The R. Crumb Book

"Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life": http://tiny.cc/746t001

He didn't want to repeat himself.

I know people my age who are doing the exact same thing in the music business they were doing forty years ago, the only thing that's changed is the names. The acts come and go, they remain. Paid well, but isn't it soul-crushing?

Speaking of soul-crushing... What is it like to be a grown man and have to hit the stage year after year and sing songs you wrote forty years ago? That's what the audience might want, but it's got to be depressing. Ultimately you're doing it for the money and the adulation. Those aren't nothing, bur are they enough?

Not for Robert Crumb.

This book got phenomenal reviews. But it took a long time to hook me. I ultimately figured out why, it was the art analysis. The writer is from the world of art, and just writing Crumb's story was not enough, he had to analyze the comics and...it takes a very special person to be able to make this interesting, even live. That's actually why I became an art history major, because of the professors. They were ENTERTAINING! I went to college because I was supposed to, I wasn't interested in ANYTHING they were teaching, not a single thing. As for English...they didn't want to hear my opinion, they wanted us to analyze historical takes...WHO CARES! But in the art history lectures the professor would talk about a great ice cream place around the corner from the museum and I found my mind never drifted, which it did in seemingly every other class.

Not that I'm a visual person, which is kind of funny. I can read an entire newspaper and not remember a single ad...I'm a word person. But the artistic sensibility? That's what I learned in college.

And it's different from a commercial sensibility.

Everybody in music wants to make it, become a brand.

That was never Crumb's goal. He didn't enforce his rights on merchandise and he'd rather own his work than cave to a publisher. It has to be pure, and honest, and when it isn't...

So I never read Crumb's comics. NEVER! I'm not a comics person. Never read the superhero work... Sure, I read some "Archie," but once I grew up, no way. I respected what Crumb did, of course I read a strip here or there, but it's just not my thing.

But my sister went to college with Justin Green's brother and we were in San Francisco and he took us over to Crumb's apartment and...what do you say to a famous artist?

At that point, 1973, Crumb was into music. Old time music. Which I knew from the music press. I didn't know the tunes. But in the silence I picked up a spare guitar and started playing early sixties hits like "Boys" and Robert played right along. My sister's buddy Keith couldn't believe it, he wanted me to shut up and fade into the woodwork, but Crumb and I got along famously, even played "Gloria"...G-L-O-R-I-A!

Would Crumb remember?

I doubt it.

Have I ever seen him again? I don't even reach out to rock stars who give me their contact info...what am I going to say? I'm too nervous.

But as a result of this experience, I've followed Crumb's career and I went to see the movie thirty years ago which I could never forget, nobody could. Crumb had moved to France by that time and...let's put it this way, underground comics had a moment and it's never returned.

Speaking of that moment...

After it was over, after Crumb got divorced, he had NOTHING! He was broke, not even a car.

And he was not living in the Bay Area anymore, nowhere near the coast, but closer to Sacramento. He never stopped working, but he also didn't feel like a has-been.

Now if you're a musician and reach the peak and then fall to the bottom you're anything but bright and sunny. You're depressed. Everywhere you go people ask you what happened. You ultimately stay home, until you face the facts and get a day job where you're hassled for who you used to be.

But Crumb is making music, which he quits when the band wants to take it too seriously.

Crumb wasn't afraid of riches and fame, they're just not what he needed. They weren't the goal.

And Crumb knew who he was. A nerd. And when he became famous and women came on to him...

He took advantage.

But then he started to make comics about his sexual predilections. Was he sexist? Yes, he had to be hipped to the fact. But also, as years went by, he continued to reveal all his fantasies, he was honest in a way only artists can be...

And he never fit in.

And he was always alienated. AND KNEW IT!

Even when he was famous he'd take the bus hours to San Francisco. He had none of the trappings, despite being so revered.

And the work had to be pure. He turned down so many options, especially after Ralph Bakshi made the film of "Fritz the Cat." If you weren't going to get it right, he didn't want to be involved.

And he'd had enough of fame. He turned down an invitation to appear with his band on SNL. Turned down Letterman too, even though his compatriot, Harvey Pekar, who he drew for, was a staple on the show and built a whole career around his appearances.

Now Crumb did not live a normal life.

He did not have a normal family.

Then again, who does?

Man, we were hit, abused by today's standards, back in the fifties and sixties.

His father was from the military, his mother was overwhelmed. Robert got out, he escaped the family drama, he was lucky, not everybody was.

And he didn't get into comics to make a buck, he was into it from a very young age, it was his passion. And no one had to teach him how to do it. College was unnecessary. His talent was innate, but he worked on it.

And he didn't do what was expedient. He didn't want to paint and be a member of the fine art world...he thought both the artists and buyers were phony.

Sounds a little like Holden Caulfield, but Crumb was always up for a good time. And he was led by women. He'd jump from one to another, had multiple women at the same time, they took the edge off, they took care of him.

And he made those with less confidence feel beautiful.

Now I'm not going to recommend you read this book. Because it's long and at times dry and I thought about quitting once or twice myself.

But then I started to see myself in it.

There are all these questions...

Do you do what is expected of you?

Do you do what's expedient?

Do you do it for the money?

And everybody else can't understand your choices. Because they're part of the flow and you're sitting on the riverbank, outside. There are threads between you, but always a distance, always a distance.

So when I finished the book earlier today I was in a stupor. I stared off into the distance. I tried to evaluate my mood.

I felt a stronger connection reading this book than hanging with most people. So is that what I should do, just sit home and read books?

And Crumb got a ton of negative feedback, and was not always commercially successful in his enterprises, but he kept marching forward, for himself!

It's hard when everybody tells you to go back to doing what you always did, the famous stuff, but that's death inside, you can't do that.

And then Crumb saying he was dying to work but was out of ideas.

Happens to me, I'm eager to write, but I don't have anything I'm dying to say.

It's a lonely journey, then again, Crumb always needed his alone time. Me too, I can't party every day, even be with people every day, I've got to retreat and reorganize, metabolize and evaluate.

We're all looking to be known, and I felt known reading this book.

A little.


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