Interview #5: Steve Turner
As part of Rock and the Beat Generation's Kerouac's centenary specials, we chat to a leading British music journalist and popular cultural historian whose biography of the writer broke fresh ground
Steve Turner is a poet, author and journalist who published Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster in 1996 with Bloomsbury in London and Viking in New York. I recall attending a bookstore launch of the biography at the Edinburgh Festival, an event at which Carolyn Cassady was present. The biography’s title tellingly references a line in Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem ‘Howl’ as the poet paid tribute to his Beat circle.
The book, subtitled ‘A Life in Words and Pictures’ and written in a vivid and dynamic fashion, engaging and accessible, was as notable for its appearance as its prose. The design was quite beautiful: it felt like a period journal or a lovingly-crafted scrapbook. So, in a packed biographical category, this particular Kerouac volume has always been close to my heart.
Turner, who lives in London and regularly contributed to Melody Maker, New Musical Express and Rolling Stone in their heyday, has also written books on Van Morrison, the Beatles, gospel music, the song ‘Amazing Grace’ and the band on the Titanic.
As Kerouac’s centenary approaches, we talked to him about his original and appealing take on this literary figure – his work, his life and influence – and Turner’s wider interest in poetry and the Beat Generation writers…
What feelings are generated for you by the Kerouac anniversary? What do you believe Kerouac means today, a hundred years on from his birth?
The anniversary doesn’t spark any particular feelings, because I’m always reading Beat material anyway. I have over 200 books either by or about the Beats and constantly dip into them. In 2018 I traced Kerouac’s route from Denver to San Francisco and visited places like Central City and Longmont where he stopped off. That was fun.
On that trip I found a lot of young people who didn’t know who Kerouac was. People who are a product of the Beat heritage need to have it pointed out to them which is what I think both you and I do in our work. When I was giving a talk about the Beatles at Pepperdine University in Malibu not too long ago a girl came up to me afterwards and said: ‘So now I know why I wear blue jeans’. And I took that as a real compliment.
You pitched a biography of the author in the early 1990s which became, of course, Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster. That was already a crowded marketplace: there were already quite a number of books covering his life story. What did you feel you could add to the conversation?
I had done a biography of Van Morrison for Bloomsbury who were running a series that they referred to in-house as their ‘icons’ series. Richard Williams, who’d done books on Miles Davis and Bob Dylan for the series, put my name forward when Van was suggested to him because I’d just done a piece on Van’s Belfast for the Independent. When that book was finished I thought that Kerouac was an ideal icon and fortunately they thought so too. What made it unique was the illustrations, all of which I researched.
Pictured above: The cover of Steve Turner’s Kerouac biography
Was it a particular challenge for a British writer? Did you feel an Anglo perspective could add something, a critical distance perhaps, to the enquiry?
I thought the product – the way the book looked and felt – was the unique contribution. It had an amazing designer, Simon Jennings, who turned it into an artwork. He really felt for the period. If I added anything I think it was perhaps the angles of pop culture and spirituality. Ann Douglas, a Beat expert who was lecturing at Columbia, said in a review that Angelheaded Hipster ‘offers fresh insights into Kerouac’s pop culture influences…and announces a welcome emphasis on Kerouac’s spiritual quest.’ At the time I didn’t think about my view being Anglo.
Pictured above: Turner (right) with Al Hinkle, the model for Ed Dunkel in On the Road, giving his final interview, San Jose, July 2018
Did you come to the biography as a fan of Kerouac and the Beats? Or was this the work of a neutral observer?
I’d first read On the Road in 1967 and was a fan. I’d been writing poetry since 1965 and performing it since 1968 and I acknowledged the Beats as my literary ancestors. By the time of the book I’d spoken to Ginsberg, Corso and Burroughs and had seen each of them doing public readings. I’d long been interested in the interface between rock music and Beat poetry. I’d met Pete Brown, the Cream lyricist, in 1968 and Roger McGough had reviewed my first poetry book in NME in 1975. In 1998 I did a synopsis of a book about the Beats and rock music but couldn’t get it off the ground!!
There was some talk about the mid-1990s producing a revival in interest in Kerouac and the Beats. The big touring Whitney Museum show helped in this respect, we might argue. Did you feel a swell of impetus behind the book you had written as a result?
Not really. I think the visual aspect of the book was its strongest selling point. Other than Ann Charters’ Scenes Along the Road I didn’t know of any book that captured the imagery of the Beats and yet it was such an iconic visual period. To go back to your earlier question about Kerouac’s significance today, I think that the misogyny now feels a little uncomfortable, but the ideas of freedom and self-exploration remain strong. When I did the book I think it was around the time that Kerouac was being used to sell chinos so I felt that he still had pop cultural impetus.
Pictured above: The distinctive pages of Angelheaded Hipster
Two areas on which you have written widely – popular music and religion – were important hooks in your telling of the Kerouac story. Were these factors that prompted you to produce the biographical account?
They didn’t prompt me to write the book, but they were areas of particular interest which I was excited to pursue. I’d been writing about music since 1970 both as a journalist and as an author and had, by that time, spoken to many of the greats of rock history from Ray Charles to John Lennon, Jerry Lee Lewis to U2, Jerry Garcia to David Bowie. I’d also written Hungry for Heaven: Rock‘n’Roll and the Search for Redemption. I was always conscious that the Beats had laid down a path later followed by the ‘hippy’ generation.
One of the most exciting aspects of your volume was the incorporation of images and the high production values in terms of design – the look of the book amplified its content superbly. How difficult was it to source the pictures and secure permissions and to what degree did you play a part in creating the style of the edition, e.g. the text re-creations, that was released?
The text recreations came from Simon Jennings (who also did a Burroughs bio for Bloomsbury and possibly one on Ginsberg). Sourcing the photos was enjoyable. The location photos I got by calling local libraries and asking for photos from whichever year Kerouac passed through their town. I got lucky with Magnum who found a load of Beat shots by Burt Glinn misfiled under ‘youth culture’ or ‘bohemians’ that featured Kerouac and Corso at a party.
John Sampas (of the Kerouac Estate) showed me around Lowell and, at the end of the trip, he showed me a small suitcase full of photos of Kerouac and asked me to list the images I’d like to use in the book. I think I listed around 50. However, once I got back to London he first reduced the number to 20, then 10, and, in the end, didn’t supply any.