Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

Patti Smith Reviews Bob Dylan's New Album

Well I was sitting on my window sill, watching the sky shifting, when a messenger arrived with
a copy of the new Bob Dylan album.  I gave old Glenn Gould a rest and put Modern Times in my player. To this day, it still feels funny sliding a CD in place instead of setting a record on the turntable. It was always exciting, that first moment, when the needle connected with the vinyl groove. The first CD I ever heard was an experimental one, a long time ago, with Rainy Day Women on it. I just shook my head and said "nope. it will never take off. nobody will give up playing records." Nostradamus I am not.
In any event, there are two handsome portraits of Bob in the packaging. I like the song called Ain't Talkin'.  Like walking alongside Bob hearing him thinking. It was nice to get a special copy brought to my door.  It kind of made up for all those bus rides in the mid-sixties, through Camden into Philadelphia, to stand for hours in line just to buy a copy of Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde. It was always worth it though. I was never disappointed. (Photo: Smith at Lollapalooza, 2006)

Modern Times aside, I am just writing to say I have been working more on the website and will be making some changes in the next week. I had been kind of negligent for a while as I did a lot
of traveling and have had a lot on my mind.  But I promise to be more active.  I am adding another version of Qana on the site. Just a live late night practice tape. I mispronounced it when I did it myself but it was the only version I had and I thought the sentiments were more important than the pronunciation. I have a penchant for  mispronouncing, so sorry about that.

So I hope you will check the site out. I will try to put new stuff up every day or two. It's a good communication base. Hope to see you there. Well I've got to go clean out the refrigerator. A good idea is  to put an open new box of Arm and Hammer baking soda on one of the shelves. It cuts odors. Not that I'm implying anything.  all good wishes, Patti Smith

You can catch Bob Dylan in concert on Saturday, Sept. 2 at Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame.
Patti Smith's new book, "Just Kids: From Brooklyn to the Chelsea Hotel" will be available in stores October 1.

Unknown Flophouse Mistaken for The Chelsea

A play called “The Love Doll” has just finished its run at the Philipstown Depot Theatre in Cold Spring, NY, wherever that is.  The play is set in the “infamous” Chelsea Hotel -- – though I can’t imagine what they mean by that – situated on 23^rd Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues.  Apparently, in this play, a man who lives with a life size blowup doll attempts to commit suicide by boobytrapping his room.  Now, for the life of me, I can’t image how anyone could suggest that such loathsome perverts would ever be allowed to set foot in our fine hotel. This is not the Chelsea we know and love and Stanley Bard would never allow such behavior.  Most likely, however, since they got the address wrong, they probably got everything else wrong as well.  I can only conclude that they are unfamiliar with the city, and that these events took place in an entirely different building.  They speak of the Chelsea as the scene of “madness, mayhem, and finally joy,” but those of lucky enough to live here of course know only the joy.  (Ed Hamilton)

Sathima Bea Benjamin’s SongSpirit

            Our Chelsea Hotel neighbor, Sathima Bea Benjamin, has just released a new CD, SongSpirit, on Ekapa Records.  Interspersing old jazz standards with her own original songs, the CD covers almost her entire career, from an early recording with Duke Ellington in Paris in 1963, to her latest session in Capetown in 2002.
            Sathima has a very fine voice, which can range from the sweet, upbeat and buoyant, as in “Ah Sweet Mystery of Life” and “I Only Have Eyes For You,” to the smooth, sultry and sexy, as in the Ellington piece, “I Got it Bad and that Ain’t Good” and “Lush Life,” both of which really evoke the feel of the smoky night club.  I’d have to say that “Lush Life” was one of my favorites on the CD: I listened to it over and over.
            Three of Sathima’s own songs appear on the CD as well.  I particularly liked “Children of Soweto,” with it’s cheerful, uplifting folk beat, and “Africa,” a moving evocation of returning home to her native South Africa after years of Exile.  In the latter, with the haunting Saxophone of Carlos Ward echoing in the background, Sathima sings, “I’ve come home to feel my people’s warmth, to shelter ‘neath your trees, to catch the summer breeze...”  Also of note on the piece is the piano of Onaje Allan Gumbs.
            Sathima is married to the great jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, and the selection she recorded with him, “It Never Entered My Mind,” is another of the highlights of the album.  Ibrahim’s delicate, tinkling piano sounds almost classical on this piece.
            Yet another highlight of the CD is the bittersweet “Indian Summer,” with its evocation of love that almost was, and of the promise of dreams that will never come true.
            If you like jazz, or even if you don’t, you can’t go wrong with this CD.  It’s mellow and relaxing and provides a welcome break from the jarring dissonance of the city.  The CD rewards repeated listening, and stands as an eloquent summation of Sathima’s lifelong body of work. (Ed Hamilton)

All Tomorrow's Parties: August 28 - Sept. 3, 2006

Monday, August 28, 12:00 midnight
Bob Dylan will premier his first album in five years, "Modern Times," on XM Satellite Radio.  Beginning on Tuesday, August 29, fans can purchase a copy of Modern Times at select retailers. The artist's 44th album features 10 new songs recorded this winter with Dylan on keyboards, guitars, harmonica and vocals, accompanied by his touring band.

