Born in Washington, Indiana, McBride spent years traveling around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Nebraska working in radio, before moving to San Francisco, in the early 1950s.

[1] In the summer of 1973, McBride and Bernard Stone hosted a "Fourth of July Party" for Allen Ginsberg at the Turret Bookshop, London.

In January, 2009 McBride appeared at "The British Beat" event as part of the "Back On the Road" exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham.

The event was curated by Professor Dick Ellis, Head of American and Canadian Studies at Birmingham University, and also featured readings by Jim Burns, Ian McMillan, David Tipton and Camelia Ellias.

[9] McBride's first collection of poetry, Oranges, was published in 1960 by Wilder Bentley at the Bread and Wine Press in San Francisco, California.

The first chapter of the book recalls a conversation with Jack Kerouac, who had phoned City Lights to talk to Ferlinghetti about publishing Visions of Cody.

The second chapter of The Astonished I describes the first reading of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (a lament for the death of Dylan Thomas) by Kenneth Rexroth at the Cellar in Green Street, San Francisco.

McBride was strongly influenced by Kenneth Patchen, who introduced him to the work of Giono, Celine, Proust, Nathanael West and William Saroyan.