The Pulteney StreetSurvey
The Music Never Stopped
BY ANDREW WICKENDEN '09
Awash in creative energy, Eric Andersen ’65, L.H.D. ’22 left Hobart in 1963 and hitchhiked to San Francisco “with my notebook and my guitar...to meet the Beats,” as he recalls in the 2021 documentary of his career, The Songpoet. Writers like Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti “taught me new ways to see and a new way to live. Their words have freed and inspired my own writing as intensely as any reality that surrounds me.” The following winter, Andersen moved east to Greenwich Village and began composing songs like “Thirsty Boots” and “Violets of Dawn,” which would cement him as a folk musician of the !rst order.
Drawing inspiration from an eclectic range of music, art and literature, he has transcended the folk scene and the “singer-songwriter” label. He has performed in concert with Bob Dylan, Elton John and The Doors, and was part of a trans-Canadian train tour with Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy and The Band — all between writing and recording scores of original songs that have been covered by everyone from the Dead and Dylan to Johnny Cash. Early on, he taught Joni Mitchell her first open tunings, which became her signature style of playing.
Through thick and thin, Andersen’s prolific creative output has continued unabated, with dozens of albums to date alongside essays for National Geographic Traveler and The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats. As he told Rolling Stone last year, “My wife Inge says you’re put on Earth to finish the things you were supposed to finish. And I know with me, in my case, it’s music and writing. I know there are things that are not finished yet. So, you know, we hang in there...to accomplish the things we were planning to do.”