"Jazz was my generation’s original inspiration. It was American classical music and the backdrop to the Beat Generation. Psychedelic rock soon became the definitive music of my generation. The psychedelic dance palaces like Chet Helm’s Avalon Ballroom, Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium, Straight Theater and more obscure venues like California Hall and Western Front were imitated all over the world."

Jose Antonio Pineda: Underground Culture

Jose Antonio Pineda is a Salvadoran poet, actor, dancer, singer and author. In interviews Pineda reflects that he was a co-founder of the Straight Theatre in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s. Pineda sings mostly rhythm and blues tunes in various bands in South East Asia mostly with 'the beatniks' as Frisco Tony & the Beatniks. Neo-beat poet Pineda sometimes combines poetry reading and performance as a blues singer, specializing in American roots music. Pineda was born in El Salvador, his parents emigrated to the USA. His father drove trucks, his mother, a teacher in El Salvador did menial jobs because of lack of language skills. His family, two sisters and two brothers lived in an Hispanic neighborhood. He attended a local Jesuit school, but was dismissed from it in his final year saying later that 'Jesuits and the Beat poets did not have a symbiotic relationship' Pineda says, 'I defected to the Beat movement.' In those days in San Francisco, the Straight Theatre in the Haight area was a central meeting point for artist types, and Pineda acted in small plays, did some Flamenco dancing and was part of the psychedelic scene. 'My roots are in alternative culture, in particular the psychedelic underground'.                                         (Jose Antonio Pineda / Photo © by Steve Porte)

Pineda moved to Spain and Madrid in the 1970s to study dance saying later that he 'rediscovered symbolism and surrealism' during that period. Eventually moving back to the U.S., he later resided in Southeast Asia, writing, acting and giving readings of his poetry. The novel The Magick Papers by Antonio Pineda was published in 2004. Linda Kelly published 3 works by Antonio Pineda in the Sam Francisco Haight Street Voice Beat Poet Michael McClure & Jim Morrison, The Wilde, Wycked, and Wonderful World of Mark McCloud, and Shaman.

Interview by Michael Limnios / Photos © by Steve Porte 

How has the Beats and Counterculture influenced your views of the world? When did the idea of Straight Theatre in Haight Ashbury come about?

In 1963 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated my peer group and I were students at City College of San Francisco. The assassination was a wakeup call. February next I shared a sugar cube of LSD with Jim Wilson a young poet from Buffalo who would later be integrated into the inner circle of Straight Theater by founder Reg Williams.

By summer we all had long hair and dressed in psychedelic fashion. The underground of the day was affiliated with poetry, avant garde cinema, and the San Francisco Sound represented by emerging bands like the Warlocks- who became the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holdin Company with Janis Joplin - Quicksilver Messenger Service, Santana, and psychedelic Edwardian cowboys, The Charlatans.

Reg Williams created a cine club in the tradition of CAHIERS de Cinema. The Straight Ashbury Viewing Society and assigned me to host screenings of avant garde filmmakers like Bruce Conners, Stan Brakhage, occult director Kenneth Anger and Jonas Mekas. The directors often hosted their screenings and engaged the audience in Q&A.

Reg Williams created a psychedelic light show Straight Lightning, and I assisted him in producing a preview reading- dance concert, drama night at Avalon Ballroom as a benefit for the Straight Theater. I as anointed to introduce Beat Icon Michael McClure on stage to read Ghost Tantras. For a brief moment I was Ganymede cupbearer to the gods. The Wildflower & The Outfit opened for the Dead. Ed Bullins a soul brother- poet playwright and creator of Black Arts West staged a guerrilla theater drama; Clara’s Old Man. Bullins would soon be for a short time the Minister of Culture of the Black Panthers and Huey Newton.

Reg produced Jim Wilson in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the Straight, as well as McClure’s The Blossom i.e. the Billy the Kid trilogy which would culminate in The Beard. I portrayed Harlequin in The Philosophers Stone, an Antonin Artaud mimodrama that opened the show for Blossom

McClure introduced me to Richard Brautigan and we produced a reading of him at the Straight. Brautigan invited me to a recording session, and I translated a poem for Richard into Spanish and cut a track on Listening to Richard Brautigan on Zapple recordings, a subsidiary of the Beatles Apple Records.

I met Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey through McClure and Brautigan events that would culminate in the Big Bang of the counterculture universe - The Acid Tests.

How important was music in your life? How does music affect your mood and inspiration?

