WEBVTT - Dennis McNally 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:13.119 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Websett's Podcast. My 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:16.840 guest today is Dennis McNally, who has a new book, 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:22.160 The Last Great Dream, How Bohemians became Hippies and created 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.320 the Sixties. Dennis, why this book? 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:26.000 Why now? 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:33.080 I find myself, you know, in my age as apparently 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:36.160 the self appointed historian of the counterculture in America since 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:40.879 World War Two. I did books on Kerouac and The 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:43.839 Grateful Dead and the sort of the deeper background of 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:49.000 it all, and then I sort of paused, and in 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:53.400 twenty sixteen I was invited to curate a photo show 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:57.560 about the Summer of Love for the California Historical Society. 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:01.920 Every museum in the Bay Area was going wild over, 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:04.880 you know, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love. 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:08.720 So I started on that. I started with the beats 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:11.520 and sort of started poking around. It was it was 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.039 it was a treasure hunt, really, and it was great fun. 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.720 And after a few months I went, this is a book. 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:22.000 This is the origins of the sixties, of what we 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:26.360 think of as the sixties, which is in considerable part 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.959 starts starts in the Haye Ashbury. Although it has kindred 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:37.400 spirits in many places, specifically la New York and London, 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:39.759 which is what I studied. 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:44.679 Okay, some of the similar vintages you but many people 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.720 were not alive at the sixties. What do people not 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:50.960 get about how the sixties really were? 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:57.840 The media, you know, there's a fascinating article by a 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.200 guy named Hendrik Hertzberg, who would turn out to be 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.360 the writer for The New Yorker and a very distinguished guy, 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.160 and he probably he was a beat reporter for Newsweek 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:13.200 in the late sixties, and he the went to the 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:18.640 Haye Ashbury quite early, and for whatever reason, it's a 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.640 brilliant article. And if news We could actually run it 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.400 instead of what they ended up doing, because of course 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:29.160 different people write, and he was just a traveling reporter, 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.480 they would have had the best thing ever written about 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:37.040 the hate. Because what happened was the media after the 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:41.399 BN which exploded the whole story with an enormous turnout 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:44.800 in Golden Gate Park in January of sixty seven. The 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.800 media descended on the hate, and unfortunately, these are people 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:54.840 who basically couldn't see past what they saw, which was flowers, 0:02:55.160 --> 0:03:01.040 unusual people, stoned people, and they couldn't see the basically 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:08.680 spiritual and anti material aspects of that culture and how 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:10.840 it had all sort of ended up in the music. 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:15.560 And all they knew was these people were weird and 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.280 they didn't understand them, and that's the way they wrote 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:23.040 about them. And that's really lasted many years. I teach 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.040 a high occasionally go and lecture high school class that 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:30.960 focuses on the sixties. And the point I keep trying 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:34.880 to make to these students, because they're fascinated with the sixties. 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.040 Now a few of them, you know, have hippie parents 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:42.760 or just you know, some fascination with like the music 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:47.760 little you know, young deadheads for instance. But what I 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.920 keep trying to emphasize with them is, in my opinion 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.600 that the reason they're interested in the sixties is that 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:58.440 it's never gone away the issues that were raised, whether 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:05.120 it's organic food or Asian studies or sexual you know, 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.680 the whole idea of the gentle male hippie, which evolved 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.200 into gay liberal into a welcoming gays to San Francisco 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.520 in the seventies. And you know, now with the issue 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:20.719 is trans people, what we have actually is, you know, 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:26.880 an exact reversal of those values with the values of 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:31.279 the president administration, which you have to remember. One of 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:33.560 the side effects of the Hayde Ashbury and the free 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:36.640 speech movement and the Wats rebellion was the election of 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:41.320 Ronald Reagan as governor in nineteen sixty six and then 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:45.840 president in nineteen eighty. And from Reagan to Trump is 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:50.360 you know, pretty much a direct line of resistance to 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:52.880 the sixties. That's really, you know, to some extent, what 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:53.800 it's about. 