Cool and Good Weird

Henry bone headed and thick, doing the same as he had done every year at this time, hiding and running away from the dreaded holidays.  

From Thanksgiving until a few days after New Years he hunkered down in his Queen’s apartment—like Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945, stocking up on tortilla, beans and rice, oranges, water, Coca-cola, Jack Daniels and plenty of dope.

He would spend the month writing short stories and watching The Night of the Iguana over and over, letting it run on repeat.

Tennessee Williams was Henry’s favorite playwright, he had watched The Night of the Iguana 1000s of times and he saw something new in it every time, it was time-less. 

The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon in utter mental exhaustion, cutting through the layers of the onion, on the run from the Episcopal Church and God in Mexico. Shannon having an extended nervous breakdown in Mexico, wrapped up in a straw hammock used as a straight-jacket, cured by cocaine tea and the love of a beatnik gal.

Henry feeling safe after New Years, secure that the ghost of Christmas had gone back to Finland or the North Pole for another year. He was ready to go out. 

Tired of beans and rice, in need of real food, he leaves his Queens digs and goes to Chaim’s Deli.

Walking a few blocks to the deli, going inside and sitting at his favorite booth. His regular waitress Ruby comes to his table and says—

Jesus Henry where the fuck have you been? We have been worried sick about you here, Chaim was ready to call the cops but I told him I thought you were hiding from the holiday spooks. 

Henry says to Ruby—

Ruby as usual you are spot on. I’m really hungry doll, I want a pastrami on pumpernickel, a bowl of matzo ball soup, coleslaw and some Jack and soda to wash it down.

After eating too much, Henry says bye to the folks at Chaim’s and walks out the double glass door at the entrance, lighting a joint, taking a deep drag and looking up at the moon, thinking—

How sweet it is!

In the Bowery he goes to a dump called the Vomit House for a drink. The place full of bums, men and women sitting at tables and in booths, screaming at one another back and forth, babbling incoherently, their conversations disjointed, banging down bottles of cheap wine, Mad Dog 20 20. 

Henry at the bar sitting next to a bum in a dirty and ripped business suit who turns to him and says—

I’m Dr. Stephen Grundy I’m the creator and marketer of the Palm Springs Diet, nice to meet you. 

Henry saying— 

I’m Henry, what the fuck are you doing here? 

Dr. Grundy says—

Well, Henry I had a slip and am on a new liquid diet called — The Fall Down, then Grab and Gulp Down Anything with Alcohol in it Diet.

Henry thinking the guy was absolutely uncool, finishing his beer and leaving the Vomit House. 

In Manhattan on 53rd Street he walks into MoMa to see what is going on and eyeballs a security guard standing in front of a Jackson Pollack painting wearing a blazer made of fake Holstein cow-skin. The fake cow-skin blazer against the Pollack painting was too much for Henry's eyes, blurry, causing his eyes to tear. 

Henry asking—

Why are you wearing that cornball blazer? It's a disgrace to cows everywhere, so what's going on at MaMA today?

The guard says—

Sir, if you don't like my blazer you can write a message to the MoMA blog. Joseph Beuys is staging a happening in the basement, I'm sorry you don't like my blazer.  

Henry takes the elevator to the basement of MoMA, one floor down, there is nobody around except a thin man wearing a 40s-style Fedora sitting in a pile of hay at the very end of the concrete room. There are thick and large strips of grayish-green felt on the floor spread everywhere. 

Joseph Beuys, WW2  Stuka pilot and 20th Century artist extraordinaire is holding a cane and petting a Coyote.

Henry approaches Beuys and pets his Coyote, the artist stands and then picks up a strip of green felt from the floor, wrapping it around Henry and saying—

You're an artist, everyone is an artist.

Henry wondered what the fuck was going on? 

Feeling hot wrapped in the strip of felt he takes it off in-turn wrapping it around Joseph Beuys, saying— 

You’re weird, cool, and good weird.

Henry leaves MoMa needing a drink badly to shake off whatever the scene in MoMa basement was about.

He takes a taxi to Chinatown and goes to Mr. Lee’s Laundry. At the entrance he walks through a red double door, drudgingly ascending 6 flights of stairs to the roof top. There is a party going on, red lit up lanterns strung on wire, swaying in the wind. There were a hundred people or more there, all sitting on plastic stools at plastic tables. 

