Steven ‘Jesse’ Bernstein: the poet who performed with a rodent in his mouth
The Seattle grunge scene welcomed bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden to the mainstream, rejuvenating and popularising alternative rock. Taking inspiration from genres like punk, hardcore and metal, grunge music typically explored themes of alienation and disillusionment, not shying away from heavy topics like mental illness and violence.
In 1967, a man named Steve ‘Jesse’ Bernstein first moved to Seattle from California, where he honed his craft as a poet for many years. In 1979, he released his first chapbook, Choking on Sixth, one of many he would create during his lifetime. However, he was also an active performer of his poems, which were defined by a mixture of poignant meditations on life and sardonic wit.
As the Seattle music scene began to grow, Bernstein started to earn fans in the form of musicians like Kurt Cobain, who watched him perform at local bars and theatres. Soon enough, bands like Nirvana and Steve Albini’s Big Black were recruiting Bernstein as an opening act, with his poems fitting perfectly within the grunge landscape. However, his intense substance abuse and mental health issues often interfered, with Bernstein exhibiting some shocking on-stage behaviour.
Bernstein’s shows were not for the faint of heart. Regina Hackett from Seattle Post-Intelligencer once wrote: “He read poems from a stage with a live rodent in his mouth, its tail twitching as baseline punctuation. He tried to cut his heart out in order to hold it in his hands and calm it down. He once urinated on a heckler and tended to throw things: beer bottles, manuscripts, drumsticks, his wallet, a sandwich.”
Sub Pop eventually approached the poet, and Bernstein set out to record an album of his spoken-word pieces – to be recorded in a prison. However, the recording proved a failure, with Seattle Weekly columnist Laura Cassidy recalling the process: “It didn’t end up sounding like the real Folsom Prison record [that inspired it]– I think the deal was that it just wasn’t that call-and-response, audience-participation thing that Johnny Cash’s record is. It was recorded in the morning, [and] the prisoners were into it, but they weren’t whooping and hollering. I bet it was a little too quiet and dull, so why release a record with awkward room noise when you can either record Bernstein in a better setting or set a bunch of music to it?”
However, when Bernstein died after stabbing himself in the neck, Sub Pop released a posthumous release, Prison, which the poet had begun working on while he was alive. The album features instrumentation by Steve Fisk, with Bernstein delivering his poems over the top.
Cassidy explained: “Bernstein and Fisk didn’t really work ‘together’ all that much. They had meetings to discuss what Fisk would do, and according to Fisk, Bernstein gave Fisk complete artistic license. […] People really revered [Bernstein]; he was loved. Other than that, Fisk did the majority of [Prison] on his own without checking in with Bernstein – in fact, most of it was completed after Bernstein died.”
Since passing away in 1991 at the age of 40, Bernstein’s material has faded into relative obscurity, only obtaining a small yet dedicated cult following. Sadly, Bernstein was a genuinely talented writer who never received the acclaim he deserved.
