The Fugs | |
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![]() Ad for the Fugs appearance at Eagles Auditorium, Seattle, 1968 | |
Background information | |
Origin | Lower East Side, New York City, U.S. |
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Years active |
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Labels | |
Members |
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Website | thefugs |
The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, [2] by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy Modal Rounders. Kupferberg named the band from a euphemism for fuck used in Norman Mailer's novel The Naked and the Dead .
The band was one of the leaders of the underground scene of the 1960s and became an important part of the American counterculture of that decade. [3] The group is known for its comedic, even lewd, nature but also earned fame through its persistent anti-Vietnam War sentiment during the 1960s. [2] A famous song of theirs was "Kill for Peace", [4] on their 1966 album The Fugs.
Some 1969 correspondence, found inside an FBI file on the rock group The Doors, called The Fugs the "most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive". [5] They have been derided for their scatological lyrics. [6] But, Tom Robbins wrote of them in 1968, "Incongruously… this trio of hairy gross ginch gropers is the most intellectual, sophisticated and literary ensemble in rock." [7] The Fugs have been labeled avant-rock noise music. [8]
The band's original core members, Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and Ken Weaver, were joined at various times in the 1960s by a number of others, some of whom were noted session musicians or members of other bands. These included Weber and Stampfel, [9] bassist John Anderson, guitarist Vinny Leary, guitarist Peter Kearney, keyboardist Lee Crabtree, guitarist Jon Kalb, guitarist Stefan Grossman, singer and guitarist Jake Jacobs, guitarist Eric Gale, bassist Chuck Rainey, keyboardist Robert Banks, bassist Charles Larkey, guitarist Ken Pine, guitarist Danny Kortchmar, clarinetist Perry Robinson, bassist Bill Wolf, and drummer Bob Mason.[ citation needed ]
For most of their career, the Fugs were composed of the primary singer-songwriters Sanders and, until his death, Kupferberg; the composer, songwriter, guitarist and long-time Allen Ginsberg collaborator Steven Taylor; singer-songwriter and percussionist Coby Batty; and Scott Petito, a musician and music producer.[ citation needed ]
The band signed a record contract with ESP-Disk in 1965. The Fugs said that "our royalty rate was less than 3%, one of the lower percentages in the history of western civilization". [2] The owner of the label, Bernard Stollman, has frequently faced accusation of not paying royalties to artists. [10] In February 1967, the group was signed to Atlantic Records and recorded one album, The Fugs Eat It, but it was never released. [11]
A satirical rock band with a political slant, the Fugs have performed at various war protests – against the Vietnam War and since the 1980s at events around other U.S. involved wars. The band's often frank and humorous lyrics about sex, drugs, and politics [6] occasionally generated hostile reactions, most notably from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the late 1960s. The group is referenced several times in the F.B.I. file on the Doors; an excerpt mentions eleven songs from The Fugs First Album that are "vulgar and repulsive and are most suggestive". [12]
In 1968, they toured Europe twice: in May to Denmark and Sweden where they wrote the song "The Swedish Nada" [11] and played with Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, and The Nice; [13] and in September to Germany where they played with Peter Brötzmann, Cuby and the Blizzards, Family, Guru Guru Groove, Alexis Korner, David Peel, Tangerine Dream, at the Internationale Essener Songtage in the Grugahalle in Essen. [13] [14]
In 1971, at a General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Fugs song was castigated by Ezra Taft Benson - a high-ranking elder who would go on to become its President. In a speech condemning rock music as Satanic, Benson said "the cynic defends his degeneracy by ridiculing his critics with confusing metaphors." He complained that critiquing "The words of the rock recording 'I Couldn't Get High,'" caused people to call for the LDS hymn 'High on the Mountain Top' to be dropped from songbooks. Benson disputed the retort that 'If one sees filthy implications in a popular song, it is because he has a dirty mind,'" saying "No filth is [merely] implied in many of the lyrics. It is proclaimed." [15]
In a 2012 interview with National Public Radio, Ed Sanders read a leaflet from an August 1965 show: "The Fugs present: Night of napalm, songs against the war, rock n' roll bomb shrieks, heavy metal orgasms! Watch all The Fugs die in a napalm raid!" [16]
