Tonight I went to Bar Lucerna1 to see some of the better known Czech bands. Svatý Vincent2. Polnous. [Půlnoc?3]. Also on the bill was Alan Ginsberg4 and a screeching woman he introduced as a great poet. Silly old bugger5. More interestingly, Barbora and Ezra got it together – started holding onto each other during the concert and went home together afterwards. Barbora, after getting drunk with her formidable mother, had told me that she loved Ezra. But about Ezra’s feelings, I was not sure. I left the concert before the end with a drunken Charles. Went randomly about Wenceslas Square before I decided to run for the last train.
Louis Armstrong sang (and recorded a live album) here in 1965, and Ella Fitzgerald in 1969. The ‘entertainment complex’ — completed in 1920 and still running — is a mix of Art Nouveau and Modernism. The Great Hall can host 2,500. Like many things, young-Toby takes it for granted. Just another minor wonder.
Shamefully misspelled. Allen Ginsberg. At this time, young-Toby has lost his love of and respect for the Beats. A few years earlier, he’d have been delighted to be in the same large room as the poet who had written Howl and Kaddish and ‘A Supermarket in California’. Someone who’d known Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Someone who’d written liner notes for a Dylan album. A conscientious objector to American Capitalism and nuclear mania, although often a deliberately irritating one.
Ginsberg’s crowning as Praha’s Král Majales (King of the May 1965) and his famous deportation from the country have been much written about. I won’t go over that.
When he returned in 1990, it served as both a connection between those two hopeful times and a reminder of the distance and difference between them. Ginsberg in 1965 had been on a cultural hot streak. He went straight from police hassle/arrest in Praha to hanging out with the Beatles and Dylan. Freaking out but also deeply influencing John Lennon. Here’s Marianne Faithful’s account of their first meeting —
Then Allen Ginsberg came in.. He went over to the chair (Bob) Dylan was sitting in and plonked himself down on the armrest… John Lennon broke the silence snarling: “Why don’t you sit a bit closer then, dearie?” The insinuation – that Allen had a crush on Dylan was intended to demolish (him), but since it wasn’t far from the truth anyway, Allen took it very lightly. The joke was on them, really. He burst out laughing, fell off the arm and onto Lennon’s lap. Allen looked up to him and said, “Have you ever read William Blake, young man?”… And Lennon in his Liverpudlian deadpan said, “Never heard of the man”. Cynthia (Lennon), who wasn’t going to let him get away with this even in jest, chided him; “Oh, John, stop lying.” That broke the ice.
Here’s Barry Miles’ — countercultural lynchpin, and eternal interviewee — talking about the freakout —
When [Ginsberg] was staying with me, he had his 39th birthday and he wanted to have The Beatles come to his birthday-party, so, I knew the address of NEMS [Brian Epstein‘s Company], that was about all, but some friends of Allen’s drew some very beautiful (sort of) invites, and, sure enough, John Lennon and Cynthia (Lennon) and George Harrison with Pattie (Boyd) came along to the birthday party, which was in Chester Square, or somewhere like that. And Allen, by that time, had stripped down to his birthday-suit, since it was his birthday, and he was standing there with his underpants on his head and a “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging round his dick! [laughs]. And I must say the two Beatles took it pretty well. First of all, they immediately made sure that there were no photographers present, because clearly that would have been really bad. And they stayed long enough for a drink. And when they left I asked John, you know, “Why are you going so soon?” And he said [Miles affects Lennon’s Liverpudlian accent], “You don’t do that in front of the birds!” – And then, like, a few years later… there he was stark naked on the cover of one of his own albums!
1990 was not 1965. Ginsberg’s clothes were not cool. He wore a badly fitting leather jacket and computer programmer trousers. I remember Hush Puppies, or the equivalent, on his feet. Fashion in 1990 was a sad fall from 1965.
Ginsberg read out a few poems, but the one I remember is ‘Kral Majales (King of May)’, including the lines —
And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,
and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and Beard of my own body
and I am the King of May, which is Kral Majales in the Czechoslovakian tongue,
and I am the King of May, which is old Human poesy, and 100,000 people chose my name,
and I am the King of May, and in a few minutes I will land at London Airport…
Despite himself, and despite the presence of Ginsberg’s trousers, young-Toby can see the joy and triumph in his return.
The people who had wanted Ginsberg gone from the country in 1965, the grey politicians and the grey police, were, twenty five years later, out of power.
It looks like freedom has won through.
That’s what young-Toby wrote.