HARVEY MATUSOW: A LIFE IN FIVE POSTS

Harvey Matusow

October 3, 1926 – January 17, 2002

A WORK IN PROGRESS

Early last week, I was a guest of the ladies in charge of the Special Collections of Sussex University Library. A discussion is going on between us about the future of my own HQ INFO Archive and broader issues. You can access their Special Collections catalogue here. Of immediate interest to me was the fact that they house, alongside the world-famous Mass Observations Archive and a substantial Bloomsbury collection, the personal archive of Harvey Matusow – a man whose name was familiar to me and someone who I believe I met in London in the early ‘70s. He was certainly a counter-culture figure of note. I browsed though his books and became very curious to find out more about the man. Coverage of his life and times is scattered across the Internet so am attempting here to bring together what biographical details exists in a compact form to provide a clearer, richer and more coherent picture of the long and diverse life of the “trickster” figure that was Harvey Matusow. It’s an extraordinary story that deserves to be more widely known.

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1926-1946

‘I was born and brought up in The Bronx in its more gentle and energetic years. It was The Bronx in transition from a rural farming area to 45 square miles of high-rise city. The money that passed hands and the deals which were made in 1926 in The Bronx probably created the most powerful political machine in The United States. It was the Bronx machine that got Al Smith the Democratic nomination for President in 1928, and it was The Bronx that gave us Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. I watched my father use the machine, a phone call here, a phone call there, and suddenly the laws and the rules vanished. Everyone and everything seemed to have a price tag. By the time I was ten, I could steal your purse or pick your pocket on the subway, and you'd never know it. The streets were the jungle, a more gentle jungle than today, but, a jungle nevertheless. You learned it's sounds, it's smells as well as every crack in the cement side walks. It was all busy detail, filing everything away for some future unseen unexpected confrontation or crisis. Always shooting angles, the ricochet life style of a city kid.’

His parents Sylvia (nicknamed “Kitty”) and his father Herman had both arrived separately in the United States in 1906. Kitty was an observant Orthodox Jew; Herman a ‘short, well-dressed man [who] possessed a hair-trigger temper, a good sense of humour, and a passion for playing cards.'

‘He worked as a singing waiter in Coney Island [with Jimmy Durante, says Wikipedia] and, during World War 1, served as a quartermaster sergeant in the US Army. During the 1920s, he built a chain of cigar stores in good Manhattan locations…but he lost everything in the 1929 crash. “During the depression,” Harvey recalled, “Herman’s card earnings kept us alive.”

‘Harvey had one sibling, his brother Danny, three-and-a half years older, his best friend protector and hero, with whom he shared a bedroom… Both brothers attended Bronx public schools. But Harvey, despite his quick intelligence, proved a consistently poor student, a circumstance he later attributed to dyslexia (a condition largely unknown at the time).

‘He did develop “street smarts.” At the twelve, he went to work in the neighbourhood for Phil the Bookie. As a messenger and gofer, he saw bribes given to police officers and drew the lesson that government was corrupt.'

In August 1942, Danny enlisted in the Army Air Force and was called to active duty in March 1943 and sent to England. Harvey joined the army in November 1943. In deptember 1944, Danny was reported missing in action after his B-17 aircraft was lost in a daylight bombing raid over Nuremburg. Harvey was called to active duty on October 31, 1944, trained as a rifleman and sent to Europe, where he saw a minimum of combat. On V-E Day in the spring of 1945 he was in Paris and was then assigned to a US-sponsored college in Biarritz where he worked as a photographer for an army public relations unit.

In 1946 he was transferred in Mainz where he worked interrogating German prisoners. One prisoner, who had kept a detailed diary and map, enabled him to locate his brother’s burial site in a church cemetery in a suburb of Nuremburg. (His brother was later reburied in a military cemetery in France.)

He was ordered to return to the US in July and discharged from the Army on August 3, 1946.

Sources:
Lichtman, Robert M. and Cohen, Ronald (2004). Deadly Farce: Harvey Matusow and the Informer System in the McCarthy Era. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252028864.

Kahn, Albert Eugene (1987). The Matusow Affair: Memoir of a National Scandal. Moyer Bell Ltd. ISBN 0918825857.

Matusow, Harvey (1955). False Witness. Cameron & Kahn.

Italic quotes from ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’, Matusow’s title for his unfinished autobiography, sections of which are available on the web.

HARVEY MATUSOW 2: 1946-1960

Harvey Matusow
1946-1960

‘Matusow did time for telling the truth about having lied'
Emile de Antonio, filmmaker.

'Back in New York after the war, he worked various jobs (including as an agent for Dean Martin) while he drifted towards Greenwich Village hootenannies, the folk music revival and the American Communist Party.' WNFU's Beware of the Blog

His first introduction to the political left came in November 1946 when he was invited to a neighbourhood party for members of the American Youth for Democracy (AYD), which a year later would be listed as a Communist front. He enjoyed the camaraderie and the folk, union and protest songs he heard sung. He joined AYD and became the club’s education and social director. [Lichtman]

‘It didn't take long before I joined the A.Y.D., went to meetings, got petitions signed…The fear and hysteria of McCarthyism hadn't begun, nor had the Cold War moved into top-gear. Communists, communism didn't frighten me or generate any feelings of hate in me. Just fought a war allied with them. Met quite a few of them in France. They were all anti-Fascists and fought and died. Didn't understand much of what they were about, but those who I'd met, I liked. I was hungry and hooked, wanting to explore this world, to relate to and try to better understand these people. It wasn't difficult at all for me to get involved in the Left Wing. American Youth for Democracy - what could be nicer than that?’

1949-51: ‘Was part of the folk music revival of the 40s. Was a Broadway agent, worked for the agency that handled Dean Martin before he joined Jerry Lewis. As a hopeful comic, lived the night club life…Won subscription drive for Daily Worker and got free trip to Puerto Rico…met and married Kay, a working journalist for the Black newspaper The Amsterdam News’.

