MEET THE BEATS
1. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI & CITY LIGHTS BOOKS
In Larry Keenan's cover photo for the erstwhile 'City Lights Journal,' proprietor Lawrence Ferlinghetti is pictured standing in front of the North Beach bookstore of the same name, brandishing an oversized umbrella above some of San Francisco's Beat and post-Beat cognoscenti. No matter that it isn't raining; the photo symbolizes the tall, mannerly Ferlinghetti's protective and supportive attitude towards the city's creative souls, persisting more than half a century to the present day.
Studying in Paris in the 1940s, Ferlinghetti, an expatriate New Yorker, had acquired an interest both in literate, user-friendly bookstores and in the city of San Francisco, as it was represented to him by older poet Kenneth Rexroth. Early in the following decade, Ferlinghetti relocated to North Beach and, with pioneering pop culture magazine editor Peter Martin, opened City Lights Books, in 1953, as the nation's first paperback bookstore.
After Martin sold out to Ferlinghetti in 1955, the latter expanded into publishing with a book of his own verse, like him measured and elegant, that launched City Lights' 'Pocket Poets Series.' A year later, he published 'Howl and Other Poems' by Allen Ginsberg, which bourgeoned both his and the poet's fame. The paperback, flying in the face of establishment propriety with its unabashed use of language and images, landed Ferlinghetti in a nearby municipal court, as a defendant against obscenity charges.
City Lights Books continues its functions as a center for readings, publications, book sales, and the cordial continuation of the best of the Beat spirit.
2. JACK KEROUAC
From Massachusetts and New Jersey, respectively, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg met in 1944 while attending Columbia University in New York. There, with the older St. Louis-bred writer William Burroughs, they began a celebration of rebellious words and deeds, which eventually led to their joint migration to the West Coast a decade later.
Personifying the wanderlust of his postwar peers, Kerouac spent time at sea and on a number of road trips (eventually reaching San Francisco) in the company of hard-knock but fascinating characters. One such acquaintance was New York junkie Herbert Huncke, from whom Kerouac borrowed the word 'beat' to apply to the contrarian lifestyle to which he and his friends aspired.
All these experiences, and more to come later, were grist for Kerouac's writer's mill, resulting over two decades in numerous poems and novels, the most famous of which is 'On the Road.' Lodging in San Francisco or its suburbs, Kerouac became a staple of the North Beach Beat scene, dying sooner than most of his friends (in 1969, of cirrhosis at age 47) and posthumously lending his name to the alley alongside City Lights Books.
3. ALLEN GINSBERG
Son of a mother committed to an asylum, Allen Ginsberg was subject to periods of blazing energy and depression. As a teenager, Ginsberg was relieved to find himself in compatible company, both intellectually and creatively, in New York City's mid-1940s.
There, Ginsberg wrote for a Columbia student newspaper; hung with Kerouac, Burroughs, and future Beat bard Gregory Corso; and in 1954 followed the path of some of these friends to San Francisco, where he initiated a romantic relationship with his fellow poet and eventual life-long companion, Peter Orlovsky.
Ginsberg's poem 'Howl' gained notoriety after prompting a much-publicized obscenity trial, but it wasn't the only work in which the poet made reference to homoeroticism and other sexual matters, which he believed were deserving of full expression in literature and elsewhere.
In poems and publicly, Ginsberg also expressed his dismay at his country's crass commercialism and at the lack of understanding and mistreatment of mentally unbalanced persons, including his mother, himself, and patients he'd encountered in hospitals.
Ginsberg's expository style was sometimes suggestive of the title of his most famous poem, seeming like a run-on howl composed of repeated words, coinages, and fantastic images, though all this is also reflective of his ethnic grounding in the literature of Judaism.
After the Beat era, Ginsberg remained a familiar figure in San Francisco and other progressive locales, protesting war and advocating for gay rights and the legalization of marijuana.
4. WILLIAM BURROUGHS
Older (born in 1914) and usually better dressed (in suit and fedora) than his fellow Beats, William Burroughs made for a curious sort of mentor to several of the younger Beats, and to many other writers and readers of his several novels in subsequent generations.
