donahue
in paris mid-forties stakes are never small
for more than three decades he's been writing and singing about love and death
politics in transcendence mori piece in the bubble freedom
a lot of her songs have been manifestos to remember people have the power
rock-and-roll nor
dancing barefoot
because the night
and others have been a tiffany's of the power of the word back by three chords
patty was born in chicago and raises the jersey girl
and
media press review class clown high school and depth of your jersey
yep i did when class clown but my also
more important ones barton of the year
have one of the actually one of the things in my life that i'm most proud of
what it what is going to be here
actually i still to this date don't know why i got it
it was the most coveted
uh... awards you can get my high school and uh...
you know i realized to get in trouble a lot i daydream di was sick a lot it
wasn't like the genius um... i'd love school then
i love do you know
get not been doing my book reports telling people about moby dick but
you know i wasn't quite i didn't have any specific great gift
and i used to think bns pardon of the year would be the coolest thing one
could ever be
because
you know it exemplified
independence still weakness
of good heart
and um...
and i got it
acai you'd still to this day
can't believe i got it
i mean and that was fast
picked up to nineteen sixty four and i still sometimes like i still think
how you forget that spartan appeared at that time
rather low octane things part of the year
everything well
i'd that's part of the year actually mystifies me more in america
via until his arrest his speech but it was um diam
but you can't in new york ny in sixty seven yes um... and i was curious i've
always been curious about how people sort of
get their nose in the door
weekend in the organ made friends with robert mapplethorpe sam sheppard
uh...
how did you do this in jersey girl like yourself
well i mean i came to new york city looking for a job
in nineteen sixty seven
um...
i lit lived in new york for about a month
like a lot of kids you know i lived in the streets i slept in the subway
i am
slept in central park
and i just kept
looking for a job in my family got a job in a bookstore
and uh...
built my life you know the wasn't easy
but i was so
taking with new york city and it was so freakin tress the way you wanted nobody
but yet
um... it was uh... just before the architecture the museums
at was so exciting to me to be in new york city that i
really didn't mind the strength
and i met robert
accidentally and
he was just a boy i mean we were both twenty he was
he was a kid i'm going to pratt
and uh...
we fell in love and he was my boyfriend in
i met sam sheppard
actually in six uh...
nineteen seventy ed
in the child when i was looking at the chelsea hotel so that was
and the next here of late
sixty-seven me and robert were
you know we were kids
so used to student he wasn't robert mapplethorpe
well he was proper mapplethorpe notice video is always robert mapplethorpe
until he was a kid tennis
he was a student
danny and uh...
how did you do when he came was he was he also in that
not buying that lenny kaye by sending him in uh...
the family other or make i don't remember if i
well i would bet there with a book came out
account number it but it had of
some really great pieces of uh... rock journalism in like around nineteen
seventy
uh... rock journalists were like scholars i mean they opened they were
serious they weren't uh...
nearly writing criticism they were inventing
um... uh... away to discuss rock-and-roll in a scholarly way
and this particular book had that pieces by um...
uh... one of the greatest at pieces of writing of rock-and-roll about
rock-and-roll
by sandeep perlman
i think was called the history of l_a_ uh... things by richard meltzer
uh... jon landau
and one of the pieces that was then there was called uh... well of us are
not the pala music
and being from south jersey acapella music was very important uh...
in my growing process
and it was
than most
tend to rest
him in
intelligent
and insightful piece of writing
completely selfless
and beautiful and i thought whoever wrote this is a really good person
so i saw them out
you know that
tell 'em what a great piece in
he told me he worked at uh... bleecker bob's he was selling that people do you
say bleecker bob's in said to come and stop in cm so
i did in we became friends wow
notice kazan
back before the internet we if you want to hear and all the you had to get the
physical desk now yet to go down with his stories high and we you knowing
by couldn't you know they were expensive some of them and
now like there was a song i was looking at looking for called bacon fat and all
that on the record it was like eight dollars and i was only making sixty five
dollars a week at scribners
so uh...
when he would let me hear them
for nothing you know we would
i mean you couldn't tape them erred
do anything but you can go in and see what the record look like him
might dance around to it and stuff so
students
in nineteen seventy one u
room with fewer detroit that was the most of the project
uh... bruno we just
you you you and i needed the first
performance the first poetry with well apparently
i was a irreverent body and separatist sapan you know it's a marks base to go
there with gregory corso and gregory hated all the poets
and i was so glad because i have like the neither and that
and is just
poetry tended to be a little boring
then i got a chance to uh...
open short maligned uh...
and as per our talk rex birthday
at the time i was uh... cn sam sheppard
and i talk to sam about this and i said and wanna do something
blood into poetry and what sound i wanted to be sonic
any civil while gypsum
the car in it to you know any guitar players
and i said that
kid at the record store place a little bit parts
so i went to a ripley kebabs and i said the lenny
you play a little bit torrents of or a little
and i said can you make like a
car crash
you know like
a car crash sounds you know would like some kind of
feedback to me those
so we did our weeded out had our first poetry dgn opening charred maligned
death
and it was the first time an electric guitar had been played in saint mark's
church
and um...
sacrilege
yet it got some people a-level set
so um...
but it was a great night it was very exciting and uh...
you know to this day
i mean we didn't ruffle some feathers but uh...
gerard was game you shot in saint mark's church came you shot so
you know grateful for that
you know when you said to somebody like a poetry has
yeah i was a snot nose you know actually i wrote letters to all the heads of
saint marks and told them
to watch out i was coming
are is really obnoxious
carefully
and and frankly can waldman loop around saint marks
she was so sweet and uh...
