weary of it! That image of the woman holding what surely looked like her dead baby in the liquor store window, the wrecked autos outside on the street, stayed with me.

  I decided to break up The Fugs. Part of me just wanted to write poetry and be a regular ole Beatnik. Running a rock band was a fifteen-hour-a-day job. Each morning after I woke up, the first thing I thought about was how to promote The Fugs, maybe flesh out a press release for the day, call up our managers to see what gigs were being lined up. It was a lot of worry and stress and not as satisfying as it once had been. I also had an opportunity, as an official Reprise Records producer, to produce my own album. I thought of doing a satirical “Out-There” electro-punk country-and-western album, with elements of proto-environmentalism. My plan to keep the Peace Eye Bookstore open paid off because it had kept up its popularity and was a steady source of income.

  An Art Show for Claude Pelieu

  Ever since I had published Claude Pelieu’s Automatic Pilot back in early 1965, we had been friends. I had also been friends with his wife, Mary Beach, an outstanding artist and translator of his poetry. (Mary would translate into French the novel I was working on during 1969, Shards of God.) Pelieu was one of the outstanding collagists of the era, and so I organized an exhibition of his glyphic art, which combined images and text, at Peace Eye.

  Invitation/poster for Claude Pelieu’s show at Peace Eye.

  Mary Beach, Miriam Sanders, Claude Pelieu, Deirdre Sanders at Peace Eye. Photo by Ed Sanders.

  Red Boots on Avenue A

  Even though I was breaking up The Fugs, the rest of ’69 flamed past, as full of projects as any other year of the decade. I kept the Peace Eye Bookstore open throughout the year and minded the store on many days.

  One early April evening I walked up Avenue A from the store to our apartment. I unlocked the door, and then I was rushed from behind by two guys who tossed me to the floor and pushed a knife against my throat, chanting, “Where’s the amphetamine—where’s the amphetamine?” with an insistence that portended arterial insert. Someone had burned them for some uppers.

  I told them I never used amphetamine, much less traded in it, and I swore to God I wasn’t the one who’d burned them. Finally one of them, wearing a blue trench coat, said, “Hey, man, the guy that burned us didn’t have no red boots on.” And so my stylish red rock-and-roll boots may have saved my life.

  Recording The Belle of Avenue A

  Our longtime producer, Richard Alderson, who had coproduced Tenderness Junction and It Crawled into My Hand, Honest (our Reprise albums), had gone off to study Mayan music in the Yucatan and had closed his studio.

  Frank Zappa had been doing sessions at Apostolic Studio on East Tenth Street, which was outfitted by its owner, John Townley, with the scene’s first twelve-track recording equipment. Townley had been in the Night Owl house band, the Magicians, with futur
e Fug Jake Jacobs. Our engineer at Apostolic was David Baker, a veteran of the civil rights movement who had done field recording in the South during Freedom Summer in 1964.

  I ran an ad in the Village Voice looking for a guitarist to help me work up songs. A young man named Dan Hamburg answered, and we began a fruitful collaboration, starting with The Belle of Avenue A for The Fugs and then my solo albums for Reprise, Sanders Truckstop, and Beer Cans on the Moon. Hamburg had just been fired as a caseworker at a foster care agency “because,” as he later told me, “I was complaining about how I thought that too many ‘difficult’ kids in my caseload were being summarily diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia-undifferentiated type,’ ejected from foster homes, and warehoused in Creedmore State Hospital, where they were zombified with thorazine and stellazine.” Later Hamburg spent thirty-one years teaching in New York’s inner-city junior high schools. But in 1969 he was all creativity and élan, and he helped us immensely.

  Hamburg played guitar on Tuli’s “Bum’s Song” and on my tunes “The Belle of Avenue A,” “Queen of the Nile,” and “Yodeling Yippie.” The Fugs performing ensemble—Ken Pine on guitar, Bob Mason on drums, and Bill Wolf on bass—recorded Weaver’s two tunes, “Dust Devil” and “Four Minutes to Twelve”; “Chicago” by Country Joe McDonald and myself; “Mr. Mack”; and Tuli’s “Flower Children” and “Children of the Dream.”