Perhaps not evident in his demeanor, Burroughs' homosexuality and long experience with guns, heroin, and pills were transparent in his writing, which often functioned as thinly disguised autobiography.
Burroughs' books, including the celebrated 'Naked Lunch' (1962), also referenced the quirky circumstances of his life, including his sometime employment as an exterminator, an unintentional act of manslaughter, and his seamy sojourn in North Africa. His honesty in expression, like fellow writer Neal Cassady's, helped set a standard for the Beats, as did his exploration of America's underworld.
But it was Burroughs' erudition that first made an impression on the teenaged Allen Ginsberg when they were introduced near Columbia in the mid-'40s. Ginsberg soon shared his acquaintance with another new friend, Jack Kerouac, but Burroughs didn't follow the two younger writers west until well after their instigation of the Beat culture in San Francisco. Ginsberg and Kerouac, however, championed Burroughs on the West Coast, and later spent time with him in Paris and in Tangiers.
By the 1990s, Burroughs had seemingly surpassed the status of other Beats as a pop icon, appearing in films directed by Gus Van Sant and receiving the adulation of younger icons David Bowie, Patti Smith, and Johnny Depp.
5. MICHAEL McCLURE
The Six Gallery in San Francisco's Marina neighborhood, west of North Beach, was a memorable site for Michael McClure to render the first public reading of his poetry, in October 1955. New to the city, to which he'd come to study art with abstract expressionist Clyfford Still, McClure had been asked to assemble a reading at the Gallery, a former garage that had become devoted to the visual arts.
McClure enlisted his new friend, Allen Ginsberg, to help recruit poets, who included Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, and Philip Lamantia, with elder poet and long-time San Francisco resident Kenneth Rexroth functioning as emcee. The event is best remembered for Ginsberg's introduction of his long, passionate poem 'Howl,' cheered on by an inebriated Jack Kerouac.
McClure's own first book of poetry was published a year later, and he went on to produce many others, suffused with his animalistic approach to the human condition. (He considered people to be "bags of meat" and performed one of his readings for the lions at the San Francisco Zoo.)
Despite this call to the wild, McClure had a benign nature that was easily embraced, in the latter part of the '60s, by the Hippies. Like Ginsberg, McClure stood up to authorities, who accused him of depicting obscene acts in his play 'The Beard.'
McClure served as playwright-in-residence at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, penned the song 'Mercedes Benz' (made popular by Janis Joplin), and was acknowledged as a poetic mentor to Doors songwriter Jim Morrison.
6. ON THE ROAD
Jack Kerouac wrote his chef d'oeuvre, 'On the Road,' in 1951, before the acknowledged emergence of the Beat culture, and set the start date of the narrative in 1947. But the incubation of the Beats was already in process by the earlier date, with the coming together in New York City of Kerouac, fellow writers Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, and the charismatic soldier of fortune, Neal Cassady. The foursome is featured in the Viking Press first printing of 'On the Road' (1957) under fictitious names.
Despite the pseudonyms (which incidentally weren't used in Kerouac's original manuscript, typed over a period of three weeks on a continuous scroll of tracing paper), many of the novel's events were based on the real-life experiences of Kerouac and his friends and acquaintances that took place during the period that the Beat culture was coalescing.
The book's title references four journeys made by Kerouac across the U.S. and Mexico, some in the company of Cassady. Cassady inspired Kerouac not only as a vital fellow traveler but also because of his own literary style: natural, without traditional literary affect, and forthright in recounting sexual adventures.
Although some of the racier episodes and the real names of the protagonists were edited out by Kerouac before the initial publication, they were mostly restored, 38 years after the author's death, for 'The Original Scroll' edition of the book, published in 2007.
Still, enough salaciousness remained in the first published edition of 'On the Road' in 1957, along with accounts of a marijuana-fueled foray into Mexico, to garner plenty of positive and negative reactions from Beats and the wider reading public. The book helped reinforce images of the Beats in general, and San Francisco (one of the featured locales) in particular, and was enormously influential on later writers.
