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When Lenny Met A new book examines what really happened when hit Sydney in 1962 – and inspires an upcoming play that’ll bring the pioneering satirist back to the stage. By Michael Adams ike many in Generation X, my beautiful six-CD box set from 2004 called knowledge of Lenny Bruce Let The Buyer Beware that comprises began with his being the first hours of recordings of Bruce’s shows, “LB” name mentioned in REM’s interviews and even backstage tapes of 1987 apocalyptic hiptwister It’s The End him being hassled by the cops. A week LOf The World As We Know It (And I Feel later ’s terrific 1974 filmLenny , Fine). Shamefully, for a long time, all I in which gives one of knew beyond that was that Bruce was a his great but underrated performances, comic pioneer who was persecuted for screened on television to provide another saying dirty words on stage before he died overview of the man and his times. of a . I didn’t get much more On www.archive.org I found you can specific than that until a few months listen to the 1959 album The Sick Humor ago when I determined I ought to know Of Lenny Bruce legally for free. At iTunes, more about the man who inspired the I forked out $17.99 for his triumphant likes of , and 1960 The Concert and who is the figure credited recording. Digging up a copy of his 1965 with creating the notion that a autobiography How To Talk Dirty And COVER, © 2004 Shout! Factory can use his personal life, and Influence Peoplewas to realise Bruce was philosophy as no-holds barred art, at least as good on the page as he was on entertainment and social . the stage.

I got the basics from Wikipedia before etting into Bruce takes work. seeing what I could find of Bruce in action His words always demanded THE BUYER BEWARE LET on YouTube, beginning one night with a audiences think before they tame but soulful bit he did on Glaughed but half a century many of his in 1959 called “All Alone” and ending with references to personalities and events the sombre 1972 documentary Lenny have dated. And some of what was Bruce Without Tears, made six years after shocking then is mild to the point of his death. A few weeks later, in a second- G-rated now. Regardless of whether you

hand book-store, I stumbled upon a know who Cardinal Spellman is or are FROM OPENING IMAGE DETAIL Commander-in-Chief Dwight Eisenhower or parodying the timelessly crass commercialism of Holy Rollers because Bruce’s words snap- snap-snap together like musical riffs that’re both provocative and warm. But as you sink into his vibe – and there’s no other word for it – his humour reclaims more of its original peculiar lustre. And as you learn about his life in those times – as you put yourself into his context – it dawns just how dangerous he must’ve appeared to the stuffed-shirt powers that were. Bruce talked openly and smartly Damian Kringas says Bruce took Sydney and compassionately about politics and in stride but was reportedly very upset by and sex and dope and dykes and the Nazi implication made here. queers and minorities. He argued against organised hypocrisy in all its forms bemused that discussing “come” could years before the counterculture lined up get you in hot water, simply listening to against The Man. Even when the Civil Bruce is a pleasure because what hooks Rights Movement was still about its good you immediately is the man’s vocal works, Bruce had moved on to taking rhythm, which is part patois, part supposed white liberals’ double-standards patter, and all original hipster. to task. He shocked audiences with a It doesn’t matter if he’s role-playing the riff that overused the word “nigger” as a ancient history that is the manipulation way of demonstrating it could be thus of U.S. Vice-President Nixon by disarmed as an epithet. In this bit alone, he anticipated Richard Pryor and NWA down. Googling for more was to make the by decades. Same goes for his attacks on serendipitous discovery that local author the Catholic Church, which’d be echoed Damian Kringas had just released a study by Bill Hicks and others more than twenty of the period called Lenny Bruce: 13 Days years later. While other have In Sydney. taken on the role of preacher, Bruce Kringas’s initial interest in Bruce was happy to admit he was a huckster stemmed from his own writing efforts. who was only able to ply his trade – like When he was working on his novel J. Edgar Hoover – because societal Leon The Fish – which was published dysfunction existed. When the world was in 2000 – he wanted to include a Bruce fixed, he’d no longer be needed. quote, which led him to investigate Fat chance. Bruce was an artist truly clearance rights with the comedian’s ahead of his time, which is why so much estate. Later, another of Kringas’s writing of what he had to say remains relevant. It’s projects referenced The Defiant Ones, also why he found himself on the brunt the 1958 Stanley Kramer movie in which of so much malice from those in office. prisoners played by Tony Curtis and Lenny Bruce’s 1962 visit has been the subject of much myth-making.

