On this date -- April 12 -- in 1963 The Beatles released the song, "From Me to You," in the UK. But, you ask, what does that have to do with Jack Kerouac? That is, what is the Kerouac-Beatles connection?
According to Ellis Amburn, in Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac (St. Martin's Griffin, 1998):
Kerouac told me that Ginsberg had recently been with Bob Dylan in London for Dylan's Royal Albert Hall concert, and that Ginsberg and Dylan were "thickern thieves." At a party after Dylan's concert, Ginsberg met the Beatles and lectured them about the Beat Generation. John Lennon subsequently contacted Kerouac, revealing that the band's name was derive from "Beat." "He was sorry he hadn't come to see me when they played Queens," Kerouac said, referring to the Beatles Shea Stadium concert in 1965. "I told him it's just as well, since my mother wouldn't let them in without a haircut." (p. 342)
Amburn has been criticized for his accuracy, but I've seen no evidence that discounts this story. The haircut comment definitely sounds like something Jack would say, and I can see Mémère barring the door to such longhairs.
How about Jack's own words? In a June 22, 1965 letter to Arabelle Porter of the New American Library bemoaning the unavailability of On The Road in paperback, Kerouac reminds her of the Beats-Beatles connection:
If you're in business be businesslike. Don't let incompetents tell you Road or anything connected with it is "dead." Beatles is spelled Beatles and not Beetles. (Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969, Penguin, 1999, p. 458)
For some connections between the Beat Generation and The Beatles, see this Beatdom story, or this blog post by Stephanie Nikolopoulos.
No comments:
Post a Comment