Tuesday, February 08, 2011

News at Eleven: I always wonder whether participants

in such history-making events instantly realize their significance. [Michael] McClure says, in the case of the Gallery Six reading, he did.

"We had all decided to put our toe on the line and stand for it. We knew that something had happened. There was no doubt."

When it comes to hip happenings of the 1950s and beyond, McClure's seeming omnipresence rivals that of Forrest Gump. He wrote the song Mercedes Benz, made famous by Janis Joplin. He became a key figure in San Francisco's 1960s counterculture. He was buddies with Kerouac, Dennis Hopper, Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan (Dylan gave McClure the autoharp he used to compose Mercedes Benz).

from Times Colonist: Beat poet helped create early hippie movement

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