  Bum’s Song 3:06

  Dust Devil 3:18

  Chicago 2:14

  Four Minutes to Twelve 5:40

  Mr. Mack 3:51

  The Belle of Avenue A 5:42

  Queen of the Nile 2:46

  Flower Children 4:25

  Yodeling Yippie 2:19

  Children of the Dream 5:54

  Dan Hamburg, guitar backing up Tuli’s vocal on “Bum’s Song”

  “Dust Devil,” Ken Pine, guitar; Bill Wolf, bass; Bob Mason, drums; vocal, Ken Weaver

  “Chicago,” written by Ed Sanders and Country Joe McDonald for the Yippie film in the fall of 1968. Sung by Ed Sanders, Bill Wolf, Ken Pine; Ken Pine, guitar; Bob Mason, drums

  “Four Minutes to Twelve,” Ken Pine, guitar; Bill Wolf, bass; Bob Mason, drums; Ken Weaver, vocal

  “Mr. Mack,” Ken Pine, guitar; Bill Wolf, bass; Bob Mason, drums; Ed Sanders, vocal

  Dan Hamburg, guitar backing up Ed Sanders’vocals on “Yodeling Yippie,” “The Belle of Avenue A ,” and “Queen of the Nile”

  “Flower Children,” Jim Pepper, flute; Ken Pine, guitar; Bill Wolf, bass; Bob Mason, drums; vocals, Tuli Kupferberg , Bill Wolf, Ken Pine

  “Children of the Dream,” Ken Pine, lead and rhythm guitar, stylophone; Bob Mason, drums; Bill Wolf, bass; vocals, Tuli Kupferberg; harmony, Bill Wolf, Ken Pine

  Producer: Ed Sanders

  One of my contributions to The Belle of Avenue A was based on my experiences at the Chicago riots, commingled with my newfound skill at yodeling:Yodeling Yippie

  I ride the left wing airlines

  stirring up trouble at night

  Secret signs and secret deeds

  I’m just a Yodeling Yippie

  kai-yippie yodelaydie . . . etc.

  I went to see Mayor Daley

  Drove into Chicago town

  Mayor Daley that porcomorph

  The lettering: “The Fugs: Messages of Love, Peace, Social Concern, Poesy, Rectitude, Honor, and Spiritual Salvation.”

  Radio spots for The Belle of Avenue A.

  He chopped down his yodeling friends

  Hodelaydie Hodelaydie Hodelaydie . . . etc.

  I ride across the U.S. A .

  Stirring up peace-creeps at night

  We’ll ride high and we’ll ride low

  I’m just a yodeling Yippie

  kai-yippie yodelaydie . . . etc.

  I went to see Mayor Daley

  Rode into Chicago town

  Mayor Daley that porcomorph

  Chopped down his yodeling friends

  hodelaydie hodelaydie hoo

  For much of 1969 I kept recording at Apostolic Studio, with outstanding engineer David Baker. I mixed and sequenced Golden Filth, The Fugs live at the Fillmore East, which we had recorded the weekend before RFK’s assassination. I also recorded Lionel Goldbart’s album God Loves Rock and Roll there and my own solo album Sanders Truckstop. Later in the year I turned Allen Ginsberg onto Apostolic, where he recorded his album of his musical settings of William Blake poems.

  Saying Good-Bye

  My formal duties as a Fug were over. It had not been an easy time. We were very, very controversial. We were always on the verge of getting arrested. We had bomb threats. We were picketed by right-wingers. Someone sent me a fake bomb in the mail. Someone called once and said he was going to bomb, first me, then Frank Zappa. We were investigated by the FBI, by the Post Office, by the New York District Attorney’s Office. We were often encouraged not to try to perform again at the same venue. We were tossed off a major label. All of this took bites out of our spirit. I was getting weary—four years had seemed like forty and I felt as if I’d awakened inside a Samuel Beckett novel.

