The Ballad of the Skeletons

Song facts

From OpenCulture, April 17, 2012:

Allen Ginsberg was an unlikely MTV star. In late 1996 the Beat poet was 70 years old and in declining health. He had less than a year to live. But Ginsberg managed to stay culturally and politically relevant, right up to the end. His last major project was a collaboration with Paul McCartney and Philip Glass, among others, on a musical adaptation of his poem, “The Ballad of the Skeletons.”

The poem was first published in 1995. The American political climate from which it arose bears a striking resemblance to the one we’re living in today. “I started it,” Ginsberg told Harvey Kubernik of The Los Angeles Times in 1996, “because [of] all that inflated bull about the family values, the ‘contract with America,’ Newt Gingrich and all the loudmouth stuff on talk radio, and Rush Limbaugh and all those other guys. It seemed obnoxious and stupid and kind of sub-contradictory, so I figured I’d write a poem to knock it out of the ring.”

The skeletal imagery was inspired by the Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead, and takes a playful poke at the vanity of human desires. “It’s an old trick,” Ginsberg told Steve Silberman in a 1996 interview for HotWired, “to dress up archetypal characters as skeletons: the bishop, the Pope, the President, the police chief. There’s a Mexican painter–Posada–who does exactly that.”

In October of 1995, Ginsberg visited Paul McCartney and his family at their home in England. He recited “The Ballad of the Skeletons while one of McCartney’s daughters filmed it. As Ginsberg recalled to Silberman, he mentioned that he had to give a reading with Anne Waldman and other poets at the Royal Albert Hall, and was looking for a guitarist to accompany him. “Why don’t you try me,” McCartney said. “I love the poem.” Ginsberg continued the story:

He showed up at 5 p.m. for the sound check, and he bought a box for his family. Got all his kids together, four of them, and his wife, and he sat through the whole evening of poetry, and we didn’t say who my accompanist was going to be. We introduced him at the end of the evening, and then the roar went up on the floor of the Albert Hall, and we knocked out the song. He said if I ever got around to recording it, let him know. So he volunteered, and we made a basic track, and sent it to him, on 24 tracks, and he added maracas and drums, which it needed. It gave it a skeleton, gave it a shape. And also organ, he was trying to get that effect of Al Kooper on the early Dylan. And guitar, so he put a lot of work in on that. And then we got it back just in time for Philip Glass to fill in his arpeggios on piano.

The recording was produced by Lenny Kaye, guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, who had put together a group of musicians for a performance of the song at a Tibet House benefit in April of 1996. One member of the audience that night was Danny Goldberg, president of Mercury Records and a fan of Ginsberg. He invited the poet to record the song, and it all came together quickly. In a 1997 article in Tikkun, Goldberg remembered Ginsberg’s giddiness over the project: “He loved that Paul McCartney had overdubbed drums on ‘Skeletons.’ He said, ‘It’s the closest I’m going to ever come to being in the Beatles,’ and giggled like a teenager.”

The recording features Ginsberg on vocals, Glass on keyboards, McCartney on guitar, drums, Hammond organ and maracas, Kaye on bass, Marc Ribot on guitar and David Mansfield on Guitar. Mercury released the song as a CD single in two versions, including one with the language sanitized for radio and television. The “B side” was a recording of Ginsberg’s “New Stanzas for Amazing Grace“ that did not include McCartney or Glass. The next step was to create a video. As Goldberg recalled, Ginsberg knew an opportunity when he saw one:

When Tom Freston, the CEO of MTV, bought five of Allen’s photos, Ginsberg promptly called me, not too subtly implying that if Mercury would fund production of a video, we might be able to get on MTV. Allen had an unerring instinct of how to mobilize his mystique for those who were interested. He regaled Freston with stories of the beatniks one night at our house, which made it almost impossible for MTV to reject his video despite the fact that he was decades older than typical MTV artists and audience members. A political satire of both generations, “Skeletons” received highly pubicized and much-coveted “buzz bin” rotation on MTV in the weeks before the last election–to the consternation of other record companies who were submitting artists with more conventional credentials. This made Allen the only seventy-year-old besides Tony Bennett to ever be played on MTV.

