The Fugs
The Fugs is an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders. Kupferberg named the band from a euphemism for fuck used in Norman Mailer's novel The Naked and the Dead.
The band were supported by folklorist Harry Smith, compiler of Anthology of American Folk Music, who helped them sign with Folkways Records. They became prominent leaders of the 1960s underground scene and the American counterculture of that decade. The group is known for its comedic, satirical and explicit lyricism as well as their persistent anti–Vietnam War sentiment, which culminated in Ed Sanders leading an "Exorcism of the Pentagon" in 1967. Since the 1980s, they have performed at several events regarding other U.S. involved wars.
Background
According to Ed Sanders, the idea of forming a band arose in late 1964 after a poetry reading at Café Le Metro on New York's Lower East Side. He and fellow poet-artist Tuli Kupferberg, already known in the downtown scene for his anarchic humor and protest art, spent an evening discussing how to bring the immediacy of Beat poetry into the idiom of rock and roll. Sanders later recalled proposing “a poetry-rock group that would combine the joy of verse with the noise of the streets,” to which Kupferberg instantly agreed.Both men were active in the Lower East Side's countercultural network of poets, artists, and folk musicians centered around St. Mark's Place and the East Tenth Street galleries. Sanders soon opened the Peace Eye Bookstore—part press office for his mimeographed journal Fuck You/A Magazine of the Arts and part salon for radical poets—which quickly became the group's headquarters and rehearsal space.
In early sessions held behind the bookstore's shelves, Sanders and Kupferberg were joined by drummer Ken Weaver to set their poems to rudimentary rock and folk rhythms. They described the result as “holy anarchy”—a blend of chant, satire, and street theater intended as both entertainment and political protest. From these experiments the Fugs were born, formally debuting at the Peace Eye opening celebration in December 1964.
Career
1960s
During the mid-to late 1960s, the Fugs' core members which consisted of Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and Ken Weaver were augmented by a rotating cast of New York musicians. Among those who appeared in the 1960s were guitarists Danny Kortchmar and Eric Gale; keyboardist Lee Crabtree; bassist Chuck Rainey; clarinetist Perry Robinson; and others.In early 1965, Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders briefly joined the group and contributed to rehearsals and the sessions for their debut album. Folklorist Harry Smith, compiler of Anthology of American Folk Music, became an early supporter and facilitated the Fugs’ signing to Folkways Records who released their debut album The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction. However, ESP-Disk' promptly re-released the album and put out their follow-up The Fugs. In October 1966, writer Norman Jopling reported in British music magazine Record Mirror: "Three labels, ESP, Atlantic, and MGM are battling to sign the Fugs whose first LP on ESP has been on the Billboard' LP chart for fourteen weeks without any air play".
Additionally, Andy Warhol briefly considered the Fugs and Holy Modal Rounders for his multimedia series the Exploding Plastic Inevitable before selecting the Velvet Underground. Warhol attended early performances at Sanders’ Peace Eye Bookstore and appeared at the group's anti-war benefit Night of Napalm, later inspiring their improvised track “Spontaneous Salute to Andy Warhol.”
By 1966, the Fugs had become fixtures of the Lower East Side scene, performing at anti-war rallies and benefits. The band soon became prominent within the 1960s counterculture. On January 1, 1966, New York police raided the Peace Eye Bookstore and arrested Sanders on obscenity charges; he was later acquitted with ACLU support, which increased the group's notoriety. Ed Sanders also performed at the 1967 March on the Pentagon, where he and others attempted to “levitate” the building—an event chronicled in Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night. A recording of the ritual, titled “Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon,” appears on the Fugs' 1968 Reprise album Tenderness Junction.
In February 1967, the group briefly signed with Atlantic Records and recorded an album titled The Fugs Eat It, which was ultimately shelved and never released. Later that year, they joined Reprise Records, releasing Tenderness Junction and It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. On leaving ESP, Sanders later joked that “our royalty rate was less than 3%, one of the lower percentages in the history of Western civilization.”
The band toured Europe twice in 1968, performing in Denmark, Sweden, and West Germany at the Internationale Essener Songtage alongside Tangerine Dream, Peter Brötzmann, and other underground musicians. In 1969, the FBI investigated the group for obscenity after a broadcasting executive described them as “the filthiest and most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive.” The case was eventually dropped.
1970s–1990s
In 1971, at a General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Fugs song was castigated by Ezra Taft Benson, a high-ranking elder who would go on to become its President. In a speech condemning rock music as Satanic, Benson said "the cynic defends his degeneracy by ridiculing his critics with confusing metaphors". He complained that critiquing "The words of the rock recording 'I Couldn't Get High caused people to call for the LDS hymn "High on the Mountain Top" to be dropped from songbooks. Benson disputed the retort that "If one sees filthy implications in a popular song, it is because he has a dirty mind", saying "No filth is implied in many of the lyrics. It is proclaimed."One of their better-known songs is an adaptation of Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach". Others were settings of William Blake's poems "Ah! Sun-flower" and "How Sweet I Roam'd". Another, "Nothing", is a paraphrasing of the Yiddish folk song "Bulbes".
