Influence on Music
The Beat authors had a profound influence on pop/ rock music emerging out of the counterculture movement during in the 1960's. The most notable bands like The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison of the Doors were either inspired by their work or became friends with many famous Beatniks. In 1982 when Allen Ginsberg wrote a summary of the effects of the Beat Movement he noted "The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and other popular musicians influenced in the later fifties and sixties by Beat generation poets' and writers' works." Not only did the Beatniks influence many aspects of the recording artists creatively they also worked with them to cement their new brand of "deviant" labeled music as a legitimate art form.
The Beat authors had a profound influence on pop/ rock music emerging out of the counterculture movement during in the 1960's. The most notable bands like The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison of the Doors were either inspired by their work or became friends with many famous Beatniks. In 1982 when Allen Ginsberg wrote a summary of the effects of the Beat Movement he noted "The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and other popular musicians influenced in the later fifties and sixties by Beat generation poets' and writers' works." Not only did the Beatniks influence many aspects of the recording artists creatively they also worked with them to cement their new brand of "deviant" labeled music as a legitimate art form.
The Beatles Part of the reason the band chose to spell their name as The Beatles (and not beetles) was a reference to the Beat Movement. John Lennon was also a self professed fan of Jack Kerouac. In addition all the members of The Beatles met and became lasting friends with Allen Ginsberg working to expand the anti-war movement in Vietnam. |
Bob Dylan
Writers like Ginsberg and Kerouac also had an extremely personal relationship with the artist Bob Dylan. It was primarily the works of the Beatnik writers that inspired Dylan. He once told a reporter “I came out of the wilderness and just naturally fell in with the Beat scene, the bohemian, Be Bop crowd, it was all pretty much connected ... It was Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti … I got in at the tail end of that and it was magic … it had just as big an impact on me as Elvis Presley.” |