Jazz was my generation’s original inspiration. It was American classical music and the backdrop to the Beat Generation. Psychedelic rock soon became the definitive music of my generation. The psychedelic dance palaces like Chet Helm’s Avalon Ballroom, Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium, Straight Theater and more obscure venues like California Hall and Western Front were imitated all over the world.

"The camera flashes back to the emergence of the 60s underground. America was a very conservative culture, young men were supposed to have short hair sport collegiate button-down attire, ladies were to be prim and proper, the endgame was the nuclear family and sex was not spoken about unless you were a celebrity - licensed to thrill." (Jose Antonio Pineda aka "Frisco Tony" / Photo © by Steve Porte)

Where does your creative drive come from? What are some of the most important life’s lessons you have learned from your experiences in the music and poetry?

If Greenwich Village and Times Square in New York City were the breeding grounds for the Beat Generation, North Beach and Haight Ashbury were associated with the Beat Genealogy and the counterculture. Poetry readings, indie printing presses, music -a book of verses underneath the tree some weed Acid and thee singing beside me in the wilderness.

San Francisco became El Dorado, the golden city of the gods, where the streets were paved with dreams, and young bohemian artists flocked to go Beat, dig the psychedelic scene, tune in turn on and drop out, and leave the political conservatism behind inflicted by racism, the struggle for civil rights and the Vietnam war. Paisley dreams, free love, flower power, the Utopian dream that would overthrow Dystopian capitalism.

To dream the impossible dream: an enlightened world, where God was love, War was a thing of the past, culture- art- literature- music reigned and social economic equality was available to all. Creative freedom became the order of the day lysergic lions braving society’s disorders, The harsh realities of law and order soon brought surcease to the movement, and bohemian dissidents were driven further underground as the Beat, The Hip and the damned continued their pursuit of Literary Valhalla.

What moment changed your life the most? Are there any specific memories or highlights of your career that you would like to tell us about?!

The moment I introduced Michael McClure on stage to read Ghost Tantras completely changed my life. McClure and Brautigan encouraged me to write, and Kesey and Neal Cassady inspired me to quest for adventures. Kesey eloquently pointed out.’ I’m too young to be a Beat, too old to be a hippie.’

Kesey, Ginsberg, and Cassady were instrumental in induction young Bohemians into the lysergic mysteries by their inauguration of the acid tests which essentially created the Haight Ashbury and invented a new generation of free thinkers, musicians, litterateurs and political activists.

My generation’s went on the road to Europe and SEAsia looking for the lost art of Paris and Vietnam. Hanging out with gypsies, flamenco artists and bullfighting aficionados in Spain, traveling the old hippie trail to the erotic perfumes of Thailand and Cambodia - the rave parties in Goa in order to return to Amsterdam.

"Have the Time Machine drop me in Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris during the reign of Surrealism - the most complete art movement of the last 100 years. I would Roll with Man Ray and Kiki de Montparnasse. I would knock on the door of the home of Gala and Paul Eluard and Max Ernst, and they would invite me in.for coffee." (Jose Antonio Pineda / Photo © by Steve Porte)

What were the reasons that made the 1960s to be the center of underground and Rock n’ Roll culture researches and experiments?

The camera flashes back to the emergence of the 60s underground. America was a very conservative culture, young men were supposed to have short hair sport collegiate button-down attire, ladies were to be prim and proper, the endgame was the nuclear family and sex was not spoken about unless you were a celebrity - licensed to thrill.

Enter poet Sylvia Plath: She was instrumental in baring her soul accompanied by movie star looks, victimized by ECT, as were Richard Brautigan, Bob Kaufman, and Lou Reed. Sylvia would represent the modern woman in search of enlightenment and fulfillment. The bohemian Beat poets aforementioned were to become pillars of the anti- establishment underground.

The confluences in NYC of Beat poets, abstract expressionists painters, pop art icons and method acting as espoused by the Actors Studio rebels Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg were merging in the Greenwich Village and streets of Time Square to create a postmodern Art underground to the driving soundtrack of rock and roll.

The West Coast Beats were exploding in San Francisco, the Cafe Six reading where Allen Ginsberg premiered his reading of Howl, was the shot heard round the world. North Beach supplanted Greenwich Village as the epicenter of Beat culture. City Lights bookstore became the Shakespeare & Company of the hood under the aegis of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Black poets Joan’s, Bob Kaufman, Leroi Jones aka Amiri Baraka influenced the vanilla beat movement. I would like to add my friend Ed Bullins to this equation. Bullins was a political activist and founded BLACK ARTS WEST, became an Obie award winning playwright and professor of dramaturgy at Northeastern University

Bullins was also Minister of Culture for the Black Panthers, which no doubt did not endear him to the establishment. McClure and I worked with Ed at the Straight Theater, and Bullion's was driven by jazz and Blues and the inflections of the black ghettos, prisons and barbershops. McClure admired Bullins and said to me. ‘Bullins and Kaufman were much under: estimated as were Baraka and Joans because the media was comfortable with beatniks as long as they were white.’