7. HOWL
Arguably the most widely recognized poem from the Beat era, and an enduring landmark in 20th century American literature, 'Howl' was revised several times by its creator, Allen Ginsberg, right up to the point of his first public reading of it at San Francisco's Six Gallery in 1955.
Ginsberg had written the long poem at his cottage in Berkeley at the urging of his therapist and of his poetic mentor, Kenneth Rexroth, while devoting himself to writing full time and striving to free his voice. He found models of expression in William Carlos Williams and in his fellow New York expatriate Jack Kerouac, but set out to create his own form of versifying, based on the repetition of key words and the basing of line lengths on the rhythms of breathing.
This incantatory form, somewhat evocative of Jewish liturgical text, supported the content of 'Howl,' which bemoaned the repression of a variety of counter-culture characters. In one of the poem's four sections, Ginsberg, inspired by an episode of peyote-fueled visualization, rails against the monster of contemporary materialism.
During the Six Gallery reading, the poets and others who were assembled recognized the passion and uniqueness of Ginsberg's vision, as did Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who set about publishing 'Howl and Other Poems,' and a reporter from the 'New York Times,' who gave the poem national exposure.
The objects of Ginsberg's empathy and criticism resonated with the Beat Generation, several of whose prominent figures appear within 'Howl,' often in coded references. Peppered with homoerotic and other sexual allusions, 'Howl' gained further fame as the subject of an obscenity trial, at which Ferlinghetti prevailed.
8. VINCE GUARALDI
"Jazz didn't need any poetry," maintains jazz pianist Larry Vuckovich. "It was poetry in itself." But in the 1950s, jazz was happening in the same environs as poetry, in North Beach, where one of the neighborhood's most distinctive-looking musicians, the mustachioed Vince Guaraldi, became the young Vuckovich's piano teacher.
"San Francisco in the '50s covered the whole [musical] spectrum," Vuckovich remembers, and Guaraldi's keyboard and compositional style embodied several genres: cool phrasing, Latin syncopation, and a light-hearted approach to voicings evocative of country player Floyd Cramer.
Hard-bop players were closer in rhythm and spirit to the written language of the Beats, but the denizens of North Beach frequented clubs where Guaraldi worked his smoother stylings. They also caught him in the company of Latin leader Cal Tjader, who launched Guaraldi's recording career and employed him throughout the '50s, until the pianist left to focus on a solo career. Guaraldi also appeared elsewhere in San Francisco, sometimes engaging Vuckovich as a 'sub' or as a partner in dual-piano gigs.
The breezy classic, 'Cast Your Fate to the Wind,' from Guaraldi's 1962 album Impressions of 'Black Orpheus,' brought him a jazz Grammy and crossover placement on the pop charts.
A couple of years later, Guaraldi secured another long-term gig, scoring a series of television productions and a full-length film based on California cartoonist Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts'
comic strip. The pianist's sweet 'Linus and Lucy' theme for 'Peanuts' brought him the greatest renown and fame, long outlasting his premature death at age 47 in 1976.
9. MORT SAHL
Credited as one of the forefathers of contemporary stand-up comedy, Mort Sahl could be more accurately tagged as a comic social commentator, an important subset of the stand-up panoply.
Born in Montreal and brought up in Southern California, Sahl came north in the early 1950s to Enrico Banducci's hungry i nightclub in North Beach to hone his chops. Newspaper in hand and casually dressed in a pullover sweater, he'd comment sardonically on current events, especially politics.
"Sahl was just so charming," recalls Catherine Munson, then a young married biochemical researcher and soon to become the first lady of sales for Eichler Homes. "We were heavily involved in the politics and excitement of change, so we thoroughly enjoyed Mort."
Despite his rather academic appearance, Sahl's mordent political criticism resonated with the anti-authoritarian attitude of the Beats. And though he lacked the self-deprecating insight of Woody Allen and the risqué blue humor of Lenny Bruce, Sahl was much revered by contemporary and later comedians; in fact, Allen compared Sahl's influence on comedy to Charlie 'Bird' Parker's on jazz. Sahl was also befriended by several American Presidents, recorded a dozen albums (including one at the hungry i), and appeared in several films.
