I saw the best minds of my generation...

Ok, so I have been obsessing on the Beat poets for a few weeks. Yes, yes, I know that I have been reading a lot of Ginsberg and Kerouac and Burroughs - and visiting their old San Francisco haunts, too - and spending a lot of my vacation time thinking about why they strike me as so important - especially in 2010. What's more, it has become quite clear to me that their influence has been sadly minimized and even neglected in much of what passes for rock and roll critique.

Clearly, Mikal Gilmore gets it right in Stories Done his reflections on the outcasts of the 60s. Writer Kate Stephenson has written a chapter called "A Revival of Poetry as Song: Allen Ginsberg, Rock-and-Roll and the Return to the Bardic Tradition." And there is an insightful posting quoting Rick Danko of the Band sharing his thoughts about Ginsberg, Dylan and rock and roll. But not a great deal more that I have been able to find. (NOTE: if you know of other resources that are valuable, PLEASE share them, ok?)

So, I want to turn this current obsession into something creative and maybe even satisfying; which means I am going to write an extended essay called "The Madness of the Best Minds of My Generation: Beat Poets and the Art of Rock and Roll." (If I knew how to make a flow chart on blogger I would outline it visually. Because I don't, however, let me lay out my ideas like this.) The essay would have four parts:

I. Introduction
A. The foundation for my hunch is Ginsberg's poem "Howl."

1. It was influenced by Blake, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman

2. It was critiqued by Kenneth Rexsroth of San Francisco as "too stilted and academic"

3. Finding his own "bebop" and "spiritual" voice - helped along by Jack Kerouac - "Howl" is shared in North Beach in 1956

B. The poem is an oral and written version of "bebop art: immediate, intuitive and improvisational.

C. It is equally "incarnational" in a prophetic way in that it explores EVERYTHING within the human experience: shadow and light - debasement and enlightenment - spirituality and sexuality - economics and matters of the heart. In this, Ginsberg is connected to the prophets of the Old Testament.

II. The popular culture expression of the Beats was clearly Jack Kerouac's book: On the Road.

A. This experiment in jazz prose was inspired by the rapping monologue's of Neil Cassady who later went on to drive the Merry Prankster bus for Ken Kesey during his electric kool-aid acid tests.

B. Kesey, Kerouac and Cassady influence/shape the early experience of the Grateful Dead - the house band for the acid tests - who later befriend Bob Dylan.

III. The rock and roll musicians of the 60s - as well as key artists of subsequent generations - not only embrace the wisdom and wildness of Ginsberg and Kerouac, they build upon the Beat foundation to create a new art form. At its heart this new genre includes a poetry saturated with everyday language, social critique and spiritual challenge.

A. The leader of the pack is clearly Bob Dylan who makes his first rock album - without a band - with Another Side of Bob Dylan. This record embraces the Ginsberg influence and plays with it.

1. Dylan continues the experiment with: Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.

2. Dylan returns to this experiment again on Blood on the Tracks as well as Desire and the Rolling Thunder Review - which includes Ginsberg.

B. The Beatles are connected not only through Dylan but Lennon's exploration of poetry.

1. Examples would include the shift in their music after 1965 - Rubber Soul - as well as Revolver and Sgt. Pepper with parts of the White Album, too. Ginsberg records some of his Blake material at Apple but it is never released. (He also works with Dylan, too.)

2. John Lennon's solo work builds on this Beat foundation.

3. Paul McCartney eventually records and performs with Ginsberg.

C. Other 60s rock musicians who begin to experiment with the new art form of poetry, music and the movement of the body would include: Joni Mitchell, Nico and the Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, The Doors, Pearls Before Swine, Marvin Gaye, Simon and Garfunkel, Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets, Leonard Cohen.

D. Musicians from the 70s: Bruce Springsteen, Television, Patti Smith, Voidoids, Talking Heads, the Clash, Bruce Cockburn, Tom Waits

E. Musicians from the 80s: U2, REM, Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs, Ani DeFranco, NWA, Cowboy Junkies, Sarah McLachlan

F. Musicians from the 90s: Eminem, Jay Z, Beck, NIN, Arcade Fire, Nirvana, Michel Franti , Radiohead, Arrested Development

IV. Closing observations

A. Rock and roll reclaimed and reinvented poetry through the inspiration and witness of the Beats.

B. This new art form embraced new technologies in addition to marrying words with music and often visuals and body movement, too.

Well, that's my working outline: thoughts, ideas, criticisms, questions? There is a Beat theme through all of these artists - and it is grounded in an incarnational commitment to freedom - that Ginsberg nailed in part two of "Howl."

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!