Back in the day, I was something of a fanboy. For a while there I wrote fan letters to academics and scholars whose work struck a chord with me. I should say fan emails. Even an avid collector of paper like me did not write hard copy letters. So, when I read Kyle Schlesinger’s essay on Robert Creeley as a publisher and editor, I dropped him a line expressing how impressed I was with his essay. It made me see my Black Mountain Reviews and Divers Press items in a whole new light. Same with Oliver Harris. Daniel Kane. Jim Pennington. Roy Pennington. The list goes on.

Most of these initial emails are lost on my end. Part of me believes that hard copy letters are in some ways more likely to survive than emails and texts. But the experts tell me differently; they insist that emails and texts are persistent, even indestructible. Tell that to my initial email to Kyle Schlesinger. I can’t find it. Maybe he has it. That said, I do have my fan email to Reva Wolf. Wolf wrote one of the best books on the Mimeo Revolution of all time: Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s.

Here is what I wrote about her book on the Mimeo Mimeo Blog:

For me, Reva Wolf’s Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s is the mirror by which all books relating to the Mimeo Revolution must stand in front of to judge their appearance. Wolf’s mirror is unforgiving and reveals all blemishes. This was the first book I read that provided a coherent, directed reading of mimeo mags beyond providing a narrative history of a scene and its participants. Wolf does not tell a story, she provides a close, fascinating reading. She has read all the mags; she has dug into the archives, she has watched the films, she has seen the artwork, she has read the interviews and histories, she has talked to the participants, and then wonderfully she weaves it all together in a readable, clear, exciting fashion.

Generally, in the little magazine universe only Modernist magazines get this superstar treatment, such as Mark Morrisson’s The Public Face of Modernism, and to be honest, I do not think anybody has approached what Wolf accomplished. The reason is Warhol no doubt. The success of Wolf’s book stems from art criticism rather than literary criticism. Wolf is an art historian and the better for it. In my opinion, art criticism is far more interesting and exciting in its readings than literary criticism. Wolf’s book is much more innovative and entertaining than Morrisson’s book for example. As we will see further on, the most successful treatments of the Mimeo Revolution have treated the publications in the context of art.

Wolf’s readings of the Warhol covers of C and Fuck You have become the accepted way to approach those magazines. Her treatment of 2/2 Stories for Warhol is fantastic and fun. Her analysis of the Haircut piece in Floating Bear 26 is as close as the shave on Kojak’s head. She ends any doubt over whether Warhol was an intellectual (he was).  Wolf can handle the bread and butter of literary criticism with ease as she shows by documenting how little magazines operate in a creative community and how mags talk to each other and about each other. Any number of literary scholars have dealt with reception theory in terms of little magazines (such as Morrisson). Wolf does it better. In short, her too short book is absolutely brilliant. Yet like a gifted teenager, this book is a bit of a loner. Maybe I’ll think of some company for it in the days to come, but Wolf’s book stands in a class by itself.

One way to see if a work of criticism has made its case, and even to an extent crossed over out of the academy, is whether the book is cited in rare book catalogues. Wolf’s book is a standard reference for bookdealers everywhere and is relied on heavily. It is as essential as Clay and Phillips Secret Location. Only Daniel Kane approaches Wolf’s mastery of New York mimeo.

The minute I finished Wolf’s book I was literally bouncing off the walls with excitement, and I wrote her what amounted to a fan letter. The book was so fun to read, so informative, and so inspiring I had to let her know that she had changed the way I looked at the mimeo mags I had the opportunity to look at every day for years. She revitalized my book collection and infused it with meaning and energy. I would guess that academics do not get fan letters from those outside of the academic establishment very often. Maybe that is for the best, because I think I scared her.

And here is the fan letter:

Professor Wolf

My name is Jed Birmingham. I am a William Burroughs and little magazine collector. This pursuit has lead (sic, Oy!!!) me to studying the material I own and writing about it on a Burroughs site called Reality Studio. As you may know, Burroughs appeared in most of the major magazines of New York in the 1960’s: Floating Bear, Fuck You, C Journal, Yugen, Kulchur, et al.

Your book on Andy Warhol and gossip has been a wonder to me. I cite and link to it often in my articles. Given all the items I have purchased lately dealing with the New York scene, I will be sure to reread your book soon.  It is a wonderful resource. Although I am not an everyday reader, I am not an academic either. In any case, I found your book fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable.

I eagerly await any new work you might have as well as any articles or essays you might suggest. Thank you for your scholarship; it is appreciated.

You might be interested in some of my articles if only for the images that accompany them. Below is a small sampling. I would appreciate any comments, additions or corrections if you so choose.

 http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/kiss-and-couch/
 http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/couch-the-andy-warhol-cover-of-fuck-you/
 http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/burroughs-berrigan-and-the-ticket-that-exploded/

One of the joys of your book was all the great images.

Thanks again

Wolf’s response was not as aloof as I remembered but we did not get in touch ever again as I recall. Going through the Sanders Archive I thought of Wolf and her book once again. Box 349 – `1962-1964, Folder: 1964 Peace Eye Gossip Item Ashbery + Warhol brough her to mind to be exact. Just a scrap of paper really with writing on both sides, and one that was hard to decipher, but I did my best to transcribe it:  

Have quiz on mouth
Ashbery/Drunk took Warhol/hook up/woke up bed full/of big gobs vaseline/+ piss

What would Wolf make of this? She wrote on Sanders and Ashbery extensively in her book but not in this context. Although she does mention Sanders in terms of blow jobs. I can only imagine her take would be brilliant, insightful, and well-researched. Maybe it would only be a lengthy footnote.  

Gossip is a big part of Sanders’ Fuck You publications. The Talk of the Town section of Fuck You, a magazine of the arts is a gossip section for the literary underground of the Lower East Side. A zine like Bugger has tabloid, gossipy elements to it. The Dick is a mimeo gossip tabloid fully realized. I suspect that Sanders got some of the inspiration for these gossipy elements from Warhol as well as Ted Berrigan and C Press. Berrigan is a major figure in Wolf’s book, of course. In 1969, Warhol would publish his own version of The Dick with the publication of Interview, a magazine in part dedicated to gossip. Sinking Bear also plays into this Warhol-Ashbery item in some way. Sanders’ interest in gossip, like the tidbit in the Archive, parallels his foray into investigative journalism in the 1970s, starting with his study of the Manson Family. Investigative journalism is the less tawdry, more serious manifestation of dishing gossip. Keaton has been looking into this angle for quite some time and maybe in the future he will expand on it on Mapping the Secret Location on RealityStudio. Maybe this scrap of gossip involving Warhol and Ashbery will find its way in his account somewhere.

That said, should I email Reva Wolf? Remember me? If she doesn’t respond I can write Chad Bennett a fan email. His book Word of Mouth: Gossip and American Poetry looks promising. There is a chapter on Frank O’Hara, so he must know about the New York mimeo scene. Well, before you write a fan email, you must become a fan. So, I guess reading Word of Mouth is long overdue. It has been sitting on my shelf for ages. On the same shelf as the Wolf book. I wonder if Bennett’s book measures up. Does anyone out there have any word of mouth on it?

Review of Victor Bockris’ The Burroughs-Warhol Connection (Beatdom Books, 2024)

So… Victor Bockris, sometime court jester and definitely court-recorder during Uncle Bill’s Bunker years, the counter-culture con-job that was the Nova Convention, go-between for The Bunker and The Factory, and probably the first commentator-with-genuine-access to note the essential similarity between the two, even if the central figures could not have been more opposite in their outlook.

For all that Burroughs and Warhol were affectless, All American, queer boys, Burroughs was a junkie who wanted to turn all that painful input waaayy down, Warhol needed speed to turn it all up far enough. And yet both somehow succeeded in creating timeless art out of the very time-bound world they found themselves in opposition to, and in doing so became the quintessential commentators on the inevitable decline of the American Imperial Nightmare, unlike any others because of working from a position of such (ironically) insider privelige.

And Victor Bockris had a ringside seat to the whole damned carny ride, and faithfully, lovingly, recorded it ALL, like a cross between the police stenographer taking down the Last Words of Dutch Schultz and the radio-operator broadcasting desperately from the doomed Titanic (lovingly commemorated right here in our local park, in Godalming, Surrey.)

English public school boy turned transatlantic transplant, Bockris set out to “make a place for himself at the table” by quite literally making a place for himself at the table: he somehow managed to schmooze his way into being social secretary and organiser to the previously quite enigmatic William Burroughs, succeeding in introducing him to a whole new generation by all the dinner parties he managed to arrange for Uncle Bill with emerging and established talent ranging from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Susan Sontag, and even, of course, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol.

My one criticism of the present collection would be the inordinate time and page-count allocated to the meeting with Mick Jagger — which was, by all accounts, a bit of a disaster — which no amount of trying to revisit it from various different angles really adds anything to what, at the end of the day, is a non-story. Also, with the passage of time, one has to wonder at the sheer irrelevance of Jagger, and what, if anything, this non-starter of a story manages to communicate. Or not, as the case may be.

Also, one small gripe: I am not sure — and this is echoed by a number of friends that I have shown the book to — what, if anything, is really added by the so-called “Burroughs-Warhol Tapestries” by Bockris collaborator David Schmidlapp? They seem to add little-or-nothing that was not already achieved more clearly and concisely by simply reproducing the original photos (most of which were already available in earlier editions of Victor’s seminal With William Burroughs: A Report From The Bunker. Sorry fellas, sometimes more — just for the sake of it — isn’t always… more?)

One thing that IS a definite addition is the excerpts from Victor Bockris’ diaries, kept at the time he was recording these various counter-cultural historical meetings, and they alone are worth the price of admission. The lengthy interview with Leon Horton, in which Victor describes his background, and writing past present and future, with an open heart (and a “worried penis”) is also not to be missed!

Also essential is Victor’s closing “William Burroughs and Andy Warhol: The Biography of Comparison” in which he states:

In the future, no one will write biographies of one person; all biographies will be about two people. There will be The Biography of Comparison in which one life reflects upon the other, and The Biography of Collaboration in which two people join forces to create a third mind.

In The Burroughs-Warhol Connection Victor Bockris has taken the first step towards both these ends.

Others can only follow…

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

An installment in The Visible Man: A Coffee Table Zine of Photographs of William S. Burroughs

Let’s start with a category of photos that does not make the list: Burroughs and rock stars. So let’s go all Casey Kasem and put on blast all those pix of Burroughs and Patti Smith. Why the fuck does it look like that Patti is always trying to give Uncle Bill a blowjob? Head on his lap waiting for the command to kneel and deliver. Patti, why must you prostrate yourself before Bill like he is your domineering pimp? I understand that Burroughs’ pimp hand, which was his writing hand, of course, was strong as fuck, but, Patti, you should lie down for nobody. Anyone who put on wax an album as sublime as Horses is the equal of any artist in any genre.  

In another photo, Smith stands behind Burroughs. Is Patti standing up for herself? The woman behind the throne. The true source of power behind a doddering king. That would be an interesting reading and one I would welcome, but there is not an element of command on Patti’s part; this is more like the stereotypical stand-by-your-man stuff. Patti as loyal but submissive wife. That song is so played out; Patti, you can and have done better. Do you remember how you transformed and transcended “Gloria” and made her your own? Smith is a creative force of nature and has taken on gods and fought them to a standstill on their own turf before.

Guitar Solo as Porno

Guitar as woman
Listen to her wailin’
Picasso was an asshole
I heard a
Rich man say
As Hendrix
Ate a peach
At Monterey
Tribbing as tribute
Hot shot frottage
At the Old Grey
Whistle Test
Punks thought
Patti was a turn on
Even if she was not
Plugged in
I do not care
What they say
She sure
as hell
Made some noise
anyway

Why should Burroughs be treated any differently? When Patti first came to New York City she aspired to be a groupie and Burroughs was one of her great love affairs. A one-way street for poor Pats. I know, I know, the adoring fanboy is part of Patti’s shtick, be it Keith Richards, Arthur Rimbaud, or Burroughs. I do not find this cute because when you look at the photos of Burroughs and Patti, it is so obviously a pose. The pictures are as staged as reproductions of a crime scene. And Patti the Poseur is Patti at her worst. At the Nova Convention, the real Patti came out bearing fangs, as when she threw a hissy fit upon learning that Frank Zappa was the headliner and she had to have her ego stroked before her performance. Patti knows she is the Queen Bitch to Burroughs’ Godfather of Punk. So why the annoying routine on Patti’s part? Would it be so terrible if there was a pic of Burroughs kissing her bare ass in the toilet stall at CBGB?

