Beat Soundtrack #13: Kurt Hemmer

In which prominent Beat figures, writers and critics, historians and academics, fans and followers, talk about the relationship between that literary community and music

Kurt Hemmer is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Beat Literature (Facts On File, 2007) and Professor of English at Harper College. With filmmaker Tom Knoff, he produced several award-winning films: Janine Pommy Vega: As We Cover the Streets, Rebel Roar: The Sound of Michael McClure, Wow! Ted Joans Lives!, Keenan and Love Janine Pommy Vega. His essays have appeared in Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), A History of California Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Beat Drama (Bloomsbury, 2016), The Cambridge Companion to the Beats (Cambridge UP, 2017), William S. Burroughs: Cutting Up the Century (Indiana University Press, 2019), The Beats, Black Mountain, and New Modes in American Poetry (Clemson University Press, 2021) and the forthcoming Harold Norse: Poet Maverick, Gay Laureate (Clemson, UP 2022).

What attracted you to the Beats? When did you first encounter them? Do you have a favourite text, novel or poetry?

As an undergraduate in college, I was looking for a writer or group of writers to concentrate on if I were going to go to grad school for six years to get a doctorate. You better love something if you’re going to study it for six years. Previously I had been consumed with European literature, writing an honours thesis on the influence of Nietzsche on the Czech writer in Paris Milan Kundera as a senior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. But I hadn’t mastered a foreign language and I wanted something American. I came across Ann Charters’ The Portable Beat Reader (1992), which had recently come out in paperback with the great picture by Allen Ginsberg of William S. Burroughs talking to Jack Kerouac on the cover, and knew I had found my calling.

My dad is a Fifties person, introducing me to Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. My mother is a Sixties person, introducing me to Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Beats were the perfect fit for my interest in American culture in the 1950s and 1960s. I read Kerouac’s line in On the Road: ‘But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes “Awww!”’ I’d never heard anything like that before. I was hooked.

Kerouac is my favourite writer, On the Road is my favourite novel, and Allen Ginsberg is my favourite poet. I knew I wanted to be a Beat scholar and I was determined to work with Ann Charters at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. I later went to get my PhD at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington so that I could work with Tim Hunt, who was an even bigger influence on my development as a scholar than Charters was. Now I’m working on a Gregory Corso biography, I’m the new Secretary of the Beat Studies Association, and with filmmaker Tom Knoff we’ve just made American Joyride, a video tribute to the Kerouac centenary.

Picture above: Kurt Hemmer at Gregory Corso’s grave in Rome

What is the relationship between the Beat writers and music? How do you think that literary scene and musical sound connect(ed)?

Unlike other poets, the true heirs of the Beats were rock artists, not other poets. I’m a rock and roll fanatic in a similar way that some people are jazz aficionados. For 20 years I’ve team taught a course on rock and roll at Harper College. For the last decade I’ve taught it with Maggie McKinley, the President of the Norman Mailer Society. The class actually starts with Robert Johnson and we teach the lyrics of rock songs by Little Richard to Bob Dylan to the White Stripes next to poems by Beat authors, Shakespeare and Gwendolyn Brooks that have common themes and use common literary devices.

As an academic and writer have you been shaped or influenced by Beat experiences?

One of the greatest nights of my life was bringing Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist from the Doors, and the Beat poet Michael McClure to Washington State University for a sold out performance. My brother Erik flew from Rhode Island to see the show. We rode together with Manzarek and McClure from the airport in Spokane, Washington back to Pullman. That night after the show we had a bar in Pullman all to ourselves – just my friends and the performers – and were regaled by stories of rock and Beat glory by Manzarek and McClure. Later, when Tom Knoff and I made a documentary film about McClure, Manzarek let us use some music he wrote for our soundtrack. It’s pretty remarkable when you can make a film with a score by a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Which musical artists from whichever era appear to make links with the Beat Generation – and how?

When Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature it was an affirmation of the Beat Generation. Dylan is the true heir of the Beats. When he went electric, the Beats went electric. Everyone influenced by Dylan, and there are a lot, has been influenced by the Beats. But then you also have the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Jim Morrison and the Doors, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, and the list goes on and on. It is truly remarkable. The Beats influenced and changed the possibilities of the lyrics of rock and inspired pop stars to see themselves as avant garde artists.

Who are your own favourite singers, musicians, and bands? Do they represent Beat ideas or attitudes in their lives and art?

Most of the bands I like have some connection to the Beats, even if I didn’t know it at the time I first got into these bands. In high school my favourite bands were the Clash and the Smiths, but it was only later that I found out about the connections between the Beats and Joe Strummer and Morrissey. The Jesus and Mary Chain are one of my favourite, and most underrated, rock bands and I think it’s great that they sampled Burroughs on their song ‘Lowlife’ on the Rollercoaster EP. My favourite 21st-century rock band are Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, whose 2005 album is called Howl.