Interview #19: Pat Thomas

Material man quizzed

PAT THOMAS is a one-time musician, counterculture historian and active mover and shaker in the record business as creative powerhouse behind numerous rock reissues, compilations and anthologies, very often, too, the author of the accompanying sleeve notes.

After penning acclaimed books portraying political radical Jerry Rubin and the musical world of the revolutionary Black Panthers, Thomas has now turned his attention to Allen Ginsberg’s extraordinary archive – letters, posters, tickets, photographs and multiple other fragments – to produce Material Wealth, a visual cornucopia – with supporting annotations – evoking the political poet’s picaresque life.

He spoke to R&BG about the new project…

How would you describe the new book?

Well, it’s a Ginsberg book that’s never been done before – it’s like a museum exhibition catalog with hundreds of photos, images, photos, and scans of objects – with most images annotated with lots of essays (mostly written by me) mixed in throughout the book.

If Allen Ginsberg had merely saved just his own personal ephemera that would be remarkable. However, he kept everything connected to his friends as well. A poster for Patti Smith’s very first poetry reading. Piles of correspondence when Allen acted as the literary agent of William S. Burroughs, Herbert Huncke and others.

Various Yippie manifestos. A ticket stub for a 1974 concert by Bob Dylan & the Band with Yoko Ono’s phone number scribbled on the back. Posters documenting early Beat Generation readings in 1950s San Francisco as well as later ones capturing the Haight-Ashbury Hippie era.

Of course, Allen’s own remarkable journey is here too. Agreements for BBC Radio appearances, schedules of college lecture tours, early notes for his iconic ‘Kaddish’ poem. A parody rewrite of ‘Howl’ as ‘Towel’ by Terry Southern. Obsessive letters from fans he never met and a bizarre letter that Allen sent to the American Nazi Party during the George Lincoln Rockwell era, something about ‘I heard you want to kill me, can we meet and discuss it?’

There are hundreds of thousands of items carefully stored at Stanford University in their Allen Ginsberg collection. After lengthy research by Peter Hale (of the Ginsberg Estate) and myself, here are some of the most interesting items that comprise the one Ginsberg book that has never been done and needed to be done, a collection of these images!

Pictured above: Author Pat Thomas. Image by Kelly O

Was it a commission or did you pitch the idea? What part did the Trust play?

Because I’d done these projects earlier:  I was the reissue producer of 2016’s 3-CD The Last Word on First Blues, which gathers Allen’s 1971 to 1984 rock, blues and folk singing/songwriting, and the reissue producer of the 2017 release The Complete Songs Of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, Ginsberg’s 1970 album of William Blake poems set to music and sung by Allen with additional recordings of the era including Buddhist mantras.

I knew that were was about tens of thousands items in the vault (not just music or recordings – I’m referring to Ginsberg’s entire life – mostly paper items of course) so I suggested to the Trust that they let me do a deep dive for this book. The Trust trusted me! They also (basically Peter Hale) worked closely with me, looking at items, identifying them, sorting it all out.

The book looks so good. Who was the designer?

A guy named Andy Outis. He was hired by the publisher, Powerhouse Books in Brooklyn. Yes, he was amazing.

How much information was there to explore?

I don’t know how to quantify that – let’s say there was roughly 100,000 items and we looked at 20,000. And we boiled it down to about 700 items or something. No human could look at all. We were able to choose in advance – what particular era or topic I was interested in.

So much has already been published about Allen’s relationship with his fellow Beats – especially Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs – that rather than regurgitate that for the hundredth time, I’ve taken some paths less explored: Allen’s interactions with Bob Dylan, Jerry Rubin & Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies, Paul McCartney, his anti-Vietnam War protests including the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

But don’t worry – Ginsberg’s pals Jack and Bill along with Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Neal Cassady, and others – including Allen’s life partner Peter Orlovsky – are properly represented.

Pictured above: The new Ginsberg title edited by Pat Thomas

Was Ginsberg a great hoarder?

That’s an understatement – but he wasn’t a nutbag for keeping it all – he was smart.

How long did it take to trawl through it?

We were there at Stanford University for several eight-hour days. Tt was intense – basically no time to rest or relax. Later, off campus – under rocks, inside caves – Peter Hale found more.

Is there a music dimension, or a rock component, to some of the material?

It digs into his connections with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, the Clash, Elvin Jones, David Amram and so much more. There’s a lengthy essay in the back of the book in which I explore many of his music and some spoken word albums.

Did you learn anything new about Ginsberg you would like to share?

I don’t know if I can succinctly say something. Allen was the living, breathing, writing, performing embodiment of ‘Be Yourself!’ We currently live in a society where both liberals and conservatives, lefties and right wingers, go out of their way to feel offended.

Allen was open to discussion with anyone – his personal assistant Bob Rosenthal (who spent nearly 20 years by his side) remembers, ‘There would be people visiting all day long. There were open-house rules at Ginsberg’s: You could eat anything in the refrigerator, especially if you were willing to replace it…I worked for him 19 and a half years, and I never once lost respect for him as a person…we could just talk. About literature, ideas, anything.’

I didn’t know Allen, although I met him briefly. But I miss his energy terribly – his public persona seemed warm, human. In the current world of soundbites (never a real conversation), social media arguments between strangers and ‘one upmanship’ in general, we’ve lost the plot terribly.

More than a quarter of a century since he died, how does the poet stand up today?

Allen has been gone for over 25 years – his legacy is hard to succinctly summarize. On his deathbed, other icons came to pay tribute from pop art maverick Roy Lichtenstein to punk poetess Patti Smith.

In 1986, Allen’s personal secretary Bob Rosenthal and his archivist / bibliographer Bill Morgan assembled a book titled Best Minds asking some 200 different people to pay tribute to Allen in poetry, prose or visually. The diversity of the contributors speaks volumes. To name only a few:

Kathy Acker, Julien Beck, Daniel Berrigan, John Cage, Ram Dass, Dave Dellinger, Robert Frank, Jean Genet, John Hammond Sr., Nat Hentoff, George Herms, Ted Joans, Paul Krassner, Tuli Kupferberg, Joanne Kyger, Tim Leary, Norman Mailer, Judith Malina, Yoko Ono, Terry Southern, Happy Traum, Chögyam Trungpa, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Waldman, Robert Anton Wilson and many others comprising a cross-section of 20th Century voices and minds of note.

Rolling Stone gave Allen no less than a dozen pages of content upon his death in 1997. Contributors included Ken Kesey, John Cale, Marianne Faithfull, Elvin Jones, Robert Hunter, Lou Reed, Deborah Harry, Philip Glass, Lenny Kaye, Graham Nash, Tom Hayden, Pete Seeger, and Jim Jarmusch.

No other writer (be it rock critic, novelist, poet, journalist, you name it) has ever received that amount of space upon their death in America’s best known pop culture magazine. Allen was a celebrity for actually doing something meaningful over a period of five decades, rather than instantly trumpeted via social media for doing absolutely nothing.

See also: Jonah Raskin’s article on Pat Thomas’s book, ‘Book Review #20: Material Wealth’, December 15th, 2023