Beat Soundtrack #25: Nick Williams
In which prominent Beat figures, writers and critics, historians and academics, fans and followers, talk about the relationship between that literary community and music
Nick Williams is a UK-based composer and performer. Although trained in what is generally called the ‘classical’ tradition, like many composers of his generation he is just as much at home in rock and pop music, playing with a number of bands throughout his creative career. His music has been performed throughout Europe and America. He is artistic associate with the Yorkshire-based new music collective Spelk.
What attracted you to the Beats? When did you first encounter them?
As a teenager I was the quiet school rebel, interested in everything I wasn’t meant to be interested in (the school was very traditional…) – anarchism, the counterculture, Dada, Zen. I remember when I was 14 or 15 coming across a little book called Allen Ginsberg in the Sixties by (I think) Eric Mottram and from there I followed the connections.
It’s hard to remember the exact sequence of events but I think the first Kerouac I read wasn’t On the Road but The Dharma Bums. That led me to Gary Snyder and the San Francisco poets. I had come across Ferlinghetti in the old Penguin Modern Poets series – he was in a volume with Ginsberg and Corso.
At university a friend introduced me to Burroughs’ work – at first Naked Lunch, Nova Express, The Soft Machine, later Cities of the Red Night. More recently I’ve been checking out the women poets on the San Francisco scene, particularly Joanne Kyger, Diane di Prima and ruth weiss – all overlooked and underrated in my opinion.
The other San Francisco writer I discovered as a teenager (and still read regularly) was Richard Brautigan, although he resisted the association with the Beats. I suppose I’m most interested in that moment of transition from the 50s Beats to the 60s counterculture and how some individuals (like Ginsberg and Snyder) successfully negotiated that transition and some didn’t (like Kerouac).
Do you have a favourite text, novel or poetry?
It’s impossible to choose a particular favourite text, but among the contenders would be…
Novels: Kerouac: The Dharma Bums, Doctor Sax (slightly overlooked – never understood why). Brautigan: Trout Fishing in America, A Confederate General from Big Sur. Burroughs: Cities of the Red Night.
Poetry: Snyder, Corso, Kyger, Ferlinghetti (I must confess to sharing Ferlinghetti’s reservations about the Beats – too concerned with individual sensations/experiences, neglecting the social/communal/political aspects of life. There are obvious exceptions but they are the writers who were most uncomfortable with the ‘Beat’ label or who outgrew it.)
What is the relationship between the Beat writers and music? How do you think that literary scene and musical sound connect(ed)?
The obvious thing I suppose is in the energy and immediacy of the jazz that the Beats associated themselves with – Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk. Ideas of spontaneity, ‘first thought best thought’ are common to both (some of) the writers and (some of) the musicians – though Monk wasn’t always happy with what he came up with. There’s a story of how he came off the stage complaining that he had played all the wrong wrong notes, as opposed to the right wrong notes…I think that people assumed (maybe some still do) there was no discipline involved in being spontaneous but what they didn’t see was the years of preparation and practice needed in order to be spontaneous…
As a musician and composer have you been shaped or influenced by Beat experiences?
Working within the so-called ‘classical’ tradition might seem to be inimical to the ‘Beat experience’, but I’m sure the exposure to both the writing and the lifestyle (which I emulated to a large extent in my 20s) has left a mark on my music. I think there’s an immediacy and energy to my concert music which is perhaps derived from both my reading of the Beats and the rock music I was playing. For a long time I’ve wanted to do a kind of ‘translation into music’ for percussion of the rhythms of the words in the scene in On the Road where Dean and Sal go to a jazz club to hear Slim Gaillard.
Which musical artists from whichever era appear to make links with the Beat Generation – and how?
I sometimes think Beethoven was the first Beat musician – his reaction against convention, the revolutionary nature of his music, the ‘fuck-you’ attitude to his patrons and the aristocracy.
Apart from the obvious (Dylan, Patti Smith, Lou Reed et al) I think of Gil Scott Heron, Afrika Bambaataa and other hip hop artists, who connect to writers like LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and Bob Kaufman.
I think Captain Beefheart has some Beat in him, but I don’t know how directly influenced he was and I’m sure he would have denied any connection. Poets like John Cooper Clarke, Linton Kwesi Johnson and, more recently, Kae Tempest who regularly work with music, are clearly in the tradition of poetry plus jazz (Ferlinghetti, Rexroth, Kerouac, ruth weiss).
In the classical (for want of a better word!) world, some composers have looked to Beat writers for texts or inspiration. Wilfrid Mellers, as professor at York University, was a pioneer in the academic study of popular music (he wrote books on the Beatles and Dylan as well as Bach and Beethoven). He set Gary Snyder’s ‘A Berry Feast’ in his Yeibichai (which includes scat singer and jazz group along with the orchestra and chorus).
Scottish composer James Dillon dedicated his choral work Hyades to Snyder and Joe Cutler references On the Road in his Sal’s Sax. David Dramm, an American composer, guitarist and songwriter, based in Amsterdam writes for the concert hall but also works regularly with Patti Smith and John Cale.
And the early minimalists had their roots in the late 50s/early 60s counterculture – Steve Reich provided music for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which gave rise to the Diggers, and Philip Glass lived the Beat life in Paris before travelling overland to India to study Buddhism, later becoming close friends with Ginsberg.
The outsider composer Harry Partch was often compared to the Beats, due to his hobo years riding the rails in the 1930s and his rejection of conventions in both music and life. But he always denied any links.
Who are your own favourite singers, musicians and bands? Do they represent Beat ideas or attitudes in their lives and art?
I have pretty wide tastes, from Medieval music to left-field electronica, and some things are more obviously related to Beat attitudes than others. Captain Beefheart is top of my favourites (his freewheeling creativity and poetry may appear to relate to Beat poetry but he was too ornery to admit to any influence or connection), closely followed by the Beatles (with their tantalising links to Ginsberg and the Mersey poets like Adrian Henri).
Then there’s the music of my mid/late teens – post-punk bands like PIL, Gang of Four, Delta 5, the Slits, Raincoats, new wave bands like Talking Heads. Björk is pretty unclassifiable, but I think she has the Beat spirit of immediacy, exploration and adventure.
I think maybe the Beats have had such a major cultural influence that it’s hard to pin down anything specific – it’s more that they seem to have given later generations permission to explore, invent, discover for themselves, in the same way that punk did. The danger is that you then create an army of clones who feel they have to conform to certain images, ideas, sounds – the exact opposite of the freedoms that the Beats and punks encourage us to live by.
When my father, Neal, and my mother, Carolyn, would have friends visit our home in Los Gatos, California, in the '50s and '60s, they would play mostly jazz records. "Sketches of Spain" by Miles Davis I must have heard a gazillion times while trying to sleep. But I loved it. And Dad also loved rock & roll, especially Chuck Berry. I mean, songs like "Mabeleine" and "Nadine" described the story of his life! While he would be driving, when Chuck came on the AM dashboard radio, he would crank up the volume and crank the steering wheel back and forth to the beat of the music. I wasn't scared--I just laughed--but I had to hold on! Rock on...John Allen Cassady
Some great name-checks, thoughtful musings and loads of similarities to my own preferences as well as some new names and artists to investigate. Thank you for another great dispatch