Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

by Simon Warner

  The Beats clearly pinned their colours to the mast of jazz but what do you think they made of rock ‘n’ roll in the later 1950s and the music that became rock from the mid-1960s? Can you see evidence in rock song-writing – lyrically, for example – of Beat influence?

  There is direct evidence of the Beats as a primary source in the song-writing of Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and other luminaries. But the influence of the Beats on rock song-writing runs much deeper than their documented impact on these justifiably influential songwriters. Beat writers, in a sense, freed all of American song-writing and literature from the stale old world it was chained to. The Beats’ timing was good. America was growing lazy and fat for perhaps the first time. Many who would go on to write the rock soundtrack of the 1960s and 70s were among the first to discover two books banned in most American schools, The Catcher in the Rye and On the Road. Reading these was a part of the American rite of passage in the Eisenhower/Kennedy era. The 1960s youthquake and the rock song-writing explosion which was to follow could not have taken place without the direct and subliminal influence of these two books. Kerouac’s romanticised notion of hitchhiking in On the Road accounts for untold thousands of road trips launched in the pre and early hippy time-frame. Though for most who would later pick up a guitar and a pen to express their feelings, the influence of the Beats was real, but more peripheral. All things Beat, from bongos to Burroughs, began to slowly stir itself into the American cultural stew. Notably it was television rather than Corso or McClure that brought Beat to the heartland. The nation’s greatest exposure to Beat, and any resultant message contained therein, was delivered by Maynard G. Krebs the jive talking, dopey, ‘beatnik’ sidekick on popular TV sitcom The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis. Maynard was massive and weekly, while Kerouac struggled to draw a crowd for his live TV reading on the Steve Allen Show. But the authentic Beats contributed to, and certainly have a real place in the continuum of American music, that broad expanse of sounds and influences which they were so moved by.

  Or is it more of a sociological issue – is it simply linked to anti-authoritarian resistance?

  A bit of both I suppose. By kicking in the doors of American literature the Beat writers ensured that future generations of writers and songwriters would never have to endure the restraints imposed upon them prior to the1960s. In the process they helped define a liberated, more ‘in-your-face’ and, ultimately, more American style of writing than anything which had preceded it. This sea change occurred simultaneously with the igniting of the Civil Rights and anti-war and movements along with a counterculture deeply rooted in anti-authoritarian resistance.

  To what degree might we regard Neal Cassady as an archetypal rock hero? He has been eulogised by the Grateful Dead, Tom Waits and many others.

  Neal almost single-handedly invented the notion of the non-stop, 24-hour, sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, though he would have substituted jazz or classical for the musical component here. Neal personified action. He was the driver. He got you from here to there, an unforgettable, magnetic persona to those who encountered his frenetic force field. Back in the days before the music business was reduced to a series of talent contests – when real rock stars walked amongst us – they were a similar force to Neal. Again, Neal as master of all things cerebral and sensual.

  What do you think Cassady made of the post-Beat culture of Kesey and the Acid Tests?

  I’d speculate that Neal saw little difference between his years as Beat and hippy, though his hippy years were certainly more speed addled. Neal lived life in a series of moments: a continuation of the pursuit of kicks and some new place to find them in.

  Did Cassady like rock music? Did he connect with it? What evidence may there be of this?

  Though rock ’n’ roll was staking its claim on American music and culture in this time-frame, evidence suggests that Neal didn’t think any more or less of it than any other musical form. He loved all kinds of music, but preferred to groove with and find inspiration from jazz and its pure, improvisational nature. Or dig deep into classical music. Though his son John recalls Neal listening to Chuck Berry on the car radio and cranking up ‘Maybelline’ as he banged the dashboard to the beat. There was a natural affinity between the staccato phrasing and cars and girls centric lyrics of Berry and the Beats. Another link to an apparent appreciation of rock ’n’ roll can be found in On the Road, Part Four. While in San Antonio, Sal and Dean pump nickels into the jukebox playing ‘I Like My Baby’s Pudding’ by Wynonie Harris, the same Wynonie Harris whose ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ would a few years later be covered by an unknown Elvis Presley. Did Chuck Berry read On the Road? Probably not, but Chuck and Jack and Neal dug Slim Gaillard. They were all swept along in the continuum of American music.

