Dead Newark Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg Gets ‘Reborn’
Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg—born in 1926 Newark, raised in Paterson, died in 1997 New York City at 70—is getting “Reborn” via the November 3 re-release of his 1989 Hal Wilner-produced The Lion For Real, now dubbed The Lion For Real, Re-Born (Shimmy Disc/Joyful Noise), a double-vinyl doozy of his incendiary words, accompanied by music. The not-so-missing link between the beatniks of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, his rhymes, his political activism and his mere presence galvanized generations. The dude practically invented the counter-culture. His Howl was banned in 1956, and he won his obscenity trial. His cry for gay rights came at a time in America when gay sex was illegal in every state. Renouncing his Jewish faith to become a Buddhist, he predicted “The Fall of America” in 1974, leaving the country to live abroad, but coming back to champion LSD guru Timothy Leary, novelist Ken Kesey, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan. He fought for free speech, against the Vietnam war, for the homeless (he was there during the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot when over-zealous police bashed heads). He fought to legalize pot in the ‘60s. He exposed the CIA’s involvement in the production of heroin in Thailand. He wrote a song with Paul McCartney and avant-garde composer Phillip Glass (“The Ballad Of The Skeletons”), became part of Dylan’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” yet he refused to go mainstream when rock stars of all stripes started gravitating towards him, arguing against age-of-sexual-consent laws, and flirting with Communism. He was, like the start of rock’n’roll, every parent’s nightmare.
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