Ballad of the Skeletons

In The Ballad of the Skeletons, the 70-year-old poet, accompanied by Paul McCartney on drums, organ, and guitar; Philip Glass on piano; and Lenny Kaye on bass, spiritedly declaims what sounds at first like a left-wing polemic against the usual targets. As Allen Ginsberg’s chant sinks in, it turns into something more slippery and interesting: an aging seer’s not-at-all kindly meditation on the folly of earthly passions.