Most snorting cocaine and drinking Japanese whiskey. Henry sits down at a table of Chinese ladyboys, one of them who is wearing a red silk Hanfu hands him a drink and then lays a few lines of cocaine on a pink Hello Kitty mirror she pulls out from a large purse that is full of make up and junk of all sorts . 

Henry feeling right as the ladyboy says to him,

hi darling my name is Butterfly, do you want some company? 

He says—

Sex you mean? I’m straight you know.

Butterfly says—

I will suck you really good and then lube my ass with coconut oil, when you are inside me it will be divine, I’m tight, almost a virgin. 

Henry tempted, it was 2AM, he was a man and he was horny, maybe next time, 

he says to Butterfly—

Almost a virgin? You are lovely Butterfly but I have to go home and feed my pet iguana cockroach and scorpion fillets or he will be very angry with me.

Henry tired and wasted, walking down 6 flights of stairs to street level, he gets a taxi to Queens. 

Laying his head back on a plastic pillow in the back seat of the taxi and thinking—

I’m a genius but nobody knows it.

Bukowski

Bukowski claimed the majority of what he wrote happened in his life.

To make himself more picturesque for the reader he did little to elaborate on himself.

Heinrich Karl Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in August 1920.

In 1924 the family of three left Germany and moved to LA. Young Charle's father bought a two bedroom bungalow on Jefferson Park Road not far from Hollywood. In 1924 LA was paradise, there was plenty of work in agriculture and building, but the palm trees and clean orderly ways of America 1924 passed the freaky immigrant family by.

A TWISTED CHILDHOOD FUCKED ME UP.

Bukowski’s mother dressed young Charles in velvet trousers, he was a mark from the start, getting shit canned from both ends. His old man, “The Nazi sergeant Hymie” would strap him endlessly if he missed a blade of grass after mowing the lawn. Buk would have to fight for his life at Virginia Road Elementary School as well. 

Bukowski hated the world already as a young man, he would brew his juice while lying in bed looking at light patterns on the ceiling, listening to Brahms or Mahler. Like other outlaw literary geniuses, the struggle to get through daily life forced him to go into his inner mind. 

Bukowski began writing as a boy, he sensed life wasn’t going to be a picnic. He was attracted to the solitary nature of writing, it helped him to gain perspective, writing became his foil, but his hammer was booze. 

By the age of 15 he was a full-time alcoholic, he could buy booze anywhere, he looked 33, his face long and drawn like a deathly horse head, full of deeply rooted acme, people found him hard to look at. 

One night he came home to the family house drunk, he broke a lock to get in unnoticed and was greeted by his old man. Hymie immediately began strapping Charles with a leather belt, the metal end. Bukowski puked on a new white carpet in the entryway (Perhaps the most famous puke scene in modern 20th Century American Literature). Somehow 15 year old Charles gathered the strength to get up, punching Hymie in the gut, ending the confrontation.  

During the ruckus his mom packed a small cardboard suitcase, pushing young Charles out the door before Hymie could get up. This cheap cardboard suitcase would become a right of passage metaphor in Bukowski’s stories. He used the suitcase for years, too poor to buy another. At one point it became so worn he painted it with liquid shoeblack.

After graduating from LA High (he didn’t bother to pick up his diploma feeling the ceremony was superficial and inane) Buk enrolled in LA City College, now living free from his old man, the sadistic Hymie, free to drink whenever he pleased. He began his barfly life in a small dumpy room over the “Starlight Lounge”while studying  journalism and literature. He liked true grit author’s like Upton Sinclair and Ernest Hemingway, supporting himself by working part-time as a janitor at Sears. 

Buk was apolitical throughout his life. His twisted fucked up early life made him anti-social and he rooted for the bad guys out of spite. During World War II he wrote a short story in support of Hitler which got him in trouble at LA City College. Of course, Henry didn’t give a shit about Hitler, but he discovered the joy of tweaking and outraging the mainstream, it was easy for him and would bring him joy throughout his life.

