Marco Island Diary

“Naples (FL) is a treasure trove for farcical political bumper stickers. One of my favorites is the ‘Stop Socialism’ bumper sticker. Typically this is spotted on a car operated by a gray-haired driver, hurtling along at 33mph on the way to the doctor’s office for free medical care. You know, single-payer ‘socialist’ government-run Medicare…There should be a ‘truth in advertising law about bumper stickers…you should be required to affix a bumper sticker next to it which reads: ‘I am a big, fat hypocrite.’”
–letter in the Naples Daily News

THURSDAY: Michael, the wandering minstrel, had booked me into the delightfully modest Pink House Motel—the only one on the island—which overlooks the water in Goodland, an isolated suburb at the southeast tip, with a handful of restaurants and bars but no shops. To be self-sufficient one must drive four miles to the Wynn Dixie supermarket in the main part of Marco, a relatively affluent community popular with retirees who delight in propping up their mailboxes with cement sea lions or porpoises. I had flown into Fort Myers and on the 40-mile drive down couldn’t help but notice how law-abiding Floridians appear to be about the speed limit.
    Michael Ward-Bergeman was here for a New Year’s Eve concert, the 365th and last of an entire year of playing daily gigs in many parts of the U.S. as well as Venezuela and Europe. “I began to wonder about what it would be like to perform every day” he told me when we met last summer. “Would a momentum develop? Would I discover something new about myself, about music, about others. It became clear that 2011 was the year to do it”.
    Settling into my new home, with nothing to do, I noticed that the television had 100 channels and accidentally stumbled onto the greatest movie ever made: That’s Entertainment. (It’s in three installments). The Marx Brothers…Abbott and Costello… Lena Horne, Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire dancing with Anne Miller…Judy Garland with Mickey Rooney….Gene Kelley dancing with a twin clone…every famous bit from every MGM movie ever made. These were our heroes and heroines, our idols and mentors, and in the days before television the secular gods we all shared. How gracious and grand America now seems to have been in retrospect. Maybe That’s Entertainment should be a mandatory class in the schools of today.

FRIDAY: Naples Botanical Gardens was the venue for today’s concert and our party—which now included Michael’s singer girlfriend, Yulene, and his friend Oscar and wife Anne—admired the floral displays, herb garden, banana palms and fountains as Michael prepared his equipment. He fetches, carries and sets up everything himself while Oscar videotapes endlessly (eventually there’ll be a movie). Understandably, his adventures have been many including getting a hug from his kindergarten teacher at the Long Island elementary school he had attended and a brief appearance at the Zuccotti Park occupation but it was hard to equal the moment here in the Naples garden when a small boy with a watering can walked across the set pausing only to pour water on Michael’s feet. Unperturbed he kept on playing. ...

(read the entire column and
link to access the column archives)

wait-a-minute:

Michael Ward-Bergeman,
originally posted in July 2011 in Ojai, CA

update: Michael and friends conclude their 365-a-gig-a-day tour this week in Florida. Click here to read the original column and watch the interview below...

Winter 2009

John Wilcock
the Ojai Orange

(read the entire issue)

also in the News...

– republished the week of January 14, 2012

An authorized comic book biography of John Wilcock,
art by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall

This IS a book length comic series on John Wilcock. People who enjoy focusing on underground and alternative media are occasionally familiar with John's work, but most often the response is "who's that?" Outside of small press historians and collectors, John remains very unknown. Which makes no sense, the more you learn about him. We're very excited about the opportunity to tell his story. Art for THE STORY OF JOHN WILCOCK is by me and co-conspirator Scott Marshall. Story comes from an extended and ongoing year-long interview with Wilcock, himself. The focus is John's years in New York, roughly 1954-1971.

(read more)

A way with Andy Warhol : John Wilcock recalls life in iconic pop artist's inner circle
Marilyn McMahon, Staff Writer
Santa Barbara News Press

During a journalism career that began when he was 16, John Wilcock has interviewed celebrities — Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Milton Berle, Steve Allen and Bob Dylan, to name a few — was part of enigmatic pop artist Andy Warhol's intimate circle in the 1960s, traveled to exotic locations all over the globe, has written dozens of books ranging from frugal travel to magic, was one of five founders (Norman Mailer was one of them) of the Village Voice and co-founded Interview magazine (still in circulation) with Mr. Warhol.

Today, the 83-year-old writer, who has been described by others in his field as "a libertarian-anarchist" and "a talented Bohemian counter-culture journalist," lives a tranquil life in a rustic cottage he rents on the outskirts of Ojai.

(click here to access the Santa Barbara News Press online where the full text of the article is available by subscription)

Sneak Peak “The Return of the World's Worst Businessman”
Tyler Malone
PMc Magazine

John Wilcock is not what you would call a household name, and yet, he has had a measurable impact on art, journalism and culture-at-large over the last century. He co-founded Interview with Andy Warhol. He also was one of the co-founders of The Village Voice. He has written for countless print and online publications: Frommer’s, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail, The East Village Other, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The Ojai Orange, etc. So why, one feels inclined to ask, is he relatively unknown? The answer seems simple: Wilcock has called himself “the world’s worst businessman.” This self-description makes sense because listening to him one hears the voice of a writer and a traveler and an enthusiast, not at all the voice of a businessman. In an age when it seems like everyone is all about business—art as a business, fashion as a business, everything as a business—it is refreshing to hear someone self-identify as “the world’s worst businessman.” It seems less like he has failed as a businessman and more like he has refused to become one. In addition to all his other accomplishments,...

