Beck, ‘Loser’, and the homeless history of the anti-folk movement
It’s winter. New York, 1989. Beck looks out the one eye that isn’t pressed against someone else’s sofa cushion. His only sense of ownership is an out-of-tune guitar. Pizza boxes clutter up filthy coffee tables, beer cans carpet the floor, and a serene sense of loathing hangs in the air. Beck would use these things and more to put together the music that would eventually make him rich and famous, but for now, it was just a stage, New York City as the backdrop, and a whole lot of nothing as the muse.
New York was the place to be if you wanted to make it as a musician in the ‘80s; there was no question about it. Beck knew that and decided to take the plunge one day, moving to the Big Apple in 1989 with only $8 and his guitar. He planned on making money through his music, getting gigs wherever he could and hopefully getting spotted somewhere along the line.
The creative world is harsh, but in the mid-1980s, music was in a strange place of contradiction. One of the prominent genres at the time was folk, which was incredibly serious and enjoyed focusing on the world’s challenges. However, it was also so self-obsessed that it turned its nose up at those living the brutal lyrics portrayed in its hits.
The majority of venues where folk musicians played at the time were in Greenwich Village, including Folk City and The Speakeasy. Beck, along with several other musicians trying to make it at the time, asked for gigs but were rejected. Their circumstances were severe enough for the venues, but their music wasn’t. This was one of the first bricks that set the foundation for the anti-folk movement.
Many anti-folk stars (the term yet to be coined) made their way by living from couch to couch, making money any way they could and relying on the kindness of distant and near friends for a place to stay. Beck did this for over two years, his dire circumstances inspiring his more self-loathing music, such as the now-hit single ‘Loser’.
Beck wasn’t the only musician struggling to get gigs and pay his way during this period, either. The likes of the Washington Squares, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Michelle Shocked, John S Hall and Kirk Kelly were all sleeping from sofa to sofa, embracing the loser lifestyle, rallying troops for what would eventually be the anti-folk army.
Beck was never a big fan of how serious folk music took itself, and so he, along with other musicians on the anti-folk scene, wrote words that focused on more mundane struggles, poking fun at the severity of folk. The term anti-folk also came about thanks to the opening of The Fort, a venue that was going to give these as-yet unheard musicians a proper platform. The opening coincided with the New York Folk Festival, so Lach, the founder of The Fort, called their event the New York Antifolk Festival. The venue changed from year to year, eventually finding a home in the SideWalk Café.
The struggles of people throughout the anti-folk movement led to the development of a new genre; it can now be heard throughout music, which glorifies the struggles of the every day without taking those struggles too seriously. ‘Loser’ personifies this attitude very well, as it is self-deprecating but has a fun twist. Since the sofa hopping, Beck has won Grammys and is considered one of the best musicians of his generation.