‘By 1950, he either sensed an opportunity for money and fame, or (according to him) needed to protect his own ass, so he contacted the FBI and began his four year long career as a paid informer for anyone in need of an anti-Communist accuser with bona fide red street cred… [he] ultimately destroyed the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans, communists and non-communists alike.’ WNFU's Beware of the Blog

1950-52: Contacted the FBI and became an informer. The Korean War began. Kay and I separated and I left New York heading for San Francisco…[but] truck broke down in Taos, New Mexico, Went to art school, ran local pool hall, became gofer for Mable Dodge and Freida Lawrence. Got called to active duty in Air Force.

1951-53: The McCarthy years. Worked my way out of US Air Force into a job as an investigator for The Ohio Un-American Activities Committee. Became the ‘darling of the Hearst press, the China lobby, the Justice Department and Congressional Committees on both the House and Senate side. Spied on trade unions. Left Ohio and became assistant editor of ‘Counterattack’, the blacklisting newsletter that also created the blacklist bible ‘Red Channels’. Involved in actors clearances in New York and Hollywood.

In 1952, went to work for Senator McCarthy…After election, went to work for [him] with specific purpose to help undermine public trust in the New York Times.

[He] once reported that 126 Communists worked in the Sunday Department of the New York Times even though the total number of employees was 100. [Wikipedia]

In 1952 he went to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn who put him on their payroll and encouraged his tendency to create lists of communists out of thin air. Among Matusow's targets during this period of time were The New York Times and The Girl Scouts.
WNFU's Beware of the Blog

1953-54: Married and divorced twice to McCarthy financial supporter, Arvilla Peterson Bentley. Moved into her large mansion [in Washington DC]. Suddenly find myself, a high school drop-out, in a large mansion with an upstairs maid, a housekeeper, a cook, a butler/chauffeur, a gardener, a part time laundress. It was a madness out of my league, caught up in the power vortex of America. That was the insanity of it all.

1954: Returned to New York where I buried myself in writing poetry, doing some off Broadway Theatre, and some up-tight, sometimes feeble, attempts at stand-up comedy…Did some radio and realized that I was now blacklisted, and found it almost impossible to find theatre work…Was baptised in Mormon Church (Oct. 1, 1954). Attempts to get book, ‘Blacklisting Was My Business’, published.

1954-1955: I received a message from and called Albert Kahn of the book publishing firm of Cameron & Kahn. They had heard about the book I was writing, and seemed interested in publishing it. Returned to New York, immersed myself in a Greenwich Village apartment. Wrote the book ‘False Witness’, recanted my testimony, and was overwhelmed beyond any expectation of the results of my recantation and the book. I was alone like I had never known aloneness…Estranged from most of my family (except my mother and father), and perhaps eight of my forty-two uncles and aunts. Conflict and question, "Why did I do it?" (I am amazed now that I am still alive, for I fully expected to be shot dead every day of that period.)

1954-1956: I was in such disrepute, I stopped going to Mormon Church. Was afraid to test them on forgiveness…Started to hang around my old Greenwich Village haunts: The White Horse, Louie's, and the Limelight Coffee House. Met and married third wife, Ellen Raskin… an artist doing book and record jackets and illustrations…Employment was difficult. I would get job and lose it within days. Started selling Book of Knowledge. Sold my first to unemployed actor [Jason Robards].

In 1954, either because he felt remorse over the destruction he caused, or because he sensed another quick buck, he came clean on his years of lying and perjury with his book False Witness. In it, he truthfully accused Cohn and McCarthy of keeping him on the payroll as a paid witness and a professional liar. For once, Matusow was telling the truth, but Roy Cohn didn't see it that way. Cohn accused him of lying in the book, and in the ensuing trial, Matusow was convicted of perjury and sentenced to five years in prison... As a professional liar, Matusow had been the toast of the town, but for finally telling the truth, he was imprisoned. It was then that he was dubbed "The Most Hated Man in America" by The National Enquirer, The Baltimore Sun and other papers. WNFU's Beware of the Blog

1956-1957: Trial in New York Federal Court. My word against Roy Cohn. Convicted and sentenced to five years in Federal Prison for saying that Cohn, when he was Assistant U.S. Attorney, had suborned perjury. The irony of it all was that I had committed countless acts of perjury, and the government tried and convicted me of telling the truth. Sent to prison. Made bail after three months in the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa. Ellen and I ended two-year marriage. My father died.

[April 1st 1957]: Met fourth wife, Beatrice Swope Lysander. She was the best writer I have ever known. She was hanging out at Louis' Tavern, under The Circle In The Square Theatre, and was with our mutual friend, Steve McQueen. Steve and Lee Marvin and I used to deliver TV sets for Jerry Francis from his shop on west 10th street…Bea was also a "den mother" to many of the Village poets of the Beat Generation (Howard Hart, Sy Krim, Jack Micheline and a few others).

It was 1957, and the Warren Supreme Court, using me as a prime reason, upset almost every rule and law that the government was using to persecute the left. They refused to grant me a hearing on appeal, and I went back to prison.

On the eve of my return to prison, Bea and I went to see the Henry Fonda movie, Twelve Angry Men, and after the movie went to have a farewell party at the journalist Bill Dufty's house. Bill and his wife Maley, and the singer Billie Holiday threw a farewell party. Billie and I shared notes about Federal prisons. [Bea, Bill & I] went to the Federal Court House where I surrendered to the U.S. Marshall, and went off to prison.

1956-1960: General reflection on prison life. My work in the athletic department. Captain of the tennis team and the volley ball team. I treated prison like the university I never attended. I devoured books, attended lectures given by Bucknell University professors, painted over 200 canvases. Produced and directed four plays: ‘Stalag 17’, ‘Waiting for Godot’, ‘Mr. Roberts’, and ‘Arsenic & Old Lace’(with two Mafia types playing the old ladies). Reflections also on Frank Costello, the so-called head of the "Mafia", who I got to know well while at Lewisburg, and who I got to see after release in New York.

1956-1960: The day Wilhelm Reich died he was in the next cell…In the general population he was known as "The Sex Box Man", and the folk tales regarding his orgone box were more then surreal.

Sources: Italic quotes and bold chronological entries: from the ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’. Chronological entries edited to correct mistypings and misspellings, to shorten it and, in some cases, to make it read more fluently. Other sources indicated.

