Tuli Kupferberg

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Tuli Kupferberg
TuliKupferberg.jpg
Born
Naphtali Kupferberg

(1923-09-28)September 28, 1923
DiedJuly 12, 2010(2010-07-12) (aged 86)
New York City, U.S.
Education Brooklyn College
Occupation(s)Author, poet, musician, cartoonist, publisher
Years active1958–2009
Known for The Fugs
1001 Ways to Beat the Draft
1001 Ways to Live Without Working
SpouseSylvia Topp
ChildrenJoe, Noah, Samara.

Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg (September 28, 1923 – July 12, 2010) was an American counterculture poet, author, singer, editorial cartoonist, comic artist, columnist, [1] publisher, and co-founder of the rock band The Fugs.

Contents

Biography

Naphtali Kupferberg was born into a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking household in New York City. [2] A cum laude graduate of Brooklyn College in 1944, Kupferberg founded the magazine Birth in 1958. [3]

Kupferberg reportedly appears in Ginsberg's poem Howl as the person "who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer." The incident in question actually occurred on the Manhattan Bridge. [4] Ginsberg's description in Howl uses poetic license. Kupferberg did jump from the Manhattan Bridge in 1944, after which he was picked up by a passing tugboat and taken to Gouverneur Hospital. [5] Severely injured, he had broken the transverse process of his spine and spent time in a body cast. [6]

In 1964, Kupferberg formed the satirical rock group the Fugs with poet Ed Sanders. [7]

Kupferberg was active in New York pacifist-anarchist circles. In 1965 he was one of the lecturers at the newly founded Free University of New York. [8]

He appeared as a machine-gun-toting soldier policing Manhattan in W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism , a 1971 film about the revolutionary psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich by Dušan Makavejev.

An anti-police-brutality skit from his Revolting Theatre [9] appeared in the 1971 underground film Dynamite Chicken directed by Ernest Pintoff, and featuring Richard Pryor.

In 1972, Kupferberg played the role of God in the Canadian experimental film Voulez-vous coucher avec God? . Kupferberg later appeared in the music video for Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror by Jeffrey Lewis. [10]

Kupferberg suffered a stroke in April 2009 at his home in New York City, which left him severely visually impaired and in need of regular nursing care. After treatment for a number of days at a New York hospital, followed by convalescence at a nursing home, he recuperated at home. [11]

Kupferberg died in New York Downtown Hospital in Manhattan of kidney failure and sepsis on July 12, 2010. [12] 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." [13]

A documentary film titled "Tuli Tuli Tuli, 1001 Ways to Be Joyfully Revolted" is dedicated to him. Directed by David Liver, the film features contributions from figures such as Jeffrey Lewis and Thurston Moore, and is expected to be released by the end of 2025. [14] [15]

Bibliography

Discography

ESP Disk – ESP-1035

Shimmy Disc – shimmy 020

References

  1. "Tuli Kupferberg". lambiek.net. Retrieved March 17, 2025.
  2. Vox Table Podcast, Fed. 22, 2010. Fugging Around – by Vox Tablet > Tablet Magazine – A New Read on Jewish Life
  3. Sisario, Ben (July 15, 2003). "Rock 'n' Roll Dissidents, Fearless for 4 Decades". The New York Times . Retrieved October 8, 2007.
  4. Holden, Stephen (August 21, 1987). "POP/JAZZ; The Fugs Look Back to 1967's 'Summer of Love'". The New York Times. Retrieved October 8, 2007. . . . Tuli Kupferberg, the poet and cartoonist whom Mr. Ginsberg remembered in Howl as the person who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived. (Mr. Ginsberg said the other day that the incident actually took place on the Manhattan Bridge in 1945.)
  5. "'What The Hell Was That?': Remembering Tuli Kupferberg". The Forward. July 15, 2010. Retrieved September 24, 2021.
  6. Michael Simmons, Tuli Kupferberg featured obit, Mojo, October 2010.
  7. Strausbaugh, John (September 20, 2000). "The Old Fug". New York Press. Archived from the original on June 11, 2007. Retrieved October 8, 2007.
  8. Berke, Joseph (October 29, 1965), "The Free University of New York", Peace News: 6–7 as reproduced in Jakobsen, Jakob (2012), Anti-University of London–Antihistory Tabloid, London: MayDay Rooms, pp. 6–7
  9. "Tuli's Montreal Revolt". Media Burn Archive. Retrieved November 18, 2023.
  10. "Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror" (video). YouTube. January 6, 2007. Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved March 15, 2007.
  11. "Fugs Founder Tuli Kupferberg Dies at 86". Exclaim.ca. July 12, 2010. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
  12. Sisario, Ben (July 12, 2010), "Tuli Kupferberg, Poet and Singer, Dies at 86", Artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com.
  13. Mojo Magazine #203, October 2010, p. 34
  14. "Tuli Kupferberg", Wikipédia (in French), May 25, 2025, retrieved May 25, 2025
  15. Cichosch, Katharina J. (September 29, 2023). "Zum 100. Geburtstag von Tuli Kupferberg: Ein unheroischer Held". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). ISSN   0931-9085 . Retrieved May 25, 2025.

Further reading