Tuesday, August 29,
After winning the Budweiser Irish Derby, Dylan Thomas is the favorite to win the Juddmonte International Stakes being run today in York.  So head over to the nearest OTB parlor and place your bet before they close them all down.

Tuesday, August 29, 10:30 p.m.
Susanne Bartsch and Kenny Kenny invite you to Happy Valley Tuesdays. SHOW: LAVINIA DJ: Princess & Dan Cacioppo Hosts: Miranda Moondust, Kim Aviance, Astro, Theodora Ladyfag, Amanda Lepore & Dirty Martini.  Door: Andrea and Cynthia. 
14 east 27 St., NY NY

Friday, September 1, various times
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film opens tonight at the Film Forum.  It's the US theatrical premiere of Ric Burns’s 4-hour epic.  Narrated by Laurie Anderson. With Jeff Koons as the voice of Andy Warhol. Featuring interviews with art dealer Irving Blum, curator Donna DeSalvo, diarist/co-author Pat Hackett, art critic Dave Hickey, writer Stephen Koch, Jeff Koons, Paul Morrissey, George Plimpton, art historian John Richardson, and Warhol’s brother John Warhola.
Film Forum, 209 West Houston, NY NY

Saturday, September 2,
Harry Smith's early abstractions will be shown along with some of his other short films at the Anthology Film Archives later this month, but for those readers who just can't wait you can already enjoy some of his early abstractions on youtube.


If you have a relevant event you want added to "All Tomorrow's Parties," e-mail chelblog@yahoo.com

Featured E-mail of the Week

From a rocker in Maryland:
Just wanted you to know how much I enjoy the blog...it's alot of fun to read, I find myself laughing outloud at work...and sometimes I really need that! Thanks once again for linking the blog I wrote about the Chelsea...even if you did take it a little out of context!! …. Maybe next time I'm in town you could ask Stanley to give me a discount...HA HA! Keep up the good work. And thanks for giving me my Chelsea fix when I'm home. This is why we write the blog: to help the people in Maryland make it through the workday!

A librarian from Brooklyn weighs in: I really enjoy reading about the Chelsea on your blog. I loved that there was an entry that looked into the AOL searcher profiles, awesome idea!! I also just watched the Entourage episode about the Ramones project. Cool!

A new reader who enjoys torturing librarians writes:
I notice some of my favorite writers listed on your site. Here's a fun game to play:

Call up your local library and tell them that you're looking for a book. Tell them it's a kids book...by Charles Bukowski. Then just wait a few seconds for the long pause. Then say "Yeah, I think it's called 'Notes from a Dirty old Man to little kids' or something like that."
I have a friend who is a librarian and she hates me for doing this stuff to her.

A reader from Canada:
I kind of like the idea of the Chelsea Hotel being old and crappy. None of this refurbished business.
Of course, in my head, I'm writing in a room there, the curtains are dusty, the room is clean but it's not the Hilton....which is exactly why I would be there. 
n'est pas?  Our point exactly!  Old and Crappy is best!

Betty Bishop Remembers The Nineties

Betty Bishop spent a memorable six months here at the Chelsea back in the early nineties, attending one of good ol' Gingie's birthday parties.  She even got to have one of her paintings on display in the lobby for a while.  But she sure was glad that the guy who jumped down the stairwell was all cleaned up by the time she got home.
1. What do you do?  I have done a lot of things. From working as a waitress to owning a fairly large catering company where we made little sandwiches for the Queen of England. I sold it and retired when I was 51 years old. Then I took up art. I am now 72.
2. When did you stay at the Chelsea?

I stayed at the Chelsea for 6 months the winter of 1992/93. Room 603 I think. You can see a painting of my room and there is also one of the hall on the 6th floor. (Click here for her photos. The one on the right hung in the lobby for a while.)

3. What brought you to the famed hotel?

I am from Toronto - I wanted to study at the Art Student's League and did study at the Art Student's League. I knew about the Chelsea and I just phoned and asked if they had a room with a kitchen. They did and the price was right although it took rather a long time to get them to tell me exactly how much it would cost me. "Come on down and we will see"...............it was sort of like that if I remember correctly.

4. Has your art been influenced by any former or currents residents of the hotel?

Probably unconsciously.