After a year at LA City College in 1942 this butt ugly, outrageous and anti-social genius hit the road. He was writing full time now sending stories to the rags of the day, “Popular Mechanics” and “Thriller Detective.” He was in search of the glue of experience that would help sharpen his writing chops. Henry caught a bus from LA to New Orleans, he only had thirteen dollars in his pocket.

While traveling in the forties he would often run out of money and live on candy bars. Later in life at a reading, he was asked what the secret to his success was? Buk saying,” One candy bar a day.” 

When he got to New Orleans he lived in a tar paper shack lit by a single light bulb. Buk couldn’t hold down a job, preferring to booze it up with bums and whores. Eventually taking a job on a railroad gang and leaving New Orleans. On the way to Texas, he found a paperback copy of “Notes from the Underground” by Dostoevsky. It related to the struggle of the Russian poor with the Czarist elite, reminding Charles of his days at LA City College. 

BUKOWSKI WROTE BECAUSE HE WAS HURT AND PISSED OFF. WRITING, BOOZE, AND MAHLER WERE THE ONLY WAYS HE COULD DEAL WITH HIS CHILDHOOD.

The following is a bit from a Bukowski poem illustrating his rage against the machine as well as his frustration from being on the shit end of the capitalist system most of his life. It is from “Factotum,” written in the sixties. 

“….the days of 

the bosses, yellow men

with bad breath and big feet, men

who look like frogs, hyenas, men who 

walk as melody has never been invented,

men who think it is intelligent to hire and

fire and profit, men with expensive wife's

they possess like 60 acres of ground to be 

drilled and shown-off—“

By the early fifties, Buk had returned to his beloved LA. He had been writing since the forties, sending manuscripts to editors all over America. None were accepted, his work contained unheard of radicalism sex and realty, rarified stuff in the fifties.

On off hours Buk would write and listen to Mahler late at night in his room above “Sunlight Inn” He didn’t go to the beach once during all his years in California, he was light years away from “Muscle Beach” mentality. His toxic and mercurial voice was alive in the alley and on the bar stools of the “Sunlight Inn.”

One day Bukowski got a letter from Barbara Frye, editor of the “Harlequin Review” out of Wheeler, Texas. She told him that she thought he was the greatest poet since William Blake.  They corresponded for two days and she asked him to marry her. Barbara was missing two vertebrae from her neck and couldn’t move her neck from side to side, she looked neckless. She came to LA and Charles married her, the next edition of “Harlequin Review" had eight of Henry’s poems in it. 

In seven years the marriage was toast, the years of marriage were like scenes out of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” Frye would constantly talk shit to him barking,” Why don’t you get off your ass and stop drinking? Go get a job.” Bukowski was published in the “Paris Review” by this time, next to Sartre. 

John Webb spent three years in jail for a dope charge and robbing a bank. Inside jail, he developed a love for literature and poetry and became the editor of the prison paper, which was used mostly for ass wipe and rolling joints. 

When Webb was paroled he contacted William Burroughs, Henry Miller, and Lorenzo Ferlinghetti as well as other underground writers of the time, urging them to contribute to his new avant-garde rag “The Outsider.” His wife who called herself Gypsy Lou worked with John on the rag.

In the early sixties, John and Gypsy Lou contacted Bukowski saying, “ We love the realness of your work, it’s not phony at all, you seem honest and down to earth.” In short time the couple published Buk's first book of poetry, “Factotum,” a crafted and artfully bounded edition made with handmade paper.

FUCK SCREAMING I DON’T WANT TO GO THERE.

Bukowski took to the flower power scene of the sixties like a dog takes to a cat. He was hired to write short stories for a rag called the "LA Free Press" published by John Byran. He loved to ass whip the other writers calling them, "Scummy, commy, hippy shit. Buk's thinking was more in line with the Hell's Angels than the hippies. 

Bukowski met Neal Cassidy of Beat fame through John Bryan. Cassidy was on his way to Mexico in a Plymouth V8 wagon. The three of them went for a ride, Cassidy the X parking lot attendant could back a semi truck into a donut hole. Cassidy took the wheel, Buk sat in the back seat and Bryan rode shotgun. Buk offered Cassidy some whiskey from a pint and Neal slugged it like a pro, Buk then saying, “ Have another taste?” Charles felt OK with Cassidy because he drank.