  Running a rock band is a quick and hasty thing, and however much long-term planning gets done, improper and impolite decisions are sometimes made—and they haunt a bandleader into midlife and beyond. And so The Fugs of the 1960s were no more, and I put a few boxes of live concert tapes into my archives and did not pay attention to them for twenty-five years.

  As everyone knows all too well, everything flows, frays, rots, and rinses. For instance, the building that had once housed the Peace Eye Bookstore on East Tenth Street is no more, so that the exact spot where The Fugs shouted out “The Ten Commandments” and “Swinburne Stomp” at the opening party was for years a summertime vegetable garden. Tempus fugo-rum fugit. (Now the site of the “Swinburne Stomp” has been turned into a housing project.)

  The Fugs were lucky throughout those years in attracting quality. The musicians who played with us—Lee Crabtree, Ken Pine, Bob Mason, Dan Kootch, Jake Jacobs, Bill Wolf, Stefan Grossman, Jon Kalb, Geoff Outlaw, Charles Larkey, John Anderson, Pete Kearney, Steve Weber, and Peter Stampfel—were among the finest of their era. We also attracted quality engineers: Richard Alderson, Chris Huston, and David Baker. We are lucky to have found Mo Ostin, then the president of Reprise Records, who always supported and encouraged us and never censored us.

  The Resist Tour

  Just a few days after completing The Belle of Avenue A, I went on a tour of the United States with a group of poets protesting the Draft and the ever-continuing war in Indochina. From April 25 to May 3 there were one-nighters in Iowa City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boulder, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee. I was honored to be included with such poets as Gary Snyder, Robert Creeley, Galway Kinnell, Robert Duncan, Clayton Eshleman, Morgan Gibson, Muriel Rukeyser, and Barbara Gibson.

  During one of the flights I sat with my friend Robert Bly, who had a year before received the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, but in the awards ceremony in New York City he handed the $1,000 award check to a representative of the Draft Resistance, saying, “I ask you to use this money . . . to find and to counsel other young men, urging them to defy the Draft authorities, and not to destroy their spiritual lives by participating in this war.” (It was a brave thing to say in public because he said it just weeks after Dr. Benjamin Spock, William Sloan Coffin, and other anti-Draft activists had been indicted.)

  Poster for the May 3, 1969, Resistance Read-In at St. Boniface Church in Milwaukee.

  In our conversation on the flight Bly told me about flying saucer publications he had been reading, particularly about peculiar outer-spacelings that had been observed who had “I-shaped mouths.” That inspired me in writing Shards of God, where I placed in the story line some I-mouthed saucerlings.

  God Loves Rock and Roll

  In the spring of 1969 I produced an album of Lionel Goldbart’s songs, with the great title God Loves Rock and Roll, for Douglas Records. David Baker of Apostolic Studios was the engineer.
We completed the album, though Alan Douglas never released it.

  Lionel Goldbart signed a contract with me, dated March 1, 1969. The album had a budget of $5,000, which was substantial for 1969. I gave him a $500 advance against 90 percent of all royalty moneys received from Douglas Records.

  The album was arranged by Dan Hamburg and by Randy Kaye, both of whom had done work on It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. Kaye oversaw some sessions on God Loves Rock and Roll, with Miroslav Vitous on bass, Kaye on marimba and vibes, Perry Robinson on clarinet, Richard Young-stein on sitar and bass, David Izenson on bass, and Rusty Clark on electric viola. The basic studio setup for takes was overseen by Randy Kaye: vibes, clarinet, viola, and two standup basses.

  I turned in the completed album to Douglas Records.

  Side A

  God Loves Rock and Roll

  Teeny Bopper Song

  Sun Is Hole in Sky

  The Kabbalah Gang

  Space Cadets

  City of Clay

  Side B

  Jack o’Lantern

  Piggy Wiggy’s Back in Action

  In My Lives

  Little Tripper