Their participation in the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam's 1967 March on the Pentagon, at which they and others purportedly attempted to encircle and levitate the Pentagon, is chronicled in Norman Mailer's book The Armies of the Night . A recording of this event is featured on the Fugs' 1968 album, Tenderness Junction, entitled "Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon Oct. 21, 1967". [17] Beforehand, Sanders and Kupferberg had prepared an elaborate exorcism ritual, and rented a flatbed truck along with a sound system. [2] As is heard on the album, the two gathered a large crowd in front of the Pentagon and repeatedly chanted, "Out, demons, out!" [2] [17]
One of their better-known songs is an adaptation of Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach". Others were settings of William Blake's poems "Ah! Sun-flower" and "How Sweet I Roam'd". Another, "Nothing", is a paraphrasing of the Yiddish folk song "Bulbes". [18]
After pursuing individual projects over the years, in 1984 Sanders and Kupferberg decided to re-form the band and stage a series of Fugs reunion concerts. [19] On August 15, 1988, at the Byrdcliff Barn in Woodstock, New York, the Fugs performed one of their first real reunion concerts. This incarnation of the Fugs included, at various times, the guitarist and singer Steve Taylor (who was also Allen Ginsberg's teaching assistant at the Naropa Institute), the drummer and singer Coby Batty, the bassist Mark Kramer, the guitarist Vinny Leary (who had contributed to the first two original Fugs albums), and the bassist and keyboardist Scott Petito. The re-formed Fugs performed concerts at numerous locations in the United States and Europe over the next several years.
In 1994 the band intended to perform a series of concerts in Woodstock, New York, (where Sanders had lived for many years) to commemorate the 1969 Woodstock Festival, which had actually occurred near the town of Bethel, some 50 miles away. They learned that a group of promoters were planning to stage Woodstock '94 that August near Saugerties, about 8 miles from Woodstock, and that this festival would be much more tightly controlled and commercialized than the original. Consequently, The Fugs decided to stage their own August 1994 concerts as "The Real Woodstock Festival", in an atmosphere more in keeping with the spirit of the 1969 festival. The basic Fugs roster of Sanders, Kupferberg, Taylor, Batty, and Petito performed in this series of concerts with additional vocal support from Amy Fradon and Leslie Ritter and also with appearances by Allen Ginsberg and Country Joe McDonald. In 2003, the group released The Fugs Final CD (Part 1) with positive feedback. In 2004, The Fugs began to record Be Free: The Fugs Final CD (Part 2).
In 2008 their song "CIA Man" was featured during the end credits for the movie Burn After Reading , directed by the Coen brothers. In 2009, Kupferberg suffered two strokes, the latter of which severely hindered his eyesight. He was under constant care, but was able to finish recording his tracks for Be Free in his New York City apartment. A benefit for Kupferberg was held in Brooklyn, New York, in February 2010, featuring all of the Fugs minus Kupferberg, as well as Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, and others. Be Free: The Fugs Final CD (Part 2) was released on February 23, 2010. The album art, designed by Sanders, featured a snail reading Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl". The album was produced by Taylor and Sanders.
Kupferberg died on July 12, 2010, in Manhattan, at the age of 86. [20] In 2008, in one of his last interviews, he told Mojo magazine, "Nobody who lived through the '50s thought the '60s could've existed. So there's always hope." [21]
The remaining Fugs from time to time seriously consider further performances. [11] [19] On June 11, 2011, the four remaining Fugs performed at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London as part of the annual Meltdown Festival, curated that year by Ray Davies of the Kinks. Their set received a four-star review in The Guardian . [22]
They performed at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland on November 30, 2012, and at the City Winery in Chicago on December 1, 2012. They performed at the Brooklyn Folk Festival on November 10, 2021.
The band can be seen performing in the cult film Chappaqua (1967) by Conrad Rooks. Tuli Kupferberg made appearances in W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) by Dušan Makavejev and played God in Voulez-vous coucher avec God? (1972) by Michael Hirsh and Jack Christie.
Their song, "CIA Man", can be heard during the closing credits of the 2008 Coen Brothers' film Burn After Reading , and during the closing credits of the fifth episode of the 2017 docudrama miniseries Wormwood .
The Fugs went through a number of lineup changes. Below are those that lasted the longest. For instance, guitarist Stefan Grossman was with the band for only several weeks, so this lineup is not included.