(read more)

Jewcy Top 10 Art Books of 2010
Margarita Korol

This brilliant remake of a pop primary document is brought to you by John Wilcock, probably the Most Interesting Man in the World in the realm of writers. The Village Voice cofounder had also edited Warhol’s seminal mag Interview in the 70s. The fruit of the book is in the genius of its redesign. After 40 years out-of-print, the newly edited edition is “beautifully redesigned in a bright, Warholian palette” that surrounds a trail of Harry Shunk’s internationally Pop-art-informed camera as well as transcribed interviews with those closest to Warhol that ultimately make up an oral history of the artist’s Factory period. By looking at him through the scope of his peers, this book is the equivalent of Pittsburgh’s Warhol Museum in illuminating qualities of Warhol’s warped mirror on which our American culture was briefly reflected.

Said John Wilcock in explaining the book, “A lot of people really misunderstood him then and indeed still do, although there’s hardly a day when Andy’s name is not mentioned in the paper.” Especially interesting is the timing of Warhol’s booming popularity as it comes half a century after pop rushed the 60s, a period similar to our own with fluxes in economic, political, and civil rights climates.

(read more)

A Reader Comment from the recent New York Times Frugal Traveler post
RN—Sydney, Australia

Not only did John Wilcock shake up staid publishing in the USA, from the Village Voice to the East Village Other, his influence extended to several continents, including Australia & the UK, where - in his mild mannered way - he pushed the boundaries of image and speech. The counter culture was nothing but a dull puddle, until John kicked out the jams and ignited the Underground Press, which attracted absurd prosecutions, that of course boosted circulations. An unsung hero of the sixties,

indifferent to self promotion and the hoarding of gold, it is great to see John get a dash of recognition.

(read more)

A Budget Travel Pioneer on a Time When $5 a Day Was Real (Frugal) Money
nytimes.com: Frugal Traveler
by Seth Kugel

It was the first handwritten letter I’d received in 5 years. Or maybe 10. Signed by John Wilcock, a man I’d never heard of, and postmarked Ojai, Calif., it was waiting for me when I returned from my São Paulo-to-New York summer trip. Mr. Wilcock wrote that he had been an assistant editor at The Times Travel section back in the 1950s, and had written the first editions of “Mexico on $5 a Day,” “Greece on $5 a Day” and “Japan on $5 a Day” for Arthur Frommer in the 1960s.

By George, I thought. This man was the original Frugal Traveler.

(read more)

available in print...

Manhattan Memories
An Autobiography
by John Wilcock

"A GOOD WAY to describe John Wilcock is to say that he is a talented bohemian counter-culture journalist who once played a major role in the emergence of America’s underground press. Born 1927 in Sheffield, England, he left school aged 16 to work on various newspapers in England, and on Toronto periodicals before moving to New York City. There in 1955 he became one of the five founders of the Village Voice in which he and co-founder Norman Mailer wrote weekly columns. Wilcock called his column “The Village Square”, an intended pun. He and young Mailer were not quite friends, although Wilcock was at times annoyed, but always amused, by Mailer’s monstrous ego."

-From the preface of Manhattan Memories, by Martin Gardner
order from lulu.com
also available at amazon.com (in paperback or for your Kindle)
and other online booksellers

The Autobiography and Sex Life of AndyWarhol
by John Wilcock
Edited by Christopher Trela
Photographs by Shunk-Kender

Village Voice and Interview cofounder John Wilcock was first drawn into the milieu of Andy Warhol through film-maker Jonas Mekas, assisting on some of Warhol’s early films, hanging out at his parties and quickly becoming a regular at the Factory. “About six months after I started hanging out at the old, silvery Factory onWest 47th Street,” he recalls, “[Gerard] Malanga came up to me and asked, ‘When are you going to write something about us?’” Already fascinated by Warhol’s persona, Wilcock went to work, interviewing the artist’s closest associates, supporters and superstars. Among these were Malanga, Naomi Levine, Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet, all of whom had been in the earliest films; scriptwriter Ronnie Tavel, and photographer Gretchen Berg; art dealers Sam Green, Ivan Karp, Eleanor Ward and Leo Castelli, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Henry Geldzahler; the poets Charles Henri Ford and Taylor Mead, and the artist Marisol; and the musicians Lou Reed and Nico. Paul Morrisey supplied the title: The Autobiography and Sex Life of AndyWarhol was the first oral biography of the artist. First published in 1971, and pitched against the colorful backdrop of the 1960s, it assembles a prismatic portrait of one of modern art’s least knowable artists during the early years of his fame. The Autobiography and Sex Life is likely the most revealing portrait of Warhol, being composite instead of singular; each of its interviewees offers a piece of the puzzle that was Andy Warhol. This new edition corrects the many errors of the first, and is beautifully designed in a bright, Warholian palette with numerous illustrations. The British-born writer John Wilcock co-founded The Village Voice in 1955, and went on to edit seminal publications such as The East Village Other, Los Angeles Free Press, Other Scenes and (in 1970) Interview, with Andy Warhol.