  How have rock music or popular music, in all its forms, featured in the Neal Cassady celebrations you have organised?

  The Neal Cassady Birthday Bash has more music each year. It’s ranged from singer-songwriter Chris Carrington, singing his original Neal specific material, to David Amram jamming with renowned trumpeter Hugh Raglin. At the upcoming 2012 Birthday Bash, in February, we’ll feature noted experimental guitarist Janet Feder and Jonny Five from platinum-selling, socially conscious hip hop band, the Flobots. Plus, David Amram will perform the music from the movie Pull My Daisy. As the event expands over the next few years to encompass a full weekend of activities, I’d like to feature artists like Patti Smith and Tom Waits. They’d both like to play the Denver Bash, they just don’t know it yet…

  His surviving family have certain musical tendencies. Can you say something about those interests? Have they played at the Neal Cassady birthday event?

  Son John has played guitar since his teens. He’s been in bands and still plays and writes. In 2010, he jammed on stage with some friends following the Bash in Denver.

  What might Carolyn Cassady make of rock culture – does she have sympathies with it or does she link its rise in some way to the early demise of Neal?

  I would never attempt speak for Carolyn, but doubt her estimation would be very high for most of what was to become known as rock. She is truly a genteel, almost plantation-reared Southern lady who’s in possession of a rapier-like wit and self-assured knowledge.

  Have you encountered musicians you¹ve worked with or managed who have an affection for the Beats or see them as an inspiration?

  Yes. And I think the Beats will continue to be a strong lyrical and lifestyle influence on a direct and subliminal level. Their impact is just beginning to reach a new, hungry post-rock ’n’ roll generation via hip hop, rap, electronica and beyond. The great continuum of American music – now truly a world music – rolls on! And Neal’s still in the driver’s seat.

  5 THE BRITISH BEAT: ROCK, LITERATURE AND THE UK COUNTERCULTURE IN THE 1960S

  The mark that the Beat Generation writers left on the US at the end of the 1950s is hard to dispute. From the best-sellers lists, which saw Jack Kerouac’s On the Road included for some weeks after the book’s American publication in 1957, to the ructions that surrounded the obscenity claims against Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and the subsequent trial in the same year which would catapult an until then little-known poet into the national headlines, the Beats left their thumb-print on the consciousness of their homeland. They were hardly greeted with open arms by the mainstream, probably despised by much of the cultural establishment, but they were present on the radar: on TV chat shows, like that fronted by host and jazz pianist Steve Allen, where Kerouac would read,1 or on middle-of-the-road, TV situation comedies which might feature a Beat character,2 a butt of jokes, yes, but a recognised archetype in US homes as one decade moved towards the next.

  Add to that, the vicarious interest of the weekly news photo magazines like Life3 in the scenes surrounding those who followed in the wake of these writers – in Greenwich Village and North Beach, San Francisco – and the shorthand coined by Herb Caen – ‘beatnik’ – in a 1958 newspaper article for the San Francis
co Chronicle4 that managed to elide both Beat and Sputnik – a recent arrival in the skies above Earth – and appeared to suggest that this subcultural crew were a terrestrial threat to American values just as the Soviets’ orbiting satellite was an extra-terrestrial one, and we can see that the Beat Generation, while suspected and denigrated by core society, had made an impression.

  Perhaps then it was little wonder that a rising crowd of young writers and musicians should feel some attachment to this rebel breed and its provocative ideas, this gathering of individuals who challenged the certainties of everyday politics and morality. Thus Ken Kesey and Richard Fariña, among the novelists, and Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia and Roger McGuinn, among the singers and group members, to name just a small number of examples, would, by the early 1960s, be referencing their affection for the Beat axis and working through how they could incorporate some its style, some of its messages, into the prose they were writing, the songs they were penning.