And that is what is so grating about some of the photographs of Burroughs with rock musicians. The air of submission of them all. It is borderline S&M-type shit. For Kurt Cobain to come bearing a giant hypodermic needle across his shoulders, crawling on his bloody knees, and lovingly placing his burden upon Burroughs’ doorstep in Lawrence gets to be too much when you know there have been hundreds of lowly pilgrims before him. Cobain was not a mere follower; he was not a bottom to Burroughs; he was a trailblazer who changed the course of rock music forever. He took his source materials and made them his own. There should be no anxiety of influence with Kurt, nor with Patti for that matter. But no doubt this anxiety exists and it has a powerful hold on all those who came searching for Burroughs. Just ask Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Michael Stipe and so on and so on.

And then there are those who bask in Burroughs’ presence trying to get some of his shine. I think of all the sucker fish hovering around the Great White Burroughs looking for some chum. Madonna and Bowie are the biggest offenders here. In the Rolling Stone interview and photo session, Bowie is trying so hard to get some of Burroughs’ spotlight that you swear you can see his glam make-up streaking down his face. And Madonna, well, you just expect her to vogue her ass off, but the pic of her and Burroughs is such an obvious attempt on Madonna’s part to get away from the kid’s table and sit with the adults. She is hoping for some legitimacy and authenticity but the pervading sense that the entire scene was staged for the paparazzi destroys all possibility of hat.

I have to respect Mick Jagger. In the photos of him and Burroughs, there is a definite sense that Jagger does not really give a fuck who Burroughs is (if he even really read Burroughs in the first place) and that Jagger views himself as the alpha male lording over the Bunker like a visiting dignitary. The British royalty bit played to the max. I also like the photo of Burroughs and Joe Strummer. Joe is just hanging out having a beer, shooting the shit, like the good ole boy he was. Joe Strummer, pub rock til the day he died!!!

The photos of Burroughs with rock stars are some of the most famous and iconic pics of Burroughs that exist. These are the shots that are thrown up repeatedly on Facebook and Instagram. The clickbait that generates likes and emojis, but there is no real content here. They are the product of a celebrity culture that, sadly, Burroughs himself courted. Personally I do not believe that Burroughs cared little for the rock star attention and merely played along to be nice. Burroughs played the role of Pope and Godfather much too well. Burroughs as Godfather of Punk is a star turn worthy of Brando. Burroughs enjoyed the offerings of expensive drugs and empty platitudes and dare I say he became seduced by a celebrity culture that overtook the latter part of his career. The Burroughs of the fabricated collectible. The Burroughs of Nike and Gap ads. MTV videos. Burroughs became a rock star himself. Living in a world of photo ops, meet-and-greets, and lip-synched concerts. By the end one thinks of Joe Louis, former champion of the world, greeting gamblers at a Las Vegas casino. Burroughs once a contender to the crown of the Greatest Living Writer reduced to a curiosity to be gawked at. The pics of Burroughs with rock stars are a harsh reminder of how far Burroughs had fallen from the days when he was el hombre invisible and yet seemed to be present everywhere including the placement of his mysterious, elusive image on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. This was a side of Burroughs that could not be fully captured on film. A presence just outside the frame, captured as mere shadow, not a pop culture celebutard fully exposed (and exploited) in front of the camera.

Read further installments in The Visible Man: A Coffee Table Zine of Photographs of William S. Burroughs

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I do not know about you but I am a names and dates guy. If you are here in the Studio, I suspect you are too. Just give us the factoids. Drown us with proper nouns. Shower us with historical dates. So maybe Michael Walker’s 2013 book What You Want Is In The Limo: On the Road with Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and the Who in 1973, the Year the Sixties Died and the Modern Rock Star Was Born caught your eye. I saw it in my Amazon queue and in a few clicks it went on its way to my doorstep. Whew, that title is a mouthful. By the way, what is it with the long and convoluted titles accompanying non-fiction titles nowadays? It is getting ridiculous. The entire contents of the book are right there on display on the cover. In some cases you do not even have to read the book anymore. Anyway, it is not the covers of books that first come to mind when I receive a non-fiction title. Nor the dust jacket flaps nor the author bio nor the images placed in the middle of the book. No, I go straight to the index and look for my good friend Mr. B. More often than not el hombre invisible lurks in there somewhere in the pages of any book I am interested in. What You Want Is In The Limo proves to be no exception. There Burroughs is on page 107 in connection with the Rolling Stones 1972 American tour:

But Gibson-Stromberg [the Stones’ publicists] weren’t just good at spending their clients’ money; they were geniuses at playing the media like Keith Richards plays “Tumblin’ Dice.” Gibson-Stromberg orchestrated the publicity juggernaut for the Rolling Stones ’72 tour that Robert Plant would bitterly invoke when Danny Goldberg is hired to secure Zeppelin mainstream coverage in ’73. For the Stones tour, after landing covers and features in Rolling Stone and the cream of the mainstream magazines, Gibson-Stromberg made sure that writers almost as famous as the band were assigned to the stories. William S. Burroughs was briefly on board; Terry Southern took his place. Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner’s weakness for social climbing was fed by Truman Capote, a bit of stunt casting that resulted in no actual story for Rolling Stone — the magazine ultimately commissioned Andy Warhol to interview him about the tour — but endless free publicity for the band as Capote gabbed about life with the Stones on Johnny Carson. As Gibson summed up the strategy: “I would have liked to have seen Teddy Kennedy come along to write about the Stones. It’s just as ludicrous.”

What?!!? Burroughs could have been on the road with Keef? And rubbed shoulders with his nemesis Truman Capote? What is this about Terry Southern snorting coke with Jagger? Warhol is on the fringes too. Well, I’ll be, it seems like the gang’s all here.  

So not surprisingly the above paragraph hit me with the force of an honest-to-God revelation. I emailed all my friends. Hey, man, did you know Burroughs almost toured with the Stones? Far out! It struck me as one of the greatest What-If’s in the entire Burroughs biography. And I am all about What-Ifs. This is barroom speculation fodder if I ever heard it. Bartender another round, please. Because not only am I obsessed by facts, I am not against fantasizing “alternative facts” if the RealityStudio is not churning out the film I want. You have to ask yourself: What would Burroughs have done?

And then I calmed down. The impact of a fact is dependent on one’s space-time continuum. I just happened to be in the right mind-space for this particular Burroughs fact. I had read it before. Miles’ Call Me Burroughs, which I rely on heavily in what follows, briefly and concisely lays out the facts of Burroughs’ brush with the Stones in the 1971-1972 time period. While reading Miles’ bio, I passed right by those names and dates without a single moment of wonder and excitement. At the time, it was hard to focus on anything in particular given the fact that the biography contained several mind-blowing gems per page. Perhaps what had changed this time around was that I happened to be listening to hours and hours of Stones concerts from 1969 to 1972, which I consider, like many, to be the sweet spot for the band. The Mick Taylor years. I usually stop listening after Exile on Main Street, but in listening to all those YouTube tracks, I happened upon the Brussels Affair deluxe set, recorded live from a series of concerts in Belgium in 1973, organized not so much for the Belgians, as much as for the French fans who could not see the Stones in their home country since the band was exiled due to drug offenses and other outrages that occurred during their stay in the South of France recording Exile on Main Street in the basement of Nellcôte. That concert blew my mind and the live tracks from the most recent album, Goat’s Head Soup, like “Dancing with Mr. D.”, “Star Star”, and “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” demanded that I reassess an album I dismissed because of the dreadful Angie.

So the Stones were definitely on my mind and the time was ripe for it to be righteously blown by the fact that Burroughs could have toured with Mick, Keith, and the boys. To be honest it really should not have been all that surprising. In the star-studded galaxy of the 1960s Underground, Burroughs and the Stones intersected with each other’s orbit for years. The pull of their personalities and personal myths naturally brought them all into proximity. The first interaction that comes to mind is from 1965 at Lester Persky’s “50 Most Beautiful People Party” held at Andy Warhol’s Factory. Burroughs attended, as did Brian Jones, and it is Jones, not the junkie icon Keith Richards, who ultimately may be the most Burroughsian Stone. The fragile, high-maintenance, struggling-to-maintain Jones seems much like some of the Dilly Boys Burroughs fraternized with throughout his London Years. Jones’ death by accidental drowning in his swimming pool on July 3, 1969 — the first member of Rock’s infamous 27 Club — inspired the same whispers of “was he or wasn’t he” that Burroughs’ shooting of Joan engendered.  

Jones, not Mick or Keith, was the first of the group to be plugged into the frequencies of the international Underground (for example Jones conspicuously attended the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967) as well as world music. Burroughs and Jones shared a deep interest in Moroccan music. In February 1967, just after the infamous drug bust at Redlands, Mick, Keith, and Brian, along with an entourage that included Donald Cammell, Anita Pallenberg, Christopher Gibbs, Robert Fraser, and Michael Cooper, fled to Morocco to escape their legal troubles and the hounding British press. In Tangier the group met up with photographer Cecil Beaton and scenester Brion Gysin. In his autobiography, Life, Keith states that Burroughs was along for the ride as well. This appears to be a mis-recollection on Keith’s part as Burroughs was in London and did not visit until the summer, but an understandable one given the legend that surrounded Burroughs in Tangier; his presence pervaded the place and the Stones were in Morocco in large part due to the myth Burroughs and Paul Bowles created. In any case, Burroughs was there in spirit as he expressed sympathy with the Stones’ suffering under persistent drug harassment. In a letter to Gysin on April 20, 1967: “The drug nonsense here goes on and on. The Rolling Stones are searched wherever they go and were physically attacked by the French immigration officials at Orly. England is like a South Sea island hit by measles no resistance.”  

As usual Gysin was star struck. Butterfly on a Wheel: The Great Rolling Stones Drugs Bust quotes Gysin’s initial impressions as follows:

The action starts almost at once. Brian and I drop acid. Anita sulks and drops sleepers. (She) goes off to sleep in the suite she shares with Brian. Keith has plugged in and is sending some great throbbing sounds winging after her and on out into the moonlight over the desert. . . . Robert (Fraser) puts on a great old Elmore James record out of his collection. Get Mick doing little magic dances for him. For the first time, I see Mick really is magic. So, as the acid comes up on me, Brian recedes into Big Picture (sic). Looks like a tiny celluloid Kewpie doll banked all around by a choir of identical little girl dolls looking just like him, chanting his hymns . . . Room service arrives with great trays of food in which we toboggan around on the floor. I am sorry to say Food? Who needs it? How very gross.

In Stones lore the trip would be famous for the drama involving Brian, Keith, and Anita, whereby Keith and Anita became romantically involved during Brian’s brief absence for health reasons. As the trip progressed the relationship became cemented after Brian threatened to beat Anita in Morocco when she rebuffed Brian’s request that she engage in an orgy with local prostitutes. The dynamics of the band would never be the same.

On a more positive note, the trip was also important for initiating Jones’ interest in Moroccan music. In 1968 Jones returned to Morocco, again accompanied by Gysin, to make recordings of the Master Magicians of Jajouka on July 29. Burroughs listened to the tapes with Jones soon after in Tangiers. From With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker:  

I first met Brian Jones in the Parade Bar in Tangier. He had just returned from the Village of Joujouka, where he had recorded the Pipes of Pan music, which after his death was edited and processed in the studio at a cost of about 10,000 pounds. I went back to his room in the Minza and I listened to a selection of a tape made by a sound engineer with two Uhers. Very, very good job of sound engineering. That came out as the record and cassette of “Brian Jones Plays with the Pipes of Pan” [Burroughs owns and often plays this cassette]

After Jones died, the record company had no plans to do anything about this record, which was unfinished at the time of his death, although it was in pretty good shape. However, the Joujoukan musicians had a union and sent Hamri to London, and with the help of Brion Gysin and an awful lot of finagling and phone calls with the lawyers who were handling Brian’s estate, this thing finally came out and there was eventually some money for the Joujoukan musicians. You see, there was nothing of Brian Jones himself on the record and it was considered to be misleading because he didn’t play. He played with them in one sense: there is a suggestion of that, you see, in playing with the Pipes of Pan, he was playing with the God of Panic…

George Chkiantz was the sound engineer Burroughs remembered. Burroughs made an impression as well. Chkiantz had a vivid memory of “a guy in a homburg, with a black umbrella and a raincoat, looking pale and saying, ‘I’m not feeling very well, I’m off to the chemist.’ That is the sum total of what I remember, thinking how, when it was 30 or 35 degrees [Celsius], could a guy conceivably be wearing a black hat!”  