Repeated arrests on and drugs Sidney Poitier are shackled together. “I charges in the United States drove him to was reading about it and how Lenny did bankruptcy and despondency and death. this interpretation of that film on stage Though in a more minor capacity, British with this black trumpet player. They and Australian puritans also had a hand were chained together as they came on in hounding him from the spotlight and and there was all this homoerotic, gay ensuring that his reputation as a “sick marriage stuff he threw in.” comedian” travelled much further than Kringas vaguely knew that Bruce had his actual message. come to – “It was like, ‘Fuck, that’s right, he came out here and he first learned that Bruce’s story briefly got hammered!’” – but his interest was intersected with Sydney from James renewed in 2008 when the Spanish artist Cockington’s 2005 book Banned: Dora Garcia staged a Bienale of Sydney ITales From The Bizarre History Of show called Just because everything is Australian Obscenity, which had been different it does not mean that anything sitting on my bookshelf for years, waiting has changed. Garcia’s premise was that to give up the brief outline of what went Bruce, appearing in Sydney on September 6, 1962, had delivered only one sentence Bruce was booked for a two-week stint, of his show – ‘What a fucking wonderful two shows a night, at a Sydney nightclub audience!’ – before he was promptly called Aaron’s Hotel, which was decked arrested and asked to leave the country, out to resemble a dive. Lenny never to return. “García has imagined the took a hit of and took to the tiny performance that never took place and… stage for the first show at 9pm. It’s there ‘lets’ Lenny Bruce finally speak in Sydney,” accounts of his time in Australia begin to was how the Bienale promo material vary. described her work. “Depending on who you talk to Bruce “I was thinking, well, that’s a great either freely performed his material to story,” says Kringas. “I wonder if that acclaim or left his audience in a state really happened. And of course it didn’t. of stunned disbelief,” Kringas writes. If But it started off just rekindling interest there are two schools of thought on what and then I moved into trying to work out went down at that show, the 11pm gig is what really happened.” a positively Rashomon event, with each “I was thinking, Great story – wonder if that really happened. Of course, it didn’t.”

hat did happen in 1962 was audience member Kringas interviewed that music promoter Lee recalling the event very differently. Gordon – who’d made his What emerges most consistently is Wname and fortune by touring the likes of that Bruce was riffing through his routine Frank Sinatra, Little Richard and Louis – likely beginning with his rumination Armstrong in the – had fallen on on dirty words that begins “I’m going to financial hard times when a bid to bring piss on you” – but failing to connect with Elvis out to Australia failed. Bizarrely, he the audience, due in part to his focus on thought bringing Lenny Bruce to Sydney American topics and a poor sound mix. might rejuvenate his finances. Bizarre The spark in this powder keg was Barbara because the comic didn’t have much of Wyndon, a then-popular local actress, a fanbase in Australia and many of those who stood up and complained with who knew him knew his press reputation words to the effect of, “Come on, Lenny, rather than his routines, which didn’t give us something we can laugh at.” rate much in the way of record sales or To which Bruce made a reply along the radio play. Gordon hoped to capitalise on lines of, “Fuck you, lady.” overseas controversy and thus devised an A walkout ensued which included unusual ad campaign (see opposite). Bob Rogers, then a high-profile radio DJ. Caption Itae volorupta solorrum es aliat. Lenduciam que pero Lenny Bruce on stage at Aaron’s; inset: , legendary promoter.

