Moondog: The vagabond who became a countercultural icon

The Viking of Sixth Avenue — NYC's most distinct underground figure is the stuff of urban legend: a blind homeless composer, dressed as a viking, who influenced a wave of seminal artists. Now a film is finally bringing his story to light.

In late ’60s New York, anyone wandering between Sixth Avenue and West 52nd Street would be swamped with suits – some filing in and out of the newly built CBS building, some swarming around the nearby ad agencies and corporate headquarters.

Yet in the middle of it all stood a unique figure: a blind man wearing a cloak and Viking helmet, either composing music, selling art or having his photograph taken with tourists.

“He brought such an unusual thing to such a banal place,” says Jim Sclavunos of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

Jim is speaking in The Viking of 6th Avenue, a new documentary about the inimitable street poet, avant-garde musician and underground icon known as Moondog.

The film gathers a spectrum of fans and collaborators to tell a story unlike any other in American subculture – one that touched the lives of everyone from Janis Joplin and Charlie Parker to Allen Ginsberg and David Bowie.

Back in 2009, British filmmaker Holly Elson stumbled across a photo of Moondog on the BBC’s website and felt compelled to investigate his music. It sounded otherworldly yet somehow familiar.

But when she discovered the breadth and reach of his artistic output, she was hooked.

“I thought, ‘This is such a good story, someone must have told it already,’” she says. “The more you go into it, the more magical it becomes.”

Yet despite Moondog’s stature among artists such as Anohni (formerly Antony and the Johnsons, who covered his music), Philip Glass (with whom Moondog lived for a year) and Elvis Costello (who invited him to perform at London’s Meltdown Festival while he was still alive), much of that legacy remained buried in dust-covered boxes, unprocessed rolls of film and Braille scores that have never been heard.