At
the age of 22, Michael McClure gave his first poetry reading at the
legendary Six Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first
read Howl. One of the last remaining Beat poets, Michael McClure
was closely associated with both Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and appears
as the character Pat McLear in Kerouac’s novel Big Sur. McClure
also served as a poetry mentor to both Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison of
The Doors, introducing these artists to the work of Rimbaud and Blake.
He is featured in Scorcese’s film The Last Waltz. McClure’s
songs include Janis Joplin’s beloved "Mercedes Benz".
The author of dozens of books of poetry, McClure read
with an actor’s command and a singer’s timing, “transporting audiences
to a very different and intriguing place.” McClure also performed regularly
with The Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek, with whom he recorded two
albums.
On
January 14, 1967, McClure read at the epochal Human Be-In event in Golden
Gate Park in San Francisco and transcended his earlier identity to become
an important member of the 1960s hippie counterculture. Barry Miles
famously referred to McClure as "the prince of the San Francisco
scene.
McClure would later court controversy as a playwright
with his play The Beard. The play tells of a fictional encounter
in the blue velvet of eternity between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow
and is a theatrical exploration of his "Meat Politics" theory,
in which all human beings are "bags of meat".
McClure's other plays include Josephine The Mouse
Singer and VKTMS. He had an eleven-year run as playwright-in-residence
with San Francisco's Magic Theatre where his operetta "Minnie Mouse
and the Tap-Dancing Buddha" had an extended run. He made two television
documentaries – The Maze and September Blackberries
– and was featured in several films, including Martin Scorsese's The
Last Waltz (1978), where he recites from The Canterbury Tales;
Norman Mailer's Beyond the Law (1968); and, most prominently,
Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand (1971).
In
addition to poetry, McClure published books of essays and two novels
and created twenty plays and musicals, for which he received several
Obie Awards. His journalism was featured in Rolling Stone, Vanity
Fair, the L.A. Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
A Professor Emeritus of California College of the Arts, Michael McClure’s
travelled widely and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area hills with
his wife, sculptor Amy Evans McClure.
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