The video was directed by Gus Van Sant, who had ties to surviving members of the Beat generation. Van Sant had directed William S. Burroughs in the film Drugstore Cowboy, and had made short films–Thanksgiving Prayer and The Discipline of DE— based on writing by Burroughs. Ginsberg was happy with Van Sant’s work, despite a tight filming budget. “It’s a great collage,” Ginsberg told Silberman. “He went back to old Pathé, Satan skeletons, and mixed them up with Rush Limbaugh, and Dole, and the local politicians, Newt Gingrich, and the President. And mixed those up with the atom bomb, when I talk about the electric chair– ‘Hey, what’s cookin?’–you got Satan setting off an atom bomb, and I’m trembling with a USA hat on, the Uncle Sam hat on. So it’s quite a production, it’s fun.”

From Club Sandwich N°81, Spring 1997:

Poet extraordinaire Allen Ginsberg is not only one of the most famous, prolific and profound exponents of his art, carving his name into the pantheon of the century’s best, he’s also a friend of Paul McCartney. Readers may recall seeing in a previous Club Sandwich (issue 76) a photograph of Allen and Paul together, on stage at the Royal Albert Hall. Allen read a riveting new piece, The Ballad Of The Skeletons, while Paul – his surprise guest, whose unexpected appearance drew gasps, even from the “cool” crowd – vamped on electric guitar. During that same visit to England, Allen and Paul also worked together in Paul’s studio, cutting the definitive version of the piece that, at its fullest and in all its finery, extends to almost eight minutes. Paul contributed not only guitar but also drums, maracas and a Hammond organ passage. (Later still, other musicians Philip Glass, Lenny Kaye, Marc Ribot and David Mansfield also contributed.) The result is a four-track CD EP, issued shortly before Christmas in USA by Mercury Records, comprising this full piece, an edited version, a “clean” version and, finally, a new rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’ that has no McCartney connection.

“The Ballad Of The Skeletons” was included in the 2020 reissue of “Flaming Pie” but was not remastered. 

Allen Ginsberg: “I did the poem at Carnegie Hall (in New York at a benefit) for the Tibet House, that followed the Albert Hall show. And… Danny Goldberg, (President of Mercury Records), was in the audience at Carnegie Hall, (and he) called up my office.. ’cause he heard it and liked it and said, “Do you want to record it?” I got together Marc Ribot, who I had played it with first, Lenny (Kaye) and David Mansfield. And Lenny was the session-maker… We made a basic track – and McCartney had said, “If you record it, I’d like to work on it. It would be fun”. So we did a 24-hour overnight-mail to him, and he got it, and listened to it, after a few days. He spent a day on it. He put on maracas, drums, (which was unexpected, which we needed), and organ, Hammond organ, trying to sound like Al Kooper. And guitar, which was very strong. Then the day it arrived, Philip Glass was in town, and he volunteered because he thought it was my hit, so he wanted to do something with it. He added on piano, very much in his style, and fitting perfectly onto the rest of the tape. Then Hal Willner wound up mixing it and brought out McCartney’s role and the structure that McCartney
had given to it, ’cause he gave it a very nice, dramatic structure. I had planned that after “Blow Nancy Blow” you would have four consecutive choruses of instrumentals. McCartney and I had planned the breaks the first time, and varied it a little..”

Allen Ginsberg: “[Paul] reacts to the words in an intelligent way. You can hear it on the tape. Like, if I say on the recording, “What’s cooking”, all of a sudden he brings in the maracas to get that really funny excitement. When I say, “Blow Nancy Blow”, he blows on the Hammond organ. He added a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of interpretation. And sometimes when I made a flub, he covered it. He left his lead sheet in his guitar case, so we had to share my lead sheet (at the gig), which was fun.”

Last updated on September 26, 2020

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