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:59.039 Okay, what was in the water in California? Why did 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:01.800 this started in California? 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:11.000 San Francisco is the only city in America. New Orleans 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.040 is slightly different for the reason that it was a 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:19.719 colonial city and it's just different. But San Francisco is 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:23.559 the only cities evolved as economic institutions. You know, people 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:28.599 come together and they do business. But San Francisco as 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:35.120 a city was created by frankly, slightly crazy people who 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.840 were not fitting in with their world on the East Coast, 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.919 or in Chile or in China, and they came to 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.320 San Francisco on a gamble and they were gambling on gold, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:52.640 of course, and it left this ethos that even though 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:54.800 you know, it became a city and it had a 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.400 conventional political structure and churches and normal you know, superficial 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:05.039 normal things. But it left a heritage of tolerance for 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:12.760 craziness that is unique in American in American cities, the 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:17.440 example being a man named Emperor Norton. Norton had been, uh, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:23.840 went crazy basically after he went busted in the stock market, 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:30.320 and he dubbed himself Emperor Norton and then proceeded to 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:34.880 print up Emperor Norton banknotes. Now, you know, every city 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.479 has its crazies, and and you know there's no great 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.880 surprise in that. But what is different about San Francisco 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:43.560 was that the bartenders and the restaurant people in San 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:50.160 Francisco accepted these clearly not real dollars and fed him 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:54.640 out of admiration for his craziness. That's the only way 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.960 I can explain it. And and that's just something that's 0:06:58.000 --> 0:06:59.960 always been a little part of San Francis. 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:02.120 When did Emperor Norton live. 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:05.200 In the eighteen sixties and seventies. 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:10.120 Okay, eighteen sixties, seventies, the beginning of the century, there's 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:15.120 an earthquake. You're saying that this ethos pre dates all 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.960 of this, It really starts around the time of the 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:19.560 gold Rush. 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:25.080 Absolutely, it's just you know, there's a quote in my 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:27.880 book from Robert Duncan, one of the poets I studied, 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:33.000 that talks about San Francisco is the Western edge of dreams. 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.800 You know, it's you start talking about geography, and it 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.679 gets a little mystical, and some people get very nervous. 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:45.240 But the fact is that San Francisco, you know, so 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:50.760 called Western civilization, which were theoretically least part of starts 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:57.040 in generally around Europe, Europe and the Middle East, and 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:02.320 proceeds west, and it gets across America, and it gets 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.200 to the Pacific, and it, you know, stops in the sense, 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:12.880 and San Francisco was the edge, and in fact, from 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:18.080 the beginning looked west to Asia just as almost just 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.640 as much as it did back east to you know, 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:25.360 Boston and New York and the centers of American so 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:26.280 called civilization. 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.400 Okay, you talked about the roots being in San Francisco, 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.880 Los Angeles, in New York. Let's stay in California for 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:37.199 a second. What was going on in Los Angeles? 