Twenty five years on for Beat/rock classic

George-Warren discusses breakthrough title

IN 1999, a book dropped into my hands which felt like a sacred text for those few of us trying to make sense of the relationship between the Beat Generation writers and several waves of rock musicians keen to tap in to the literary spirit of those earlier novelists and poets.

The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, which first appeared just before the millennium, felt to me like a justification, a vindication, for several years of running college classes that drew attention to links between Kerouac and Tom Waits, Ginsberg and Dylan, Burroughs and Patti Smith, Neal Cassady and the Grateful Dead.

For the Western academy, always comfortable with the grain of the Ancient world, at ease with the Mediaeval milieu and cosy with the Victorian viewpoint, these lightning bolts of modernity – experimental literature and amplified sound – were already something of an anathema. Bringing them together for the consideration of lively undergraduate minds seemed to be a form of cerebral subversion.

From just this side of the mid-1990s, I conceived a course called ‘Rock and the Written Word’ which rather promiscuously meandered from the Beats to the Angry Young Men, from the New Journalism to rock criticism, from Blake to the Liverpool Poets, from jazz to spoken word, rock’n’roll to rap, psychedelia to rave, country to punk, wherever in fact popular music and reportage, fictional texts and stories, verse and lyrics, became entwined.

Pictured above: On the cover – Kerouac and girlfriend Joyce Johnson captured in New York City in the late 1950s

But to give such an educational project credibility and suitable heft, the teacher and taught needed some kind of authentic text that supported these novel notions and revolutions in print and on record, that granted this somewhat radical discourse an ideological plausibility. And, I have to say that the Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and the Counterculture, to give it its full title, rather fitted my then somewhat obscure bill.

The book, conceived and edited by Holly George-Warren, established music journalist and Rolling Stone feature writer, would become a fixture in my reading lists and, as the course was later refined as ‘Joined at the Hip: Rock, Jazz and the Beat Generation’, even more appropriate to my pedagogic purposes and for those who wrote essays on the topic.

With a focus on all the key Beats, including undersung female voices, the volume also embraced articles by important commentators like Ann Douglas, John Tytell and Douglas Brinkley, pieces on bebop and hip hop, seamless references to Robert Hunter and Lou Reed, Richard Hell and Lee Ranaldo, Yoko Ono, Lydia Lunch and Chuck D, and a gallery of great music critics: Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs, Robert Palmer and Anthony DeCurtis, to name only some.

George-Warren, in her own introduction to the book, reminded us of the space that the magazine Rolling Stone had given to maverick penmen like Hunter S. Thompson and Richard Meltzer, who themselves acknowledged the inspiration of the Beat pioneers.

And, further, she emphasised the rock overlap: ‘Likewise, the Beat filter has added texture to the recordings of numerous artists whose music gave the magazine its raison d'être: from the Beatles, Dylan and the Velvet Underground in the Sixties, to David Bowie, Tom Waits and Patti Smith in the Seventies, to Sonic Youth and Beck in recent tears.’

Pictured above: Editor Holly George-Warren. With a Kerouac biography on the way, she appears at the Beat Museum in San Francisco this coming weekend

As this groundbreaking collection celebrates its 25th birthday in 2024, I’m thrilled to report that it also features quite a number of individuals I would now count as friends of Rock and the Beat Generation – people like musician David Amram, writer Brian Hassett, artist Rick Bleier, journalist Barry Alfonso, biographer Ann Charters, poet Anne Waldman and, indeed, George-Warren herself.

We recently spoke to Holly George-Warren, currently working on a new biography of Jack Kerouac, about the Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, its history, conception and reception…

Simon Warner: To go back a quarter of a century, were you in charge of commissioning for Rolling Stone’s Straight Arrow imprint at the time?

Holly George-Warren: Yes, since 1993, I had been editorial director of Rolling Stone Press, which was Rolling Stone's book division. My job was to come up with book ideas, write a book proposal that was shopped to various publishers by our literary agent, and then once we got a publishing deal I'd  put together a team as needed to create the book.

SW: Did Jann Wenner have a role in signing off titles you had identified? 

HGW: No. His only input  was to introduce me to Johnny Depp, who was visiting our offices one day in 1998. Johnny and I chatted, I told him about the book, and he was eager to contribute an essay (which he did).

SW: Was the Beat book your concept?

HGW: Yes. An editor named Bob Miller at Hyperion Publishing was very interested in the idea when I pitched it to him at a meeting.

SW: What drove you to pursue such a collection? What made you think you could make it work?

HGW: I relished the numerous Beat-related articles the magazine had published going back to the late '60s. I thought there was plenty of material to comprise an anthology but I wanted to enhance it by assigning new pieces, which would bring a fresh perspective to the book. 

Pictured above: An alternative edition of the book

SW: There were strong suggestions that interest in Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs had dimmed by the early 1990s but was then revived by the Whitney Museum touring show 1995-6? Do you remember that shift and did you perceive a kind of changing attitude during the period?

HGW: I'd been interested in the Beats pretty continuously since the 1970s, so that was my main motivation in doing the book. In the '80s, I lived  on St. Mark's Place, around the corner from Allen Ginsberg and not far from William Burroughs, and went to their readings, as well as attended readings by folks like Anne Waldman at the St. Mark's Poetry Project. But I'm sure attending the Whitney show in NYC whetted my appetite to create such a book project – and perhaps helped expand the market for the book.

SW: How did you come to pursue contributors? Did you want to find a balance of literary commentary and musical journalism?

HGW: I wanted to commission essays by women who had been part of the story from the beginning, so I approached Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Carolyn Cassady and Ann Charters. In addition to people like Michael McClure and David Amram, I also wanted to include contemporary Beat acolytes – musicians, writers,  and music journalists. As I contacted various contributors, they would recommend others. There are more than 70 pieces in the book – a real mix of voices and styles!

SW: Were you happy with the results and do you consider the book a success (personally, I found it inspirational!)?

Yes! It's my favorite among the 40 or so books I conceived and spearheaded while running Rolling Stone Press from 1993-2001. The book got excellent reviews, and I organized readings with our contributors in NYC, SF and LA, which were well-attended. I recently signed a copy in October that someone brought to the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac gathering. I think the book has stood the test of time.

See also: ‘Jack, Janis & Holly’, November 3rd, 2024