  But how did these issues, these cultural forces, characterise their presence in the UK? In this chapter I want to consider the ways in which British writing made strides in the 1950s, particularly with the rise of that body of fiction associated with the Angry Young Men, a movement that even attracted comparisons, if superficial ones only, with the Beat upsurge. Primarily though, I want to examine the quite different trajectory of popular music, an area of activity that saw the UK cower in the shadow of American domination during that decade, only to break out of this cultural stranglehold in dramatic fashion during the early years of the 1960s. As an extraordinary, and quite unpredicted, shift occurred, one that would see British songs and sounds actually challenge the previous omnipotence of US musical stars and their output, UK poets would be also able to carve out a new space that built on the successes of those home-based groups and singers. These innovative wordsmiths were provided with an opportunity to concoct a body of literature that bore closer resemblance to the products of the Beat eruption than the more conventional and restrained responses of the Angry Young Men.

  Furthermore, the forging of an informal, social alliance between a rampant British musical scene from around 1964 and the practices of other creative and ground-breaking artists – painters, photographers, film-makers, playwrights and more – would lead to the emergence of a discernible and eclectic underground, one that would increasingly raise its head above the parapets during the remainder of the decade. In a time of economic prosperity, the liberalised and progressive tone of the period, often dubbed the Swinging Sixties, would encourage creative experiment and generate new opportunities to make connections with the fashionable mainstream. This UK phenomenon would bear comparison with the simultaneous surge of American energy that became known as the counterculture, that gathering of alternative renegades whose libertarian ideas would gain momentum from the mid-1950s onwards, first under a Beat banner and later as part of the hippy cavalcade.

  In Britain, however, the conditions were quite different from those in the US and in crucial ways. While in America, the campaign for Civil Rights would give a focus and impetus to political radicalism during the first half of the decade and the demonstrations against the Vietnam War would inherit much of that earlier energy in the second half of a dynamic period, the UK was arguably more concerned with the exciting possibilities that full employment and consumer spending power might generate. Nonetheless, with a Labour government elected in 1964, this atmosphere of optimism re-kindled long-running debates about class and classlessness in a modern Britain. The startling rise of popular musicians, many of whom were drawn from the lower echelons of society, gave these questions fresh pertinence. Adding to this ferment of social fluidity were those engaged in the subterranean activities of the avant garde scene. Many such creatives would successfully cling to the coat-tails of the new, sophisticated rock music – hugely popular, mass consumed and increasingly politically engaged itself from the mid-1960s – to also make their presence felt on a number of the main stages of British life. As part of this survey, too, I want to assess to what extent there was actual evidence of the Beat spirit among the musicians who led this 1960s charge.

  But, to backtrack a little, how were the areas of British fiction and poetry affected by the developments in New York and on the West Coast in the 1950s? Britain was most certainly a nation of literature for sure, even if those literary forms remained of a rather staid and conventional variety as the Second World War concluded. The written word was caught in the tides of an imposing history – from Shakespeare to Donne, Keats to Wilde, Wells to Waugh – challenged to some degree by the modernist scribes of the 1920s – James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and American émigré T. S. Eliot – then the new Socialist voices of the 1930s and their prime heir, George Orwell, from the 1940s. But the beating heart of conservatism, in both prose and verse, remained largely at the helm. However, from the middle of the 1950s, a wave of younger voices would challenge establishment notions of literary value. The Angry Young Men would produce new plays and novels that had something of the restless, resisting spirit of their Beat counterparts – challenging to accepted models of society, testing the seams of the social fabric – though the subjects they addressed and the ways they addressed them were somewhat different, as we shall see. It was also rather in their content than their form that they would take on long-standing bastions; the experimental tendencies of many Beats were rather less evident in the British canon of the AYM.

  As for popular music, Britain, in the later 1940s and on into the 1950s, lived in the shadow of American domination, a product, we might argue, of a three-pronged assault. Firstly, Broadway, and its leading role in a young dramatic form known as musical theatre, had become pre-eminent since the 1920s, as both a setting for songwriters and composers and a source of material for singers and performers on New York City’s Great White Way and beyond. Secondly, Hollywood had become the means to transport that music and those songs across the US and around the world via its big screen romantic set-pieces and their accompanying soundtracks, still a relative novelty mid-century, as sound itself had only come to the big screen in 1927. Thirdly, we might cite a significant factor that had grown not out of industrial intent or strategic planning but rather out of global catastrophe: the presence of the US in Europe. Once President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s troops had joined the war effort against Germany, here was a further means by which American popular culture, and its music specifically, could be effectively exported eastwards.