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.600 Los Angeless is somewhat different from San Francisco. As I say, 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:46.679 the tolerance for crazy, well, it came out different, and 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.839 Los Angeles unusually did not have this big tradition. I 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:56.120 mean it was founded by Roman Catholic priests, of course, 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.520 and then around the turn of the century and heading 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:04.520 toward the era when Hollywood sort of brought many people 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.840 to Los Angeles, it did not have that tradition. But 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:11.280 what it did have, and I don't particularly have an 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:17.040 explanation for it, is an openness to unusual religions, so 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:23.080 that theosophy prospered there. They brought in I've just gone 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:28.359 blank on his name. Do to Christian Murdy, who they 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:33.360 decided was the new Jesus. He said, nah, I'm just 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:37.400 a teacher. But stayed in Los Angeles and they're all kinds, 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:44.800 you know, esoteric occult astrology. Joseph Campbell, the great historian 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.920 of art, came to San Francisco, I mean Los Angeles 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:52.480 in the thirties and was bemoaning the fact that everybody 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.040 in Los Angeles seemed to be into astrology, which he 0:09:55.720 --> 0:10:00.840 regarded with some reserve, shall we say. And you know, 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:07.880 so there was this this receptiveness and then what happened eventually, Uh, 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.920 and the most interesting for me, other than for instance, 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:17.319 the the the music world, which Los Angeles contributed John 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:22.320 Cage to the world. And uh, but the the main 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:29.599 line of cultural transference was in art. Los Angeles immediately 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:34.360 immediately became in a narrow way. I mean, it wasn't 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:37.040 like it was in the Los Angeles times. But the 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:42.400 fact is that that modern art, uh and abstract expressionism 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.240 and then later pop art, you know, it just came 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:50.080 straight out of Los Angeles. Andie Warhol's first show was 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:54.360 in Los Angeles, and there was a receptiveness to to 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:59.680 experimental art that Los Angeles, Uh, you know gave really 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:00.680 gave the United States. 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:03.480 Now you talk about third point of the triangle in 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:07.079 New York. How does New York figure into your sixties thesis? 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:15.280 Well, yeah, New York was the capital of freethinking in America, 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.920 at least since Walt Whitman, you know, held court at Fafts, 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.600 which was this bar in the Bowery, which is to say, 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:28.800 just on the edge of Greenwich Village. And for whatever reason, 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:37.000 Greenwich Village became the home of freethinking from really the beginning, 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.040 in particular the beginning of the twentieth century and through 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.160 what they call it the introduction of modernism in American 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:48.840 art and literature, and there was the Masses and Robert 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.319 Eastman and all kinds of things. Mabel Dodge Lewin was 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:58.240 doing peyote in the village in nineteen teens before she 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:02.720 and d Lawrence moved out to uh to Santa Fe 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.960 or Taos, I should say, and you know, there's there's 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:14.040 always been this, you know, froth the the hippie specific 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:20.000 hippie thing was tricked to me. The the catalyst, the 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:21.840 trigger of it was LSD. 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:27.120 But before before, before you get there, okay, so we 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:30.520 have the landscape, the ground is tilled with all of 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:36.880 this craziness, insight, astrology, different thinking. When does it start 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.400 to Germany? You know, you talk about Norton in the 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.599 eighteen sixties. When did these things start to flower? Is 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.640 it all as we say, post war, post World War two? 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.640 Is it before that? When does it start to coalesce? 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:53.440 We not coalesced. When did it start to germinate? 0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:00.520 Well, that's a very good question. I would say it 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:05.960 started to germinate again in the introduction of the modern 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:10.280 to an openness, to a culture that was not explicitly 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:15.320 Christian for instance, that was you know that anticipated a 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:22.280 certain looseness and freedom that runs into the rest of 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:27.240 the twentieth century. By the you know, one of the elements, 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.400 for instance, in an important element ethical element in the 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:35.520 scene of Greenwich Village was Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers, 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.360 and that started in the thirties, for instance, again as 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:44.360 a conscious communal attempt. She had started out as a 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:49.480 left wing socialist and then decided that it just it 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:54.240 lacked soul. She adopted Catholicism, but was concerned that the 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:59.640 Church did not have enough social concerns for you know, 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:04.360 the the less privileged, and created the Catholic Workers, which 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:09.120 had a real impact in the Greenish village, particularly in 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:16.280 their pacifism. But yet so it germinates in various strands. 