By
Richie Unterberger
In the
late 1960s, even the most adventurous rock and folk acts usually
cloaked their drug, sex, and anti-war references in coy, coded
language. It took several New York bands to spell these out in plainly
explicit, taboo-breaking lyrics, matched to music as raw and
pile-driving as their words. The Fugs, the Holy Modal Rounders, and the
Velvet Underground are all celebrated for such contributions, but even
they weren't as underground as David Peel and the Lower East Side. Peel
wasn't just plugged into what was going on in the street – he was what
was going on in the street, recording his 1968 debut album Have a Marijuana in Washington
Square Park after gaining a following for his performances there.
After a stint in
the military from 1963 to 1965, Brooklyn native Peel moved to New York
and played music in the city's streets and parks. Greenwich Village's
Washington Square Park had long been a haven for informal folk
performers, and it was there that Peel came to the attention of Danny
Fields from Elektra Records. The singer's material was riddled with
no-holds-barred commentary about war, illicit substances, and other
hot-button topics like police brutality that few labels would have
touched. Partially for those very reasons, Elektra was a logical home
for the performer.
Label president "Jac Holzman and his Elektra team
were certainly visionaries, and not afraid to use candid,
controversial, and artistic originality as part of their repertoire of
independent music and artists like me – to say what we mean and mean
what we say," observes Peel today. "They also had pop, rock, blues,
classical, and other good music stuff as part of their music catalog,
along with concept recordings. The Doors, as a blues rock pop band,
definitely influenced my decision to be signed on Elektra. The Doors
are one of my top favorite music bands, along with Elvis Presley, the
Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan."
Peel was unusual, indeed almost unique, in building
his sound and reputation outside of the clubs and studios where most
musicians scuffle for a break. "The Fugs were one of the first bands
that influenced me to sing my type of music as part of my street and
underground sound," he remembers. "They were candid, satirical, and
contemporary with what was happening all around us and beyond. I saw
them perform in Tompkins Square Park [in New York's East Village] and
[they] blew me away with their content and style; I had my life changed
into a street singer ever since."
As for the other most notorious New York bands, "The
Holy Modal Rounders and the Velvet Underground had their own thing
going on -- more or less as electric indie music bands. They had very
little influence on my style of music or on me, since I performed
mostly in the parks, streets, and other outside public places as an
acoustic performer, while they rocked electrically on the stage. I was
basically influenced by my outside audience and other park musicians. I
usually never hung out at any clubs or cafes or music venues. The parks
and streets were my studio and stage."
Although his route to a contract wasn't
conventional, as David adds, "I was thinking of becoming a recording
artist before I was signed by Elektra Records after living the
Haight-Ashbury scene, then going back to the East and West Villages to
do my live street performances. All of my material came organically
from the streets and parks wherever I performed in and outside New York
City. I more or less fine-tuned my songs when Elektra signed me." And
since his sensibility was so shaped by his outdoor performances, it
made sense to record his debut album in Washington Square Park itself.
According to Peel, "Me and Elektra wanted it to be recorded in
Washington Square as [an] acoustic songs concept record. The park was
my stage and hangout where most of my songs were naturally developed in
my own habitat and comfort zone."
As spontaneous as Have
a Marijuana sounds, with loose spirited backing by several
like-minded friends who comprised the Lower East Side, it was actually
cut over a period of four weeks. Producing was Peter Siegel, who'd
worked with such Elektra folk and psychedelic acts as Earth Opera, Tom
Paxton, the Charles River Valley Boys, and Pat Kilroy. "We actually got
a permit from the city, but that didn't stop some policeman from
unplugging us," recalled Siegel in Follow the Music: The Life and High
Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture.
"Yeah, I had a permit in my pocket, but they were singing about cops
being pigs. The light would go out, you'd look up and the cop would be
right there with the plug in his hand, you'd show him the permit and
plug it back in."
Siegel and Holzman, Peel emphasizes, "were very
supportive to music openness along with Danny Fields, [sleeve
photographer/artist/designer] Bob Heimall, [art director] Bill Harvey,
and all the Elektra crew. They were a family of friends that made my
work and my Lower East Side band have so much fun -- but also getting
the music job done as natural but professional recording artists. I am
so thankful that I made records on their label." More than forty years
later, Holzman remained proud of the LP, commenting in Becoming Elektra, "David Peel was a
phenomenon on the street, and we recorded it right out on the street.
It was the spirit of Washington Square. Why not? Nobody was telling him
or us what to do."
The art direction and sleeve design was a quite
important component for Have a
Marijuana, since as Holzman explained in Follow the Music, "The album cover
featured a massive marijuana plant, with 'Have a Marijuana' in outsized
letters. That cover and the photos of David singing to and with the
crowd made it into newspapers, magazines, and onto murals throughout
the world as an example of what was happening in rebellious America."
Elaborates Peel, "We also added the hemp leaf on the cover along with
the title 'Have a Marijuana' – using a pot word (marijuana) that was
very rarely used on any record covers until our entry title became real
– hemp, hemp, hooray!!"
An album containing songs like "Up Against the Wall"
(which used the same phrase, adding a crucial FCC-unfriendly fifth word
at the end, that Jefferson Airplane sang the following year on "We Can
Be Together"), "I Do My Bawling in the Bathroom," "Here Comes a Cop,"
"I've Got Some Grass," and "The Alphabet Song" (with its chant "smoke
pot smoke pot everybody smoke pot") was bound not to gain much
aboveground airplay, as much as it did reflect day-to-day realities in
the Village and Lower East Side. Nonetheless, it did attract some
positive press, Eye magazine
declaring, "What it lacks in virtuosity and polish it more than makes
up in raw gusto." Music trade bible Billboard
(whose charts the LP actually entered, peaking at #186) even gave it a
blurb, pithily and accurately pegging it as a "folksy post-Fugs peek at
pot, cops, and lunacy."
Sales were profitable enough for Elektra to give a
go-ahead to a second album, 1970's The
American Revolution, distinguished from the debut as it was
"done in an electric music format as I requested it to be done. I
wanted to have some rock songs as recordings and had no problem with
the record company to do so." A move to Apple Records brought Peel to
his greatest level of visibility on 1972's The Pope Smokes Dope, produced by
John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He's continued to release recordings since
then, April 2012 finding him profiled in the New York Times for performances at
Occupy movement encampments and protests, for which he's written songs
like "Up Against the Wall Street."
How do the songs and sentiments of Have a Marijuana reverberate down
the years as the United States gears up for the 2012 election, with
many of the same issues Peel addresses, satirized, or protested in the
late 1960s still very much with us today? "History repeats itself as
the rights and wrongs of peoples trying to get their share of peace and
harmony," he responds. "I merely sang what I saw in action and
otherwise. The Occupy movement certainly comes to mind as a current
example of what's happening to our freedom and liberties. Singing songs
concerning these matters is one way of expressing yourself in defiance
without going to the extremes of no return."
Continues David, "Elections are all the same in
America and all over the world. We artists have to expose their wrongs
on our rights as I do making music for the people – by the people – and
with the people. David Peel will always be singing on the streets as a
messenger of truth and honesty through my songs. And I will always sing
my songs from Have a Marijuana
until it's legalized as an open celebration for everyone. Thanks for
listening. The journey and the adventure continues..." – Richie
Unterberger
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