Stanley Booth recounts a story of Gysin’s on Brian Jones’ reaction to the Moroccan ceremony:

And at one moment dinner obviously had to be somewhere in the offing, like about an hour away, everybody was just beginning to think about food and we had there acetylene lamps, giving a great very theatrical glow to the whole scene, rather like limelight used to be, a greenish-white sort of tone. And the most beautiful goat that anybody had ever seen — pure white — was suddenly led right across the scene, between Brian and Suki and Hamri and me, sitting on these cushions, kind of lying back, and the musicians out in the courtyard about ten feet away right in front of us, so quickly that for a moment hardly anybody realized at all what was happening, until Brian leapt to his feet, and he said, “That’s me!” and was pulled down and sort of subsided, and the music went on . . .

In 1973 Burroughs himself accompanied a musician to Morocco to experience the Master Musicians in action, in this case with jazz experimentalist Ornette Coleman, who also recorded an album influenced by his time there, Dancing in Your Head. The influence is strong on the track, “Midnight Sunrise,” which features Coleman alongside the Master Musicians recorded during a religious ceremony attended by the group. On assignment for Oui, a men’s magazine, Burroughs wrote a straightforward account of the scene he observed accompanied by an article by Craig Karpel in turn observing Burroughs in action. The previous trip with Brian Jones is mentioned only in passing but by this point Gysin’s initial impression of the Stones had soured. Gysin considered Jones cheap and selfish and regretted that Jones never compensated the musicians for their work on the eventual album: Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, which was released in 1971 after Brian’s death. The album is credited with introducing Moroccan music to a wider audience and starting the world music trend. According to Call Me Burroughs, Derek Taylor, the renowned publicist, hired Burroughs to write sleeve notes for the album and to record a radio spot: “Listen to this music, the primordial sounds of a 4,000 year-old rock ‘n’ roll band.” In the 1995 reissue CD Burroughs provides notes to the album booklet, but what is less-known is that Burroughs along with Jones and Timothy Leary blurbed the LP in 1971 in a full-page advertisement that appeared in the rock press: “Hashish visions take flesh in the Pipes of Pan. All is permitted to the children of panic.”  

So in a sense Burroughs had already provided his take, however brief, on a Rolling Stones project before he was asked to be a magazine’s special correspondent to the Stones’ 1972 American tour. What magazine that was seems unclear. In Call Me Burroughs, Miles states it was Playboy and that the project was all set up by Gysin. Despite Gysin’s insistence that Burroughs take the assignment, after initially signing on, Burroughs had second thoughts and declined the offer. Turnabout is fair play. In 1965, Playboy rejected Burroughs’ account of his return to his hometown of St. Louis, which was eventually published in Paris Review later that year along with Conrad Knickerbocker’s groundbreaking interview with the then largely unknown author.  

For this most recent snafu with Playboy, Burroughs felt he had no connection with rock and roll and therefore had nothing original to say and just like with the offer to tour with Dylan on the Rolling Thunder tour in 1975, Burroughs hated the idea of being in an entourage. Burroughs inspired his own entourage. He was too much the rock god himself to bow down to the Stones. In addition, at the time, Burroughs was compiling his archives for sale, which required all his time and effort. Ultimately the financial benefits of the archive trumped his limited interest in covering the Stones. Viewed in that light, Gysin agreed. Burroughs: “So he got me into it and then turned right around, I didn’t want to cover their tour in the first place.” This upset Playboy editors: “There are a lot of people going to be disappointed by this decision, not least the Stones.”

In S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones, Robert Greenfield states the magazine assignment was offed by Saturday Review:  

It’s a terrible world all right, the rockbiz and the rock PR biz and the magazine world, and things going so fast and furiously that when Saturday Review phones wanting to send along William Burroughs, it’s an idea that gasses everybody. With the five major publication taken care of, Gibson figures it’s okay to fuck around a little, and Bill Burroughs is such a crazy sonofabitch anyway. God he could be great for the film they are going to make of the tour. The whole thing is an upper. When Burroughs drops out and Saturday Review substitutes Terry Southern, well, that’s okay too. At least he’s famous.

The Saturday Review was an American weekly, general-interest magazine that was in transition in 1971/1972, as it has just been sold prompting the resignation of long-time editor Norman Cousins. The magazine then split into four monthlies on various topics like Arts or Science. Perhaps the new owners were trying to shake things up and generate some buzz with the hiring of Burroughs to cover the Stones. It was not a very original idea. Burroughs had been used by magazines, little, mainstream, or men’s, for shock value and cool cachet for over a decade by this point. For example in 1959, poetry editor of Saturday Review, John Ciardi, provided one of the very first critical reviews of Naked Lunch. His positive and perceptive review proved crucial to the legal strategy of Barney Rosset down the road with Grove Press. Ciardi testified at the Naked Lunch trial and was a lynchpin of the defense. Ciardi left his post at Saturday Review in 1972 as well.  

So it makes sense that Saturday Review would ask Burroughs to cover the Stones and Greenfield should know. He was there and was the Stones-approved correspondent for the tour. He had been following the Stones from their farewell concert in the U.K. in March 1971 on to Nellcôte on through the 1972 American tour. Few people know more about the Stones during this period than Greenfield. Furthermore, when Burroughs dropped out, Terry Southern put his nose in the Stones’ business (and their cocaine) with relish. Southern’s piece, “The Rolling Stones’ U.S. Tour: Riding the Lapping Tongue,” appeared in the introductory Arts edition of the Saturday Review on August 12, 1972, as a cover story, further suggesting that Burroughs was contacted by the Saturday Review not Playboy. That said, in what became the stuff of legend, the Stones stayed at the Playboy Mansion during the Midwest portion of the tour and made it their home base. Interestingly Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione acquired Saturday Review in 1987.

Just a few years later in 1975, again in connection with a U.S. tour, Burroughs accepted an offer from Crawdaddy, a rock magazine in the image of Rolling Stone and Creem, to attend a Led Zeppelin concert at Madison Square Garden in order to record his impressions and interview guitarist Jimmy Page. At the time Burroughs had a standing gig with the magazine for a column, much like he did in the late 1960s for Mayfair, the British equivalent of Playboy. Burroughs and Page bonded over their shared interest in the occult — Page lived in Aleister Crowley’s former residence (Burroughs knew the real estate agent) — as well as a discussion on Burroughs’ interest in using sound frequencies as weapons and for crowd control.  

As recounted in What You Want Is In The Limo, Led Zeppelin broke all the rules then existing about rock and roll tours and in the process rewrote them for the future, but as the book makes clear, the Rolling Stones were there first. During their 1972 American tour, they set the bar for financial success (around $4 million for a 30-date tour) and raised the roof in term of rock and roll excess. As Led Zeppelin knew and tried to correct with their 1973 tour, they were not viewed by the media as on the same level as the Rolling Stones. No matter how hard Led Zeppelin would try, the 1973 tour would not equal the Stones of 1972. Surely Led Zeppelin out-earned the Stones ($6 million), but in terms of hip credentials and decadent cool The Song Remains the Same will never approach Cocksucker Blues.  

Reading Burroughs in Crawdaddy, I wonder what he would have done with the unprecedented spectacle of the 1972 Stones tour. In terms of being an event, it was on par with the 1968 Democratic Convention, which Burroughs covered for Esquire alongside Terry Southern. I guess that if Burroughs was going to cover any Stones concert, it would have to have been Altamont, which resulted in the beating of Jefferson Airplanes’ Marty Balin as well as four deaths, including the murder of Meredith Hunter at the hands of the Hell’s Angels, which was caught on film by Baird Bryant, who previously filmed scenes for Easy Rider and Shirley Clarke’s Cool World. Besides the obviously Burroughsian elements of Wild Boys occurring at Altamont, the Stones set list from that concert seem particularly on point: the occult of “Sympathy for the Devil,” the misogynistic “Under My Thumb,” the menacing juju of “Midnight Rambler,” and the apocalyptic “Gimme Shelter.”  

Burroughs on Altamont. Burroughs provided advice to Stanley Booth, who covered the 1969 tour and wrote one of the greatest books on rock ever written: The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. Booth remembered:  

Burroughs was really above the fray, but he was very helpful to me. He lived in London at Duke Street, St James and I’d go and see him at his flat. He gave me a lot of good advice. We talked about Scott Fitzgerald, whose work he valued very highly, and he told me to read Carlos Baker’s book about Hemingway. He also told me not to smoke hash in front of the window. Those were both pieces of good advice. Uncle Bill was aware that he was a very famous junky, probably the most famous junky in the world at that time.

It is definitely an intriguing What-If, but Burroughs, on the equally interesting and in some respects more Burroughsian — as evidenced by Cocksucker Blues — 1972 tour, could actually have been a reality. This is especially true when you consider that fact that the attraction between Burroughs and the Stones orbits was never as strong as that in that 1971-1972 timeframe. Now I suspect Burroughs would have phoned it in: a brief introduction discussing the radical potential of rock to reach a mass audience of youth waiting for marching orders (such as Burroughs musing on the Stones for a projected 20th Anniversary book: “Rock and roll music is a sociological phenomenon of unprecedented scope and effect . . . The Stones as heroes of the cultural revolution . . . front line fighters pushed around by police and customs agents”) shifting to a brief interview with Mick discussing his recent role in Performance and maybe some interaction on the possibilities and potentials for a film version of Naked Lunch onward to a coda cut-up regarding the particulars of the 1972 tour. The Crawdaddy piece on Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin in a nutshell.

But that is not what My Burroughs would do; no, the 1972 tour was ripe to be covered in a truly Burroughsian fashion. How about a Roosevelt After Inauguration-style routine that depicted the behind-the-scene action of the tour? Ticket scalpers preying on the milling crowds in a slave auction-type atmosphere complete with young single mothers offering up there first-borns to rapacious sex traders for shitty obstructed seats in the back row or boyfriends ponying up their nubile girlfriends for group fuck scenes performed out in the streets in front of the arena, all to be televised live on the Dick Cavett show.  

Or perhaps a routine depicting the backstage scene of roadies and police security, both in the form of purple ass baboons, terrorizing groupies, drug dealers, and hangers-on with all manner of violence and mayhem. Flash cut to beatings and rapes, the conspicuous consumption of mass quantities of heroin injected with massive syringes the size of Charlie Watts’ drumsticks, and the sound of the hog-like snorting of piles of cocaine of Andes proportions, all orchestrated by the baboons before and on a crowd willing to do anything to get into the dressing room in order to hold court with the distant, disgusted, and disdainful Kings of Rock.

Or maybe Burroughs might have recreated an AJ’s Annual Party-type scene from Naked Lunch as held at the Playboy Mansion in Chicago. Mick and Bianca, Keith and Anita up on a makeshift stage performing, like Johnny and Mary, wild acts of gymnastic fuckattude before a rapt audience of purple-assed baboon roadies and Playboy bunnies, who increasing agitated and turned on by the performance on-stage — in which the participants shift genders, suck each other off like Mugwumps, and hang each other into spontaneous orgasm — themselves engage in a massive orgy that threatens to ignite into flames giving off fumes of semen, pot smoke, dynamite, and patchouli. Behind Mick, Bianca, Keith, and Anita is a large movie screen on which is projected a Burroughs-style cut-up film flickering rapid fire images featuring the ritual murder of Meredith Hunter at Altamont intercut with split second stills of Brian Jones, interspersed with shots of the band performing “Brown Sugar,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “Street Fighting Man,” a fitting soundtrack of sex, drugs, and revolutionary/apocalyptic violence, alongside the Pipes of Pan, interlaid with footage of the daily rushes from Robert Frank’s Cocksucker Blues, all played at the volume of 7 Hertz, so that the audience’s organs rub together with such force that they erupt into geyser-like orgasms and burst into flames. The smoke clears into near silence with only the sound of Hef and Bill Wyman playing backgammon in the middle of a room full of charred carcasses; the two men seeming for all the world like nothing ever happened.

Probably not, but we can always have our fantasies.