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:21.800 Before World War Two, but you have this devastating depression 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:26.160 which you know, people generally speaking it was more important 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:29.600 to survive than to try and create something new in 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:34.080 many ways during the thirties. Then you have this complete 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:38.560 unified effort during World War two in which everyone whether 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:41.240 it was women going to you know, work in factories 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:48.600 or boy scouts collecting newspapers for you know, recycling dribes. 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:57.160 Everyone was rationed sugar and meat and tires and whatnot. 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:02.360 So you have this unified effort against fascism. And then 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.240 what happens is we get to the end of World 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.520 War Two and we should be you know cha la lah, 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.960 a happy day, except that we're immediately in a Cold War. 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:16.640 And the problem with the Cold War is that a 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:19.800 lot of Americans said, wait a minute, you know, we 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:23.960 fought this war. We deserve you know, we deserve a win. 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:28.360 What is this with, you know, continuing yet another war. 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:34.040 And the problem is that rather than accept that, hey, 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:38.000 eighteen million Soviet people died in that war, you know, 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:42.200 they have their reasons for doing what they're doing. There 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:48.480 was a large trend towards blaming internal flaws in the 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:55.640 American resistance, which is to say, the Roosevelt administration, and 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.520 they called it communism. They say, oh, there must be communists, 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.320 there must be a We all know now that sometimes 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:08.880 people will grab a conspiracy theory as a more satisfying 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.720 answer to why things are the way they are, rather 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:15.800 than saying, well, the objective forces of history look at this. 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.680 Of course they're you know, going to resist the Soviets. 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:23.640 So anyway, you end up with what we call McCarthyism. 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.240 Except it was a great deal more than than Joe McCarthy, 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:35.720 and uh so there's this incredible repression and and uh, 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:40.240 you know, intolerance of any deviating viewpoint, in particular sexual. 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:43.640 I mean, a great deal of the of the the 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:50.160 government attacks on on, you know, so called investigating so 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:54.120 called disloyal people ended up being about gay people and 0:16:54.200 --> 0:17:01.480 about anybody. That nudism was considered subversive. And it literally 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:05.440 it's in the law that Eisenhower passed or his executive order. 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.600 So and then on top of all that, you have 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:16.119 this incredible burst again after the depression of prosperity during 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.919 the fifties, and everybody's you know, gobbling up their prosperity, 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.520 and you know, you can't blame them, but the price 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:28.439 of that prosperity was silence. You know, don't don't push it, 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:34.720 don't challenge things. I was interviewing Michael McClure, the beat poet, 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:39.639 and I said, you know, why did on the Road howl? 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:42.560 But howl in a more rarefied way, because it's one 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:46.360 hundred and fifty people heard it. First. On the Road 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:50.960 was this best seller, and you know, a whole raft 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:55.080 of people, starting with Janis Joplin, David Bowie, Bob Dylan 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:59.040 and Jerry Garcia just as examples of sixties. We people 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:04.439 we associate with sixties read Kerouac and went, yes, this 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:07.680 is a world I want to be part of. And 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:12.600 it was basically about spiritual freedom, about looseness, about exploring 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:18.159 rather than conforming. And it had this incredible impact. So 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:22.080 I interviewed Michael mclaur and I said, why did this 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.960 book have such a powerful influence. I read it and 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:27.879 I like it and it's important to me. But and 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:32.679 he just looked at me. I was young, and he 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:34.680 looked at me and he said, Dennis, did you live 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.240 in the fifties? And I said, well, you know, I 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:39.480 was ten when they ended, so I kind of sort 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.680 of but not. And he went, well, if you had, 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:49.879 