Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell/Massachusetts. We know the French Canadian by his Americanized name: Jack Kerouac. His 1957 novel “On The Road” is both a founding document and a map of American counterculture and has made mythically transfigured America a place of longing for generations. For Kerouac’s 100th birthday we have Australian songwriter Robert Forster, who released the song “The House That Jack Kerouac Built” with his band The Go-Betweens in 1986 and the music for a very nice one in 1998 Radio play version of “On The Road” by Bavarian Radio wrote, asked about the meaning of Kerouac and “On The Road”.
Before I read “On The Road” as a teenager in the mid 90’s I had already heard from a lot of people who were influenced by this book, also knew a thing or two about the Beat Generation and this whole idea of being on the road Driving across America seemed like a mythical experience to me. So I had basically internalized the novel before I read it. And yet the book seemed to me as if it had just been written for me. How was that for you?
I first read On The Road in the mid to late 70’s. So in my late teens. Even then, the book was already surrounded by myth. It was a cornerstone of the counterculture, after all, so the book was there and people around me were reading it. Also, the novel was already an important text in rock ‘n’ roll culture. That’s for sure. So I didn’t have to bother finding him or getting to know the world and ideas that the book deals with. And the beat culture, a particular way of living and seeing life, was not only known, but found, through other writers – most of whom were still alive then – like Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and so on in the rock music counterculture and culture more and more entry into mainstream culture, even in an initially very vague way.
The novel is actually about a time before rock’n’roll.
It’s correct. True, the novel was published in 1957. But most of the book was written in 1951. What happens in the text takes place in the late 1940s. So this is a late forties novel, it’s easy to miss. So this is about Charlie Parker, not Elvis. It is said that the best time to have lived in New York was in the 1940s – especially the late 1940s. After the war, when there was an openness and freedom in the city that it never quite regained. “On the Road” begins there at that exact time. And that wild underground feeling runs through the whole book.
Can you remember your first reading impression?
What I immediately loved about the book was that, like Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, On The Road was so damn readable. I challenge everyone to read the first two pages – they won’t stop until the end of the book. What I particularly like about the book is the joie de vivre. How many books are about the joy of life? no murder Nobody goes through a midlife crisis. No fabricated gloom. No endless chatter about family life and its problems. The book is about kicks and is a kick in itself.
What influence did reading it have on you at the time?
When I read it, like so many teenagers, I wanted to break away from my roots and travel for the sake of travel. I couldn’t because I was in college writing songs and going on a crazy adventure on the road wasn’t the right thing to do at the time. But I knew the moment would come and that Kerouac was a tour guide. Not to what I would find on the street – his world was the USA in the late 1940s – but to the open-hearted spirit with which I would approach this adventure.
I know an incredible number of people who have read “On The Road” and say that the book made a great impression on them. But I don’t know that many who read another Kerouac novel after that.
You’re right, a lot of people just read On The Road. And in a way, Kerouac’s books cover ONE thing – he’s the focus of the story, with time and place changing, but basically he’s telling what’s right in front of him. This gives his books strength and beauty. On The Road is his best book and maybe you don’t have to read more to get this ONE THING. I have read “Dharma Bums” twice and I really like it. Set mostly in San Francisco – a city I like, it’s about Buddhism and a spiritual quest that was sparked when Kerouac met young poet Gary Snyder (who’s still alive and is a fascinating character and a really good one nature and elog poets). This is a beautiful book – a lovely little tune to the great One The Road song.
Around the time you read “On The Road” you also started writing songs. Is there a connection between Kerouac and your songs?
Kerouac didn’t really influence my lyrics. If there’s one thing he gave me or I took from him, it’s to be entertaining and to admire the simple things around you. So… maybe there was some influence as I still follow that thread in my songs.
And of course you wrote the song “The House That Jack Kerouac Built”. What kind of house is that?
“The House That Jack Kerouac Built” is two things. A game with the popular phrase “The House That Jack Built” – and I don’t know where that phrase came from. And the second thing that would take me at least 1,000 words to explain: the song was written at a time in my life, 1986, when I was living in London a wild rock lifestyle that I loved and feared at the same time, and kind of insane in my own way Thinking about it, the whole ethos of Live Wild and Die Young could be summed up as “The House Jack Kerouac Built”. Not that Kerouac wanted it, but his famous book was part of the rock mythology of the fast and dangerous life, the flirting with death that I was kind of living at the time. Does that make any sense? It was like rock ‘n’ roll was literally the house that Jack Kerouac built. And I loved and feared it.