By the early seventies “ Notes of a Dirty Old Man” was published by Ferlinghetti’s “Black Sparrow Press.” This wasn’t Charles best book but it was a big seller and brought him world fame and moderate wealth. He continued to live the barfly life, drinking 24/7. He bought a track house in San Pedro, a mansion compared to the rooming house shit holes of the last thirty years. He also bought his first car, a BMW which he kept till he died.

He would drive the BMW to the Santa Anita Race Track and drink beer covered in a paper sack as he watched the working stiffs driving in the opposite direction to work on the freeway. The crotch of his chinos would often get wet with beer by the time he got to the track. He would walk to the betting window looking like he pissed his pants, he liked the look.

BOOZEHOUND POET CHARLES BUKOWSKI WRITES A HYMN TO HIMSELF IN HOLLYWOOD AND STARTS SINGING.

So ran the profile in “People Magazine” on Charles Bukowski when the publicist of the film “Barfly" sent out the media blitz. A film which would have never been canned with out the help of Dennis Hopper’s Venice Beach friend Barbet Shroeder. The stories surrounding the production of the film are legendary, Shroeder was part Mossad hit man and part insane. He pushed the film through, showing up at Golan and Globus’s suite in the Beverly Hill’s Hotel with a chain saw threatening to saw the room up if they didn’t give him the money for the film.

When “Barfly” began screening in theaters around the country it changed Buk, he would strut around his house loaded, feeling the part of the sheik of Sunset Blvd. But his constant inner companion was a sad man that pussy and booze couldn’t kill. The part in “Barfly” where Henry Chinowski (hilariously played by Mickey Rourke) is up late at night musing, listening to Mahler, feeling his heart and life around him, was spot on Bukowski, there was a sensitive and hurt soul inside the wild man. 

Bukowski respected Hollywood Stars as much as he respected hippies. The only films he liked were,”All Quiet on the Western Front” and “ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” He once met Arnold Schwarzenegger at an industry party and called him a “Piece of shit” in German.  And there was the time Sean Penn, who was in awe of Bukowski and a regular visitor, brought his wife Madonna to Buk’s Sand Pedro place. His neighbors knew him only as a weird drunk, a little girl who lived next door later asked,” Mr B was that Madonna at your house?”

By 1987 Bukowskis’s health was getting bad, years of boozing was catching up with him. He was writing his last novel “Hollywood” about the making of “Barfly,”  amazed still that he made it in Hollywood.

Writing kept his pain at bay for a while but his body finally gave in to booze in March of 1994. Considering the voracity of abuse he directed at himself it was amazing he lived as long as he did. 

He wrote to find a way to cope with everyday life, he reveled with losers, he was a 1000 to one punch drunk champ driving in the opposite direction who beat the odds.    

The Making of "Exile on Main Street"

The Stones exiled themselves from the UK to France in 1971 because of high British taxes, consequently, Exile on Main Street was born. 

They looked for studios in Paris and couldn’t find any they liked. They had a old BBC van that was equipped with a studio that could be parked by any theater or empty loft.

In the end, Keith Richard's house Nillcote in the south of France seemed to be the best choice, near lawless Marceau and Mafia Italy. Philipe Lymen, part of the Stone's tribe could make smack runs into Marceau, or into Mafia controlled Genoa. 

Once in France they felt like true expats, alone with nothing to lose, they were in a Catch-22 situation making Exile, close to bankruptcy, it was sink or swim, fight or flight.

Mick and Bianca Jagger (who was pregnant) were living in Paris. The musicians, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Mike Taylor, Bobby Keys were scattered around the globe. Mick decided that they should move into Nillcote.

Once at Nillcote ready to record it was the positivity of their leader Mick Jagger that was the glue that held the thing together and got the ball rolling, his constant happiness and vision, his easy-going style, his ongoing joy of the whole process.

Keith on the other-hand was muddling through a junk habit.

Once they began recording and writing, it was a constant struggle, Keith would sleep all day and wake up in the middle of the night, then eating some fruit and fixing.    

The band had to be ready and waited for Keith,  This unnerved Jagger who felt Keith would do better to adhere to some kind of a schedule.