Even for the Stones 1971/1972 was a very druggy time. From the groupies to the roadies up to the band themselves, heroin was everywhere. Keith in particular was in the throes of addiction. Not surprisingly Keith was drawn to Burroughs. In 1971 Keith attempted to kick using the apomorphine cure. It was a dreadful experience. Keith on the cure from Life:

Off of Bill Burroughs, I got apomorphine, along with Smitty, the vicious nurse from Cornwall. The cure that Gram Parsons and I did was total anti-heroin aversion therapy. And Smitty loved to administer it. “Time, boys.” There’s Parsons and me in my bed, “Oh no, here comes Smitty.” Gram and I need to take a cure just before the farewell tour of 1971, when he and his soon-to-be wife, Gretchen, came over to England and we went about our usual ways. Bill Burroughs recommended this hideous woman to administer the apomorphine that Burroughs talked endlessly about, a therapy that was pretty useless. But Burroughs swore by it. I didn’t know him that well, except to talk about dope — how to get off or how to get the quality you’re after. Smitty was Burroughs’ favorite nurse and she was a sadist and the cure consisted of her shooting you up with this shit and then standing over you. You do as you’re told. You don’t argue. “Stop sniveling, boy. You wouldn t be here if you hadn’t screwed up.” We took this cure in Cheyne Walk, and it was Gram and me in my four-poster bed, the only guy I ever slept with. Except we kept falling off the bed because we were twitching so much from the treatment. With a bucket to throw up in, if you could stop twitching for enough seconds to get near it. “You go the bucket, Gram?” Our only outlet, if we could stand up, would be to go down and play the piano and sing for a bit, or as much as possible to kill time. I wouldn’t recommend that cure to anybody. I wondered if that was Bill Burroughs’s joke, to send me to probably the worst cure he’d ever had.

Immediately afterwards Keith began using again. As Keith’s drug issues progressed throughout the 1970s, his interest and fascination with Burroughs persisted. Both men lived by their own rules, saw through mainstream society’s bullshit, and served as icons for the outlaw lifestyle. In fact, Keith’s publicists felt Burroughs and Keith were too closely associated and that Burroughs’ reputation as the Pope of Dope shed a bad light on the Glimmer Twin. In 1978, with yet another drug bust on his hands, Keith was advised not to attend the Nova Convention because the close proximity to Burroughs could adversely affect his upcoming drug trial in Toronto. Keith was on the poster announcing the Convention and audience members were greatly upset at his absence. Frank Zappa replaced him and performed the Talking Asshole routine.

Keith was not only familiar with Burroughs’ methods of cure, but apparently also with his cut-up method. As documented by Beatdom and elsewhere, Mick and Keith experimented with the cut-up technique.  

Aside from the love of guns, hard drugs, being cultural phenomenons and part-time movie stars, what did William S. Burroughs share with the Rolling Stones?

Recently released on DVD, Stones In Exile is a documentary premiered by the BBC in May. Amid the great footage of the boys jamming and living at Keith Richards’ house in France, we get a glimpse of the song-writing process that put Jagger/Richards on the pop map.

One pleasant surprise, among many, is the creation of the song, “Casino Boogie“. 

“Casino Boogie” was written in the famous “cut up” style created by Williams Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Words and phrases and cut from sentences and thrown into a hat. Then the cut up pieces of language are magically arranged by the forces that be and are divined by the artist, who randomly picks out the cut up pieces and puts them together into some semblance of order

From an interview in Uncut from August 2010, Jagger was asked about the lyric “million dollar sad”:

That song was done in cut-ups. It’s in the style of William Burroughs, and so-on. “Million Dollar Sad” doesn’t mean anything. We did it in LA in the studio. We just wrote phrases on bits of paper and cut them up. The Burroughs style. And then you throw them into a hat, pick them out and assemble them into verses. We did it for one number, but it worked. We probably did it ‘cos we couldn’t think of anything to write.

Keith recalled:

I think when we got to Casino Boogie, Mick and I looked at each other and just couldn;t think of another lyrical concept or idea for the song. I said to Mick, “You know how Bill Burroughs did that cut-up thing – where he would randomly chop words out of a book or newspaper and then try to sort them up?” That’s how we did the lyrics for Casino Boogie, and that was Bill Burroughs’ biggest influence on the Rolling Stones.

Here are the lyrics:

No good, can’t speak, wound up, no sleep.
Sky diver insider her, skip rope, stunt flyer.
Wounded lover, got no time on hand.
One last cycle, thrill freak Uncle Sam.
Pause for bus’ness, hope you’ll understand.
Judge and jury walk out hand in hand.
Dietrich movies, close up boogies,
Kissing cunt in Cannes.

Grotesque music, million dollar sad.
Got no tactics, got no time on hand.

Left shoe shuffle, right shoe muffle,
Sinking in the sand.
Fade out freedom, steaming heat on,
Watch that hat in black.
Finger twitching, got no time on hand.

Burroughs was one of the seemingly thousands of visitors who passed through the doors of Nellcôte, perhaps inspiring Mick and Keith’s experimentation. The line “kissing cunt from Cannes” has long inspired controversy. Does it refer to Bianca Jagger, Mick’s new wife, thought by many to be the Yoko of the band? Or Mick’s infidelities? Or does the line refer to the cut-up method itself? Some insist that the line is “kissing cut in cans,” such as the cutting and editing of film or of word associations, like that in Casino Boogie.

Most interestingly, if the Stones’ publicists pursued the services of Burroughs to cover the tour, Burroughs somewhat reluctantly pursued Jagger in return. In 1971 the movie version of Naked Lunch seemed a real possibility. Gysin completed a script, which Burroughs hated, and Gysin proceeded to make the rounds in Hollywood to get the movie made. Burroughs attended the premier of Performance and inscribed his program “Hassan-i-Sabbah was here”; he placed the program in his archive, and it is located in Folio 130, item 6. Burroughs thought Jagger was “great” but feared that in the future he might be distracted by groupies. Performance had numerous Burroughsian elements, including mention of Soft Machine (the song “Memo from Turner” features the line: “the man who works the some machine”) and Hassan-i-Sabbah, as well as utilizing, early in the movie, the cut-up methods that Burroughs experimented with in the 1960s with Antony Balch.  

According to Call Me Burroughs, in an effort to ingratiate himself with Jagger, Burroughs attended the band’s farewell concert at the Marquee Club in London on March 26, 1971, and the band’s farewell party on March 30th. Burroughs attended with reservations: “That’s it. I never paid court. I don’t like their music. I don’t like rock and roll at all.” Further on the party:  

I have never mastered the art of talking to people in the bedlam of a noisy party. Some people can do it, they get their voices right through all that stuff, and I remember Keith Richards talking to me and I couldn’t understand one word he said! Not a word. It wasn’t my thing. I didn’t have a good time at all. I don’t like parties. I hate parties. 

Despite all the discussion and flirting, Jagger, who initially expressed interest in playing Lee, the lead character, refused to commit to the project; Jagger wanted to name the director and not use Balch, who Jagger hated in some part because in a meeting Balch noted the tightness of Jagger’s trousers, which Mick did not appreciate. In addition Jagger invited Burroughs to his May 12, 1971 wedding to Bianca Jagger in Saint-Tropez. Burroughs begged off: “I’m not gregarious; I don’t want to be involved in a massive thing like that.” Again Jagger was offended.  

With Jagger out of the picture, they moved on to James Taylor, who the studio liked based no doubt on his performance in Two-Lane Blacktop, a cult classic from 1971, also starring Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. A James Taylor concert ticket is in the Burroughs archive in the same Folio as a Rolling Stones badge issued by Massachusetts Department of Public Works, perhaps from this period. The film went through a rewrite involving Terry Southern and one wonders if behind-the-scenes, Southern’s pestering of Keith and Mick about appearing in the film in some capacity, not his free-wheeling over-indulgence in the Stones’ lifestyle, resulted in Southern being thrown off the tour. Here is Greenfield on Southern working Keith backstage in Dallas:

A lot of people seem to have left the party, but time has little or no meaning at this stage of the game. Terry is leaning over and pitching to Keith, trying to sell him a movie. “Fantastic thing is, Keith, it’s you and Mick . . . musicians, see, from Kansas City . . open on a great shot of the two of ya in a bar . . . long-distance call, cut to New York City and all these fucked-up changes you go through making it.”

“Us from Kansas City?” Keith says. “You jokin?”

For years people have been trying to lay movie deals on the Stones, drag them into films that they’ll have to write the music for. Donald Cammel, who succeeded in getting Jagger and Anita Pallenberg for Performance, Southern, even William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, who are interested in having Jagger write the music for the film version of Naked Lunch. Somehow the Stones relate to it easily, as though it were only proper that they be consulted for the soundtrack for the best in anarchy their generation has produced.

“I’ve spoken to William about it,” Southern says now, “and it all depends on you doin the music . . .”

Ah, no, don’t really know at this time, Terry,” Keith mumbles.

“Ah, well, a certain person there . . . we uh both know . . . would love you bein obstreperous about it.

“Me bein physical, you mean?”

“No, acutally, I’ve uh spoken to William about and he assures me ah em aha (in a low voice) you would not have to ah . . . or even, uh, unless of course you wanted to.”

“Tell me whyyy/the doctor has no faaaaaace,” the cassette cries, unwinding again. No one in the room has the strength to turn it off, or try and answer the question.

If Mick was turned off by Balch’s advances, Southern’s role as pimp might not have just fallen on deaf ears. Keith exploded at him, “Can’t you see I’m sick? What the fuck do you want from me? Just fuck off and leave me alone.” Eventually the heat surrounding a film version of Naked Lunch cooled.  

In 1971/1972, it looked like Burroughs and the Stones would collaborate in some fashion. It was not to be. Over the years, Burroughs remained an occasional influence. In 1983 on the Undercover album, Jagger acknowledged that Burroughs inspired the title track “Undercover of the Night,” considered by some the Stones’ last great single:

The sex police are out there on the streets
Make sure the pass laws are not broken
The race militia has got itchy fingers
All the way from New York back to Africa 

Jagger: “I’m not saying I nicked it, but this song was heavily influenced by William Burroughs; Cities Of The Red Night, a free-wheeling novel about political and sexual repression.” 

Meanwhile, Burroughs ran hot and cold on Jagger and the Stones. Burroughs often stated openly that he hated rock music; nonetheless Jagger would continue to interest him. He said that he admired Jagger’s work and was impressed by the man. Burroughs on Jagger in 1979:  

Mick gave off the impression of great energy and intelligence and a sort of special cool of knowing where his connections are going. I had admired his work, what I’d heard of it, and I also admired him because of the pressure he was under. There’s someone who is idolized and yet receives shockingly rude treatment. Six cabdrivers refused to have him in the cab when he and Marianne Faithfull arrived at the airport. There’s something about Mick that arouses great antagonism in a certain kind of person, the cabdriver-hardhat-redneck strata throughout the world, and to be able to stand up to that and be able to maintain his equilibrium and cool, as he certainly has, is quite something.

But Burroughs could not help but feeling the antagonism that he described as experienced by “rednecks.” In 1980, Victor Bockris coaxed Jagger to the Bunker for a meeting with Burroughs. The results were far from electric. By this point, Burroughs found Jagger narcissistic and obnoxious and experienced a Jagger in full-blown star mode, who had little interest in spending time chatting in the Bunker. The meeting, attended by Andy Warhol, lasted approximately fifteen minutes.  

But perhaps Burroughs on the Stones in 1972 might have been different. For a brief moment in time, Burroughs and the Stones were drawn together by the gravitational pull of their personalities, creative interests, and personal myths. Surely, the result might have been a total eclipse providing no sparks of insight. But maybe, just maybe, there could have been fireworks that would have further illuminated their respective legends. Unfortunately it was not to be.

POSTSCRIPT:

Or was it? In a last ditch effort to see if any fragment exists documenting Burroughs’ aborted magazine assignment, I passed by the menacing gaze of the lions guarding the entrance to the Library of Interzone. Perhaps in the Borgesian archive of Interzone, there remained some evidence of an event that never happened. And there after hours of digging I found, lying between Folio 121 on the Chicago Esquire piece and Folio 122 on the Rolling Stone interview with Robert Palmer, a single sheet of typewritten paper. Burroughs always understood the value of that space between. No date, no title. Just a single paragraph, which suggests a reality that just might stoke our wildest fantasies.  

Before Burroughs declined the assignment, he wrote a short cut-up of his impressions of the Stones that covered not just the 1972 tour, but also his brief, but tantalizing, history with the band. It is all there: the death, drugs, and destruction that were the history of the Stones, and of Burroughs himself, with flickers of Altamont and the “murder” of Jones and Joan. It is just a taste, but, like heroin, it makes one wanting more, and wondering what might have been if Burroughs allowed himself to get swallowed up in the hull of the Lapping Tongue, to lurk backstage with the cocksuckers and cocaine cowboys, to stand in the wings of the stage alongside the roadies and groupies as the PA thundered “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones!!!!!,” and to aurally mainline some “Brown Sugar” at the level of 7 Hertz.

