Leonard Cohen Chelsea Hotel #2 Live

Inside The Dream Palace.

Although it is quite warm for the time of year the skies are grey and we have had buckets of rain the last few days. It is Thursday afternoon now and I haven’t ventured out since Monday, but I have been quite happy staying up all night at the Chelsea Hotel. What I mean by that is, I have been reading a book called Inside the Dream Palace, The life & times of New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. It was published in 2014 and written by Sherill Tippins. A few months ago, after I wrote a piece about the artist Vali Myers which mentioned her meeting with Patti Smith at the Chelsea, a friend of mine who read the article thought I might like to read this book and kindly sent me a copy. I finally got around to reading it this week and I must say I found it a most enthralling read indeed. Just in case you are one of the few people who haven’t heard of the Chelsea Hotel I’ll just give you a quick few details about its history. It was opened in 1884 as a visionary utopian co-operative of apartments for people of all backgrounds. At the time it was New York’s tallest building. 

In 1905 financial problems caused it to be converted to a residential hotel. It became a haven for artistic creative types from all over the world who were drawn to the Chelsea because of it’s relaxed welcoming bohemian atmosphere. A journalist described it as ‘The Ellis Island of the Avant Garde’. It became a home to writers, musicians, painters, fashion designers, and all manner of creative people who influenced each other. A whole cavalcade of people I have admired fill the pages of this book. There is Thomas Wolfe whose books Look Homeward Angel and Of Time and the River I read decades ago because he was a big influence on Jack Kerouac’s early writing. Thomas Wolfe was encouraged to live at the Chelsea by Edgar Lee Masters who wrote Spoon River Anthology. I had never heard of him before, so this book is quite educational in introducing me to different writers. 

Jack Kerouac stayed at the Chelsea as well and had an encounter with Gore Vidal. I think it was a similar experience to the Chelsea meeting between Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen which was immortalised in Leonard’s song Chelsea Hotel No2. As well as Jack, there are many other Beat related characters here such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Gary Snyder, Hubert Hunke and Gregory Corso raging through the lobby. I didn’t know that Arthur C Clarke lived here while he was writing the screenplay of 2001, A Space Odyssey for Stanley Kubrick. Brendan Behan lived a drunken existence at the Chelsea for a while until it was making him so ill he had to return to Ireland, but while in New York he managed to dictate Confessions of an Irish Rebel. 

Another Celt with a penchant for drink was Dylan Thomas who made many long visits to New York, on the last occasion without his wife Caitlin who complained that she was ‘left to rot in this bloody bog’. Dylan came back to his room one night and said, “I have had 18 straight whiskies, I think that’s the record”. He died a few days later. I found some of the stories quite amusing, such as the painter Jackson Pollock who when praised as a genius for his ‘action painting’ drunkenly ranted, “Do you think I would paint this shit if I could draw a hand?”

Bob Dylan wrote some of his greatest songs while living in the Chelsea, such as Visions of Johanna which mentions the ‘Lights flicker from the opposite loft, In this room the heat pipes just cough’. The heat pipes were notoriously noisy apparently. He wrote Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands here as well, and Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat which I didn’t know was about Edie Sedgwick until I read this book. There is a lot about the tragic story of Edie, and of course Andy Warhol. Also, Valerie Solanos who wrote the S.C.U.M Manifesto and shot Warhol, but luckily he survived. Leading on from that is The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed. When Warhol made the film Chelsea Girls Dylan said, “That’s the end of the Chelsea Hotel, you might as well burn it down’. 

Bob was wrong of course. Patti Smith and her boyfriend Robert Mapplethorpe found inspiration here when they arrived penniless. It was where Patti found her voice with encouragement from other residents. Something else I didn’t know was that Patti met both Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix here in 1970 shortly before they died. One of the most tragic events was the deaths of Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious in 1978/79. I’m not convinced that Sid killed Nancy. I think it was probably a drug dealer who did it to get their money. The police didn’t seem very interested in finding out what really happened. It did cast a cloud over the hotel’s reputation, and I don’t want to dwell on that. 

There are many, many amazing colourful characters in this book, such as the elderly artist Alphaeus Cole who was given a long-term low rent agreement by the hotel because they didn’t want him worried about money. They thought the agreement would only be for a couple of years, but he lived to be 112. I enjoyed this book immensely. I don’t know if it is the definitive work on the history of this great and iconic building because it is the only one I have read, but I heartily recommend it to anyone who is interested in the counter-culture of the 20^th century.