Barry Miles, Beat aficionado, ubiquitous presence, author of the first biography of Allen (1989 – revised 2002), not to mention, Jack Kerouac – King of the Beats and the definitive biography of William Burroughs, not to mention a whole host of other writings – see here) turns 82 tomorrow.
The chronicler of, and a vital presence in, the London underground scene of the 1960’s
(he was a manager at Better Books, co-founder of the Indica gallery and bookshop, record producer at Zapple, and co-editor and guiding-spirit of the enormously influential International Times).
It was chez Miles that Allen would stay whenever he had occasion to come to the city.
It was chez Miles, on June 3rd, 1965, that he famously celebrated his 39th birthday
In the 70’s, he spent significant time with Allen in America, notably on his Cherry Valley farm and subsequently in San Francisco and New York
Here’s the background (in his own words) on his biography of Allen:
“In 1983 I was hanging around in New York with my friend Victor Bockris and through him got to know his friend Andrew Wylie; they wrote articles and books together under the combined name of Bockris-Wylie. Andrew had decided to become a literary agent. One evening, I was with them, along with Victor’s flatmate Jeff Goldberg, in the garden of an Italian restaurant just off Father Nimo Square in Greenwich Village, and Andrew told us in his usual confident way that he was going to get us all enormous advances, even though at this time none of us had yet written a proper book. I was to write a biography of my old friend Allen Ginsberg, Victor was to write a biography of his old friend Andy Warhol, and Jeff was going to write a book on opium. It seemed an excellant idea. Andrew had devised a complicated way of presenting books: a long proposal that included a sample of the writing, a story outline, a descriptive list of chapters, potted biographies of all the major characters in the book and a list of the minor ones – 50 or more pages in all. I approached Allen, who was reluctant at first but agreed to talk about it. I flew out to Boulder, Colorado, where he was living at the time, teaching at the Naropa Institute. I stayed at his house for about a week and spent some time with William Burroughs, who was also teaching there, and Timothy Leary, who made me join in and speak at one of his classes. Allen and I discussed the idea and I explained how I would approach it. Allen liked my intention to show how the Beat Generation was an international movement, and that I would pay particular attention to his years spent abroad in India, South America and Europe. He also liked the fact that I wanted to write as objective a book as possible, allowing the reader to form their own opinion of his achievements. Allen gave me his blessing and also complete access to all of his 300 or more journals, beginning at age 16. He said he did not want the right of approval. Victor, on the other hand, ran into trouble with Andy who said they mustn’t talk to each again until the book was done. Then they could be friends again. It was a typical Andy game, but he stuck to it. When he saw Victor at a night club he would blank him, but when Victor turned away Andy would give me a big wink. Then, astonishingly, Andrew pulled it off and got all three of us the advance he said he would. I signed a contract with Simon & Schuster, and set to work. This was before the invention of the laptop so it was all written on an electric typewriter: my first, very rough, draft came to almost a million words. It took a ridiculously long time to write but I will never forget, five years later, unwrapping the FedEx package to reveal an advance bound copy of the book: my first real book.”
Miles’ two autobiographies – In the Sixties (2002) and In the Seventies are quite simply essential reading.
A new “heavily illustrated and slightly enlarged” edition of In The Sixties appeared in 2017
From In The Sixties:
“When Allen Ginsberg walked through the door of Better Books in June, 1965, asking for me, I at once asked him to do a reading. I first encountered his work in 1959 when I sent away to City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco asking for a catalogue. I received a typewritten card, listing, among other things Bob Kaufman‘s Second April and Abomunist Manifesto, Gregory Corso‘s Bomb and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl – I had not heard of any of them but ordered them all on the strength of their titles alone which all sounded great – the poetry taught at my grammar school stopped with Siegfried Sassoon. Of the four – three were just broadsides – Howl and Other Poemswas the one that impressed me the most. It put into words all my ill-formed 16-year-old thoughts and feelings in a way that came as complete revelation. He expressed everything I was feeling, and he did it in a way that was totally new to me, so to actually meet him, six years later was very exciting…”
“He was made welcome by Tom Maschler, the editorial director of Jonathan Cape, whom Ginsberg had met in Cuba. But Allen grew tired of traveling in from Tom Maschler’s house in Hampstead, which he described as “like living in Queens”, and moved in with Sue and I at Hanson Street, a ten minute walk from Better Books and Soho. From then on Allen made Better Books his unofficial headquarters for appointments and interviews.”
