Beat Punks: New York's Underground Culture from the Beat Generation to the Punk Explosion

Victor Bockris

ene 2016 · Open Road Media

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The “poet laureate of the New York underground scene” chronicles three decades of electrifying artistic expression

Once dominated by Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, by the 1970s and ’80s, New York City’s creative scene had given way to a punk rock–era defined by figures like Debbie Harry and Richard Hell. While the aesthetics of these two movements seem different on the surface, author and prolific interviewer Victor Bockris—who witnessed it all—argues that the punks borrowed from the ideology and style of the beats, and that the beats were reenergized by the emergence of punk.
 
In intimate conversation, Bockris’s close friends—including celebrities from both periods, such as William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Joey Ramone, and Patti Smith—reveal more about themselves and their art to him than to any other interviewer. Along with dozens of rare photos, Bockris’s interviews and essays capture the energy of this unique time.
 

 

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Born in England in 1949, Victor Bockris has spent most of his working life in the United States. He has written biographies of artists, writers, and musicians, including Warhol: The Biography, With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker, Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story, Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story, and Keith Richards: The Biography. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, Bockris cofounded Telegraph Books, an independent publisher of emerging writers, with poets Aram Saroyan and Andrew Wylie. Bockris moved to New York City in 1973, where he went on to work with many icons of the city’s art and literary community during the Beat Punk period of 1977–1983. Dubbed the poet laureate of the New York Underground, Bockris continues to publish books around the world. He is currently writing Scars: My Life in the New York Underground.