Ouston — Oston — Ewyork — Kif with the junkie from Gothenburg — opium jones cops bennie at the bounty bar — dead flowers bloom in the bottom of the dropper — everything is permitted at altamont — just a shot away — no sign of sympathy — master musicians Grateful Dead hashish assassins — hunting the hunter — under my thumb with a sticky trigger finger — goat gods beyond their depth in swimming pools — hot rocks rocks off — out of their heads on hot shots — bye bye Johnny Yen — Nellcote lies in the heart — madame rachou mrs Murphy Spanish tony — and head west wanted by the French police — bribing judges with creative capital — cocksuckers orgasm in blue sparks — smell of jockstraps and top hats — antenna of jissom on pirate radio — 3000 tickets exploded in Montreal — riot noises feedback played back on abbey road — the subliminal kid tailor made solos — the pipes of pan — it will soon be here or not — butterfly wheels down Main Street — cruising for the man — waiting in line with mister jimmy — at bickford’s dunking pound cake — all my friends are purple ass baboons — hanged boy spurts spontaneous like Alice Cooper — roadies on the nod — groupies on the make — turd on the run — ladies and gentleman it’s a gas gas gas —

Charles Rotmil, Robert Indiana

In contradiction to shooting nakedly and honestly as a street photographer, I was also an assistant commercial photographer, working on the edges of dishonesty. W. Eugene Smith, the uncompromising photojournalist, who was once my neighbor on 6th Avenue in the Flower District, told me he would never work on a cigarette advertisement. Most of the time I hated to assist in shoots such as fake soup ads and cigarette campaigns. Working five years on the dark side, I did mostly food photography with Irwin Horowitz. Once, for Campbell’s Soup, an account executive wanted us to show that the soup had lots of ingredients, which it did not. So we put in clear marbles to raise the level of the soup and make the ingredients rise to the top. A lawyer came by the set and said we could not do this anymore, so we had someone make us shallow soup dishes. And so it went. 

One time we did a food story for Women’s Day about a chocolate cake that Ann Landers had created. The Dear Abby variety. We used foam boards cut into a circle and then covered them with shaving cream. No one could tell if it was real or not. Another time we had Phyllis Diller in the studio for a recipe she called Garbage Soup: “All the garbage in the fridge that you could throw together. Like stone soup, the one where you start with a stone and water and then add all kinds of stuff to it…” She was a card. Always funny. 

We had one shot when the art director wanted Phyllis to be hanging backwards with her arms outstretched. I was asked to hold her down behind the set. So I held my arms around both her legs and part of her hips, while she hung over backwards and did her thing, flinging her arms around. To this day, I remember it as not the most pleasant of embraces.  

Bill Monroe

With Bill Monroe, the photographer, I was interviewed for a job and he told me to show up at 4AM for a shoot. I did not understand why so early, but I showed up. His other assistant was outside the studio in a red Triumph. “Where is your stuff?” the assistant asked me. “What do you mean?” “Your stuff, man; we are going sailing for four days!” We drove back to my pad on East 10th Street and Avenue B to get some underwear and other necessities. 

We drove out to Long Island to meet the sailboat. We would shoot the whole product campaign for Coca Cola in four days and do as many ads as possible. Because this was for European publication, the models had a worldly look. I loved it, but I busted my ass loading Kodachrome 25 and taking light measurements. With such film you could not manipulate the process with the film, so it had to be accurate, or bracket some shots. The situations were complex: typical sailing shots of young couples looking as happy as possible, leaning over the edge of the boat and drinking Coke. In between shots, the art director rolled joints for all of us. I could not partake, because I would not have been able to tell an F stop from a stop sign. I had to keep my head clear. We set beach parties with the sun setting in the background, and, of course, the party would go on. I had to stay in a motel on the shore while the director and the rest of the crew stayed on the boat with some of the models.

Peter Basch

I also worked for Peter Basch, who was a glamour photographer, shooting people like Brigitte Bardot and other movie stars. I once opened the door to Kevin McCarthy, who was in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We did not say anything except smile at each other. One day Kim Novak came to the door, all by herself. A stunning woman I thought, and she sort of liked me as well, or maybe that was the effect she had on everyone: Just smile and let you take her in. She went into the studio, and I loaded up some sheet film for a four-by-five view camera. I had trouble loading up film at times; I would miss the groove in the darkroom. If you pulled the slide out and the film was not loaded properly, the film would fall out. Peter came to get the loaded film from me and went back into the shooting studio. I was kept out of that one. Well, the intercom came on with Peter shouting for me to come to the set. When I got in, Novak was lying on a couch in a negligee. Peter was furious at me because some of the film came apart as he tried to load up the camera. “Is this the way to load film?” I was totally humiliated. When I looked over at Novak, she looked at me smiling in a way that said not to worry about it. My prospect of marrying her and having a good life together was blown away right then and there.

Catering to the Famous and Infamous

One time I went to the employment office for New York City and got a job working for a tailor shop as a salesman. I found myself at Sills of Cambridge on the second floor of 49th Street and Fifth Avenue. The shop was run and owned by two brothers, who had a similar store in Cambridge near Harvard University. Their last name was actually Silverstein or something like that but they it shorten it to Sills. Not as Jewish, I guess. The younger brother, Ben, interviewed and hired me on the spot. They liked my look, sort of European with longish hair and a natural turtle neck sweater made in Ireland. In fact, I had bought this sweater from an ad that required exact measurements and the company would knit it custom. Well, I got the sweater back and it fit exactly. It was so tight I could barely breathe. You were supposed to give slightly larger measurements but I did not know this. In any case the Sills / Silversteins liked my looks. 

No one came into the shop off the street. One could walk by and not even know the shop was there. I was not to question anyone who came in, just give them whatever they wanted and have them sign for it. It was really simple. There were yards of fabric and drawers full of fine shirts. There were two kinds of suits. Those that were ready made, but could be altered and even mixed. And the suits made to order after one picked the fabric, basted and so on, until they fit exactly. Those cost much more. 

Leonard Bernstein came in once and asked for a shirt. I opened some drawers, and he picked a white shirt and signed for it. The coolest thing was to act normal and not seem surprised at seeing him. The tailor came out from the back with a jacket he had for him, basted, i.e., with loose threads that could still be pulled out. Bernstein wanted to make sure that when he raised his arms up high, the sleeve did not ride all the way down his arm while he was conducting.  

Later I discovered he was going to rehearse in an outdoor stadium way up in the Bronx at City College. I went up there and found the orchestra ready to rehearse. I asked Bernstein if it was okay for me to sit with the musicians, so I could take photographs. You could see the cityscape behind him, even some laundry hanging to dry in the distance. It was a cool shot and I sent it to the Times, but they were not interested. I always had the chutzpah to do things like this; all they could say was no. I wish I had known Bernstein better, but often when meeting someone famous like him, there is nothing to say to them. I respected their privacy.

Another time Anthony Perkins walked in asking for a shirt. He was in a play on Broadway at the time, I think, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, or maybe it was Tea and Sympathy. He was tall and slender. In those days, I had no idea he was gay or that Bernstein was gay. Who knew? It was all hush-hush back then. I acted professionally and did not say much more than ask what he needed help with. I opened a drawer filled with shirts; we had several, and he chose one. I had him sign for it and that was it. 

Way back I was already familiar with homosexuality from reading Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide, Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Jean Marais… did I leave anyone out? The idea was accepted in France way before here. In the current world, Ginsberg who was my neighbor on 10th street, was all too familiar. Never felt uncomfortable. But I felt closer to Jack Kerouac’s lifestyle than anyone else.

Every Thursday we had a reception after five. The Sills brothers gave me money and told me to buy several bottles of hard liquor. We had a cart on wheels and the next thing you know I am the bartender. I never mixed drinks before. Just like in Mad Men everyone drank in those days, and I mean drank all day without seeming to get drunk. As one person told me, it took the edge off. Even the Sills drank all day and then sang songs from musicals. As much as I tried, I did not like to drink, except for wine and some liqueur. I also got to like gin and tonics, so I knew how to mix that. I would stand there behind the cart and mix drinks. The front of the store filled with people. 

At the open house, a man told me he was a king. Another man told me he was a pilot. I thought he meant or the big airlines. I asked him which airline he flew for and he answered his own. “I fly people to safaris in Africa on my own plane.” Once I delivered several pairs of pants to the house of Adolph Green and Betty Comden, the writers of several famous musicals. For a while, I was immersed in this other world. 

Maxwell Bodenheim

I met Maxwell Bodenheim in the Village. He was a wild one, writing poetry for a buck so he could get a drink. Most people did not know who he was. He had written a batch of pulp fiction mystery novels, like Naked on Roller Skates. For about a week he latched on to me whenever he saw me. There used to be a cafeteria on 6th Avenue and 8th Street. I bought him breakfast there once, and he covered his eggs with ground black pepper. I mean covered. His woman friend scolded him. “If I want to put pepper on my eggs, I can do whatever I want with them,” he drunkenly shouted. I guess his taste buds were gone by then from all the drinking.  

Once he came by my apartment, just a room really, on 10th Street near Sixth Avenue. I left him there while I went out to get some more food. When I came back, he was gone. He drank all of the cooking wine I had in the cupboard. I do not even know if it was real wine. Still he drank all of it. Just a month later, I read in the papers that a drifter had allowed Bodenheim to stay in his room somewhere in the Village and tried to seduce Bodenheim’s woman. According to the papers, the drifter raped her and then killed them both. Even Bodenheim’s editors could not help him; they sent him some money to no avail. He was a lost soul by then. 

Jacques Lipchitz

I got involved with Horace Richter when I met the painter Bob Thompson at the Cedar Bar. That led to taking photos for Jacques Lipchitz, the sculptor. I would take the train to the Upper Hudson River Valley to Lipchitz’s studio to photograph his vast African collection. He felt inspired by such work. I took a few photos of him as well. Once the door rang and when I opened it, a small man was standing there. It was Billie Rose the impresario. He asked to come in. Rose at that time had arranged to have all of Lipchitz’s original clay sculptures shipped to Israel for a new museum dedicated to Lipchitz. Lipchitz was always very tired and wanted to nap and that is when I took a photo of him sort of floating in space, from the top of a ladder. We did not say much during that month I photographed his African collection.

Andy Warhol

I knew from the crowd at the Cedar Bar, a gang of artist, writers and photographers, about openings on Tuesdays. At the opening for Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup show, Andy had cans of soup, real cans of tomato soup, there, and he would sign them for $100. It was wild. Suddenly, Salvador Dali was standing next to Warhol, and I said, “Bonjour, Monsieur Dali.” He just stared at me, eyes wide open and whirled his thin, long mustache, which seemed to levitate above his upper lip. He cupped his lips, but did not say a word. He smirked at me, again with eyes wide open. I mean what was there to say? He was definitely a genius but also chose to be a jester. He is the one who said once, “Il faut épater le bourgeois?” You must tickle the rich man’s fancy.  

I used to run into Warhol at a small restaurant on 6th Street and Avenue A. Macrobiotics was still a new thing, and we both ate the same dish: a bowl of brown rice topped with black beans and with some salt mixed with sesame seed. The cost: one dollar. It did the trick as far as we were concerned.

Red Grooms

I met Red once at an all-night party and got him confused with another artist, Steve Durkee. They were both sort of thin and tall and had red hair. I knew Steve from the artist community in Haverstraw, which was an outshoot from Black Mountain College. The community, called the Land, had its own school. It was typical of that area of New York, which started anarchist and, eventually, independent schools. I liked Red a lot and once we ran down 6th Avenue near midnight, knocking down garbage cans as if we were in a giant football field. This was about the time he took his paint-splattered shirt and stretched it upon a canvas. Even the 10th Street Gallery refused to show it.

One time I took Red with me to visit Chaim Gross and his daughter, Mimi, or maybe he took me. I knew Mimi from parties. In fact, I mistook someone else for her at a party. I fell asleep in a bed on the floor of a big loft. A woman stood over me and said, “You are in my bed.” I said, “Well, if it is your bed, come on in.” She did and in no time at all we were at it. I got lost in her huge breasts. But it was not Mimi. Years later, when I was married to A, I met her brother, who was a tattoo artist in Woodstock. His wife said to me, “You don’t remember me do you?” And I said, “Should I?” and she reminded me that she was the woman at the party, and I had forgotten all about it. 

I was drawn to Mimi. At the time, Chaim Gross taught a sculpture course at the New School or NYU in NYC. Wood sculpture, which is a totally other matter. You cannot make mistakes with wood. I never tried. I like clay or other mediums, like pastel, water color, gouache, and oil. Gouache is my favorite. Immediate and fast, not so many layers needed. And you can correct and change things, even weeks or months later.  