The camera cuts away to a tracking shot of counterculture freaks entering the Fillmore Auditorium to one of Bill Grahams first shows: The Acid Test, organized by influencers Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady, The Grateful Dead and other artists gigged and Mountain Girl romped as acid was still legal and consumed like chiclets. This event was acknowledged to be the Big Bang of the counterculture- and the imprimatur of the Beats and psychedelic rock n roll were lauded as the creators of the Psychedelic Underground.

"If Greenwich Village and Times Square in New York City were the breeding grounds for the Beat Generation, North Beach and Haight Ashbury were associated with the Beat Genealogy and the counterculture. Poetry readings, indie printing presses, music -a book of verses underneath the tree some weed Acid and thee singing beside me in the wilderness." (Jose Antonio Pineda / Photo © by Steve Porte)

What do you miss most nowadays from the past? What are your hopes and fears for the future? What do you think is key to a life well lived?

Dystopian governments all over the world are replete with conflict zones, extrajudicial killings and repression of human rights. Fascism is alive and well, thriving in these anti-social enclaves and the world awaits a savior to emerge from the wilderness to dismantle the anti-intellectual constructs that allow these dark forces to thrive and grow. There is no easy solution, but the underground has always been the voice of sanity and art weaponized to explore humanities highest aspirations.

Let’s take a trip with a time machine, so where and why would you really want to go for a whole day?

Have the Time Machine drop me in Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris during the reign of Surrealism - the most complete art movement of the last 100 years. I would Roll with Man Ray and Kiki de Montparnasse. I would knock on the door of the home of Gala and Paul Eluard and Max Ernst, and they would invite me in.for coffee.

I would crash the shoot of La Belle et La Bete and Cocteau would make me a dress extra. Hemingway and F.Scott Fitzgerald would let me drink and smoke with The Lost Generation. Dali and Bunuel would invite me to the screening of Un  Chien Andalou. I would dine and drink champagne with Leonora Carrington and Guiilame Apollinaire. 

I would ask Andre Breton to let me read my poems in some dive bar cafe frequented by the beautiful and the damned. Picasso would let me hang out In flamenco bars with he and his mistresses, and I would flirt with the Can-Can dancers of Pigalle and Le Moulin Rouge.

I would jump up on stage at a tango club and sing Jalousie then dance with a beautiful vedette. The moveable feast- a feast of friends, where poetry was life, painters created immortal groundbreaking art, film directors made surrealist masterpieces, theater reflected the consciousness of the epoch, and the underground was only maligned by the elite and privileged partying while Paris burned.

Giorgio di Chirico would introduce me to Mistinguette - and Antonin Artaud would invite me to collaborate with him on the screenplay of The Sea Shell and the Clergyman directed by Germaine DuLac. Anais Nin my muse would honor me with her friendship and introduce me to Henry Miller and I would ask them to collaborate on a surrealist film I composed the script for in which Anais portrays Astarte and Miller a divine poet. Life is but a dream.

"My generation’s went on the road to Europe and SEAsia looking for the lost art of Paris and Vietnam. Hanging out with gypsies, flamenco artists and bullfighting aficionados in Spain, traveling the old hippie trail to the erotic perfumes of Thailand and Cambodia - the rave parties in Goa in order to return to Amsterdam." 

(Jose Antonio Pineda, poet, actor, dancer, writer, singer / Photo © by Steve Porte)

What is the impact of music and poetry on the socio-cultural implications? What do you think the major changes will be in near or far future of the world?

Without Yvegeny Yevtushenko the world would be unaware of the atrocities of Babi Yar. Poet Anna Akhmatova reminds us that mankind has a political divinity, and the voice of the poet is the voice of the people. Cinema soundtracks are the classical music of today. When Fellini shot La Dolce Vita the music by Nino Rota immortalized the experience for the cineaste. Jazz is truly American in conception without Miles Davis, Coltrane or Bird, the Harlem Renaissance and the Cotton Club, America would be a graceless vanilla milkshake... Rock n Roll … Hail Hail as in days of old.

Interview © by Michael Limnios, 2024 / Photos © by Steve Porte 

Special Thanks: Jose Antonio Pineda