The group David Bowie called “the most lyrically explosive underground bands ever”
In 2003, David Bowie penned an article naming, in no particular order, his favourite albums of all time — no easy task for a self-confessed vinyl junkie in possession of over 2,500 records. Still, pop music’s chameleonic maestro did his best to offer a selection of albums he thought would be worthy of discussion. This meant abandoning anything too obvious like Sgt. Pepper’s or Nevermind and highlighting more obscure artists, artists like The Fugs.
Formed in New York in 1964, The Fugs took their name from the euphemistic substitute word for “fuck” employed by Norman Mailer in his incendiary novel The Naked and the Dead. This caught the author’s attention because the band was eventually featured in a chapter of his book Armies of the Night, in which The Fugs performed during the 1967 march on the Pentagon in protest of the Vietnam War.
Deeply self-satirising from the off, The Fugs quickly developed a reputation as one of the most divisive underground bands in New York, releasing their album Transatlantic Records album It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest in 1968 to equal measures of bemusement, hostility and fascination.
Perhaps because of their presence at peace rallies and proximity to organisations like The Weathermen, they even found themselves on the FBI’s watchlist. After launching a full investigation into the group, the FBI concluded that The Fugs were considered free thinkers by their peers and were noted to encourage the use of narcotics and free love. On the other hand, their records were considered not to be obscene, so the case was quickly closed.
It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest won The Fugs popularity in Europe, but Bowie had already been a fan since the release of their 1966 self-titled album.
Bowie described The Fugs in his piece for Vanity Fair: “The sleeve notes were written by Allen Ginsberg and contain these perennial yet prescient lines: “Who’s on the other side? People who think we are bad. Other side? No, let’s not make it a war, we’ll all be destroyed, we’ll go on suffering till we die if we take the War Door”.
Bowie noted: “I found on the internet the text for a newsprint ad for the Fugs, who, coupled with the Velvet Underground, played the April Fools Dance and Models Ball at the Village Gate in 1966. The F.B.I. had them on their books as ‘the Fags’.”
Adding: “This was surely one of the most lyrically explosive underground bands ever. Not the greatest musicians in the world, but how “punk” was all that? Tuli Kupferberg, Fugs co-writer and performer, in collaboration with Ed Sanders, has just finished the new Fugs album as I write. Tuli is 80 years old”.
You can check out The Fugs 1966 album below.
