Day: May 23, 2009

By William Routhier/Beacon Correspondent

Gloucester – First thought, best thought, always. Write free-flowing, spontaneous prose. Give birth to artistic creation in the heartbeat of the moment, the now, the ever-present now.

These were credos of Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and that spirit of unbridled creativity is alive and well in Gloucester musician Willie Alexander.

Alexander, who played with The Lost, the last version of the Velvet Underground, his own Boom Boom Band and The Persistence of Memory Orchestra, is a Boston music legend. Stephen King put Alexander’s song “Mass Ave.” at number 13 on his list of top 25 best rock songs of all time.

Thin and fit at 66, Alexander displays the buoyant energy of an edgy young rocker, but also carries with him the calm wisdom of a man who’s learned what is valuable and lasting. For Alexander, a major part of what is valuable and lasting is the city where he was born and now lives, Gloucester.

Alexander spent the first five years of his life in Gloucester, where his father was the minister of the Baptist Church, then moved to East Providence, R.I., and later to Newtonville, Mass. Just a subway ride away from Boston and Cambridge, Alexander would travel in to hear music at various music joints, like Club 47, which later became the famous Club Passim. It was just before the folk music boom, and Club 47 was a jazz club, home to hipsters and beatniks. To read more, click here…