5. Which artists do you most admire and why?

Cezzane, Titan, Tuttle, Freud, Horace Pippin - why? because they give me shivers! Oh yes - Van Gogh! Matisse.........

6.  Do you think the Chelsea Hotel has a creative spirit?

I imagine it does. I sometimes wondered who else had slept in my bed and who they slept with.

7.  What was the best/worst thing that happened to you at the Chelsea?

The worst was the day I came "home" and learned a guy had jumped or fallen down 9 flights into the stairwell. Fortunately for me they had cleaned him up before I got home. The best was Ginger's birthday party - Ginger was the house dog and I am invited to her September Birthday party - forever and ever!

8. Did you spot any celebrities during your visit?
Yes although it depends on your definition of a celebrity doesn't it? I had dinner with a woman who used to swim with Picasso. She also lived between the Chelsea and her Paris apartment. I am sure she is dead now so I can mention her but I don't know if she was a celebrity. She was a painter.

A Tale of Two Dylans

A Welsh writer named Phil Bowen has written a play about a meeting between Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan in the Chelsea Hotel. Though initially produced in 2001 and 2002, it was of course a flop.  Now its been brought back for a run at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Wales. Through superior blogging skills we have managed to obtain an excerpt from the top-secret script.  Picture the two men seated in a dingy cockroach-with-teeth infested room at the world famous Chelsea Hotel:

Bob: How does it feel Dylan, you old tosspot, to be on your own, with no direction home, etc. etc….?

Dylan:  Well, not so hot, Bob, you royal asshole, but at least Death Shall Have no Dominion Over Me.

Bob: No, but 18 whiskeys did.  Looking back on your life, how many roads did you have to go down before they called you a man?
Dylan: A shit load, but I’m still not ready to go gently into that good night.

We can’t wait for the sequel, where Dee Dee Ramone instructs Mark Twain in the finer points of shooting smack.

Stefan Brecht's Poetry of the Street

Stefan Brecht, the son of the great German playwright Bertolt Brecht, and a poet and scholar in his own right, maintained a writing studio in the Chelsea Hotel throughout the eighties and nineties.  Every morning, Stefan walked up 8^th Avenue to the Chelsea from his home in Greenwich Village, recording his journey in photographs.  The photographs are not what you might imagine, however, not street scenes or portraits of Chelsea neighborhood characters.  They are instead photos of the sidewalk itself, the actual pavement over which Brecht walked, with all its cracks and crevices, its grease stains and gum spots, revealing the history of the many generations of feet that have trod over it.  The photos, in black and white, have a striking, abstract expressionist quality.  Hopefully we can see them in a show someday; blown up to a decent size and hung on a gallery wall they would surely be impressive.  In the meantime, Onestar Press has a book of the photos in the works, due out this fall.

            Brecht also recorded his daily journey in poetry, and these poems have been collected in a new book, 8th Avenue Poems published by Spuyten Duyvil Press.  In a straightforward, no nonsense style, Brecht sets aside a lifetime of erudition to channel the unadorned essence of humanity in its naked struggle for survival on the mean streets of New York.  In these poems we encounter the junkies, the homeless, the trannie whores; the cleaning ladies cleaning and the young toughs preening.  Brecht’s practiced method allows him to penetrate to the heart of these people, to capture and bring back the very kernel at the core of their being, allowing us to grasp this kernel intimately by showing us that way down in the depths of our souls it is the most fundamental basis of our own struggle as well.  Consider:

It is undoubtedly an American,

but a gross sight, he is defecating in a doorway,

his pants down decently in the back only,

in a crouch, ready to jump, peering about apprehensively,

his large face up and moving. (72)

            With no attempt to sanitize, but with always an eye for the true human pathos inherent in every situation, Brecht lets the scenes speak for themselves, and speak they do, most eloquently.  They tell a tale of lives shaped—in many instances warped and twisted--by the exigencies of the harsh, Darwinian grind of the city’s overwhelming, terrible/beautiful immensity:

...in the street men carry/the faces of Indians as though some upheaval/had brought to the fore in their faces the arched cheekbones, opaque/agate eyes, the wide expanses on skulls like boulders/of this race exterminated hereabouts and in the islands... (76)

            Brecht is a keen observer of human nature, able to turn his gaze upon a street scene objectively, dispassionately, and to discern the formal beauty even in the midst of a seemingly formless—and sometimes downright frightening--chaos.  It is nonetheless clear, however, that he feels a close bond of kinship with his subjects, and his poetry is best when he lays aside all artifice and engages with the people of the street, as in this poem in which his eyes meet--for the very first time—the eyes of an insane homeless woman he has passed a hundred times in the street:

...and her face distracted into a grimace./ Now I don’t know if she was showing ironic contempt for my inability to/maintain non-recognition, mocking/me with some slight savagery, or if the rictus within which her eyes flared/was a genuine smile, better than mine, but distorted by some muscular/dyscontrol... (58-59)

            These I/Thou encounters pop up seemingly at random, surprising and touching us, as we feel they do Brecht himself, with the depth of their poignancy.  It’s a common, though doomed, strategy to attempt to remain aloof, enclosed within one’s own self, when walking the streets of New York.  For the outward danger of the streets—a danger in no sense inconsiderable—is dwarfed by the profound inward tax that the city inevitably extracts from one’s soul:

“Nickel,” he says, “Smoke,” between his teeth like at the refectory table/in the big house, graduating/up to the big time, but me at the corner of 17^th in the smoke of his young/business man’s whisper see my old girl friend in her 35^th year/slipping back into the steadying habit,/taking high aim, her nerves shot,/and the innocent enterprise of this punk/gets on my arse,/ a regrettable lack of detachment. (43)

            We are all like this in New York, doing our best to stand up straight and hold our heads high as we walk the streets, yet possessing a scarcely concealed fragility at the core of our being.  Several of Brecht’s photos of 8^th avenue are scattered throughout the book, as if to drive home the point that, like the sidewalks, the people in his poetry are worn and cracked and bear the stamp of a thousand footfalls as well, and are nonetheless as durable, as enduring as the pavement upon which they walk.

[Stefan Brecht was born in 1924 in Berlin, Germany and came to America in 1942.  He has published several books on the theatre, as well as a volume of his poetry with City Lights.  He currently lives and works in the Chelsea area of New York.  8^th Avenue Poems, Spuyten Duyvil Press, New York, will be available in bookstores soon, or you can order it at www.spuytenduyvil.net.]

-- Photo of Stefan Brecht at the Hotel Chelsea, Room 1010, 1979 by Maggie Hopp.  A special thanks to Caroline Hansberry for providing the review copy of the book as well.-- (Ed Hamilton)

Faux-Murder Chic at Miss Sixty Hotel

This Miss Sixty hotel in Riccione, Italy looks like a Holiday Inn with a child’s plastic stencil worked into its façade.  Even worse, here they are trying to steal the Chelsea's business with a fake murder room!  (I can’t tell who was fake-murdered there.)
But hey, accept no substitutes.  We have plenty of real murder rooms, including the  greatest of all – if you can find it, that is.  Nobody beats the Chelsea for morbid, gothic tourism.  Seriously though, Miss Sixty people, the faux-art-hotel thing I can see, but faux murder rooms?  Don’t even try it. We blow you away, you amateurs.   Oh, and they’ve got Orwellian technology too!  Luckily, we’ve developed some of that ourselves. (Ed Hamilton)

Book Publishers Finally Discover Internet Writers

Collegestories.com, a humor website (not to be confused with collegehumor.com, the site which was recently purchased by Barry Diller for several million dollars), just released an anthology entitled Class Dismissed (Villard, 2006).  Without a doubt this book will make several times as much money as all the movies set to be derived from the collegehumor content.

It seems that drunken frat boy humor is making a comeback of late. The New York Times reported on this trend recently in the Style section, singling out the lifestyle magazine Modern Drunkard and several forthcoming novels.

Why, may you ask, should we care?  Well, this blog's Slice-of-Lifer, Ed Hamilton, has a story in the Anthology.  We haven’t seen a copy of the book yet, so we don’t know if they used the author’s photo, but they requested a humorous one.  Here’s what they got from Ed, much to the dismay of his mother, who wanted us to send a photo of Ed in his first communion outfit.  In retrospect, perhaps that would have been funnier, or at least more ironic.

Here’s an excerpt from Ed’s story, but that’s all you get for free.  You’ll have to buy a copy of Class Dismissed to read the whole story.  (It’s also an excerpt from a novel, but Ed’s still waiting for somebody to snatch that up.)

Soon, I was hopelessly lost. The houses were getting shittier and shittier, more ramshackle. At one of the houses there were some long-haired rednecks hanging out on their front porch. They were older than me, probably in their early thirties. There were three of them, and a fat woman redneck.

They looked friendly enough, so I figured I'd ask them for directions. But in my drunken state, stumbling up into their yard, I chose an ill-advised greeting:

"Hey you guys, got any reefer?"

The men just sat there, expressionless, but the woman jumped up and screamed at me, hysterically, "No! Get out of here!

That seemed downright inhospitable. I decided to take my revenge on her by hanging out there for a while. "I wasn't even talking to you, lady," I said. Then, addressing the man nearest me, the one with a beard, I said, "You probably got some reefer, don't you, man?"