10. LENNY BRUCE
The hungry i, along with other North Beach venues, also helped spotlight the stand-up comedy career of Lenny Bruce, whose approach shared Sahl's criticism of the establishment but differed distinctly in Bruce's use of character voices and confrontational profanity.
Bruce's spontaneous, inspired, sometimes eccentric riffing was in fact much closer to the spirit of bebop than was the smooth, reserved demeanor of Sahl. "I preferred Bruce to either Allen or Sahl, because Bruce was more biting," says Ned Eichler. "But my parents just didn't take to him. They liked Woody [Allen] and the folksingers."
The law's surveillance of Bruce's material for obscenity was more pernicious than that suffered by the Beat poets, who were of course drawn to Bruce's club appearances on both coasts. Bruce was in fact arrested several times, and ultimately died of a morphine overdose while awaiting appeal on a workhouse sentence.
Among Bruce's San Francisco fans was newspaper columnist Herb Caen, who dubbed him "a rebel, but not without a cause." Bruce recorded some of his overdrive schtick for Fantasy, the Berkeley-based record label, and remains a role model for practitioners of 'blue' stand-up comedy.
11. HUNGRY I
The brick-wall décor duplicated in stand-up comedy clubs across the nation is said to have originated at the hungry i, the venue opened by colorful North Beach impresario Enrico Banducci at 599 Jackson Street, after he'd purchased the enterprise with a hip and mysterious name in the mid-'50s from its previous owner, Eric 'Big Daddy' Nord.
Interspersed with the comedy of such critical minds as Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, and Lenny Bruce was live music from national touring jazz and folk acts. The Kingston Trio recorded at the club, as did the Limeliters, musical satirist Tom Lehrer, and Mort Sahl. As its national reputation grew, the hungry i also helped boost the careers of comedians Bill Cosby, Godfrey Cambridge, and Professor Irwin Corey, as well as neighborhood resident Vince Guaraldi.
It is said that Banducci bowed to the pleadings of a very young Barbra Streisand, granting her an extended booking in the late '50s that served as her steppingstone to national fame.
By dint of the cutting-edge comedy in particular, and despite its relatively sophisticated setting, the hungry i attracted Beat audiences as well as such local cognoscenti as the young Ned Eichler and his parents.
By the mid-'60s, with stand-up and folk less in fashion, Banducci had decided to sell the club and concentrate his efforts on the café that still bears his given name, at 504 Broadway.
12. THE CELLAR
The reputation of this little venue at 576 Green Street preceded its opening in the heart of North Beach in 1956, with crowds five times the 100-person capacity soon clamoring to get in.
Sometimes called The Jazz Cellar, it had been converted by jazz musicians Wil Carlson, Jack Minger, and Sonny Nelson from an old Chinese restaurant into one of the city's best-loved showcases for bebop and progressive music, alongside the nearby Jazz Workshop, the Black Hawk in the Tenderloin district, and a few venues further west in the Fillmore and Richmond districts.
A week after opening the nightclub, Nelson invited a friend, the 26-year-old poet ruth weiss, to read her work with jazz accompaniment. It was a hit -- and a draw for Beat audiences seeking late-night entertainment, as well as for such aspiring bebop musicians as the young Larry Vuckovich. "Then I started asking other poets to come and join me," weiss recalls, "none of who ever gave me any credit, and some who became very famous."
Veteran poet Kenneth Rexroth picked Lawrence Ferlinghetti, still relatively unknown for his verse, to partner with him in a live recording at the Cellar on the Fantasy label, accompanied by the 'Cellar Jazz Quintet.' Jack Kerouac professed his love for The Cellar in his writing, extolling "the girls with dark glasses and blonde hair, the brunettes in pretty coats by the side of their little boy (The Man) -- raising beer to their lips, sucking in cigarette smoke, beating to the beat of the beat of Bruce Moore, the perfect tenor saxophone..."
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