Brianland

2025 on-stage photo by Rick Melnick

.

From Editor Simon Warner’s introduction . . .

We are very pleased to unveil a new feature at Rock and the Beat Generation, a series of interviews gathered under the heading ‘Generation Beat’ which will focus on a number of transatlantic trailblazers who have carried the Beat torch into the twenty-first century, a grouping of slightly younger writers, editors and publishers whose energy has kept this radical literary tradition alive and kicking as we move well past the millennium.

We are delighted to identify the first subject in our sequence of conversations as the ever-energetic BRIAN HASSETT.

Hassett is a Canadian-born writer, producer, performer, promoter, Beat scholar and countercultural evangelist. He is the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac (2015), How the Beats Begat the Pranksters (2017), On the Road with Cassadys & Further Visions (2018), Holy Cats! Dream-Catching at Woodstock (2019), and Blissfully Ravaged in Democracy (2020).

John Cassady, son of Neal and Carolyn Cassady, said of him:
“He writes the way he talks, and lives the way he writes. Which reminds me of my Dad and Uncle Jack.”
.

.

We talk about how I first discovered the Beats and got involved with all of them — some funny encounters over the years — the Beat ethos continuing into the 21st century — my Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac book — the importance of the Beat women like Carolyn Cassady and Edie Kerouac — how the bunch of them taught me you can still have childlike playfulness and joy as an adult — the “Jack on Film” shows at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac — working on the Rolling Stones tour in 1981 — how The Rolling Stone Book of The Beats came into being — the legacy of the Beats — upcoming plans and all sortsa fun stuff.

You can read the whole rollicking convo here . . .

https://simonwarner.substack.com/p/generation-beat-1-brian-hassett

.

============================================

Or here’s a fun impromptu interview from July 2023 — wearing a Dead & Company Ralph Steadman Sphere shirt from where I’d just returned — jamming on happiness, creativity, productivity, beating depression, writer’s block, philosophy of life, inspiring others, buoying spirits and so on.