HARVEY MATUSOW 3: 1960-1966

Harvey Matusow
1960-1966

1960-1963: Rebirth, out of prison. Life exciting, trying to make up for the years I'd been away. My Generation, the Beat Generation, had made it and I wasn't there…The fact that in prison I had done poetry and jazz with some of the best jazz musicians in the country didn't seem to carry any weight with me. Bea's seventy year old mother, Mary Morrison, was bringing me beat poetry from City Lights Bookstore in her native San Francisco. … Found work as book designer and Art Director for scientific publishing house, Academic Press. Used my position as art director to buy printing from Alger Hiss… Never thought him guilty, and told him so. He accepted a dinner invitation from Bea, and we had a great evening sharing Lewisburg and McCarthy experiences. It was during this period that the seeds were sown for the undercurrent of my life's work: serving those in prison and those facing prison, and those trying to survive after release. With a few others, organized Jailhouse Anonymous - a quiet, one-on-one service organization which takes no money for services.

1963-1966: The Art World. With friend Bill Dufty we founded monthly art magazine, ‘The New York Arts Calendar’, [which we] continued to publish for three years. Immersed in the glitter and glamour of the fine art world, and discovered it has as many morality glitches as the streets and politics, and in many ways it seems to have more corruption - too much big money involved. Wrote, edited and published fine art book, ‘The Art Collector’s Almanac’. It got me an invite to Lyndon Johnson's White House…Attempted to get a passport so as to travel to Europe on art-related business, but the State Department said no. Called Abe Fortas… one of the first to read the galley proofs on ‘False Witness’ prior to its publication [and he] got the State Department to back down.

Both the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations turned down my proposal for help in completing a history of art exhibition - the follow-through of the already published volume - and said that they would underwrite it if I were to withdraw from the project. I became angry and destructive. I convinced myself that regardless of what I did or might accomplish, society would never forgive me for my role in McCarthyism. My bitterest act, greater than any I had ever known. I took all the research I had collected, and rented a fishing boat at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Went out into the ocean and dumped it all: catalogues, photos, slides. To this day, the greatest regret of my life.

1965: My perception of a Christian society unable to forgive propelled me deeper into the counter culture of the 60's and 70's. Was deeply involved in the first "Underground" newspaper, ‘The East Village Other (EVO)’.Discovered Tim Leary and legal LSD, began taking trips and wandering into the unknown. In order to punish the United Fruit Company, helped create the hype that smoking banana peels would get you high.

'Will bananas get you high? Of course not. The whole thing was a hoax first publicized in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967. The wire services, and after them the whole country, fell for it hook, line, and roach clip. "Smokeouts" were held at Berkeley. The following Easter Sunday, the New York Times reported, "beatniks and students chanted 'banana-banana' at a 'be-in' in Central Park" and paraded around carrying a two-foot wooden banana. The Food and Drug Administration announced it was investigating "the possible hallucinogenic effects of banana peels."

'The outcome of the FDA study I have not been able to discover. However, in November 1967 researchers at New York University reported that a chemical analysis of banana peel had found no intoxicating chemicals and that the high was mainly psychological. It was obvious at the time, at least to some of us, that the whole thing was a put-on. I'll bet even the pranksters at the Barb didn't expect suckers to be falling for it 35 years later.'

Source: The Straight Dope

1965-1966: Bea and I separated… Norman Mailer and I to get to know one another. I had met him at Sy Krim's 40th Birthday party. Liked him, trusted his non-Christian soul. He had a directness and clarity which made me comfortable. When he ran for Mayor of New York a few years later, I co-chaired the Norman Mailer for Mayor Committee in London which was called The Mailer Mafia Snow Removal Trust. We had a big London bash to raise funds, and got Christine Keeler of Profumo fame to auction her bra.

Reconnected with Bobby Kennedy, who I hadn't seen since McCarthy Committee days. LSD still legal, and arranged for Kennedy to get acid for trip prior to his holding hearings on subject. He wanted to know what it was, etc. Connected thru Walter Bowart of EVO, also we gathered much information for the Committee regarding youth and drugs etc.

‘We talked for several hours in his Central Park West apartment one morning in late 1966 or 1967. I was working on a study of LSD users and he was then proselytizing for acid with the same religious fervor he’d sold subscriptions to The Daily Worker in his Communist days, had been an anti-Communist in his informer days, and then an anti-anti-Communist in his post-informer days.

‘That afternoon, I described the encounter to Irwin Silber, editor of Sing Out! magazine. “Do I know him?” Irwin yelled, even though it was just two of us in the room “That sonofabitch turned me in!”

‘Later that day, I saw a musician friend, Hedy West, and I told her about the coincidence of my morning meeting with Matusow and Silber’s having been one of his victims. “Harvey Matusow turned my father in,” Hedy said."He testified that my father was organizing Communist Boy Scout troops in Georgia. They’d never met, but that didn’t matter to Matusow or the people he was working for. My father’s response was, ‘Where I was in Georgia, 12-year-old boys weren’t playing Boy Scout; they were working in the mines.’”

- Bruce Jackson: ‘Harvey Matusow: Death of A Snitch’
The main part of the article is an interview with filmmaker Emile de Antonio whose ‘Point of Order’ is considered the best documentary on McCarthy.
.’

Also began working with Deputy Mayor Marcus of New York, working on the problems of runaway teenagers, who we started to call Hippies who were flooding the streets of Greenwich Village. Set up a hot line with others to deal with people who were having bad acid trips.

1964-1966: Following my "normal" life pattern of when in doubt, when at the emotional bottom, laugh your way back to balance. During my witness days I always had an outlet in night clubs doing sleezy stand-up comedy. Now did it again four to five nights a week on MacDougall street in the Village. Spent a lot of time with Dick Gregory, and many lonely nights at The Improv.

Reconnect with Andy Warhol, who I hadn't seen since pre-prison days when I was married to Ellen, and with him almost pulled off a hype on David Suskind. Suskind was doing a TV special on Beatnik artists. Using a Russian accent, from Andy's phone, I convinced Suskind that I was a Russian poet. Would have made the programme, but, one of the group who was in on the hype couldn't contain the secret [and] Suskind found out.