For most of their later career, the Fugs were composed of the primary singer-songwriters Sanders and Kupferberg, together with composer and guitarist Steven Taylor—a long-time collaborator of Allen Ginsberg—percussionist and vocalist Coby Batty, and musician-producer Scott Petito.
After pursuing individual projects over the years, in 1984 Sanders and Kupferberg re-formed the band and staged a series of Fugs reunion concerts. On August 15, 1988, at the Byrdcliff Barn in Woodstock, New York, the Fugs performed one of their first real reunion concerts. This incarnation of the Fugs included, at various times, the guitarist and singer Steve Taylor, the drummer and singer Coby Batty, the bassist Mark Kramer, the guitarist Vinny Leary, and the bassist and keyboardist Scott Petito. The re-formed Fugs performed concerts at numerous locations in the United States and Europe over the next several years.
In 1994 the band intended to perform a series of concerts in Woodstock, New York to commemorate the 1969 Woodstock Festival, which had actually occurred near the town of Bethel, some 50 miles away. They learned that a group of promoters were planning to stage Woodstock '94 that August near Saugerties, about eight miles from Woodstock, and that this festival would be much more tightly controlled and commercialized than the original. Consequently, the Fugs staged their own August 1994 concerts as "The Real Woodstock Festival", in an atmosphere more in keeping with the spirit of the 1969 festival. The basic Fugs roster of Sanders, Kupferberg, Taylor, Batty, and Petito performed in this series of concerts with additional vocal support from Amy Fradon and Leslie Ritter and also with appearances by Allen Ginsberg and Country Joe McDonald. In 2003, the group released The Fugs Final CD with positive feedback. In 2004, the Fugs began to record Be Free: The Fugs Final CD .
2000s–2020s
In 2009, Kupferberg suffered two strokes, the latter of which severely hindered his eyesight. He was under constant care, but was able to finish recording his tracks for Be Free in his New York City apartment. A benefit for Kupferberg was held in Brooklyn, New York, in February 2010, featuring all of the Fugs minus Kupferberg, as well as Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, and others. Be Free: The Fugs Final CD was released on February 23, 2010. The album art, designed by Sanders, featured a snail reading Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl". The album was produced by Taylor and Sanders.Kupferberg died on July 12, 2010, in Manhattan, at the age of 86. In 2008, in one of his last interviews, he told Mojo magazine, "Nobody who lived through the '50s thought the '60s could've existed. So there's always hope."
The remaining Fugs from time to time seriously consider further performances. On June 11, 2011, the four remaining Fugs performed at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London as part of the annual Meltdown Festival, curated that year by Ray Davies of the Kinks. Their set received a four-star review in The Guardian.
They performed at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland on November 30, 2012, and at the City Winery in Chicago on December 1, 2012. They performed at the Brooklyn Folk Festival on November 10, 2021.
Musical style and Legacy
Although often described as primitive musicians, the Fugs developed a deliberately raw and satirical sound that combined folk simplicity with avant-garde experimentation. Their arrangements alternated between acoustic street chants, proto-punk garage rock, and collage-like spoken-word performances incorporating poetry and found sound.Drawing on the ethos of Beat poetry and Dadaist theater, they blurred the boundaries between performance art and rock, using irony and obscenity as political tools.
Critics have since credited the group with anticipating elements of punk, alternative, and performance-art rock. Greil Marcus described their work as “a theater of absurd democracy,” while Jim DeRogatis called them “the missing link between Allen Ginsberg and Iggy Pop.”
Their songs, often built around simple three-chord structures, incorporated extended improvisations, political chants, and surreal humor, creating what Sanders termed “holy anarchy.”
In 1968, writer Tom Robbins described them as "Incongruously... this trio of hairy gross ginch gropers is the most intellectual, sophisticated and literary ensemble in rock."
They have been cited as influences by Bob Dylan, Sonic Youth, Syd Barrett, the Godz, David Peel, Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, Iggy Pop, Donald Fagen, Red Krayola, Jonathan Richman and King Missile., while covered by the Melvins, Sun City Girls, Richie Havens and the Edgar Broughton Band.
While unconfirmed, one regional report claimed that Paul McCartney mentioned enjoying the Fugs during a 1966 U.S. press conference, though no primary transcript exists to substantiate the remark. Contemporary critics have occasionally compared certain Beatles recordings—such as the chaotic passages of The White Album—to the Fugs’ anarchic and satirical style, though no direct influence has been documented.