Rod McKuen, mega-selling poet and performer, dies at 81
With no formal training, McKuen often turned out a song or a poem a day
NEW YORK — Rod McKuen, the husky-voiced “King of Kitsch” whose avalanche of music, verse and spokenword recordings in the 1960s and ’70s overwhelmed critical mockery and made him an Oscar-nominated songwriter and one of the best-selling poets in history, has died. He was 81.
McKuen died Thursday morning at a rehabilitation center in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he had been treated for pneumonia; he had been ill for several weeks and was unable to digest food, his half brother Edward McKuen Habib said.
Until his sabbatical in 1981, McKuen was an astonishingly successful and prolif ic force in popular culture, turning out hundreds of songs, poems and records. Sentimental, earnest and unashamed, he conjured a New Age spirit world that captivated those who didn’t ordinarily like “poetry,” and those who craved relief from the war, assassinations and riots of the time.
“I think it’s a reaction people are having against so much insanity in the world,” he once said. “I mean, people are really all we’ve got. You know, it sounds kind of corny and I suppose it’s a cliche, but it’s really true; that’s just the way it is.”
His best-known songs, some written with the Belgian composer Jacques Brel, include “Birthday Boy,” ”A Man Alone,” ”If You Go Away” and “Seasons In the Sun,” a charttopper in 1974 for Terry Jacks. He was nominated for Oscars for “Jean” from “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and for “A Boy Named Charlie Brown,” the title track from the beloved Peanuts movie.
Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Dolly Parton and Chet Baker were among the many artists who recorded his material, although McKuen often handled the job himself in a hushed, throaty style he honed after an early life as a rock singer cracked his natural tenor.
McKuen is credited with more than 200 albums — dozens of which went gold or platinum — and more than 30 collections of poetry. Worldwide sales for his music top 100 million units, while his book sales exceed 60 million copies.
He was especially productive from 1968 to 1969, releasing four poetry collections, eight songbooks, the soundtracks to “Miss Jean Brodie” and “A Boy Named Charlie Brown,” and at least 10 other albums. Around the same time, his “Lonesome Cities” album won a Grammy for best spoken-word recording and Sinatra commissioned him to write material for “A Man Alone: The Words and Music of Rod McKuen.”
With his sharply parted blond hair, sneakers and jeans, McKuen was recognized worldwide and thrived in every medium: movies, music, books, television, stage. When not writing or recording, he appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and other talk show programs, formed a film production company with Rock Hudson and toured constantly until he took an extended break in 1981.
“I was tired. I peaked. I left when I was on top,” McKuen told the Chicago Tribune in 2001. “One year, I did 280 concerts.”
He had no formal musical or literary training, but often turned out a song or poem per day and prided himself on writing verse that anyone could understand.
The words written about McKuen were as notable as his own. Often compared to “Love Story” author Erich Segal, he was dubbed “The King of Kitsch” by Newsweek, while the magazine Mademoiselle preferred “Marshmallow Poet.”