Ed Ward at his home in South Austin on Nov. 14, 2019 (Photo by John Anderson)
In 1964, when the New Yorker (born Nov. 2, 1948) began scribbling prose for mimeographed folk fanzine
Broadside at the age of 16, rock & roll ranked right up there with newsprint at the bottom of the birdcage or litter pan: utterly disposable.
Teen Beat and
16 ruled the day with “fab pix and fax,” but Ward lit out for an entirely unexplored musical universe the moment Bob Dylan strapped on a Fender Stratocaster and hired young white Chicagoan Mike Bloomfield to issue slashing, bluesy voltage across his new records.
Ward turned toward another mimeographed rag published out of “an apartment above a Greek deli on Sixth Avenue,” he told me in a 2019 interview. Helmed by 18-year-old music obsessive Paul Williams,