When we got to Chaim’s house, as we climbed the stairs to his living space, I passed a photograph of Chaim with Chagall. I was really immersed in that world at the time. The upshot of that meeting was that Red got involved with Mimi and eventually married her. The next thing I knew they were travelling all over Italy in a horse-drawn caravan, doing puppet plays out of the back. That may have even been one of my ideas. I once gave a friend of mine an idea like that, and he and his wife took me up on it. They got a small carousel on the back of a truck and sold ice cream and made a lot of money for a couple of years. Years later, they thanked me for the idea.

Red got really big when he created models of cities out of papier mache with the help of some assistants and Mimi. Great works of cities, like Chicago and New York. Red once exhibited in a large hall in Grand Central Station. He had a show recently where he was selling some of these things, like a life-size city bus, which one could climb aboard with people sitting in the seats. The fact that he is letting go of these now says something about him. I know how that feels: to let go of something special. I have been obsessed with a recent photograph I took of a gypsy accordion player in Paris. I did a water color, then a gouache, then a pastel, then an oil. I will not sell them at this point, unless someone offered a ridiculous price for them. To me, they are worth millions. 

Steve Durkee

Steve Durkee is a weird bird. I met him through the same art opening scene, at a party John Chamberlain had. It lasted all night; some of us even fell asleep on Sunday morning on the fire escape. We could see people going to church. What did they think of us?

Steve and I bonded in a homoerotic way, as Freud would have said. We talked endlessly about the meaning of life, the universe, and some of the time’s spiritual leaders, like Meher Baba. Baba, an Indian word for father, had taken a vow of silence and preached that love was the answer to everything. His followers understood what he meant with sign language and in other non-verbal ways. Personally, I could not go one day without talking. Try it. Talking is like breathing to me. Steve had pictures of Meher Baba in his studio on Fulton Street.

This is where Steve brought me to meet Robert Indiana, who had already made a reputation with his one-word sculptures created from found wood and metal wheel, which he rescued from downtown streets and dumps. Bob lives on Vinalhaven Island now. I saw him recently and took a photo of him lying on a couch in the manner of Truman Capote. Back then, Bob also had a studio in the Fulton Street area. His lovers were busy at a sewing machine. Bob pulled out some of his one word paintings, like EAT, a sort of phallic post from railroad beddings, for me to see. He was on to something and it works for him to this day. His works incorporating “LOVE” are everywhere, even on a stamp. 

Steve changed after he helped design the Sufi retreat in Lama, New Mexico, near Taos: The Lama Foundation. Baba Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Marshall McLuhan were all influential, and just to show you how close we were, I went to visit him there in the 1980s, and we slept near the top of Sangre de Cristo Mountain where the Lama Foundation was to be built. From up there, the landscape looked like the beginning of creation. I wrote a piece which was published in The Saturday Review entitled “The Apocalypse is a Nice Place to Visit, But… .” In it, I parodied the dropping out scenes of the time, people moving away and creating communes that actually replicated the stuff from the cities with all the city innuendoes and acting out between couples. What they were dropping out of was control. They could do whatever they wanted by replacing city life with new restrictions guided by new spiritual rules. The New Age had begun, started in Esalen, a retreat in California near Big Sur.  

Esalen was not there when I went to see Henry Miller. Then it was the Nepenthe Inn, and there were natural springs in which one could bathe, while facing the endless Pacific Ocean, sometimes over the clouds. Again, the beginning of creation, where the acting out continued with everyone getting it on with each other, including the guru who would get the most. 

Eva Broch / Pierrakos 

In 1973, I was led by friends to a medium named Eva Broch, who was related to the writer Herman Broch, who formed a German triumvirate with Hesse and Mann. She was drawn to Eastern Philosophy by the Banes collection of books, including the I Ching, used by Carl Jung. The Book of Changes and Jung books were everywhere. Chance encounters and events were meant to happen; synchronicity Jung called it. John Cage was a big proponent of chance in composing his music. According to Jung, there was order in chaos (actually a Chinese proverb) and a collective consciousness that was shared by all. This would drive Freud crazy as his former followers, like Jung and Reich went off on their own and devised their own eccentric theories. Jung with his mandalas and Reich with his focus on genitalia. Reich’s book, The Function of the Orgasm, is still on sale at the souvenir shop in Rangeley, Maine where Reich had a retreat to perform his experiments with orgone boxes made of steel wool and tin. The box definitely got real hot, but Reich maintained the box was a collector of orgone energy. He sent one of the boxes to Einstein, who wrote back and said there was a simpler explanation for the heat. 

The interested can see all Reich’s stuff at Rangeley along with his cloud busters, a long tube filled with steel wool which he would aim at clouds. When the clouds split, Reich would claim responsibility. John Pierrakos, a former patient of Reich’s who I knew well, replicated these experiments near Woodstock. He would also put old razor blades under little metal pyramids and claimed they would sharpen in a few days because of the collective energy caught in the scattered pyramids. John aimed one of those cloud busters into the sky claiming he could cause rain on command.  

I had sessions with Eva Pierrakos. In exchange for a fee, I would cook for her sometimes. Those sessions benefited me greatly, in spite of all the hullabaloo with guided spirits and mediums. What counted most was her keen perception and inventive dream interpretation, which brought up real buried feelings, some painful some pleasurable. 

Once they invited Alexander Lowen to dinner, who wrote The Betrayal of the Body. I made truite bleu, a lightly cooked, almost raw trout, turned blue. The Betrayal of the Body is a marvelous book on character analysis. Contrary to Freud, he broke up the body into the masochist structure, which was even top and bottom; the psychopathic structure, which was heavier on top, as if the body was the body was floating off the ground; and the split structure, where the top was heaviest and the bottom light, as if you were easy to topple. While Freud put the patient on the couch, Reich made him stand up, and Lowen made him stand up and move. This all led to movement classes tied to emotional outbursts of anger and sadness, which were buried or hidden behind body armors. The idea of anger management sessions is credited to Reich. 

Bob Fass

I was an avid follower of WBAI; I listened to the station all the time. It was there that I heard the first recordings of Bob Dylan as they came out. Bob Fass had a show called “Radio Unnamable” that started at midnight and went on to dawn. On my own, I recorded material for him. I had an Uher tape recorder, reel to reel, that recorded at a high level, not as good as a Niagra, but it was fine, and I owned it. Once I recorded sounds of the city: a Puerto Rican church service, the footsteps and noises of the subway, steps walking in the street, and the bells from Salvation Army Santas standing on street corners. I would come into the studio and give the tape to Bob, and without even listening to it, he would put it on and let it play for half an hour. He was amazing that way, profound and like nothing else on the radio back then. 

There was also a guy in Philadelphia who did amazing stuff on the radio, talking on and on and captivated everyone. Jean Sheperd. He had a way of going off on tangents. Once he talked about memos: How office officials sent memos to one another and he imagined one of them publishing his memos as a book. Sort of a prediction of Tweets.  

I heard him in person once when he was broadcasting from a restaurant inside a hotel in Philadelphia. He went on and on in spite of the din in the restaurant. He mesmerized his listeners. Once he asked his listeners to lean out their windows and shout something all over the city. I cannot remember what it was, but he had a hold on people. He was way ahead of his time. Bob Fass on the other hand was more underground, being on late into the night, past midnight to 3AM or later. Yet he managed to play new Dylan music first and play the whole record. In vinyl. 

Kurt Seligmann

When I lived on 10th Street between Sixth and Fifth Avenues, I hung out a lot at the New School for Social Research, which is still going strong with great writing courses. I heard Robert Frost read there. One day I was in the elevator with a man who held a small painting in his hands. It looked like one of Monet’s studies of Rouen Cathedral at noon. Is that a copy? I asked. “No it’s the real thing. I bought it from him. I am giving a class here you want to come? We are going to look at it.” The man was the surrealist Kurt Seligmann.

And that we did. We sat around the painting in a darkened room with only the painting lit. Monet wanted those same shadows at noon, so he came back each day and redid the paintings. I became a friend of Seligmann. I went to his studio, which was located right by Bryant Park near the New York Public Library. Each floor had huge windows and this is where Seligmann painted. He was immersed in alchemy and used egg tempura to simulate the special glow produced by medieval painting techniques. His figures were draped and wrapped up, including the heads. They conveyed an eerie feeling.  

Once I brought Jill Johnson there, who wrote pieces for The Village Voice on dance and art. She had a diary style of writing, all up front. We met at a party given by John Chamberlain after an opening for his car part sculptures. I liked her right off and told her she had the legs of a peasant, and I liked that. We hit it off and ended up in my pad on 10th Street. We were only involved for about two weeks. I was really not mature enough for her. She had two children and would call me in desperation. I could not handle it and I broke it off. She never forgave me for that. It was sad, really. Years later, I met her in Soho in a coffee shop. She was sitting with another woman who may have been her lover; Jill became a lesbian by that time. She did not even look up when I went over to say hello.

But she loved visiting Seligmann, and we all talked about the old days, the ones he knew about with the Ernsts and Tanguy. Once when I was there, Seligman got a phone call to say Tanguy had just died. He was in shock. Later suffering from illness, Seligmann went out to hunt crows at his country house and they found him dead in the field from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. A suicide, like Van Gogh. 

Interviews with Photographers

Years later in the seventies, I went on a job interview to assist Irving Penn, who was in the same building as Seligmann once was. I did not meet Penn. The secretary told me there was a list of people who wanted to assist him. No pay. That was impossible as I needed money. Penn had stacks of photographs in wooden portfolios, which the secretary brought out one after the other.

I also interviewed with Arnold Newman. He told me I would not go with him on trips. I would just sit in the studio and probably perform darkroom work in his absence. Behind him, I saw the photo he did of Igor Stravinsky sitting at a grand piano. 

Finally I ended up working for Irwin Horowitz doing still life and food photography for the likes of Campbell Soup, Stouffers, and various ice cream companies. That was the calmest job I ever had. Chefs would come in for shots and we would hang out talking all day about how to boil an egg and so on. I learned a lot in those five years about cooking. Our biggest assignment was for Esquire. We recreated a dinner Alexandre Dumas, the French writer, once ate, which The Four Seasons would recreate as a special event. We set up a display of a row of partridges, then a row of quails, then a row of partridges and more quails and behind a spread of peacock feathers. It was huge and we had to imagine the servants carrying this into the dining room. On the side was a giant bottle of wine, Balthazar. It held roughly 15 liters of wine. 

Mimi Returns

Writing this in October in New York City and going over the places and people I have encountered, the energy of the city is still that of a beehive. It was a holiday weekend and it gets jammed in Midtown. I went to see a Bernard Shaw play, Candida, way over on the West Side on 36th Street in a tiny third-floor theater with an excellent cast. Getting home from there was a hassle, walking down dark streets along 9th Avenue and then taking a crosstown bus to Fifth Avenue and then onward down to 11th Street where I was dog sitting for three weeks. 

Just the other day, I went to an 80th birthday celebration for Philip Roth at the Temple Emmanuel on Fifth Avenue. The opportunity to see Roth filled the place up, and people read from his work. Alec Baldwin read from The Plot against America. But Roth could not make it. He was in the hospital with a bug, they told us. I wonder if the bug’s name was Gregor Samsa.  

It just so happened that as part of an apartment open house, I went back after all these years to Chaim Gross’ apartment in the Village. Marvelous the way it looks now with all his stuff relocated from the Upper West Side: the hanging photographs of Chagall and Gross, and Soyer, as well as Gross’ wooden sculptures, his inspirational African sculpture collection, a painting by DeKooning and more.  

Mimi Gross, his daughter, showed up. Here we were meeting again after fifty years. She is a great painter in her own right. It was marvelous. She was no longer married to Red Grooms. I kissed her and it all came back. Who said you cannot go home again. She still has a youthful, playful feel about her.

*

There is something special about being a street photographer in that one does not need permission to take photographs. No need for model releases. You can shoot away as you please with no reprimand. People may come up to you and object. I can respect that and I will stop, but there is no need for permission in public places. I find that some people want to be photographed, even though they may be a bit shy about it. Yet if I used such a photo in an ad, I would get in trouble. Then you need a model release.

Journalists do this all the time. Recently, The Economist had a cover photo of Assad from Syria. Surely, they did not go over there and ask his permission to use it. This is what Nixon meant when he said they could not kick him around anymore. You could still photograph him but you could not say things about him in public.

That is not my intent in these recollections of illustrious people and places. It is merely another form of my street photography, like Robert Frank’s The Americans, which was shot on the sly and now considered a classic. My writing here, like the best photography, is, most importantly, honest.