Started to make films. Worked with Yoko and her husband Tony Cox and film maker Peter Goldman and Emile d'Antonio. Worked with d'Antonio and Mark Lane and helped him mimeograph his book on Kennedy assassination [but] no one wanted to publish it.

Lane and d'Antonio invited me to a party in Great Neck, New York. Pete Seeger was the main attraction for this fund raiser for some decent humanitarian planetary cause. I was bored and tired of the rejection, and was reluctant to go. Mark and d'Antonio convinced me that it would be alright. I had not seen Pete Seeger since the McCarthy days, when I was the main cause of his blacklisting. I had no desire to confront him, but, I put my guard down and went. Pete was gracious, loving and forgiving. His wife was not, nor were most of the guests, who were horrified at my presence. The final straw, I left the USA, vowing "never to return."

Sources: Italic quotes and chronological entries: from the ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’. Chronological entries edited to correct mistypings and, in some cases, to make it read more fluently.

PETE SEEGER FOOTNOTES:

While working as an informant, Matusow provided information against folksingers. Pete Seeger's band the Weavers [who] went from a hit record with ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ to being blacklisted and finding no work. Seeger later went to prison over his testimonies in the HUAC related witch-hunts but also forgave Matusow for his youthful mistakes and noted that Harvey never did more than cost Seeger a few jobs. ("The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was known at the time as "Wimoweh." Pete Seeger did not go to jail, though he was convicted for Contempt of Congress and issued a jail sentence.) [Wikipedia]

'[He] became a member of the Weavers, whose version of "Goodnight Irene," by Leadbelly, was, for thirteen weeks in 1950, the best-selling record in America. The Weavers quit playing in 1952, after an informant told the House Un-American Activities Committee that three of the four Weavers, including Seeger, were Communists. (Seeger knew students at Harvard who were Communists and, with the idea in mind of a more equitable world, he eventually became one himself.) Following the informant's testimony, the Weavers found fewer and fewer places to work.' [Source: ‘The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music’ by Alec Wilkinson [The New Yorker 17^th April 2006]

HARVEY MATUSOW 4: 1966-1972

See the wonderful Phil Franks digital archive here. Contains great material from the 1960s and 1970s, including a lot of stuff on the British underground newspaper Frendz, on which I also worked later on. Phil's work is outstanding and now provides a valuable cultural record of that period.
Harvey Matusow
1966-1972

1966-1967: Arrived in England in May 1966. Found a whole new life with much less pressure in London. The "Counter Culture" there was real and to me had more meaning.

Within a month I organized and became Chairman of The London Film Makers Co-Op, and organized the first underground film festivals in London. Became a moving force in founding England's first underground newspaper, IT.

Stephen Dwoskin, born in New York on 15 January 1939, is one of the most visually rich and emotionally intense filmmakers in British cinema...In 1964 he moved to London on a Fulbright Fellowship to research British design, and in 1966 set up the London Film Makers Co-op with two other New Yorkers, Andy Meyer and Simon Hartog. [Full text here] See also: 'Shoot Shoot Shoot. The First Decade of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative & British Avant-Garde Film 1966-76. '[Full text here]

Matusow had nothing to do with the founding of International Times, according to Jim Haynes and Miles, who were two of the founders. [see exchange of letters here]

Met and fell in love with and married Anna Lockwood, an avant garde composer from New Zealand. We become a team and did concerts and theatre pieces in London, Liverpool, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Oslo, Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

Wrote to Yoko and Tony [Cox] and suggested that they come to London which they did, and Yoko met John etc…

This seems unlikely. On the official ONO website it says: 'In 1966 she was invited to London to participate in a Destruction In Art symposium (DIAS).' Barry Miles in his book 'In The Sixties' says this was staged 31st August-30th Dec 1966 in London and was organised by Gustav Metzger and John Sharkey. He writes:'Mario Amya, the editor of Art and Artists, paid for Yoko Ono to attend, and she arrived with her husband, the annoyingly loud Tony Cox and their baby Kyoto.' After her performance, she was invited by John Dunbar to stage a show at the Indica Gallery, previewed at a private party on 8th November, which is where she first met John Lennon.[Wikipedia says this was in 1965 and was a Fluxus event. Both facts are certainly wrong.]

Did films, happenings, wrote much, did radio and TV, managed Jazz Club in Soho (Ronnie Scott's Old Place).

1968-1972: Worked as an independent for the BBC [and produced] 16 radio documentaries, and much TV, comedy and news and current affairs. Become one of editors of ‘The American’, a weekly in London for the American community.

Put out my first album, ‘Harvey Matusow Jew's Harp Band’.

The first realease was 'Afghan Red' a single on Head Records (1969) followed by a classic album: 'The War Between the Fats and the Thins' (1969). MP3 downloads of this album can be found here. See also: Play It Again Max

Organized International Society for Abolition of Data Processing Machines and wrote and published my third book, ‘The Beast of Business: A Record of Computer Atrocities’. Time magazine did a piece on the Society and that got me an invitation to come to the States and do a gig on the Mike Douglas Show.

According to Time magazine (Sept 12th 1969): 'Matusow now lives and plots in London. He is the self-appointed president of the International Society for the Abolition of Data Processing Machines, which claims 1,500 members. Like Matusow, they look on the computer as an exploitative monster that has turned on its creator. Members receive, free of charge, an I.S.A.D.P.M. identification card decorated with a red slingshot, symbolic of David's battle with Goliath. They also get a year's subscription to Matusow's anticomputer newsletter, which he plans to start publishing soon. For 6s., they can get a copy of his 125-page 'The Beast of Business', a handbook of guerrilla tactics for computer haters that might have been conceived by Che Guevara.' Full article here

Matusow showed his lighter side in the early 1970s when he became involved in the design, manufacture and sale of a toy called the “Stringless Yoyo”. He would later name his unfinished autobiography after this toy. [Source]

Organized ICES-72, the largest avant garde new musical festival ever done. Spent the better part of 1971 and 1972 pulling it all together. When completed, returned to the USA with Anna.