she let me some of the letters that i the center because i am working on a
little memoir and i read these letters and i i couldn't even look at them
baby arrogance and provide of coming from these little slips of paper was
just
struck him
i don't know where i got
back tag it's our guests it was that's
spartan of the year energy there
yes
as this invoice is illegal
uh... today and and
using doing now it's like
is like you approach a readings turning into songs that you can just see it sort
of
flowing toward
ali alone courses is really
the culmination
the are uilyas sta
well from like my saint mark's reading because
the first line of forces
uh... jesus died for somebody sense but not mine i wrote when i was twenty
and i performed as a poem
in nineteen seventy one so
all almost everything on horses came from
k richard soul and i
the other band members came in at the end we had already formed
through improvising poetry
and three chords together almost the whole scape of uh...
of forces
so you're free style in
well i didn't know anything i don't know how really do write a song i know a
little bit about writing songs like appalachian style songs
i wrote songs for sam shepard's plays in my room
very simple little songs
but i didn't really know much about writing the song so for me
it was
improvisation
lenny in richard would set up a chord structure and i just improvise over it
by still write songs like that
now i know more about it like to use it in bright lyrics but most of the time
heidi listen to the band jamming her
so few musicians jamming and i'm weight
till i feel a certain kinship with the music and just
getting from the microphone in improvise
and uh...
that's how i right
do you keep
you keep improvisation and you can go back and chip away at it and and it
didn't go crazy
now and it's always more thing
you know sometimes there's no
tape recorder stopped my just forget it
it's a process him
but in the new units comming soon some songwriters just three battle it out
and then you take it back into their land
teeth this were to move this phrase around
using using organic
well some songs are more ganic and some songs are very traditionally
put together elect i'd never strayed
in tiredness from the original
lyrics of because the night you know
uh... bruce and i wrote the lyrics and i a always sing the same lyrics because
you know it's a popular song people like it there's no reason to change them
but a song like random thousand dances
johnny is gone through hundreds of different always for gas
naked
hughes got it from every and prevented it
please do you just heard you had the feeling that did you know this was gonna
change the world in the dizzy or you look back i managed to such a
concentration of
created
but a bit itself was just a dump on the boundary
well cd gee bees came in it
perfect
time
seventy four
um...
early seventy four when i was working with richard song lenny
k there was hardly wasn't anywhere play
for people like us
their you know we we we'd get uh...
because i was involved in politics
we were able to get
excuse me uh... a lot of folk singers
like deluxe usta lettuce open for him it max is
had do step it galleries weeded performances in bookstores record stores
we at the leak the most idiosyncratic jobs
sometimes in cabarets
hoping opening up late transvestite exercising
at weeding quite have our niche
we were developed and you know of pollen of like minds you know people that
liked what we like
but there was no place for us to go
there literally was no place
and uh... if you have anything original
and um...
television independently
in all still in the same bind
and uh...
it was tomra lane in
and uh... richard hal
who one night went by
uh... cv g bs
and it was just this
uh... country-western bar that had about three drunk guys and it
and they talked ellie intellect in them
played there
and uh...
unite met richard helen he asked me to come in see his band so
mian lenny went like
easter of nineteen seventy four
and there were like nine people there
and uh...
and two of them were mainline so he could not
i think danny fields was there and
and uh... went into this place is little shit hole and
belt people plan poland talk n
few people milling around and i watched television
and uh...
first of all tom feelings just the cutest guy unlike that is so cute
and um...
uh...
anyway
i thought television
i'd account and you know
here where people who were doing
you know what the solar thing to us six f
well they drums and everything but
you know uh... merging poetry
improvisation
rock-and-roll
and you know we were all sort of raggedy kids
it was like
finding you know of long-lost brother or something
and uh...
lenny richard naive
from plane max is quite a bit
and from plano alive
i mean
it sounds conceded but it's just true we had like a following
of about three hundred people
but we had nowhere to
ncb gee bees was about three hundred
by just said the time you know
why don't we do some jobs here together you have you have the venue we have two
people
so
we played together and uh... one thing i can say that my banded me lang richard
we were the first band to fill c_b_ gps so um...
they came face all television and then they never left
i mean once those three hundred people came then there was always somebody
there
and uh...
it was for us
i mean we didn't have any uh... you know they didn't have the term punk rock
and uh...
we didn't have any specific goals in that way
tom in television
richard hell and tom they had their own goals they wanted to pursue
the expansion of poetry into explore rock-and-roll and their way
and uh... what i really wanted was
that rock-and-roll become
get back into the hands of people
because it was a really to me
creepy time
and rock-and-roll
we have lost jim morrison jimi hendrix and we lost janis joplin and
bob dylan had his motorcycle accident
you know the rolling stones that change do you know any cotton-like stadium
bandhan
and then all this lake
david bowie and all the stuff in case and all these bands
i don't really like
and uh... doesn't mean they didn't do good stuff it's just that
medians a snotty spartan of the year didn't really like any interest
itis felt the rock-and-roll was becoming
instead of like the people's
uh... forum
and our cultural police wear
politics and barton poetry insects and all of these things and dance
uh... that belong to the people it was
moving in this weird direction of like these mega rock stars
with these lake disgusting you know lifestyles
and uh...
like they were all in in rock-and-roll intimate
bagane
own rock-and-roll we he owned rock-and-roll excuse me
so it remains
play the
flexi teaching these represented to me
uh...
that concept
starting to uh... become flesh
the important thing to me
cbj educe per se
and united the finest perceiving tvs
but after a time
around up going on the road and around the world
what i'll always wanted was that no the kids around the world whether they were
in denmark griffin lynn or wherever they were
not to run manaus icb gps just
think of it
is it's attn it means possibility
at anybody can have c_d_ t_v_ sets a state of mind it just represents
that proper role get back into the hands of the people
and freedom
all represents