you'd understand why. It just it was radical, and you know, 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:53.040 it was denounced by the right, and it had the 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:59.520 extraordinary good fortune of having its first great review, its 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:03.760 first review, you it's important review done not by the 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.600 main critic of the New York Times, a guy named 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:12.719 Orville Prescott, nicknamed Prissy, who would have lunched it, and 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:16.320 instead by a young editor who was very interested in 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:20.760 this stuff named Gilbert milsted it's one of the discovering 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:24.119 him was one of the the uh the great successes 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:26.680 of my research on Kerouac, because nobody had talked to 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:29.919 him before, and that was you know that he was 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:32.439 open to it, and he wrote a review that that 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.399 said that On the Road was the fifties version of 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:40.560 The Sun Also Rises, and you know it's never stopped 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.040 since God only knows how many copies it'd sold. 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:54.679 Okay, in your book, you talk about the poets Kenneth 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.000 rex Roth, Lawrence Ferlingetti. How does that end up in 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:03.080 San France, Cisco, and how does that Germany? 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:05.399 If you decide that you're going to be a poet 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:10.240 and you're not at an academic institution, you right away 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.639 put yourself outside normal culture because you're not going to 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:17.280 make any money and you're going to have to, you know, 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:24.239 find a way to preserve your voice. Rex Roth, I 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.400 start the book, you know, when I was doing that 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.679 photo curation, I had started with the obvious, which was 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:36.240 how and which was in nineteen fifty five. But how 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:39.720 and Allen Ginsberg, who was of course an import from 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:46.199 New York, along with Grolengetty, all came into San Francisco 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.160 in the mid fifties that had already had a really 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:54.760 thriving poetry scene. It was sort of led because he 0:20:54.840 --> 0:21:00.320 literally had he had salons classes in two things, poetry 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:04.520 and anarchism, various flavors of anarchism, and anarchism not as 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.560 throwing rocks or bombs or whatever, but anarchism as in 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:15.480 freedom of thought. And that, you know, that's rex Roft's 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.639 fundamental connection. So when I went to start the book 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.400 as a book, I decided that the connection of rex 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:26.119 Roth and Robert Duncan, who was raised by theosophists and 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:33.479 occultists and various you know, mystic, very mystical family, he 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:38.680 brought in again an openness to shall we say, the mysterious, 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:46.760 and together they generated a scene that quickly included Philip Lamontilla. 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.000 It was very interesting pairing because of course Duncan was 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:54.600 very gay, to the extent that he had literally outed 0:21:54.760 --> 0:22:00.600 himself in nineteen forty four, which is remarkable, ended up, 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:05.280 which resulted in him being basically completely ignored by the 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:10.320 Eastern literary establishment for the rest of his life. That 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:14.359 that's just simply seemed seemed to revolt people on the 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.639 East Coast. It didn't bother anybody in San Francisco. Interestingly, 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:27.600 Rexcroft was you know, occasionally periodically homophobic, and somehow it 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:32.240 didn't matter to him at any rate. They together, they 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:38.040 sort of stirred up this interest in in poetry that 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:41.800 led to you know, many other poets, James Brown and 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:47.320 Helen Adam and all kinds of people, and there was 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:52.560 this very active poetry scene and it was all about poetry, 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.720 to oversimplify, but poetry that came from the heart, that 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:01.840 was that was individual, individually focused. At that point, the 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:06.040 the new critics that dominated American poetry, mostly from the 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:14.880 East Coast, basically prized uh, precision, irony, distance, lack of emotion, 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:19.280 all the kinds of things that San Franciscans, the San 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:24.639 Francisco poets said now and among other things, it was 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:27.320 in San Francisco was poetry made to be read out 0:23:27.359 --> 0:23:32.800 loud and performed, and they, you know, poetry readings became 0:23:32.840 --> 0:23:39.560 a standard feature of San Francisco poetry. That message or 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:45.840 that you know, that that that practice that the poets developed, spread, 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:49.320 