Photographs by Charles Rotmil

Charles Rotmil
Jacques Lipchitz

Charles Rotmil
Apartment on 1st Ave and 2nd St, New York
1962

Charles Rotmil
Bob Fass

Charles Rotmil
Bob Thomson

Charles Rotmil
Robert Indiana

Charles Rotmil
Steve Durkee

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 1 (May 1963)

Cover Page: A title page and table of contents [i]

Endless Resoundings Fill the RCMM — Dick Gallup [1]

Ember Grease — Dick Gallup [2]

It’s Everywhere, Like So Much Glue — Dick Gallup [3]

Out West and Back East — Dick Gallup [4]

Persia is Falling Beneath the Blue Triremes — Dick Gallup [5]

Sonnet I (“Three thoughts about a bad boy. Chapped punk”) — Ron Padgett [6]

Sonnet II (“As the blue cup sits upon the table, postcards”) — Ron Padgett [7]

Sonnett III (“The stone house your father built by hand, thirty”) — Ron Padgett [8]

Untitled (“Most sensual of recluses, faint” — Ron Padgett [9]

A Play — Joe Brainard [10]

A Diary August 4th — 15th — Joe Brainard [11-13]

Poem in the Traditional Manner — Ted Berrigan [14]

Poem in the Modern Manner — Ted Berrigan [15]

Homage to Beaumont Bruestle — Ted Berrigan [16]

Two Scenes (after John Ashbery) — Ted Berrigan [17]

Homage to Mayakofsky — Ted Berrigan [18]

It is a Big Red House — Ted Berrigan [19]

In Place of Sunday Mass — Ted Berrigan [20]

From a Secret Journal — Ted Berrigan [21]

Sonnet I (“His piercing pince-nex. Some dim frieze”) — Ted Berrigan [22]

Sonnet II (Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.”) — Ted Berrigan [23]

Sonnet III (“Stronger than alcohol, more great than song,”) — Ted Berrigan [24]

Sonnet IV (Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.”) — Ted Berrigan [25]

Sonnet V (“Squawking a gala occasion, forgetting, and”) — Ted Berrigan [26]

Sonnet VI (The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white”) — Ted Berrigan [27]

Real Life — Ted Berrigan [28]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 2 (June 1963)

Cover Page [i]

Title Page and table of contents [1]

The Birth of Lamantia — J. Richard White [2]

February in San Francisco — J.Richard White [3]

From The Lady — J. Richard White [4]

From a Letter from Joe Brainard to Ted Berrigan/20 May 63 — Joe Brainard [5]

Words for Love — Ted Berrigan [6]

Doubts (to Dave Bearden) — Ted Berrigan [7]

I Am Alone. You Are a Jungle. These Are the Ties That Bind — Ted Berrigan & Dick Gallup [8]

Untitled (“Dear Aunt Rose and Uncle Bert,”) — Sandra Alper [9]

Homage to Max Jacob — Ron Padgett [10]

Gamma Rays — Ron Padgett [11]

X (“I hope somebody else writes your story you zombie!”)– Ron Padgett [12]

Ash Tarzan — Ron Padgett [13]

Tristan Tarzan — Ron Padgett [14]

The Portable Life of Dr. Reverdy — Ron Padgett [15]

Sonnet XVIII (“Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a. m.”) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Sonnet XXIII (“On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar”) — Ted Berrigan [17]

Sonnet XXXII (“The blue day! In the air winds dance”) — Ted Berrigan [18]

Sonnet XXXVI — Homage to Frank O’Hara (“It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July [and]”) — Ted Berrigan [19]

Sonnet XXXVIII (“Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons”) — Ted Berrigan [20]

Sonnet XL — (“Wan as pale thighs making apple belly strides”) — Ted Berrigan [21]

Sonnet XLI (“bangin around in a cigarette she isn’t ‘in love'”) — Ted Berrigan [22]

Sonnet XLII (“She murmurs of signs to her fingers”) — Ted Berrigan [23]

For Richard White Sonnet LII (“It is a human universe: & I”) — Ted Berrigan [24]

Sonnet LIII: “for all the history of grief” (“The poem upon the page is as massive as” — Ted Berrigan [25]

A Mother’s Love is a Blessing — Joe Brainard [26]

Sally — Joe Brainard [27]

Poem (“Last night was blue or maybe arabia”) — Joe Brainard [28]

Penn Station — Ted Berrigan [29]]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 3 (July/August 1963)

Cover: Image by Joe Brainard [i]

The Waking — Theodore Roethke [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

A Sonnet for Dick Gallup / July 1963 (LXXII) (“The logic of grammar is not genuine it shines forth”) — Ted Berrigan [3]

$$$$$ from Re-Establishing Raymond Roussel — John Ashbery [4]

Sonnet (In this house I feel sad”) — John Stanton [5]

Sonnet (“Is the effort of my poem worth Manhattan:”) — John Stanton [5]

Now in Another Way (for Andy Warhol) — Gerard Malanga [6]

Some Feathers — Richard Gallup [7]

Sonnet XXXI (“And then one morning to waken perfect-faced”) — Ted Berrigan [8]

Sonnet XXXIV (“Time flies by like a great whale”) — Ted Berrigan [9]

Sonnet XXXVII (“It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful tears”) — Ted Berrigan [10]

Sonnet XLIV (“The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see”) — Ted Berrigan [11]

Sonnet XLV (“What thwarts this fear I love”) — Ted Berrigan [12]

Sonnet XLVII (“Frances Marion nudges himself gently in the big blue sky”) — Ted Berrigan [13]

Sonnet LVIII (“A glass of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-“) — Ted Berrigan [14]

Sonnet LXXIV (“The Academy of the future is opening its doors”) — Ted Berrigan [15]

A Final Sonnet for Chris (LXXXVIII) (“How strange to be gone in a minute! A man”) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Two for Barbara Guest — James Brodey

(“Muscular, standing past the station’s rim”) [17]

(“Melancholy changes its constant vigorous heart”) [17]

Three Sonnets After Frank O’Hara — Ron Padgett [18]

Poem Play (A Beautiful Day) — Ruth Krauss [19]

A Play (In a Bull’s Eye) — Ruth Krauss [20]

A Play (untitled) — Ruth Krauss [21]

A Play (There’s a Little Ambiguity Over There Among the Bluebells) — Ruth Krauss [22]

Homage to Pierre Reverdy — Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan [23]

Egg Plants Are Not Green — Ron Padgett [24]

Lettuce — Unattributed (Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan) [25]

Instead of a Man in Black the Men in Blue — Ron Padgett [26]

Choctaw — Ron Padgett — [27]

Sonnet Written in the Time it Took Lauren Owen to Walk 100 Feet — Ron Padgett [28]

Building a house — Richard Gallup [29-30]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 4 (September 1963)

Cover: Andy Warhol [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

The Poetry of Edwin Denby — Frank O’Hara [2-4]

An Introduction — John Wieners [5]

Grace After a Meal — Ted Berrigan [6]

Edwin’s Hand — Frank O’Hara [7]

Poems from In Public, In Private — Edwin Denby

The Climate [8]

The Shoulder [8]

Standing on a Street Corner [9]

Summer [10]

The Silence at Night [10]

City Without Smoke [11]

Elegy — The Streets [11-12]

From a Sonnet Sequence 

13 (“Suppose there’s a cranky woman inside me who”) [13]

21 (“The street is where people meet according to law”) [13]

Aaron [14]

The Friend [14]

Long Island City [14]

A Domestic Cat [15]

Poems from Mediterranean Cities — Edwin Denby

Ravenna [16]

Florence [16]

Siena [17]

Rome [17]

Via appia [18]

Villa Adriana [18]

Naples [19]

Amalfi [19]

Paestum [20]

Syracuse [20]

Segesta [21]

Taormina [21]

Forza d’agro [22]

Brindisi [22]

Athens [23]

The Parthenon [23]

Attica [24]

Mycenae [24]

Thebes [25]

Delphi [25]

Snoring in New York, an elegy — Edwin Denby [26-27]

Some Notes — Ted Berrigan [28]

Back Cover: Andy Warhol

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 5 (October/November 1963)

Cover: Joe Brainard (i)

Title page and table of contents [1]

The New Realism — John Ashbery [2-3]

A Game of Chess — Ron Padgett [4-7]

Passivation — Joseph Ceravolo [8-9]

Kerygma — Sotero Torregian [10]

Prose Poem (“The soul clings with its tenacity to the broken edge”) — John Wieners [11]

Sickness — John Wieners [11]

Untitled (“Do not let the silent, secret reaches of the night”) — John Wieners [12]

Happiness Is Just a Thing — John Wieners [13]

The Frightened City — Ted Berrigan [14]

Cathedral Towns — Ted Berrigan [15]

New Junket (for Harry Fainlight) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Wind — Ron Padgett [16]

What Price Salvation? — J. Richard White [17]

Spelunca (for A.R.) — J. Richard White [17]

Late December — John Ashbery [18]

Copy of a Copy — John Ashbery [19]

Undated — John Ashbery [20-22]

Political Science — Lorenzo Thomas [22]

The Infant Jesus of Prague — James Schuyler [23-28]

Poem II (“Muezzins, buzzards, newspapers — like”) — Harry Fainlight [28]

Olivetti Ode — Barbara Guest [29]

Hands — Barbara Guest [30-31]

Florida Hillocks — Kenward Elmslie [31]

Piazza of the Bananas — Kenward Elmslie [32]

Another Island Groupage — Kenward Elmslie [33]

The New World — Leroi Jones [34]

*The Success — Leroi Jones [35]

*Predicates/Categories (after M.H.) — Leroi Jones [36]

*Cant — Leroi Jones — [36]

*Poem (“There were more dirty”) — Joseph Ceravolo [37]

*Grass — Joseph Ceravolo [37]

*Poem (“Come and go see over there”) — Joseph Ceravolo [38]

*Poem (“Lapping water”) — Joseph Ceravolo [38]

*Funny Day — Joseph Ceravolo [39]

*Happiness in the Trees — Joseph Ceravolo [39]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 6 (December 1963/January 1964)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Dedication Page: Trista Tzara (4 April 1896 — 24 December 1963) [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

Canzone — Ted Berrigan [3]

Presence — Ted Berrigan [4]

Destination Moom — Ted Berrigan [5-6]

Prose Keys to American Poetry — Ted Berrigan [6]

Andy Warhol: Andy Do It — Joe Brainard [7]

Nancy — Joe Brainard [8-9]

Inside the Park — Dick Gallup [10]

Stillness — Joe Ceravolo [11]

I Am Lonely in My Crib — Joe Ceravolo [11]

Five Poems — Joe Ceravolo [12-13]

The Night Passes Through April Wind, No One Wants to Sleep — Joe Ceravolo [13]

Non-Sonnet IV — Gerard Malanga [14]

Non-Sonnet XII — Gerard Malanga [14]

Across the Table — Robert Dash [15]

C’est Toi Qui Dors Dans L’Ombre — Harlan Dangerfield [16-17]

Johnny — Joe Brainard [17]

From the Beaumont Series — Dick Gallup [18]

Duet — Ruth Krauss [19]

Poem in Honor of Some Bombs — Ted Berrigan [19]

The Pastor — Harlan Dangerfield [20-21]

Orange Jews — Harlan Dangerfield [21]

Enureseis — Lorenzo Toumes [22]

The Blind Dog of Venice (To Pat) — Ron Padgett [23]

The EMS Dispatch (To Ted)– Ron Padgett [23]

Blimps — Kenward Elmslie [24]

Poem (“the wooden junk flood closed the city”) — Kenward Elmslie [24]

Television Scenario: The Users — Kenward Elmslie [25]

Your Fun is a Snob — Kenneth Koch [26]

Sweethearts From Abroad — kenneth Koch [26]

Rapping Along — Kenneth Koch [27]

The Cat’s Breakfast — Kenneth Koch [27]

Sun Out — Kenneth Koch [28]

The Dead Body — Kenneth Koch [28]

In Every Victim Awaits the Guest of Honor — Ted Berrigan [29]

It Makes You Think, — Ted Berrigan [29]

The Complete Works: A Story-Poem (To Joe) –Ron Padgett [30-32]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 7 (February 1964)

Covers: Joe Brainard [i-vi]

Title page and table of contents [1]

Some Troubles — Ted Berrigan [2]

Cremations — Tom Veitch [3-4]

A Story from the Bushmen — Joe Ceravolo [4]

Warmth — Joe Ceravolo [5]

Ending — Joe Ceravolo [5]

The More You Take It — Joe Ceravolo [5]

