STEPHEN TAYLOR
ONLY LOVE: INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL LIMNIOS
Steven Taylor
is a poet, musician, songwriter, and ethnomusicologist. He has published two
books of poems and a musical ethnography, False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk
Underground. He has composed music for
the theater, film, radio drama, and installations and made more than a dozen
records with various artists His
articles, reviews, essays, and poems have appeared in
various anthologies and zines. From 1976-1996 he
collaborated on music and poetry works with Allen Ginsberg, and has been a
member of the seminal underground rock band The Fugs
since 1984. He has also toured and recorded with Anne Waldman, Kenward Elmslie, and the New York
hardcore band False Prophets. From 1990-2008 he was on the faculty at the Jack
Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa
University. He is senior editor at Reality Sandwich.
Michael Limnios: Since
60s – what has changed towards the best – for our civilization and culture… and
what has gone wrong?
Steve Taylor: There seems to have been a broadening of
consciousness about human rights, particularly in the US. Gay rights, Civil
Rights, women’s rights to some extent, though not enough – we need more
progress on that front. On the negative side is an increase in police-state, erosion of personal liberty, increase of
surveillance, and horrendous economic inequality.
ML: Poetry
and music… can these two arts confront the organized government “prison” of the
spirit and mind?
ST: Yes. Art has always had that function I
think. The prison of the spirit and mind isn’t just the government. It’s us.
Art works against that at the level of individual perception. And I don’t just
mean “protest” art. All art, if it’s good enough, troubles established
categories. I believe this.
ML: Do you
believe that nowadays there’re things to change in any level?
ST: Change is constant, and is constantly
needed. People are enslaved and abused all over the world. Change that.
ML: What
do you believe that it is the turning point of our civilization?
ST: Yes, in the sense that civilization can’t
continue as it has in the past. We need to clean up our act.
ML: Which
is the most interesting period in your life and why?
ST: Now. Because I have the
memories and lessons of past experience and also have the unknown future.
Also, I’m getting older now, and can see the breakdown of the body to some
extent, so now may be as good as it gets.
ML: What
experiences in your life make you a good songwriter & poetry?
ST: Reading and singing from an early age, then
writing poems and songs as a child, then hanging out with Allen Ginsberg and
the Fugs for three decades. Also experiencing art as
a living thing and constant presence. And learning to listen
to the mind, to observe the mind without pushing some insane ego agenda all the
time. That's an important skill for any artist.
ML: Which
was the best moment of your career and which was the worst?
ST: Tough question. All of the best moments were
performances. Meeting Ginsberg was a high point for sure. That changed
everything. Worse point? Working as a dishwasher in a doughnut shop.
ML: Why
did you think that the Beats continued to generate such a devoted
following?
ST: They represent a celebratory spirit that
America constantly struggles over. The Beats got their “new spirit” from
European poets and artists and African American culture. It’s a powerful
combination, like blues, jazz and rock and roll. People like the Beats because
they like that part of the American spirit that is best – the celebration, the
idea of freedom, the joy or hopefulness the Beats put forward.
ML: What
characterizes the philosophy of Beats & 60s NYC's generation?
ST: In the 1940s, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and
Burroughs spoke of a new spirit. They got it in part from the European
avant-garde of the late nineteenth-early 20th century. Humor,
experimentation, a spiritual turn, radical freedom of expression, new visions,
hallucinations. And they reacted against the hyper-industrialized,
hyper-control-and-conform impulse of the post-World-War period. It was partly a
nostalgia thing, an old romance, in some ways. The sixties was, in this sense,
the end of the Romantic period, I would say. The sense coming out of the
Romantic era and its revolutions that the individual is important, that the
individual, one’s own sensations and experience are important. There is also an
element of anarchism or at least a socialist politics in the sense of community
organization, self-organization, small scale as
important or more important than large scale. And a sense of
compassion, which manifested for some of the Beats as Buddhism, and for the
sixties in general in an interest in eastern religion and old pre-Christian
European magic. Also it manifests in the idea that art can make a
difference.
ML: Are
there any memories from 60s NYC generation, which you’d like to share with us?
ST: I came to NY in the 1970s, but of course my
older friends were all in NY during the 60s. Life was less expensive then,
slower moving, and not so dominated by technology. People had time to think and
experiment. I was talking to Ed Sanders recently about this. Now you are
expected to do email all the time, to tweet, and have a cell phone, and be
responding to a thousand messages all day. Ed was saying there’s no time to
trip anymore, no time to just hang out and think. We were joking that now, with
all the pressure and demands, you would have to hire someone to trip for you.
ML: If you go back to
the past what things you would do better and what things you would a void to do
again?
ST: I would be kinder. I would not be influenced
as much by fear. I would practice the guitar more. I would have let that cute
girl take me home after a gig at Columbia University thirty years ago. I would
have written more and studied more music. I would have been better prepared
when John Hammond asked me to come to his office and show him my tunes 1976. I
would have taken better care of my body. I would have meditated more. I would
not have gone to Italy in the spring of 1997 and would instead have gone to New
York to be with Allen when he died. I would have played with Patti Smith when
she asked me to instead of leaving the show because my son wanted to go home.
ML: What motto
of yours you would like to stay forever?
ST: Only love.
ML: What
is your “secret” dream, and what is your nightmare?
ST: To keep making music, to reach more people
with it. The nightmare is the loss of loved ones through sickness.
ML: Which
historical personalities would you like to meet?
ST: Three Johns – John Lennon (I almost did), John
Coltrane, Johann Sebastian Bach.
ML: How
you would spend a day with Naropa and Tilopa?
ST: I’d rather spend the day with the
Johns.
ML: Which
memory from Allen makes you smile?
ST: All my memoires of Allen make me smile,
because even difficult ones at this pinpoint are treasures.
ML: Tell
me a few things about the web magazine Reality Sandwich. Where did you get that idea?
ST: It wasn’t my idea. My friend Ken Jordan
started the thing with Daniel Pinchbeck. Ken has a long history of working in
new media. He’s a genius at it. He asked me to get involved.
ML: What
would be your first decisions as Minister of Education and Culture?
ST: More money for education and the arts.
ML:
Would you mind
telling me your most vivid memory from the Beat and NY avant-garde family?
ST: Going with Allen to see a Fugs rehearsal and singing with those guys and realizing it
sounded very good and afterward being invited to join the band.
ML: Are
there any memories from the Fugs, which you’d like to
share with us?
ST: Singing with Ed and Coby
and Tuli is one of the greatest experiences of my
life.
ML: Some
music styles can be fads but the blues and jazz is always with
us. Why do think that is?
ST: Because it has ancient roots that are
apparent in the music. It goes very, very deep into the world of the ancestral
spirits of humankind, all the way back to Africa, which is our Mother. And
because it is a combination of African and European influences, it reminds us
that even us honkies owe life to Africa. That's an important message. The first
time I heard the blues, it came on the car radio when I was about 12 years old,
and it went through me like electricity. My hair lit up and I fell on my knees
in the back of my father's Chevrolet. Coltrane can still make me weep for joy.
Coltrane spoke to God. All the aspirations of humanity are in that opening riff
of “A Love Supreme.”
[“Steven
Taylor: Only Love,” an interview by Michael Limnios,
was originally published at Blues GR: Keep The
Blues Alive, 2012. See http://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/poet-musician-songwriter-steven-taylor-talks-about-allen-ginsberg.
Used by permission.]