1964 – February 1965
Summer 1965
September – December 1965
December 1965 – July 1966
July – October 1966
October 1966 – Spring 1967
Summer 1967 – Summer 1968
Winter 1968 – March 1969
1984 – 2010
2010 – present
Year | Title | US Top 200 | Label |
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1965 | The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction | — | Broadside/Folkways |
1966 | The Fugs First Album * | 142 | ESP-Disk |
The Fugs | 95 | ||
1967 | The Fugs Eat It [unreleased] | — | Atlantic |
Virgin Fugs | — | ESP Disk | |
1968 | Tenderness Junction | — | Reprise |
It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest | 167 | ||
1969 | The Belle of Avenue A | — | |
1986 | No More Slavery | — | New Rose |
1987 | Star Peace – A Musical Drama In Three Acts | — | |
2003 | The Fugs Final CD (Part 1) | — | Artemis |
2010 | Be Free: The Fugs Final CD (Part 2) | — | Fugs Records |
2023 | Dancing In The Universe | — |
Year | Title | Label |
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1970 | Golden Filth (Live at The Fillmore East) | Reprise |
1984 | Refuse to Be Burnt Out | New Rose |
Baskets of Love | Olufsen | |
1993 | Fugs Live in Woodstock | MUSIK/MUSIK |
1995 | The Real Woodstock Festival | Big Beat |
Year | Title | Label | Notes |
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1975 | Fugs 4, Rounders Score | ESP-Disk | Consists of recordings from first two albums plus two unreleased cuts from first album sessions. (Four unreleased tracks by The Holy Modal Rounders are included, and date from first album sessions as well.) |
1982 | The Fugs Greatest Hits Vol. 1 | PVC | Compilation drawing from the first three albums. |
1990 | Songs from a Portable Forest | Gazell | Chronicles the 1980s reunion albums. |
1994 | Live from The 60s | Big Beat | This album is made up of recordings from assorted (unprofessionally recorded) tapes of various shows, and home demos. |
2001 | Electromagnetic Steamboat: The Reprise Recordings | Rhino Handmade | Includes the four Reprise albums in their entirety plus special promo edits, mono mix of Tenderness Junction (except for Aphrodite Mass) and tracks from the unreleased Atlantic LP (in censored, mono form.) |
2006 | Greatest Hits 1984–2004 | Fugs Records | |
2008 | Don't Stop! Don't Stop! | Big Beat | Repackaging of the first two albums with various outtakes, demos and live recordings. |
2010 | Tenderness Junction/It Crawled Into My Hand Honest | Floating World | Two-fer combining the first two Reprise albums. Unlike the Rhino Handmade set which used tapes, this release is sourced from vinyl. |
Iron Butterfly is an American rock band formed in San Diego, California, in 1966. They are best known for the 1968 hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", providing a dramatic sound that led the way towards the development of hard rock and heavy metal music. Although their heyday was the late 1960s, the band has been reincarnated with various members with varying levels of success with no new recordings since 1975. Their second album, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968), remains a best-seller, and Iron Butterfly was the first group to receive an in-house platinum album award from Atlantic Records.
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Edward Sanders is an American poet, singer, activist, author, publisher and longtime member of the rock band the Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and hippie generations. Sanders is considered to have been active and "present at the counterculture's creation."
The Grease Band was a British rock band that originally formed as Joe Cocker's backing group. They appeared with Cocker during the 1960s, including his performance at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969. The band's name derived from an interview Cocker had read with the American jazz organist Jimmy Smith, who had approvingly described another performer as having "a lot of grease", with "grease" referring to soul. After Cocker formed the Mad Dogs & Englishmen album band line-up, the group released two albums without him in the 1970s.
Blackfoot is an American Southern rock band from Jacksonville, Florida, formed in 1970. Though they primarily play with a Southern rock style, they are also known as a hard rock act. The band's classic lineup consisted of guitarist and vocalist Rickey Medlocke, guitarist Charlie Hargrett, bassist Greg T. Walker, and drummer Jackson Spires.
The Holy Modal Rounders was an American folk music group, originally the duo of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, who formed in 1963 on the Lower East Side of New York City. Although they achieved only limited commercial and critical success in the 1960s and 1970s, they quickly earned a dedicated cult following and have been retrospectively praised for their groundbreaking reworking of early 20th century folk music as well as their pioneering innovation in several genres, including freak folk and psychedelic folk. With a career spanning 40 years, the Holy Modal Rounders proved to be influential both in New York scene where they began and to generations of underground musicians.
Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg was an American counterculture poet, author, singer, cartoonist, publisher, and co-founder of the rock band The Fugs.
Brown Brigade was a reggae-influenced heavy metal band created by Sum 41 guitarist Dave "Brownsound" Baksh. The band's final lineup was Baksh, Vaughn Lal, Johnny Owens (drums), Chuck Coles (guitar), and Cess Rock (percussion).
Ken Weaver is an American singer, songwriter and musician. Born on Galveston Island, Texas, he grew up in El Campo and went on to become a Russian translator for the Air Force. A drummer, Weaver joined Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg to form the rock band The Fugs in 1964. He wrote and sang the songs "Slum Goddess," "I Couldn't Get High," "Dust Devil," and "Four Minutes to Twelve," and contributed to numerous others. He has since retired from performing. He wrote Texas Crude, a collection of Texan slang, with illustrations by R. Crumb, in 1983. He studied Russian and worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1982-83.
Perfect Sound Forever is one of the longest-running online-only music magazines. Along with Michael Goldberg's Addicted to Noise, it is one of the first publications to post recurring, feature-length music journalism online.
The Fugs First Album is the 1965 debut album by American rock band the Fugs, described in their AllMusic profile as "arguably the first underground rock group of all time". In 1965, the album charted #142 on Billboard's "Top Pop Albums" chart. The album was originally released in 1965 as The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction on Folkways Records before the band signed up with ESP-Disk, who released the album under its own label with a new name in 1966. The album was re-released in 1993 on CD with an additional 11 tracks.
The Fugs is a 1966 album by The Fugs, described in their AllMusic profile as "arguably the first underground rock group of all time". The album charted number 95 on Billboard's "Top Pop Albums" chart. The album was re-released on CD in 1993 as The Fugs Second Album on the Fantasy label with five additional tracks: two live performances and three tracks recorded for Atlantic in 1967 for an album that was never released. In its review of the re-release, AllMusic finds them "very ahead of their time lyrically" and compares them to the punk band Dead Kennedys, both lyrically and in their shared "weakness for crude humor".
It Crawled into My Hand, Honest is the fifth studio album by The Fugs, a band composed of anti-war poets. It was released in the US by record company Reprise.
Tenderness Junction is the fourth studio album of The Fugs, formed in 1964 by anti-war musician/poets Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver. It was released in the US by record company Reprise. A stand-alone CD was released by Wounded Bird Records in 2011, before which the entire album had appeared on the 2006 3-CD Rhino Handmade box set, Electromagnetic Steamboat.
The Three 4 Tens are an American garage rock band, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Virgin Fugs is a 1967 album by The Fugs. While it is their third released album, it consists of outtakes from the two 1965 sessions for their first album, The Village Fugs. While that album emphasized the second recording session, this compilation favors the first, making this arguably their chronologically "real first" album. It was released on ESP Disc, possibly without the foreknowledge or permission of the Fugs. Their site refers to it as a bootleg, though it was distributed through the same channels as their authorized previous ESP album. ESP followed this release with a 1975 compilation including seven more outtakes from these sessions, Fugs 4, Rounders Score.
The Belle Of Avenue A is a 1969 studio album by the Fugs, a band composed of anti-war poets. It was released in the US by record company Reprise. The album was first released on CD as part of the 2006 3-CD box set, Electromagnetic Steamboat, and eventually as a stand-alone CD in 2011 on the Wounded Bird label.
Fugs 4, Rounders Score is a 1975 compilation album of material by The Fugs and The Holy Modal Rounders, including seven previously unreleased performances from the Fugs' first recording session, when the Rounders were members of the Fugs' band. The title is both a reference to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and the fact that this is the fourth album of Fugs material released on ESP, as well as a pun on "score" as drug slang. Although all recordings were made under the umbrella of the Fugs, the 6 lead vocals by Stampfel and Weber on Side A allow the album to function as a Rounders compilation as well. There is a notable and unusual lack of lead vocalizing by Ed Sanders, the most prominent vocalist on all other Fugs albums.
Indian War Whoop is the third studio album by the Holy Modal Rounders, released in 1967 through ESP-Disk. The album is the band's first with contributions outside of the original members Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber. The title track is a cover of an obscure song featured on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.
Steven P. Weber was an American folk singer-songwriter and guitarist.