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Ed Sanders: Emblem of an Era Marches On

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

On Thursday, May 31, renowned musician, poet, author and 60's icon Ed Sanders will appear at the Squawk Coffeehouse (1555 Mass. Ave., Harvard Square).

Foremostly associated with The Fugs, the legendary rock group he co-founded with ex-Hassid Tuli Kupferberg, Sanders' personal and public history is long and colorful.

Born on August 17, 1939 in Kansas City, Missouri, he was groomed for law school like his uncle Milton or to work in his father's dry goods store, but soon revealed his nonconformist stripes. A Missouri University drop out, he headed to Greenwich Village in 1958 after reading Allen Ginsberg's Howl. ("When [I] returned to school the next day, [I] was a changed person," he told Hewitt Pratt of the Literary Kicks online magazine. Indeed, he was suspended for bringing in the controversial work.)

Amid the anti-war atmosphere of the early 1960's, he found his niche. His Peace Eye bookstore, located in a former kosher meat market on the Lower East Side, became a meeting place which bridged the gap between the Beat generation and the hippies.

The satirical and self-deprecating, yet highly literate Fugs (the name taken from Norman Mailer's the Naked and the Dead) formed in 1965 and became a fixture at anti-war demonstrations, sometimes collaborating with like-minded Frank Zappa. "It was better than working or graduate school," he told Pratt, "and gave us a modest hope of earning our livelihood from art."

"We were never busted for obsenity," Sanders told Goblin Magazine's Wesley Joost, "but we had trouble returning to venues."

"We had a free speech attorney on retainer. We had to pay him a monthly fee." Their FBI file was impressive; seizing upon a newspaper typo, the agency persisted in referring to the band as The Fags. They were instrumental in the 10/1/67 Pentagon levitation.

After a 15-year hiatus, the F(u)gs resumed their mission in 1984. Their last CD, The Real Woodstock Festival, was released in 1994 on London's Ace Records.

Sanders obtained a degree in Greek, Latin and the classics from New York University. Like his friend Ginsberg, his own writing style embraced the First Amendment, adhering to no bounds in content or subject matter. In addition to journals and periodicals ("I'll print anything," one proclaimed), he penned a string of well-regarded books including 1971's The Family: The Story of Charles Manson. "I learned that they were very, very guilty," he told Joost. "There was some danger…Manson still sends me hostile post cards. I think he's a fan of mine." (Movie rights are presently ongoing.)

Writing awards included fellowships from Guggenheim and the NEA. Tales of Beatnik Glory (1975), Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century, Selected Poets (1961-1985), Hymn to the Rebel Café (1993) (reverently adopted in ballad fashion by Squawk Coffeehouse's Lee Kidd), Chekhov (1995) and 1968: A History in Verse (1977-ongoing) fill his repertoire. Since 1995, he and his wife Miriam (married 40 years with a grown daughter) have published The Woodstock Journal, a bi-weekly forum for poetry, art, and news, from their home town of Woodstock, NY.

Ever the innovator, Sanders, mixing poetry and music, created his own mini-synthesizers in the 1980's. His performance gizmos include "The Talking Tie", a wired neckpiece, "The Pulse Lyre", wired up work gloves, and "The Lisa Lyre", an apparatus incorporating light-sensitive switches as well as da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". His own CD's include Songs in Ancient Greek (1990) and American Bard (1996).

Sam Thomas, central character of Tales of Beatnik Glory, epitomizes Sanders' philosophies and reflects a nearly autobiographical persona as he rants a co-opted Samuel Beckett: "Scrape, scrape, chew, chew, persist, persist," and Ezra Pound's motto "Make it NEW!"

At Squawk, Sanders will bring the new Volume Four of 1968: A History in Verse along with his inimitable, experimental style.