Mick would sit in the basement jamming during the day, fabricating lyrics and music, truly missing his best friend Keith who was sleeping or on the beach with Anita Pallenberg.

When Keith did work he was a taskmaster when a song was ready, a sensation or consciousness swept through the musicians, Keith would start staring at Bill Wyman, who would tilt his bass up 15 degrees towards the heavens, THAT WAS THE SIGN! A few takes latter the final cut was put in the can. 

The bewitching open party atmosphere is a major part of putting "Exile" together. It was an ongoing party in an egalitarian Tolstoy-like  Gypsy camp, there was no security, cool people would walk in and out. Anita Pallenberg (Keith's wife and constant companion ) reminisced later about walking into the living room and seeing a guy with a huge baggy full of smack sitting on the sofa. Of course, that was a ticket to get in on the endless partying with the family, but things got dark later.

Bobby Keyes who was from Texas and the band's sax player never mentioned seeing junk, but admitted seeing plenty of booze and ganja, all being used 24 hrs a day, this was a good old boy trying to put a positive spin on shit.  

Keith had a family whose job it was to score smack for him in Marceau. Tim Lyman would make trips between borders to supply and then use junk with Keith and Anita. Lyman's son Nicolas's (only 11) job was to roll joints. Nicholas later said when interviewed in the 90s that the scene felt dark to him at times, but that he could feel and see the charisma emanating from it all. 

When it was time to record they backed the studio van (an old BBC van) up a tiny alleyway through untrimmed trees, parking it and running the wires through the ground floor of Nillcote. It was weird, everyone had to play apart from one another in different sections of the basement, the horn section connected to the studio from a hallway, Bill Wyman was wired outside of Keith's section, walled off.

Once the recording began Nillcote was having power outages, one of the technicians realized that that amps of electricity coming from GDF Suez, a Southern France electric company wasn't enough to keep the studio juiced up. Amazingly he goes outside to the electric train track that what near Nillcote and splices their line, from then on the BBC van studio and the recording going on in the basement was devilish hot.   

Considering the cramped and broken up studio conditions it was amazing they got anything done, but of course what came out of was one of the most original and best blues/rock albums in history. 

Keith had a Jamaican maid and chauffeur, Matta and Jumbo Jack. Matta looked like a voodoo priestess and Jumbo Jack was as big as Howling Wolf and wore a top hat.

Matta was a gambler and loved to play dice, she would organize crap games and got rich winning money from Jagger and Richards. Jagger got the ideal for the song "Tumbling Dice" from the crap games with Matta.

Bianca Jagger wore a white silk dress without underwear, she radiated multicolored auras, she was the sun at the corp of Exile and to Mick's joy pregnant, he to this day loves fatherhood and family.  

Aside: I, AM GOING TO CUT UP A LIST OF IDEAS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AT NILLCOTE, William Burroughs STYLE! 

The Stones were in debt near bankruptcy, tax under Labor was 83%. It was impossible for them to live in England, and the powers at be were threatened by the Stones.

Keith felt that they were edged out of their own country (UK).

The album was raw and edgy, the reviews were terrible. 2 years later it was called the best rock n roll album ever. 

Mick felt the PRESS was very disruptive to his and Bianca's personal life.

Charlie Watts suffered culture shock at first but remains in France today.

When the band felt the album was finished, Keith said it was getting cold outside and winter was coming, the tape was in the truck and everyone left quickly. 

The French Government was scared of the devilish voodoo going on at Nillcote and stayed away from the place.

The stones felt like exiles and they knew they had to do this album, but they never knew it would be as great as it is.

There was no mention anywhere where the money was coming from and who and who was funding the project.

The Stones were the center of the rock n roll universe in the 70s when rock music was revolution. 

The whole gathering, family, players, technicians, cooks were a tribe.

Charlie says Keith was a true Bohemian, a rasta man living from day to day, not sweating the small shit.

The bands best music came when they didn't think they were being recorded.

Bobby Keys was an open-minded, loving and accepting good old boy, somewhat straight compared to the rest of the Stones, but totally in the Nillcote family groove.

Mick Taylor wasn't making any money but was digging it all.

