Tuli Kupferberg Is Dead: Long Live the Oldest Living Rock Star
I own The Fugs first album, the ESP 1966 Mono re-release of the 1965 debut.
It is one of my prize possessions.
It is a great, crazy, anarchic, raunchy experience, unlike records released today. Listening to The Fugs is an Experience - capital E - and anticipates Zappa and Captain Beefheart and the Punk movement.
Raucous and childish, literary and humorous, The Fugs influenced many without selling many records. Certainly not easy listening and not universally popular to say the least, The Fugs spawned more than their share of followers nevertheless. At a time when record companies like ESP wanted groups like the Fugs for what they said and represented.
Robert Christgau has called them the first underground rock band.
Punks and poets - true rock stars like like Lou Reed and Patti Smith among them - honored the Fugs in a benefit reunion concert last February that featured all of the original Fugs and in particular founding member Ed Sanders, but not Tuli Kupferberg. Sadly, Tuli had had two strokes by then and was in failing health. He passed away July 12 at the age of 86.
In 1964, when he and Ed Sanders founded The Fugs, the 41 year old Kupferberg already described himself as the oldest living rock star.
He was then and remained so until his passing. The oldest living rock star and forever young.
For a full appreciation, see the New York Times Obituary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/arts/music/13kupferberg.html
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