While there was no arrest, the second the broadsheet Sydney Morning Herald half of Kringas’s book chronicles the were hardly less scandalised. day-by-day fallout that followed. Aaron’s , who’d later fight his management cancelled the remainder of own censorship battles as the editor of Oz the engagement, vice cops were said to be magazine, was then a Sydney University investigating complaints and threatened student organiser and he tried to get to monitor any other performances. The Bruce two shows on campus – only to Daily Mirror ran a photo of Bruce that have them banned by the higher powers looked like he was giving a Nazi salute of higher education. The ABC over- under the front-page headline “Sick Jokes reacted, too, cancelling a planned 24- Made Audience Ill.” Other tabloids and minute interview on the People program. Shunned, Bruce holed up in his hotel experience Lenny had in Britain [where room, did drugs, clashed with Gordon he was subjected to a body cavity search at and made the acquaintance of a few the airport, deported and banned from re- locals and journalists, some of whom entry] with what happened in Australia.” Kringas was able to track down. Bruce While the basics were in the public finally did get to do a third show, at the record, Kringas provides context and Wintergarden Theatre in Rose Bay, where anecdotal accounts that give perspective a significant proportion of the small and colour to the controversy. Kringas’s audience appeared to be cops. Though the journey began with Gordon, who was comedian gave a “subdued performance”, largely simpatico with Bruce – and he began the show by mocking the whole beholden to similar demons that likely Aaron’s brouhaha – a move that presages contributed to his early death in 1963. the much more bitter anti-censorship “As soon as I started researching Lee tirades for which he’d become known. Gordon it all made sense,” says Kringas. A few days later, Bruce flew out of “That’s why Lenny came out – it was Australia of his own volition – though on Gordon’s promise. Otherwise it “The funny thing was it was all there – none of it was hidden.” under Vice Squad pressure – and into an seemed pretty strange. Like, why would even more hostile United States where Bruce come here? And Lee Gordon was the next few months would see him completely out of control, that’s where all repeatedly arrested – travesties of justice the drugs came from.” that led to his early check out, broke and Kringas interviewed numerous Aaron’s broken, on the end of a spike. and Wintergarden punters, including Aussie counterculture luminaries Richard ringas has done valuable work Neville and Albie Thoms, entertainers in sorting fact from fiction to Noelene Brown and Col Joye, reporter shed new light on the narrative Denis O’Brien, who obtained a kinda- Kand details of Bruce’s visit. “The funny sorta interview with the drug-fucked thing was it was all there,” he says. “None Bruce, and singer Tina Date, who of it was hidden. I don’t know where all befriended him and took him to Taronga that stuff about him getting arrested and Park Zoo. What emerges isn’t a definitive thrown out came from. I think people account – because no-one got close to just get on a story and then run with it. I Bruce here – but rather a multifaceted think also that people have confused the recollection of his time in Sydney. As for the controversy, Kringas says ringas’s work looks set to find it’s important not to let our supposedly a wider audience in expanded modern liberated perspective distort and reimagined fashion, with what happened nearly 50 years ago. KSydney playwright Benito Di Fonzo, “Where Lenny came unstuck was that who recently had a success with his Bob he said ‘Fuck you’ to Barbara Wyndon. Dylan stage spoof The Chronic Ills Of That’s really the issue. It wasn’t just saying Robert Zimmerman, presently crafting a ‘fuck’. It was the context. It’s 1962. It’s a stage adaptation in a style he calls “fonzo woman. You’re in a public place with journalistic surrealisation”. mixed company. Today the same thing Di Fonzo is following the form of the might happen if a comedian went on a book but departing from the known riff about a couple in the audience and for the imagined in order to comment then went after the girl. This is now. It’s more widely on Bruce’s life, conservative interesting how it’s still relevant and we Australia and the universal theme of the haven’t just become totally open.” power of words up against censorship. Part of his reason for writing the “I’ve got two Lenny Bruces narrating it book, Kringas says, was also to redeem at the moment,” he explains. “We’ve got Playwright Benito Di Fonzo draws a parallel between Bruce and Julian Assange.

Australia’s reputation, even if just a Lenny as he was in 1962 and then a dug- little. “There were a lot of people who up version we call Lenny 2011. So there’s defended him and when you think about ‘Word Lenny’ and ‘Worm Lenny’ who’re Bob Rogers, you’ve got to remember he there to set the record straight as to the 10 probably only went there because of Lee different versions of what happened that Gordon and felt obliged. And he really night.” didn’t slag Bruce off that much. He just To get Bruce’s voice, Fonzo has been said it wasn’t for him and walked out.” listening to his live albums and re-reading Lenny Bruce: 13 Days In Sydney Bruce’s autobiography and the routines is a labour of love for Kringas, who contained in The Essential Lenny Bruce. self-published through Lulu and is What’s also helped immeasurably is a rare distributing through a few bookshops and bootleg recording of Bruce’s show at the his own publishing house, Independence Wintergarden discovered by Kringas and Jones. “I’m in it for beer money, pretty shared with Fonzo and WordyMofo. The much,” he says with a laugh. “Not that I get sound quality of this tape is terrible but much beer out of it. “ Bruce is audible as he good-naturedly riffs on his experience at Aaron’s before doing some of his more familiar material. Fonzo’s play will focus on Aaron’s, using the show as a framing device, and include Sydney characters who interacted with Bruce – along with the ghosts of celebrities past and future. “In the second act I use the gig as a framing device and then inside of that I have all the other things that happened – the arguments with Lee Gordon, Tina Date, the girl he hung out with. Chief Inspector Ferguson becomes this sort of nemesis. I’ve also created a Shakespearean comic character out of the ‘Shoeshine Guy’. Damian spoke to a guy who ran a shoeshine stand in Kings Cross, so he comes in and out of the second act as a Shakespearean Fool character, and he’s also more Damian Kringas’s book is representative of Australia in a way.” available at: Fonzo laughs. “Charles Darwin appears www.independencejones.com at one point, as does and because they’ve all made our role in Afghanistan and Iraq would comments on Australia at some stage.” have to suck more cocks than there are For Fonzo, even though Lenny Bruce’s in Canberra to get on TV. And I think experience in Sydney is nearly half a it’s interesting especially now in light of century in the past, the themes of the play what’s happening with Julian Assange are as relevant as ever. – an Australian being denounced by his “It’s a way of making people look at own country. The stuff that Lenny Bruce censorship,” he says. “Lenny got into was talking about is still just as relevant trouble back then for speaking his mind. today. The power of words for both the But today someone who was criticising good and the negative.”