Willie Alexander put music to local Beat poet Vincent Ferrini's words.
By James Sullivan
April 14, 2009
April 14, 2009
GLOUCESTER - It's tough to imagine someone with more bohemian mileage than Boston rock legend Willie "Loco" Alexander. Now in his 60s but still acting like a teenager buying his first 45s, Alexander played in psychedelic garage bands in the 1960s, survived a tour of duty in the last version of the Velvet Underground, and anchored the Boston punk scene with his Boom Boom Band a few years later. Still wildly prolific, he has been indulging his experimental muse ever since.
But Alexander was always awed by another free spirit, Vincent Ferrini, the "people's poet" of Gloucester who served as the city's first and longstanding poet laureate until his death, at the ripe age of 94, in late 2007. "I miss him," says Alexander. "I'd see him around town, at parties and art stuff. He was always really encouraging for everyone here."
Last year Alexander used a grant from the local arts council to set a couple of Ferrini's poems to music. He liked the results so much he turned it into a full-blown album project called "Vincent Ferrini's Greatest Hits." It's for sale on his website, www.williealexander.com.
Working with Tony Goddess of the Rudds at his downtown Gloucester studio, Bang a Song, Alexander called on his wide travels in rock 'n' roll style, from tribal stomp to No Wave bleating to hypnotic ambience, all the while losing himself in Ferrini's life-affirming words. Words and writers have played a big part in his music over the years. Next to the classic "Mass. Ave" (one of Stephen King's all-time favorite rock songs), the Boom Boom Band's second signature song was "Kerouac," Alexander's tribute to the Beat writer who taught him to appreciate local character. When the Boom Boom Band reunited some years ago, the members led off their comeback CD with a rocking adaptation of "Gravelly Hill," a poem by the late Gloucester colossus (and Ferrini contemporary) Charles Olson.
Still, says Alexander, "I don't consciously think about poetry and rock. I'm lucky if something I've done is called poetry." His process for the new project was simple: He read through Ferrini's tall stack of published poems, looking for lines he felt he could sing. Then he let the music grow spontaneously around the words; the recording of the moody, echo-y "Always Between" was, Alexander says, "like jumping off a cliff." One track, deceptively called "Folk Song," actually comes off like an old Stones jam laid on tape while Keith was out taking a bathroom break.
Ferrini's recorded voice shows up on "Vincent & Friends," which, with its liberal use of the Brazilian cuica, sounds like a samba party in a subway station. Goddess says he was inspired by Alexander's "willingness to let it fly, throwing stuff on tape and banging on the piano." He was amazed, he says, by "how much personality Willie gets out through the microphone. Here's this guy twice my age who's twice as fired up as I am. He's been through the ringer, he's famous in France but nowhere else, and he's still totally into it."
Though "Ferrini's Greatest Hits" sounds nothing like a jazzbo spoken word project, Alexander still acknowledges the debt he owes the Beats. "It's all one big Beat bowl of soup, as Kerouac would probably put it," he says. "That's always been part of my consciousness. Not that I've tried to stay back there, but I'm proud to be a beatnik."