Audience Beats Path to Ginsberg : Poetry: An icon for a restless generation 40 years ago, the writer draws a capacity crowd at Chapman University in Orange for a broad survey of his work.

The biggest names don’t always make it out to Tehachapi, so 17-year-old Holly Gates, in his black Metallica T-shirt, had joined about 30 of his pals in a six-car caravan to Orange County. They drove three straight hours on Thursday to make it to a show they feared might quickly sell out.

The Tehachapi High contingent got lucky; despite a capacity crowd of more than 1,000 other mostly college and high-school age kids, they managed to find seats in the back of the hall--with an unobstructed view of the stage, no less.

Soon, the man they came to see took his place before the microphone. The New Jersey-bred artist offered an obligatory bit of opening patter, then launched into his first song, a cover to get the audience warmed up.

There were, however, no guitars or samplers in sight. Instead, sitting on a chair center stage, a bespectacled senior citizen in coat and tie squeezed a harmonium and warbled his musical rendition of the William Blake poem “The Tiger.” At first unsure how to react, the audience soon burst into thunderous applause.

The Allen Ginsberg concert had begun.

That the 66-year-old poet might inspire the younger generation to hit the highways in search of Experience, was, of course, nothing new. Forty years ago, along with Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and other writers, Ginsberg had given voice to the Beat Generation and helped send restless youth on the road.

On Thursday, many of the children--and even grandchildren--of that generation came to the Chapman University auditorium to experience for themselves the presence of America’s best-known Beat.

Said Fullerton College student Steve Contreras, 20: “I was so excited about this, I forgot to tape ‘The Simpsons.’ ”

Ginsberg, who often cites “first thought, best thought” as the guiding principle of his writing, had clearly given thought to the needs of his audience.

Speaking and singing for nearly two hours, the poet presented a broad survey of his work. Following “The Tiger,” Ginsberg sang a couple of his own recent compositions, including the “Just Say Yes Calypso,” a mirthful attack on the war on drugs.

After putting the crowd at ease with that musical intro, the poet outlined his 44-year-long career. He read the redolently be-bop “Pull My Daisy,” written with Kerouac and Neal Cassady in 1949, and, his voice as breathless and joyous as if he were speaking it for the first time, 1955’s echt -Beat “Sunflower Sutra.”

Generously annotating his works with explanations of their context and purpose, Ginsberg was not above a bit of name-dropping.

Introducing 1965’s “Kral Majales,” the poet explained that he that year had just arrived in Czechoslovakia after being expelled from Cuba for criticizing Fidel Castro’s treatment of homosexuals.

After spending time in Prague cafes with “a youngster named Vaclav Havel,” Ginsberg described finding himself before 100,000 protesters at an anti-government rally, where he was elected kral majales , or King of May.

The Czech secret police quickly expelled the American troublemaker. From there, he went to London to appear in the Bob Dylan documentary “Don’t Look Back” and to visit the Beatles.

The incident, Ginsberg later learned from documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, had led FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to place the poet on the “dangerous security list.”

“That,” Ginsberg said to riotous applause, “shows you how much money was wasted by the other gay character in America.”

Unlike Hoover, whom recent biographies have asserted to be homosexual, Ginsberg has reveled in his sexuality. He read “Sphincter” and other pieces that celebrated it.

After presenting samples of his work of the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, including “Father Death Blues,” Ginsberg returned to the harmonium, or lap organ, and led the hall in a spirited sing-along.

The crowd, however, wanted more. For nearly two hours after his final piece, Ginsberg remained at the hall, answering questions and autographing his books.

Although many clutched copies of “Howl,” Ginsberg’s best-known work, most seemed less drawn by poesy than by the countercultural spirit they felt the writer embodied.

“I heard that he was a poet from the beatnik generation,” said Tessa Christenson, 19, a Chapman sophomore dressed in sandals and patched jeans. “The whole ‘60s thing is really thrilling to me. I wish I was a part of it.”

Agreed Jessica Mathies, 16, of Huntington Beach: “The Beat Generation is fascinating to me. It just seems like, oh, I wish I could go back in time to Berkeley and see him there.” Mathies had a pair of coffee cups for Ginsberg to autograph. “I thought it would be real beatnik-y,” she said.

Others felt that Ginsberg’s work was in tune with artists of today.

Gates, who had made the trek from Tehachapi, noted the similarities between the poet laureate of the Beats and the heavy-metal rock superstars Metallica:

“Both represent a break with traditional structures; both use metaphor and shocking images” to make their artistic points, said Gates, a member of Tehachapi High’s honors English class.

Greg Rutledge, 19, saw Ginsberg akin less to heavy-metal axmeisters than to a voice more in tune with Middle America: Billy Joel.

“Both represent honesty,” explained the bearded film major from Loyola Marymount University in Westchester. Although Joel’s “Greatest Hits” is Rutledge’s current favorite album, the El Segundo resident brought his Ginsberg CD, “The Lion for Real,” for an autograph.

Ginsberg seemed pleased--and a little surprised--that he has become an icon to a generation whose parents had elected Ronald Reagan.

“I was in Boise, Idaho, two weeks ago, and about a third of the audience was high-school kids,” he said in an interview after his presentation. “There seems to be some resurgence of interest in Burroughs, Kerouac, the whole Beat era.”

The poet said he hoped his young audience would learn from his visit “a sense of humorous respect for each other’s souls, and an awareness of the possibility of release from suffering.”

After that first thought, he added several other goals, including a “tolerance for the manifestation of gay lib” and “maybe some appreciation for the wittiness of the language and a realization of death not being such a bad idea.”

Some who came just wanted a few burning questions answered.

A nervous and shy Pat Robinson, 14, waited more than an hour in line to get Ginsberg’s autograph. Haltingly, he summoned the courage to ask Ginsberg about the basis of certain characters in Kerouac’s “On the Road”:

“I heard that Dean Moriarty is Neal Cassady,” he said. “Is that true? And did Kerouac use you for . . . “

“Carlo Marx,” replied Ginsberg, who went on to stress that while Kerouac’s peripatetic heroes were inspired by himself and Cassady, they weren’t literal representations.

Ginsberg, who holds the title of distinguished professor of English at Brooklyn College, quickly devised a reading list for his young disciple.

“Try ‘Naked Lunch,’ ” he suggested. “Then try Gregory Corso.”

After his encounter with Ginsberg, Robinson explained why he so much liked the Beat world he had sensed in “Sunflower Sutra” and read about in Kerouac’s “On the Road.”

That story of young men out to drink up experience and stimulate their inner and outer selves with women, booze and drugs read to him like a wholesome adventure from a hopelessly innocent era.

Robinson said: “I just kinda like the way they lived their life. Like, to go out without any money and hitchhike or drive across the country. You could never do something like that today--it’s too dangerous.”

But while Robinson might feel the world of the Beats is gone forever, Ginsberg’s own work anticipated a healthy prognosis for the lifestyle he helped popularize.

As he put it in one of his 17-syllable “American Sentences,” the poet glimpsed a future in which “bearded robots drink from uranium coffee cups on Saturn’s ring.”