Tuli Kupferberg Of The Fugs 1923-2010
Independently Posted by Rudi Stettner on July 13, 2010

Read The Full Story: Tuli Kupferberg Of The Fugs 1923-2010 – IndyPosted

Tuli Kupferberg, singer, songwriter and beat generation poet passed away Monday in New York City at the age of 86. His more mainstream fame was as a singer for the Fugs, a 60?s rock group. The Fugs took their name  name in a gentler time when public sensibility demanded euphemistic substitutes for the profanities that have become more common in our time. The Fugs had a sound somewhat like the soft end of Frank Zappa’s music laced to cutting edge social commentary.

Kupferberg actually survived a jump off the Manhattan bridge, a feat mentioned in Allen Ginsberg’s poem “The Howl” the jump was described in a prose poem “Memorial Day 1971? by Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman.

I asked Tuli Kupferberg once, “Did you really jump off of The Manhattan Bridge?” “Yeah,” he said, “I really did.” “How come?” I said. “I thought that I had lost the ability to love,” Tuli said. “So, I figured I might as well be dead. So, I went one night to the top of The Manhattan Bridge, & after a few minutes, I jumped off.” “That’s amazing,” I said. “Yeah,” Tuli said, “but nothing happened. I landed in the water, & I wasn’t dead. So I swam ashore, & went home, & took a bath, & went to bed. Nobody even noticed.”

Kupferberg also wrote “1001 Ways To Beat The Draft”, some of which read as follows.

33. Marry lassie
34. Join the Abraham Lincoln brigade
35. Marry president Johnson
36. Marry Mao tse-tsung
37. Proclaim that mao tse-tsung is the living god
38. Proclaim that you are the living god
39. Stamp your foot in the earth like Rumpelstiltskin and refuse to eat until our boys return from Vietnam
40. Get elected pope
41. Get elected the supreme soviet

51. Declare war on germany
52. Tell the draft board that you will send your mother to fight in Vietnam in your place
53. Study selective service reports on malingering and military medicine, and/or military psychiatry texts or journal articles on the same subject, and use the clever methods they describe.

One of my high school memories was getting “1001 Ways to Beat The Draft” taken away on the last day of school. Kupferberg was a trend setter for other performers, born a generation before the people who made rock famous in the 60?s. Kupferberg had the ability to make even those who disagreed with him laugh at his absurd view of the world. Kupferberg’s death was preceded by a stroke in 2009 that left him in need of constant nursing care. He will certainly be missed.