Pop force McKuen dies at 81

NEW YORK – Rod McKuen, the husky-voiced “King of Kitsch” whose avalanche of music, verse and spoken-word 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, California, where he had been treated for pneumonia and 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 prolific 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 cliché, 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 chart-topper 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.

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. About 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.

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 work seemed to call for accompaniment by a single, sad guitar or a sobbing chorus of strings. Among his most quoted phrases: “Listen to the warm” and “It doesn’t matter who you love, or how you love, but that you love.”

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.” A National Lampoon parody interspaced mock verses with dollar signs.