It was so hot in the basement at times that Mick wrote a song and sang it while playing piano "Where's our Ventilator?"

A French guy went to Nillcote to visit for a day, he was dumb fucked and awed, he ends up partying with the tribe for six months.

Ian Stewart, who was a stride piano genius, often called the 5th Stone and the founder of the band was never mentioned because he wasn't at Nillcote.

Keith does an interview after shooting junk, he talks intelligently but is wain, pretty cool huh!

Charlie and Mick went back to Nillcote to look around in 2010. Mick said to Charlie on film, "There was no master plan," and "It's a boring old recording session, who gives a shit now." 

Mick was the anti-christ of rock n roll in those days, Alan Ginsberg crowned Mick the KING of the flower movement.

Keith & Mick can play like a foot stompin balls to the wall John Hammond in duo and they often do, even now.

The Stones love Ray Charles and country music. 

Rock is a beautiful Navajo blue turquoise stone on gold caldron to mix things up in—Keith

The basement was the center of the universe, drink-in Jack, smoking ganja, snorting cocaine, they could play as loud as they wanted, but it was like recording in a sauna.

Pallenberg calls it a labor of love.

When Bianca and Mick were married it was supposed to be a secret but didn't stay a secret.

Bobby keys could play all reed instruments and he taught Charlie about time settings: 2/4 mostly, to count 2 counts to every 4 beats in a measure, 1+2+. 1 and 2 and down on the 1 & 2, up on the ands. Charlie was a quick learner who rarely plays out of time.

Nillcote was never empty, but there were few disruptions, amazing considering there was no security. 

The band and the party goers would only eat one large meal a day, you could drink Pernod, spring water, Jack Daniels, fresh juice, or champaign. There would be a large table of food, everything under the sun Shepard Pie, roasted chicken, ham, tacos, beans, rice, Yorkshire Pudding, waffles, avocados, olive oil, pecan pie, you name it. 

Charlie Watts said later recording Exile was hell for everyone, but not for Keith, laugh!

Keith would sleep for a whole day, so when the band and players went to bed, Keith would just work with whoever was there. Usually Jimmy Miller, who adored Keith and would stay up with him, he could play drums some. Affable good old boy Bobby Keys would stay up too.

The Stones music is from the heart, it is true, played with open hearts and empty minds.

Keith's Mum once said that Keith was born with an utterly amazing ear, Mrs. Richards was just being modest. Listen to "All Down the Line" Alternate Take, it rocks you to the bone. Don Was said later that they opened up "All Down The Line" Alternate Take as far as you can.

Mick keep saying, “There is no control."

When the band split to LA to edit the finished Exile taps, they felt drained emotionally. 

Casino Boogie, the lyrics, were inspired by the William Burrough’s cut up method, Mick would write 3 to 8 word phrases with a felt tip pen and cut the paper into pieces while singing and sing them the way they came out. 

Anita Pallenberg says it was a beautiful world, she and Keith liked to go to a deserted beach at Nillcote and smoke ganja while Keith jammed, both sitting cross legged on an Indian blanket.

Charlie Watts says they mixed the album constantly over and over again in LA. Mick and Charlie designed the album cover.

They used the beat photographer Robert Frank's photos for the cover. 

The driving of cars and the walking around in funky urban areas while on the Exile tour in the USA was filmed in black with Super 8 by Robert Frank. 

Mick doesn't like anything you did yesterday he is interested in tomorrow, that keeps him going.

Keith did junk to hide from the glare of the press, it was his halo/armor. He felt like junk hid him from the world and protected him. No doubt because when you take junk you feel like the coolest person on earth. The shit was a shield for Keith, he lived in his own universe at Nillcote and still does live in his own Beduin cushioned library universe at his mansion in Connecticut. 

Today Keith Richards is a book freak with an unreal vocabulary who no longer is a junk. He still enjoys a smoke of ganja and snort of Rebel Yell!

_________________________________

Aside: When the album " Exile on Main Street" was released I was one of the first to buy it. I smoked ganja, drank German Beer and listened to it over and over.

REFERENCES: THE FILM WORK OF STEPHEN KIJAK AND THE INTERVIEWS ON THE DOCUMENTARY BY THOSE WHO WERE THERE