'The International Carnival of Experimental Sound, or ICES '72 for short, was an ambitious festival sprung from the mind of Harvey "Job" Matusow (1926-2002). Jumping off from his associations with Source magazine, Harvey brought together over 300 artists from over 21
countries to perform in London, England over the course of two weeks in August of 1972.' [See:ICES 72 concert]

'The event's highlights included performances by Charlotte Moorman (in the Roundhouse and in the Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh) and John Cage's HPSCHD, for eight harpsichords and projections of the American space programme. A train was hired to take participants and public to Edinburgh, to link with the Edinburgh festival; Charlotte Moorman performed Nam June Paik's TV Bra in the Richard Demarco Gallery.' [Wikipedia]

Sources: Chronological entries: from the ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’. edited to shorten it, correct mistypings and, in some cases, to make it read more fluently. Othere sources indicated.

HARVEY MATUSOW 5: 1973-2002

HARVEY MATUSOW

1973-2002

1973: Home from "exile", feeling strong and renewed. Coming home as a working artist, being in the moment - being part of an artistic team. Anna and I began to plan for concerts in the USA. I got Libby Owens Ford to prepare special glass with handmade carrying cases for the Glass Concert Tour. The kick- off was two live broadcasts on WBAI Music Store in New York, and after the second concert Anna and I parted…I left New York.

1974-1975: With the help of my friend Joe Bazer, we got a 1955 Ford school bus and converted it into a poor man's motor home.

1974-1983: I went to visit a large New Age commune in western Massachusetts. The commune had started out The Brotherhood of the Spirit, and when I arrived it was calling itself Metelica’s Aquarian Concept Inc. Michael Metelica was a young teenager who founded the commune sitting in a tree house in the wooded Berkshire Hills. [He] needed help in producing a radio programme. It was mutually beneficial -- I could help them in their radio show, and they could afford me the quiet isolation. [Picture source]

'Cadillac Ranch'

1974-1975: Connect with Boston-based macrobiotic newspaper The East/West Journal and soon found myself on their masthead as ‘Editor At Large’. Representing EW, I began to visit communes all over the country. Arrived in Amarillo in time to help The Ant Farm plant Stanley Marsh III's Cadillac Ranch. Stanley and I had been good friends for a number of years, but he couldn't understand my going hippy and living like a gypsy on the road. Wandered the west, went to my first Rainbow Gathering. Reflection of the Love Family, the Gaskin Farm.

1974-1977: Using the commune as my home base, I started to explore Eastern thought. I had studied a lot of Zen while in prison…Although exploring the East, I did not give up my Mormon beliefs, but stayed away from the Church for two reasons. Firstly, I didn't want to face or test rejection, and felt that my lifestyle was too way out ever to come back into any normal balance with society. I had allowed myself to move further and further away from any mainstream balances. The other reason was that blacks could not hold the Priesthood. I made a vow that when blacks could become priests, I would once again be an active member of my church.

1975-1977: I met, fell in love with, and married Emily. When I met her she had never been in a city in her life; she lived off in the woods far from all neighbors. Emily and I formed a spiritual community, Ammal’s Garden, and took vows of poverty, which Emily insisted on calling "vows of simplicity." Our door was open to those whom society rejected. We financed it all with a small inheritance my mother left me when she died in 1975. But, not before I had taken Emily around the world -- first class. It was an adventure like none I had ever known.

1977-1983: It was this quiet period in Tucson that got me into playing my bells once again. I had stopped and music and sound work after the split with Anna.

It was here that the Magic Mouse Theatre germinated and grew. The Theatre Company was born in a wooden shack that housed a school for mid-wives. I used this space, and the quiet of the early hours of the morning to practice my soft playing. I was alone usually, but occasionally played for a mid-wife on a middle-of-the-night home delivery run.

1977-1983: A strong mystical experience left no doubt in my mind that I must become and active member of my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Driving through the village of St. David, I saw a sign, "House for Rent." I hit the brakes and rented the house. Discovered that the village was…one of the oldest Mormon communities in Arizona. Also found out that a few weeks earlier, the Church announced that blacks could now hold the priesthood. Now the one barrier I had about being an active church member was gone. Still concerned about my lifestyle and the clean-cut Mormon way. They had to clash - and did.

For a time in the 1980s (after his conversion to Mormonism), he was known as "Job Matusow [Wikipedia]

1981-1982: Emily and I enjoyed living in the desert, but our basic lifestyle hadn't changed. Magic Mouse Theatre grows. We got a sponsor, Truly Nolen, and had some economic stability and a brand new motor home in exchange for the old silver school bus. Emily really got into theatre, and pursued her character, the green-haired clown named Sparkles. Our work schedule: 144 school shows in nine months. …In 1980 Emily and I spent an aggregate of 108 days on the road, in our vehicle. Completed 126 five-minute radio programmes on Magic Mouse for local NPR station at the University of Arizona, and signed a contract to do a TV series for the PBS TV outlet. Magic Mouse became the "official" theatre company of the Tucson Zoo, and we performed every Saturday.

1982-1983: Back to Tucson. Soon started to feed the homeless, against the wishes of the City Fathers. Became deeply involved in social issues for the homeless, where we eventually turned our commercial cafe into a free kitchen. We left Tucson in a caravan of vehicles carrying homeless people: American Refugees in America.

1983: The homeless of El Paso, and my attempts to get the White House to help. Finally reached Ed Meese, spoke to him for about 20 minutes; got promised but no real help.

1983: Moved on with the caravan to Houston where we fed the homeless and upset all the neighbors. Actively involved in tent city for the homeless. Failed in attempts to get free kitchen and shelter established. The caravan for the homeless fell apart at the break-up of tent city, and a handful of us continued on to Washington where I registered as a lobbyist for the homeless at Congress.

1983-1986: Emily took sick while we were visiting Massachusetts and the doctor advised that she needed complete rest and caring for. We found and old farm house on a hill in Orange, and I dropped all activities to care for Emily…Applied for food stamps and welfare for the first time in my life. I didn't want to, but needed to know what people get put through.

1985-1989: Emily's health… had improved enough for us to open our house to care-provide for a mentally retarded young man. Both Emily and I felt that a direction of our service should be focused on those who society rejects the most. And, within two months, we had our second young man living with us. It's now almost two years since we began this work, and can only think of ways to enlarge and expand it.

