Jim Carroll, Punk Rock Poet, Dies at 60
SEPTEMBER 14, 2009 TAGS:
Jim Carroll’s 1978 memoir The Basketball Diaries was a thundering work, exposing the manic tendencies of a brilliant poet, a promising basketball player and a hopeless addict. By 1978, Carroll had become a Lower East Side fixture. Speaking to the New York Times, punk legend Patti Smith recalled,
"I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognised as the best poet of his generation," she explained. "The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty."
Carroll died on Friday, September 11 at the age of 60.
Carroll succeeded in miring the sacred with the profane, intertwining the beautiful with the ugly. He found both of these things through a seemingly unquenchable thirst for experience and expressed them through a fountain of poetic and musical production.
The son of a bar owner, Carroll earned a basketball scholarship to the Trinity School, a prestigious Upper West Side private prep school.
The years at Trinity and the subsequent descent into heroin addiction constituted the action of The Basketball Diaries. So was Carroll’s redemption, through art.
From the Times:
Carroll attracted a devoted following, including those with great influence in the world of punk and rock. Keith Richards helped orchestrate a three album deal with Atlantic Records for Carroll’s punk rock outfit, The Jim Carroll Band. Their 1980 release Catholic Boy is considered by some critics the last great punk record.
Here’s a video of Carroll reading his poem, “Just Visiting” from the collection The Book of Nods.
Here’s a video of the Jim Carroll Band song, “People who died,” from the 1980 record Catholic Boy. (this song could be an honorable mention for Obit's Best Songs about death) The song was featured on the movie adaptation of The Basketball Diaries from 1995 featuring a young Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll.
"I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognised as the best poet of his generation," she explained. "The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty."Carroll died on Friday, September 11 at the age of 60.
Carroll succeeded in miring the sacred with the profane, intertwining the beautiful with the ugly. He found both of these things through a seemingly unquenchable thirst for experience and expressed them through a fountain of poetic and musical production.
The son of a bar owner, Carroll earned a basketball scholarship to the Trinity School, a prestigious Upper West Side private prep school.
The years at Trinity and the subsequent descent into heroin addiction constituted the action of The Basketball Diaries. So was Carroll’s redemption, through art.
From the Times:
Still in his teens, he published a limited-edition pamphlet of his poems, “Organic Trains” (1967), which, with its successor, “4 Ups and 1 Down” (1970), won him a cult following that was enhanced when The Paris Review published excerpts from his journals in 1970. “Living at the Movies” (1973), issued by a mainstream publisher, won him both acclaim and a wider audience.
Carroll attracted a devoted following, including those with great influence in the world of punk and rock. Keith Richards helped orchestrate a three album deal with Atlantic Records for Carroll’s punk rock outfit, The Jim Carroll Band. Their 1980 release Catholic Boy is considered by some critics the last great punk record.
Here’s a video of Carroll reading his poem, “Just Visiting” from the collection The Book of Nods.
Here’s a video of the Jim Carroll Band song, “People who died,” from the 1980 record Catholic Boy. (this song could be an honorable mention for Obit's Best Songs about death) The song was featured on the movie adaptation of The Basketball Diaries from 1995 featuring a young Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll.
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