among other things, to the students at what was then 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.040 called the California School of Fine Arts and later the 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:58.600 San Francisco Art Institute and students there in particular, started 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:06.199 as the fifties went along, spreading that message in their 0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:09.760 own lives. The classic example of that is a guy 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:15.400 named Wally Hedrick. Wally Hedrick was a student at CSFA 0:24:15.640 --> 0:24:21.080 and then eventually taught there and became a very distinguished 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:25.639 assemblage what they called funk Art that was, you know, 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:29.879 associated was the beat painting or in his case, metalwork 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:37.840 version of poetry in nineteen fifty eight. To skip ahead, 0:24:38.080 --> 0:24:41.320 but really, in some ways the crux of my whole book, 0:24:41.960 --> 0:24:47.199 you know, you can talk about it is he's teaching. 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:53.040 Wally is teaching at the Institute what was going to 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:58.399 become the Institute Saturday class to high school students, and 0:24:58.480 --> 0:25:00.880 one of his students was a young man named Jerry Garcia. 0:25:02.040 --> 0:25:04.159 And one of the things that Wally did in his 0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:09.359 classes was play acoustic blues like Big Bill Brunsi and such, 0:25:09.800 --> 0:25:13.800 which resulted in Jerry Garcia. When he got an accordion 0:25:13.920 --> 0:25:20.280 for his birthday that year, Piston moaned and cried and 0:25:20.320 --> 0:25:22.760 told his mother, no, no, no, it has to be a guitar, 0:25:23.440 --> 0:25:27.240 and you know it, and there he went for the 0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:30.119 rest of his life. But at the same time, he 0:25:30.160 --> 0:25:33.560 and his buddies said, because remember this is nineteen fifty eight, 0:25:33.600 --> 0:25:37.560 this is you know, current bestseller, front page news and 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:40.159 top of the bestseller list. He said, what is this 0:25:40.200 --> 0:25:42.920 beat thing? You know we keep reading about it. And 0:25:43.560 --> 0:25:46.720 Wally replied, you're a beat. Go down a City Lights, 0:25:46.760 --> 0:25:49.920 get this book and you know, on the road and 0:25:50.160 --> 0:25:53.960 you know you'll see. And he did, and it was 0:25:54.119 --> 0:25:56.520 his bible for the really for the rest of his life. 0:25:57.240 --> 0:26:00.359 His role model, carok was his role model. Which is 0:26:00.400 --> 0:26:03.760 why thirty years later or twenty years later, whenever it 0:26:03.840 --> 0:26:07.040 was that I popped up, I sent him a copy 0:26:07.040 --> 0:26:10.399 of my biography of Kdillac and he eventually turned to 0:26:10.440 --> 0:26:13.359 me and said, why don't you do us? And I said, 0:26:13.960 --> 0:26:17.920 good idea. And that led me into the next stage. 0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:21.240 I had already sort of been adet head, and that 0:26:21.359 --> 0:26:24.280 led me to this next stage after the Beats, which 0:26:24.440 --> 0:26:26.360 was hippies and the Grateful Dead. 0:26:27.080 --> 0:26:30.840 Okay, you mentioned City Lights, which opens in nineteen fifty 0:26:30.920 --> 0:26:35.520 three in Los Angeles. There are issues with the government 0:26:36.160 --> 0:26:40.560 and there are riots downtown. If you were not downtown 0:26:41.000 --> 0:26:44.120 and there wasn't a newspaper, you would have no idea 0:26:44.240 --> 0:26:49.320 this was happening. When City lights opened to what did 0:26:49.359 --> 0:26:53.520 we was the general population aware of this? And was 0:26:53.960 --> 0:26:56.800 Jerry Garcia just lucky he was in the right place 0:26:56.840 --> 0:27:01.280 at the right time taking this class or was this 0:27:02.160 --> 0:27:05.520 in the water such that other people were flowering at 0:27:05.560 --> 0:27:06.200 the same time. 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:09.879 It was kind of in the water, but it was 0:27:09.960 --> 0:27:13.400 also you know, luck, but not just look, Jerry Garcia 0:27:13.840 --> 0:27:20.800 was consciously sort of skeptical of the conventional culture and 0:27:20.920 --> 0:27:23.280 as a paint again, as a paint if you identify 0:27:23.280 --> 0:27:26.520 yourself as an artist, poet or artist paint or whatever, 0:27:26.880 --> 0:27:31.560 you automatic you automatically, you know, challenge conventional norms. I mean, 0:27:31.600 --> 0:27:34.520 you know, you're you're you're looking for a different path. 0:27:35.600 --> 0:27:41.199 And he he Uh so it wasn't just luck that 0:27:41.280 --> 0:27:46.520 he popped up in that in that classroom. Uh, but uh, 0:27:47.040 --> 0:27:50.480 it was important, of course that that Fri Lnghetti who 0:27:50.720 --> 0:27:52.919 took over city lights from a guy named Peter Martin 0:27:53.000 --> 0:27:58.160 and made it what it was that you know, he 0:27:58.160 --> 0:28:01.560 he got he was a trained poet. I mean he 0:28:01.560 --> 0:28:04.359 had gone to he had gotten his doctorate at the 0:28:04.400 --> 0:28:09.399 Sorbonne after World War Two on the GI Bill, and uh, 0:28:10.040 --> 0:28:11.879 he gets he wants to live in a city that 0:28:12.000 --> 0:28:14.439 that has some soul. That's that's what he said. And 0:28:14.480 --> 0:28:16.239 he took it through the train to San Francisco and 0:28:16.359 --> 0:28:21.160 immediately went Yes, he said, he found again a poetry 0:28:21.160 --> 0:28:27.240 culture that was what he said, provincial but liberating. And 0:28:27.920 --> 0:28:33.280 he created a clubhouse, you know, a social gathering like 0:28:33.359 --> 0:28:37.679 the Beats or or you know, any hippies later needs 0:28:38.320 --> 0:28:42.680 physical institutions to get, you know, to gather around. And 0:28:42.760 --> 0:28:45.680 for for the Beats, it was city lights and then 0:28:45.720 --> 0:28:52.000 a bar called The Place on Grant Avenue, and things flowered, 0:28:52.040 --> 0:28:58.719 people connected, and you know, how people find these directions 0:28:58.760 --> 0:29:06.840 these paths is one of those eternal questions that you 0:29:06.920 --> 0:29:10.680 have to ask each individual. And unfortunately nobody was going 0:29:10.720 --> 0:29:15.480 around saying, so why are you here in those days. 0:29:15.120 --> 0:29:18.520 It's a pity. Speaking as a historian, I would have 0:29:18.520 --> 0:29:20.000 loved to have come across that research. 0:29:20.080 --> 0:29:25.040 But okay, you mentioned, let's get back to LSD. How 0:29:25.080 --> 0:29:28.360 does LSD start and permeate the culture and why in 0:29:28.400 --> 0:29:29.719 San Francisco. 0:29:33.320 --> 0:29:39.240 The first introduction in any significant way into American culture 0:29:39.680 --> 0:29:43.480