  The fact that US soldiers would remain in Britain and on the Western continent for decades after the cessation of that landmark conflict added to this pervasive effect. For the British people, living with the very real possibility that the war might be lost, the American military assumed the role of would-be liberators on several levels, literally and symbolically. These transatlantic allies offered the genuine chance of victory in battle but also represented more besides. The stationing of the American troops generated a high level of local excitement but also offered the appealing spectre of cultural freedom. This combination proved a compelling attraction to those millions raised on the grey rations of a largely black and white island, during the dark days of the Blitz and then on into the austere early years of the next decade as post-war rationing persisted. The songs, the musicians and the dances, linked to the homeland of these military visitors, became more than just means of passing the time in a period of uncertainty and paucity; they emerged also as an emblem of liberty and escape, a metaphor of hope and a carrier of more glamorous possibilities. The lyrics, the melodies and the rhythms promised the tantalising prospect of more exhilarating experiences once Germany and her allies had been defeated and, in the 1950s, that war-time surge, that after-war promise, had hardly stalled.

  In fact, by the end of the 1950s, the US’s input, as exporter of popular cultural forms with a high quotient of glamour, was virtually undiminished, perhaps even magnified. American rock ’n’ roll, emerging in full flood from the mid-decade in the shape of singers such as Elvis
Presley, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis, thrilled a new generation of young Britons. Furthermore, there were few home-grown figures to challenge the appeal and the authority of that great wave of US talent. So how did pop music,5 a term itself only coined around the middle of the century, stand within the British landscape at this time? In the UK, indigenously produced pop had little more than parochial impact. There was a British popular music, of course, one that could be characterised in three principal ways: light orchestral music, romantic ballads and the novelty songs attached to a music hall tradition. Light music would be heard on the BBC’s Light Programme,6 a middle of the road music-based service, inter-mingled with vocal or swing versions of American romantic songs that owed their debt to the prolific US assembly lines of theatre and film. Music hall material, more comedic and often risqué, was more likely to be heard live in theatres or communally sung around a pub piano. But all of these styles looked backwards – sentimental, nostalgic or simply outdated, they touched older, adult listeners, still idealising a pre-war idea of courtship and domestic normality. Yet, just as the US was beginning to experience various cultural shifts in the midst of its own consumer boom, a more repressed and straitened Britain was also registering readings on the Geiger counter of social change.

  More subtle than the American model perhaps, this evolution could nevertheless not be ignored. If the rise of the teenager, with its attendant connection to fashion and location – sartorial looks, style choices and identifiable gathering places – occurred more slowly, if there was less spending power for British adolescents than their US counterparts, there was still a recognisable surfacing of that phenomenon known as teenage. This previously un-named stage – post-childhood but pre-adulthood – was by now being identified and discussed by commentators, from sociologists to newspaper columnists. Coffee bars became haunts of those not old enough to leave home and too young to visit public houses,7 and those cafés also provided opportunities for a new generation of young artists to play live.8 The new 45rpm, vinyl single – two-sided, plastic, 7'' discs, invented in the US at the end of the 1940s, which teens could afford to buy or certainly play on jukeboxes – contributed to this change, too. In addition, American movies cultivating images of adolescent life – from Rebel Without a Cause (1955) to Rock Around the Clock (1956) – crossed the ocean to London and Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. In the midst of these developments, localised subcultural strains began to take root, seeded, in some cases, by US style and attitude but, in other instances, distinctly British in mode. If the bikers, the ton-up boys of the late 1950s, were motorcyclists aware of movies like The Wild One, at least by reputation,9 and loved American rock music, the Teddy Boys, who pre-dated them, were much closer to a home-grown tribe.