“It was wonderful to have Allen to stay. He sat in the big broken-down old armchair and talked for hours at a time, telling us stories about Kerouac, Neal Cassady and William Burroughs and his recent adventures in Cuba, Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia. Though still in his thirties, he already had his full sixties guru look – long curling black hair and a full beard, which made him seem a venerable old bard, and, as he was 17 years older than my 22, he seemed to me a very old person indeed. Allen had been to Britain before, on two brief visits in 1958, but he knew little about day-to-day English life and was interested in everything..”
and from In the Seventies
from Miles’ memories of Cherry Valley
“Allen Ginsberg showed me around the Hall of Fame (in Cooperstown). We saw Babe Ruth’s shirt and baseball bat, baseballs autographed by long ago batsmen and pitchers, and a huge collection of colorful pennants, Allen explained the history of baseball in a loud voice until several visitors , after forcefully frowning and glaring at him to no effect acted in unison and asked him to be quiet. They informed him, somewhat bluntly, that his understanding of the game was faulty on numerous counts. These they then elucidated in rather more detail than Allen and I would have ideally liked…Allen was suitably subdued, however he soon perked up at the Cooperstown Farmers’ Museum…At the Farmers’ Museum Allen was on firmer ground, explaining the story of James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Leatherstocking Tales, whose father founded the town…”
“Many of the people in Cooperstown had pointed Allen out in loud whispers. This was the period of his most intense political activity and consequently of his greatest public fame; he was frequently on television and in the newspapers and, with his balding pate, long black hair curling over his collar, and large Whitmanesque beard , thick black-rimmed glasses, dark work clothes and baggy jeans , he was easily recognizable. His move to upstate New York had been the subject of much gossip in Cherry Valley and the surrounding villages..”
More on “The Poetry Farm”:
“The Poetry Farm was equipped with running water. Cooking was done with the aid of a large propane gas tank to the side of the house, and there was a telephone. Ma Bell was compelled by law to provide a service no matter how remote. Unfortunately, it was a party line, and Allen used it so often that his neighbors sometimes became exasperated at not being able to get through. Most days Allen spent an hour or two, sitting uncomfortably on a little child’s chair, just inside the kitchen door, his knees in the air, fingers dialing, his voluminous address book open on his lap, calling the New York Times to complain about something in that day’s Op Ed page, raising support for this group or that, arranging readings, translations, visitors and finances. I never understood why he didn’t replace it with a normal-size chair..”
“In 1969 I had produced an album of him singing William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience to tunes that he had composed himself….Allen became very interested in audio recording and, in a wonderful act of kindness, invited me to spend a season on the farm, editing his tapes into shape…We knew there were undoubtedly some gems hidden in the tape boxes as he had material going right back to the forties, including some reels on paper tape, which Allen was sure contained a recording of a sex orgy with Jack Kerouac. These I carefully restored, repairing all the tears with splicing tape, but when we played through them, to Allen’s chagrin, there was no orgy, just poorly recorded table talk. We did, however. find a 1952 recording of Allen reading his poems in a T.S.Eliot voice at Neal Cassady’s house in San Jose, as well as the famous 1960 Big Table reading in Chicago with Gregory Corso, and the notorious Los Angeles reading where he took his clothes off in front of Anais Nin, described by Lawrence Lipton in his book The Holy Barbarians. Our intention was to find the best reading of each of Allen’s published poems, but as the quality of recording was often terrible, we also had to take fidelity into account. It was a long job, but first of all I had to listen to all of the tapes – 300 of them – and catalogue which poems were on each. If they were recorded on “one side” one, I would insert leader tape between each poem so that we could find it again easily..”
“I devoted as much of my time as I could to editing and sorting Allen’s tapes but this was determined by how much electricity we had and I could rarely work for more than three hours at a stretch unless the wind was blowing. I set myself up in the living room, clearing shelves for the tapes and connecting the tape machines to each other, arranging my editing block, leader tapes, single-edged razor blades and empty spools. As soon as we had electricity installed I ordered a professional tape machine – a Revox A77 with built-in speakers so that we didn’t have to all wear headphones for playback. I also bought a pair of Electrovoice microphones and microphone stands so that we could make professional recordings of Allen when he did readings.He was very pleased to find that I could adjust the EQ to increase the bass end of his voice, making him sound like an ancient bard, and insisted that all our recordings utilize this feature.”
“There were a number of discoveries made during the project. We found recorded versions of poems Allen thought were lost forever because he no longer had manuscript copies. This included “Credo”, “Green Valentine”, “Saints Marching In” and one of his “Psalm” series of poems. I recognized that I was privileged to spend so much time with Allen, talking in his room and walking with him in the meadows and forest and knew that once the project was over I might never have such an opportunity again…”
[Editorial note – Miles completed the project, delivering 16 hours of tape to Fantasy Records for a proposed box-set. The box-set, however, was, unfortunately, never released, but many of the tracks finished up, many years later, 1995, on the Hal Willner-produced box-set Holy Soul Jelly Roll ]