1985-1989: We sold the motor home and bought two old school busses. We began a food and clothing programme in the most economically depressed town in the state. In 19 months we put out over 225,000 pounds of food to about 800 families, and didn't spend a penny of governmental money, local, state or Federal. The life of service grew as I sank the root in Emily's forest. The food programme expanded into New Hampshire.

1988-1989: I was in South Dakota on the Cheyenne River Reservation when I found out that Emily had cancer. She had been wrongly diagnosed three years earlier. Stopped all work, devoted the next year and a half of my life to nursing Emily until she died in July of 1989.

1989-1992: Returned to Arizona. Ran a homeless programme at St. Francis in the Foothills Methodist Church in Tucson. Lived in my school bus at the church for 11 months. Was given an opportunity to run a near-derelict motel on the Ghost Highway that had been superseded by the Interstate. For two and a half years I lived at the motel, serving poverty.

1991-1992: Met Lisa and marry. Changed my lifestyle. Shaved my beard and got a haircut for the first time in over 15 years. Back into show business full-time, as Cockyboo, the storyteller, so as to earn the money needed to do the service work that I still believe in and do as Director of Gandhi Peace Centre. Marriage doesn't work - Lisa and I divorce but remain close friends.

1993-1995: Start to do TV show, Magic Mouse Magazine. Win two Public Access National, Home Town Video Awards, 1993 and 1994 - combine my TV art with my social action work.

1995-1996: Leave Tucson and move to Utah, to Richfield, the town I was headed to back in 1954. Come full circle, finally climb onto my Mountain. Start Utah's first public access TV station.

Matusow houses the state's only public access station in this bus. Photo: Fred Hayes. [Source: 'McCarthyism Revisited: "The Stringless Yo-Yo" shows how a Mormon helped end the "Red Scare."' by David Madison.]

According to Stefene Russell in her article 'Voice from the Whirwind: Footnotes from the Book of Job' (18th June 2001)

'It was the calm haven of Glenwood that allowed him to found Sevier County Access Television, or SCAT-TV, which he still operates under the umbrella of the Ghandi Peace Centre. The Center is so named because the house and the property were a gift to Job from the Ghandi family (Yogesh and Job have done nonviolence work together for several decades). It includes the public access station, an informal animal adoption program, housing for anyone who finds him/herself at loose ends, a program to supply food and clothing to Indian reservations and a prisoner outreach program. This is also where Job makes his "peace bells," which he forges from melted-down munitions shells and bullet casings, with a few aluminum cans mixed in for proper texture.'

In 2001, he moved to Claremont, Hew Hampshire to run the town’s public access TV studio. Harvey Matusow died in New Hampshire from complications from a car accident in 2002.

Sources: Chronological entries: from the ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’ edited to correct mistypings and spellings, to shorten and, in a few cases, to make it read more fluently.

Begun in 1997, neither the book or the online version were completed by the time of Harvey Matusow's death. The website from which the chronological chapter outline notes are drawn, can be found here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Matusow

* Wikipedia says he was married twelve times to eleven women. One wedding was in a helicopter over New York City, another was in a piano factory.

WORLD OF TREES: NEW OLDEST TREE

Left: This 9,550 year old spruce discovered in Dalarna, Sweden.
Photo: Leif Kullman

World’s oldest living tree discovered in Sweden
Seven days ago, scientists announced their discovery in the Swedish mountains, which run from Lapland in the North to Dalarna in the South, of a cluster of around 20 spruces that are over 8,000 years old, One of them has been carbon-dated at being 9,550 years, making it the world’s oldest tree.

(The previously-known oldest trees were bristlecone pines in North America, which have been dated at 4-5,000 years old.)

A single spruce tree trunk can only live, at most, for about 600 years but they are able to clone themsleves and thus survive by pushing out another trunk as soon as the old one dies, says Professor Leif Kullman, Professor of Physical Geography at Umeå University.

Under the crown of living spruce trees on Fulu Mountain in Dalarna, they found the remains of four generations of these same trees, in the form of cones and wood. The genetic material of the living trees matched the ancient remains.

For many years, the spruce tree has been regarded as a relative newcomer in the Swedish mountain region. ”Our results have shown the complete opposite, that the spruce is one of the oldest known trees in the mountain range,” says Prof. Kullman.

As a species, spruce may give us fresh insights about climate change. The trees have survived harsh weather conditions for almost 10,000 years, enduring as bushes maybe only half a meter tall. "But over the past few decades", says Kullman, "we have seen a much warmer climate, which has meant that they have popped up like mushrooms in the soil."

Read original press release and Reuters report

[Right] A reconstruction of how the crown portion of Wattieza would have looked in life. Frank Mannolini/New York State Museum

A year before, on April 19^th 2007, palaeontologists Linda VanAller Hernick and Frank Mannolini described in Nature, their discovery of the first complete fossil of the world's oldest tree - a primitive 380-million-year-old plant, eight metres long, resembling a modern palm or tree fern.

The story began in June 2004, when Hernick and Mannolini of the New York State Museum in Albany, found the fossilised crown of a massive tree in a small sandstone quarry in Gilboa, New York. The site had already been a fruitful spot for retrieving fossils of plants and arthropods. A year later, they dug out a trunk of the same species, extracting it fragment by fragment and reassembling it like an eight-metre-long fossilised jigsaw puzzle.

The find also solves a 137-year-old mystery. A "forest" of fossil stumps were discovered at a site just 16 km away in 1870, and had perplexed generations of botanists ever since. Without the upper sections of the trees, experts were unable to accurately identify the species.

"Now the riddle is solved," with the discovery of a matching upper portion, said VanAller Hernick. "We know what was out there."

Now they confirmed it as the Wattieza species, which dates back to the Devonian period (415 to 360 million years ago), an era in which the world's primitive land plants first developed characteristics associated with modern-day trees - such as taller trunks, more diverse reproductive methods and the first signs of leaf development. This was also the period when the first seed-bearing plants spread across dry land to form forests. Wattezia itself did not bear seeds but reproduced with spores, like today's ferns.

