Tuli Kupferberg, RIP
by Paul KrassnerFiled under: Satire
By Paul Krassner, via Toni Dalton:
Tuli Kupferberg is better off dead.
My friend and countercultural icon had been suffering from a couple of strokes, hospitals, breathing tubes, feeding tubes, anemia, infections, blindness, catheter, hearing aids, wheelchairs, psychosis, memory loss, diapers, constipation, anti-depressants, sleeping pills, fatigue and a chronically bed-ridden life that seemed to be no life worth living.
Tuli was a dedicated truthseeker, and I”™d like to honor that quality with a couple of truths.
There was a rumor that Phiip Roth had lifted the onanistically obsessed idea for Portnoy”™s Complaint from a song by the Fugs–a band on the cusp of rock and punk, named after Norman Mailer”™s euphemism for fuck in The Naked and the Dead–but this notion was disavowed by Fugs leader Ed Sanders, who assured me, “Philip Roth did not plagiarize a Fugs song. He came to a Fugs show in 1966, and I think he was inspired by Tuli, in top hat and cane, singing “˜Jack-Off Blues.”™ Many times in reunion concerts, introducing Tuli singing that song, I have suggested that Roth got some of the impetus for Portnoy”™s Complaint from that time he was inspired by the Tuli tune.” (more…)