Ed Sanders

Ed Sanders was (and remains) the most important member of the Fugs. He co-founded the band with Tuli Kupferberg in 1964, wrote and sang lead on many of the group's best songs, and was more responsible for their musical arrangements, harmonies, and overall direction than anyone else, sometimes producing their albums as well. He was the author or co-author of standout Fugs songs such as "Frenzy," "I Want to Know," "Coca Cola Douche," "Turn On/Tune In/Drop Out," and "Crystal Liaison." After the Fugs broke up at the end of the 1960s (though they would re-form about 15 years later), his stature as a well-known author and poet, already established in the 1960s, continued to rise with several books of fiction, short stories, and poetry. All told, he was one of the more important figures of the American counterculture in the last half of the 20th century. All this having been noted, it has to be added that his brief solo career, encompassing an album for Reprise in 1969 and another for the same label in 1973, was a disappointment. In the first (Sanders' Truckstop), the love of country music that had occasionally been a factor in the Fugs' satire, and had started to become more prominent on the Fugs' final 1960s studio album, The Belle of Avenue A, became his dominant musical mode. Despite the presence of noted sidemen like David Bromberg (Dobro and guitar), Bill Keith (steel guitar and banjo), and Patrick Sky (guitar), the songwriting was not nearly up to the level of his Fugs' material, sounding stupid and silly more often than clever. Also, Sanders' voice, never the most conventionally pleasing of instruments although it worked within the context of the Fugs, could sound overbearingly whiny when pushed so far to the center of the spotlight. Sanders did try again with 1973's...