Until this new discovery, the oldest known entire tree was Archaepoteris, a close relative of seed plants, which flourished in the late Devonian period. The Gilboa tree differs from this later species in having a smaller trunk, a more limited root system and in lacking horizontal branches and fully-developed leaves.

Original source: Wattieza is world's oldest tree by Michelle Carr. Cosmos 19 1pril 2007

SERENDIPITY: Earlier today, discovered the full and fascinating story of the rediscovery of the world's first photograph.

ROLLING STONES: PAST AND PRESENT

The happy coincidence of receiving and reading the newly- released paperback edition of 'Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones' by Robert Greenfield [Da Capo Press. £9.99] shortly before seeing the Scorsese documentary 'Shine A Light', at a 4:00 Saturday screening at the Duke of York's in Brighton with friend Manek and son Louis, has filled my heart and mind with things to say.
Greenfield, a class act, old-school music journalist, takes us back in time to the Villa Nelcotte in the South of France where, during the long hot summer of 1971, Keef (with Anita Pallenberg) sets up base to begin recording what proves to be the crucial Stones album -their dark masterpiece if you will - a portion of which was forged in the Villa's basement, which may well have been used for torture during the period when it was a regional Nazi HQ.

Night after night, band members troop over there from a string of surrounding villas, to wait to see whether Keef will emerge from the darkness and junk to come downstairs and make some magic happen. Most nights end in frustration. Mick Taylor is close to a nervous breakdown. Mick gets married and has a pregnant Bianca on his hands. The house is full of visiting junkies (a sad portrait of Gram Parsons here), petty criminals, bagmen constantly ferrying more junk. There are knives, guns, thieves and police. Our of this dark stew, a few flashes of silver are mined.

By now the Stones have become royalty. They can have anything the desire and are already able to marshall powerful political, financial and legal resources to keep their Renaissance court
intact and on the road - despite Keef's best efforts to bring the whole enterprise to its knees. Once more, he faces serious criminal charges, once more he and Anita escape the country by the skin of their teeth and once more, money changes hands, charges are dropped or changed to ones that carry lesser penalties. The entire band follow Keef to LA where the album is finally finished but they cannot tour until Keef (and Anita, now pregnant and using) undergo drug rehab in Switzerland. Not a pretty picture.

Greenfield concludes the saga with an examination of how this album became considered to be a masterpiece and brings the story right up date with a portrait of the Stones of today -mega rich, out-grossing every other music act in the world, earning further fortunes for five-minute photo-opportunities with corporate clients.

Which brings us neatly to Scorsese's movie 'Shine A Light', which eschews the darkness and concentrates on adding majesty and lustre. Marty, of course, loves the Stones from way back and had already made one of the great music concert films ever - 'The Last Waltz'. The documentary of the making of that film reveals in fascinating detail how Scorsese planned his shoot.

In this film, all that material is in the main movie, as his people and their people struggle to find agreement on the staging and the all-important set list. Scorsese plans to shoot two concerts, back to back, in the beautiful old Art Deco Beacon Theatre in New York rather than in a giant stadium, in front of an invited audience which includes Bill Clinton. This long black and white opening sequence builds the tension perfectly. Marty gets his set list but only scant minutes before the band is on stage.

What follows is a classic performance, beautifully and dramatically shot and edited. (According to Philip French's review in The Observer: Scorsese brought in eight major cinematographers using 18 cameras) The lighting is exquisite, the choreography sublime. Apart from brief archive cut-aways, we're there up-close and personal with the Stones and their extended band - backing singers, keyboards and horn section led by long-time Stones stalwart saxophone player Bobbie Keys.

The first thing to be said is the strangeness of the set. Given the size of the songbook, one would have to call the track selection eccentric.

There are three guest appearances: we could have done without Christine Aguilera and possibly also Jim White but Buddy Guy is a real star - what a voice, what magnetism. Keef is so impressed he gives Guy his beautiful back Gibson on stage, a gunslinger's tribute from one great to another.

The film has its genuinely thrilling moments when the blood stirs and small tears began trickling down my cheeks (yes I can admit that). For my generation, the Stones provided the soundtrack of our lives. Most fascinating of all are the bands' extraordinary faces on which their entire history is marked like a road map. Mick struts pouts and prances non-stop, Keef's killer chords set the pace while he gives out secret smiles, Charlie's drumming is crisp, powerful and immaculate and Ronnie looks as cool and taut as ever. At the end of the day - magnificent!

At the post-screening debrief at The Open House, we agreed that Scorsese should just spend the next 10 years filming every important band in this manner - the Zep would be a good start.

See Previous Postings:

The Stone With The Golden Arm, my story on Keef's heroin bust in Toronto, originally published in the NME.

Hear the interview with Nick Kent on the Audio Generalist, which includes some Stones material. Nick has written one of best ever essays on the Stones in his book 'The Dark Stuff.'

Footnotes and digressions:

1. Greenfield has also written 'STP: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones' plus biographies of rock promoter Bill Graham, Dead mainman Jerry Garcia and LSD prophet Timoth Leary.

2. Wikipedia says most of the film is taken from the second of the two performances. Includes complete track listing as follows. Performance begns with Jumpin' Jack Flash and ends with Satisfaction.

3. Short New Yorker piece about the recruitment of the audience for the film.

PLANET NEWS: ANIMAL MIGRATION

A map depicts the migration of 19 sooty shearwaters that were tracked using electronic tags in a recent study. The research showed that the birds (pictured inset) migrated 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) a year, flying from New Zealand to the North Pacific and back. It is the longest animal migration ever recorded electronically.
Map courtesy: PNAS/Inset photo courtesy Steve Shunk/USGS
Source: National Geographic

World On the Move (running at 9am, BBC Radio 4) is, apparently, 'the largest radio project ever undertaken by the BBC's natural-history unit: a 40-week series tracking animal migrations, from elephants in Africa to whales off North America. Some species have been tagged and can be followed by satellite; others will be pestered by reporters, conservationists and (you gotta love this term) "embedded zoologists". It all kicks off with an introduction from Brett Westwood and (making her own migration from TV) Philippa Forrester.' This was the entry in The Guardian in February.

