Documentary revisits poet Ed Sanders and the Fugs’ anti-war legacy
Ed Sanders helped build New York’s 1960s counterculture as a poet, musician, activist and publisher, while insisting that his politics have always been rooted in peace and protest. A new documentary about his band the Fugs revisits their mix of poetry, rock, street theatre and anti-war dissent, and brings attention to a group influential in its scene but little known today.
Sanders, now 87, led the Fugs from 1964 to 1969 and re-formed the band in the 1980s with Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver. He also ran the Peace Eye Bookstore and published the zine *Fuck You*, whose motto was “total assault on the culture”; his 1971 book *The Family* chronicled Charles Manson and his followers. The article also recalls Sanders’s encounters with figures including Allen Ginsberg and Jimi Hendrix, and the Fugs’ attempt to “levitate” the Pentagon as an anti-war protest.
- Ed Sanders helped shape the 1960s counterculture through music, writing and activism.
- The Fugs combined poetry, rock and street-theatre spectacle.
- A new documentary revisits the band’s place in the anti-war movement.
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Ed Sanders was a poet and activist in New York’s counterculture, a loose movement that challenged mainstream social and political ideas. He led the Fugs, a band that combined rock music with poetry, theatre and protest.
The band’s work was shaped by opposition to the Vietnam War, which drew the United States into a long and divisive conflict. Its members used performances and public demonstrations to express their views, including joining a protest aimed at the Pentagon, the US defence headquarters.
Sanders also ran a bookshop and published an independent magazine, while writing about other figures and events of the era. The Fugs were influential in their local scene, though they are less widely known today.
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Originally published by The Guardian as “‘We tried to levitate the Pentagon’: the almost unbelievable life of Ed Sanders, trickster god of the US counterculture”.