Re-Listening to the Warm
"Are you one of the faithful?" a very smiley woman inquired as I sat down beside her. Four years ago I was at B.B. King's in Times Square, where Carmaig de Forest and I had come to attend poet-singer Rod McKuen's first New York show in many years. I didn't quite know how to answer her at the time, but by the end of McKuen's show it became clear that he was the figurehead of a particularly devoted cult of middle-aged fans. The show itself was a fascinating mixture of kitsch and craft. McKuen, then sixty-nine, read from his best-selling book of poetry, including the ubiquitous Listen to the Warm. He sang "Seasons in the Sun," of course, as well as his moving translations of his own idol, Jacques Brel. And he had the crowd in stitches with patter that consisted largely of double (and sometimes single) entendres.
The experienced washed over me in a sentimental flood as I read Claire Dederer's terrific account of a recent McKuen performance [via House of Mirth] in Palm Springs. Dederer begins by writing, "This is not going to be one of those articles where I reread the maligned work and discover that lo, it is actually pretty good. Because I did, and it's not." But she does come to an upbeat conclusion:
"The boys in their berets are drinking lattes and singing along to every word. A 60ish, hard-living woman is waving her fist in the air, rock concert style. Two more 60ish, hard-living women have literally fallen out of their chairs. As far as I can tell, Palm Springs is a town full of old people, and drunk people, and gay people, and people doing our best to go to seed. Here we all are in this room, and Rod McKuen is making us believe in love and art."
I also bought Rod McKuen Takes a San Francisco Hippie Trip as an unironic Xmas present for my father not long after its late-sixties release. That record's strangely out of print but you can still buy his camp and thoroughly cool Beatsville.