I wonder if they mention 'No Way Home:The Decline of the World's Great Animal Migrations' by David S. Wilcove. [Island Press. 256 Pages. $24.95]. According to the New York Times review:

'David Wilcove, a Princeton biologist, warns that “the phenomenon of migration is disappearing around the world.” Despite their huge numbers, migratory species are particularly vulnerable to hunting, the destruction of wild habitat and cliamte change. Humans have already eradicated some of the world’s greatest migrations, and many others are now dwindling away. While many conservation biologists have observed the decline of individual migrations, Dr. Wilcove’s book combines them into an alarming synthesis. He argues that it is not just individual species that we should be conserving — we also need to protect the migratory way of life.'

See full story here

Phenomenal Animal Migration in Sudan Stuns Experts:War-Ravaged Region Sees Massive Resurgence in Animal Migration. By BOB WOODRUFF and CHRISTINE ROMO.March 20th, 2008. ABC News

UNSEASONAL WEATHER

The biggest snowfall of the winter in Lewes yesterday !
Unforeseen effect of global warming: toboganning in April !

AL GORE: FROM ME TO WE

Steven Heller analyses this symbol in the New York Times,

Al Gore is on the move, this time through the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection, which he chairs.Through the Alliance, he plans to spend $300 million in three years to mobilise Americans on climate change.

[The media background to the campaign is explained in ‘New Al Gore campaign applies ads, media for grassroots effort’ by Ted McKenna [PR Week. April 04, 2008]

The “We” campaign website.

'Gore launches $300M green ad campaign' [Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. April 1st]

'Al Gore is launching one of the biggest public advocacy ad campaigns in history to convince Americans that the government needs to act on climate change.

'The former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner is helping to fund a $300 million campaign from the Alliance for Climate Protection aiming at pushing for action on climate change from Washington.

'Gore, the Washington Post reports, will donate award money from the peace prize, proceeds from the movie and book "An Inconvenient Truth," and his salary from Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to the cause.'

“We can solve the climate crisis, but it will require a major shift in public opinion and engagement,” Mr Gore said in a statement. It added the “technologies exist.” However, elected leaders need a push to enact required legislations. Other right things will follow. Politicians listen when they hear “the American people calling loud and clear for change.”

'The blitz will attempt to convince Americans “a clean energy economy is a win for American jobs.” Options galore exist: wind power, solar thermal to power turbines, solar panels and geothermal power, to name just a few, the Alliance says in its Web site. It then gives examples of so far successful usage of these options.

'For a sweetener, the Alliance argues installation of windmills in a section of southwest United States would meet the country’s electricity needs. Who needs the proposed 100-plus proposed carbon dioxide bellowing coal-fuelled power plants?

Extracts from: THERE AND ABOUT: Al Gore steps up war on global warming by Chege Mbitiru. He concludes; 'Mr Bush might end up being remembered as a warmonger who lived during Mr Gore’s campaign to save the globe.'

Check out: Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover by Ellen McGirt at fastcompany.com

REMEMBERING MARTIN LUTHER KING

[Left]: The original news report from the New York
Times News Service. Click to enlarge. [Right] King lies dead on the balcony.









The world and the media have been remembering the assassination of Martin Luther King, 40 years ago yesterday. and The Generalist is doing likewise. I most wanted to know whether we were anywhere nearer the truth of what actually went down that day.

King was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis at 6:01pm, April 4 1968.

His death triggered off riots across America. In the space of four days, 110 Americamn cities were in flames, including Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh. During the riots, 43 people were killed, 2135 wounded and 13,248 arrested. It took 20,800 Feederal troops and 44,000 National Guards to quell the riots.

Dr King was supposedly shot by a small-time criminal named James Earl Ray. Jesse Jackson believes that is a partial truth, at best. He told Vincent Dowd of BBC News: "I'm convinced Ray was not the lone shooter. He didn't have the money, the mobility nor the motive to have done it. The fact that James Earl Ray was able to get out of the city and out of the country means he was a hired hand. The government seems to have had the most motive for attacking Dr King."

Dowd writes: 'He had been a no-account criminal, brought up in poverty in Missouri, who escaped from jail a year before the murder. After the assassination he fled Memphis, escaping to Canada and then London. He travelled briefly to Lisbon, apparently hoping to arrange contacts with white mercenaries in Africa. He returned to London and was finally arrested at Heathrow trying to board a flight for Brussels.'

Ray was extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder. He confessed then recanted his confession. On the advice of his lawyer, he pleaded guilty to avoid a trial conviction and the possibility of receiving the death penalty and was sentenced to 99 years. Ray then fired his lawyer and spent the rest of his days attempting unsuccessfully to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had. He died in 1998 of cirrhosis of the liver. MLK's son Dexter met with Ray before his death and became convinced of his innocence.

The King family were subsequently represented by attorney William F. Pepper, whose book on the killing claims that Ray was an innocent in a larger conspiracy. In 1999 he won a wrongful death civil trial on their behalf against one Loyd Jowers, who claimed to have been paid $100,000 to arrange King's assassination. The jury concluded that Jowers was guilty and that 'governmental agencies were parties' to the assassination plot. In 2000, the US Department of Justice investigated this conspiracy claim and could find no evidence to support it.

The claims and counter claims between experts, seeking either to prove Ray's guilt, or that he was a patsy in the service of a widespread conspiracy, continue to reverberate.

Pepper is currently writing his third book on the case; Gerald Posner, who has researched Ray's life in greater depth than anyone else, wrote a book explaining why he believes Ray must be the murderer. Dowd does a useful job of looking at some of the key questions that both sides have to examine and explain

See CNN's round-up at the time of James Earl Ray's death. Contains audio-interview with Pepper.

See: 'The Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination: What Really Happened?'by Mel Ayton [June 12th 2005] on crimemagazine.com based on his book 'A Racial Crime - James Earl Ray and the Murder of Dr Martin Luther King Jr' [ArcheBooks. Feb 2005]. An anti-conspiracy theorist.

See also: lengthy Wikipedia entry

UPDATE: 'April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King's death and the Transformation of America' by Michael Eric Dyson [Published by Perseus Books. April 2008]