From A Sonnet Sequence — Ted Berrigan

Sonnet LXXIII [6]

Sonnet LXXVI [6]

Sonnet LXXVIII [6]

Sonnet LXXX [7]

Sonnet LXXXI [7]

Sonnet LXXXII [7]

Sonnet LXXXIV [8]

Sonnet LXXXVII [8]

After the Broken Arm — Ron Padgett [9]

I’d Give You My Seat If I Were Here — Ron Padgett [9]

Sonnet / To Andy Warhol — Ron Padgett [10]

Rome — Ron Padgett [10]

Nothing in That Drawer — Ron Padgett [10]

The Windows — John Wieners [11]

Les fenetres – Guillaume Apollinaire [11]

Prologue — Tony Towle [12]

Apology — Tony Towle [12]

Thoughts Near the George Washington Bridge — Tony Towle [13]

Somebody Else, Black Poems, Brown Poems — Tony Towle [13]

Gilbert and Sullivan — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

Another Abstract etc — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

The Conscience of Cole Porter — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

Abuela’s Wake — Frank Lima [15]

In Memory of Eugene Perez (drowned may 25, ’62) — Frank Lima [16]

John Perreault — John Perreault [16]

Yesterday Down at the Canal — Frank O’Hara [17]

Poeme en Forme de Saw — Frank O’Hara [17]

To jane: And in Imitation of Coleridge — Frank O’Hara [18]

Unpacking the Black Trunk — James Schuyler & Kenward Elmslie [19-26]

*Poem (“I do not always understand what you say”) — James Schuyler [26]

Two poems — James Schuyler

(“In the café I sat and watched the rain”) [27]

(August, smelling of ripe grapes and afternoon sleep”) [27]

From a Sonnet Sequence: Sonnet 30 (“Roar drowns the reproach, facing him) — Edwin Denby [28]

Political Poem on a Last Line of Pasternak’s — Frank O’Hara [28]

The Lay of the Romance of the Associations (to Kenneth Koch) — Frank O’Hara [29]

Commercial Variations — Frank O’Hara [30-31]

34 mile wind — Frank O’Hara [31]

Rhapsody — Frank O’Hara [32]

Those Who Are Dreaming, A Play about St. Paul — Frank O’Hara [32-33]

Ah, London — Harry Fainlight [34]

Meeting – Harry Fainlight [35]

Lyric — Harry Fainlight [35]

Echo & co — Harry Fainlight [36]

28 — Harry Fainlight [36]

You Have Wasted Your Life — Harry Fainlight [36]

The Home Book — James Schuyler [37-44]

Recoting — Dick Gallup [44]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 8 (April 1964)

Cover: Love Pictures by Ted Berrigan and Joe Brainard [i]

Title Page and Table of Contents [1]

From a Sonnet Sequence: Sonnet 20 (“the grand republic’s Poet is”) — Edwin Denby [2]

In His Distant Camp, Ted Awaits the Priests — Ron Padgett [2]

Mess Occupations (after Henri Michaux) — Ted Berrigan [3]

The voyage of the Argonauts (for Lionel Trilling) — Harlan Dangerfield [3]

From We Are Gentle Part I — David Shapiro [4]

Invention (to John Ashbery) — Ted Berrigan [4]

Literary Days — Tom Veitch [5-7]

Boils — Ted Berrigan, Gerard Malanga, Peter Orlovsky & Ron Padgett [8-11]

Theme and Variation — Harry Fainlight [12]

(“The chant, le chant, the song”) — Harry Fainlight [12]

Childhood — Harry Fainlight [13]

Poem (“what matter of luxury is this?”) — Al Fowler [13]

A letter from Tom Veitch/ April 5, 1962 — Tom Veitch [13]

Book III: The Concluding Book — Joseph Ceravolo [14-19 

Eskimos again — Dick Gallup [19]

From The Gobble Gang Poems — Ed Sanders [20-21]

Some Bombs (Mistranslations) (after Reverdy) — Ron Padgett [22-25]

Prick Song — J Richard White [25]

February in San Francisco] — J Richard White [26]

Poem for Things — J Richard White [26

San Francisco Ephemeris — J Richard White [26]

Early Sunday Afternoon — J Richard White [27]

Conversation — J Richard White [27]

Il penseroso — Ted Berrigan [27]

The Secret Life of Ford Maddox Ford (for carol clifford) — Ted Berrigan

Stop stop six [28]

Then I’d cry [28]

Fauna time [28-29]

The upper arm (for Andy Warhol) — Ted Berrigan [29] 

Sonnet XXVI (One sonnet for dick) — Ted Berrigan [29]

A Poem of the Forty-Eight States — Kenneth Koch [30-32]

Rain dunce (after Ted) — Ron Padgett [32]

Hygiene Sonnet — Dick Gallup [32]

Hatred — Frank O’Hara [33-35]

Reeling Midnight (to Pierre Reverdy) — Ted Berrigan [35]

The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [36-40]

(“Spooky-wooky-wooky”) — Joe Brainard [40]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 Number 9 (Summer etc. 1964)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Title page and table of contents [1]

Y..R D..K — Ron Padgett [2]

Begun — Ron Padgett [3]

The Rodent — Ron Padgett [3]

Jimmy — Ron Padgett [4]

To Henry James — Ron Padgett [4]

Some Plays — Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett

Looking For Chris [5]

Teresa (A Play) [5]

Seventeen (A Play for Kay Boyle) [5]

Seventeen (A Play)

Teresa [6]

Seventeen (A Play for Signor Melone of Venice) [6]

The Rest of the Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford — Ted Berrigan

On His Own [7]

The Dance of the Broken Bomb [7]

Putting Away [8]

Owe [8-9]

We Are Jungles [9]

What Is That Flying Away? — Joe Ceravolo [10-16]

Life in Darkness — Dick Gallup [17-21]

From Newstand Report — John Stanton [22-23]

Sally — Joe Brainard [24-26]

Intersection Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch — William Burroughs [27]

From The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [28-31]

Two Poems — David Shapiro

(“Light became audible, that is, a child, and took the empty place”) [32]

(“The most terrible spasms”) [33]

Three Poems — Tony Towle

Attached Poem [34]

Poems (to Joe LeSueur) [34]

Skylarks [34]

Juvenglandia — Harry Fainlight [35-37]

To the Autumn Sunbeam God — Harry Fainlight [37]

White — John Ashbery [38]

Vocalise — John Ashbery [38-39]

Evening Quatrains — John Ashbery [39]

At the Railway Station — Kenneth Koch [40]

Dostoevski’s The Gambler — Kenneth Koch [40]

Triste E Una Donna — Kenneth Koch [41]

Morro Rock — Kenneth Koch [41]

Schweitzerreich — Kenneth Koch [41]

Mateeyanah — Kenneth Koch [41]

Wahego — Kenneth Koch [42]

In Harmonium — Kenneth Koch [42]

Chiaroscuro — Kenneth Koch [42]

Heanorupeatomos – — Kenneth Koch [43]

An X-Ray of Utah — Kenneth Koch [43] 

Religiously — Kenneth Koch [43]

Givers of Winds Is My Name — William Burroughs [44-48]

Strum Night — Barbara Guest [49]

Looking at Flowers Through Tears — Barbara Guest [49-50]

Dada Proverb — Tristan Tzara [50]

The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express July 18, 1963 — Allen Ginsberg [51-54]

The Return of Yellow May — Kenneth Koch [55-57]

The Revolt of the Giant Animals — Kenneth Koch [58]

The Building of Florence — Kenneth Koch [59-60]

The Beverly Boys Summer Vacation — Kenneth Koch [61-64]

For the Chinese New Year & For Bill Berkson — Frank O’Hara [65-67]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 No. 10 (February 14, 1965)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Title Page and table of contents [1]

Poop — Francis Picabia [2]

Fits of Candor (A Manifesto) — Dick Gallup [2]

The Return of Philista — Dick Gallup [3]

Washington, July 5 — John Giorno [3] 

Inside Speech — Harlan Dangerfield [4]

December — Giuseppe Ungaretti [4]

Brett — Ted Berrigan [5]

Brett (A Play) — Ron Padgett [5]

After Breakfast — Giuseppe Ungaretti [5]

Richard Cory — Ron Padgett [6]

Revised Poem — John Stanton [6]

Montana — Giuseppe Ungaretti [6]

Poem (“I stand last night near a lonely son-of-a-bitch.”) — Aram Saroyan [7]

From the Poetry Machine — Al Katzman [7]

Blandford, England, Sept. 23 — John Giorno [7]

December — Ron Padgett [7]

“Yes, I Am William Burroughs. . . .” — Tom Veitch [8-9]

To the Imperial Wizard — Jeff Giles [9]

A Grave — James Schuyler [10]

Moving — Aram Saroyan [10]

Georgia — Philippe Soupalt (trans. By Peter Schjeldahl) [10]

Dirge (South Africa) — David Shapiro [11]

From Five Songs — David Shapiro [11]

*From The Mutation of the Spirit — Gregory Corso [12-14]

*Precipice: A Story — Tom Veitch [15-17]

*The Day Before the Windowshade Fell — Les Gottesman [18]

*Apologies for the Angry Postcard — Les Gottesman [18]

*Principia Mathematica — Ron Padgett [18]

*Anecdote of Mumbly at Home — Louis Nasper [19]

*Homage to _______________ – John Perreault [19]

*Ragtime Cowboy Joe — Louis Nasper [19-20]

*From the Paris Sonnets — Peter Schjeldahl

Sonnet 16 (“Darkness rises from the sewers of Paris which I hear”) [20]

Sonnet 20 (“I cannot go on like this a mother hen”) [20]

*We Hardly — Richard Huelsenbeck [21]

*”My arms are warm” — Aram Saroyan [22]

*Falling in Love in Spain or Mexico — Ron Padgett [22]

*Prison of Souls — Jeff Giles [22]

*Pomp Ilk — Dick Gallup [23]

*Mother Cabrini (a play) — Ted Berrigan [23]

*Poem (“In the corner of my room an American!”) — Aram Saroyan [24]

*My First Story — Szabo [24]

*Poem (I don’t belong to you”) — Harlan Dangerfield [24]

*Preface to “The Champ” — Kenward Elmslie [25-27]

*The Champ — Kenward Elmslie [27-34]

*Craze Man Wiliiker — Pierre Reiter [35]

*Memoirs — Douglas MacArthur [35]

*Secret Wallpaper — Ted Greenwald [36]

*The Pirates — David Shapiro [36]

*A Memory Filled with White — Giuseppe Ungaretti [36]

*(“There was an old prude from St. Paul”) — Harlan Dangerfield [37]

*(“A young maid awalking alone”) — Harlan Dangerfield [37]

*The Groundhog — Ted Berrigan [37]

*Song — Richard Kolmar [38]

*To Modigliani, to Prove to Him That I’m a Poet — Max Jacob [38]

*The Fernandez — Ron Padgett [39]

*Miss America — Kenneth Koch [39]

*Did Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate Plan to Enter Medicine — Joe Brainard [40-41]

*The Custard Sellers — James Schuyler [42-43]

*Ghost Tantra #9 — Michael McClure [43]

*Excerpt from The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [44-46]

*Recipe Department — Hasheesh Fudge — Brion Gysin [46]

*(When the mercenaries ran away . . . “) with image [47]

Ten When My Eyes Were Hurting — Larry Swingle [48-50]

A Man Saw a Ball of Gold — Ron Padgett [50]

John Button Birthday — Frank O’Hara [51]

Can’t Keep — Joseph Ceravolo [51-52]

Sestina with a Lost Line — Bruce Kawin [52]

Poem (“A new telephone on the table”) — Aram Saroyan [53]

The Bermudas — Richard Kolmar & Aram Saroyan [53]

Balance of Payments — John Ashbery [54]

Supplements — Tony Towle [55-57]

Ave Maria — Frank O’Hara [57]

Fits of Affection — John Dent [57]

The Ecclesiast — John Ashbery [58]

The Woman — Frank Lima [59]

In Three Parts — Ted Berrigan [59]

Fortune — John Ashbery [60-61]

Revolting (A one act play) — Dick Gallup [62]

The Courtier — Kenneth Koch [63]

En L’an Trentisme de Mon Eage — Kenneth Koch [63-65]

Leapfrog (for Jim Sears) — The Poem Machine [65]

Hoboken — John Ashbery [66-68]

(“From Aphrodite”) — Ed Sanders [68]

The Ode to Music (for Morton Subotnick) — Philip Whalen [69-72]

Fits of Nerves with a Fix — William Burroughs [72-73]

Street — Joe Ceravolo [74] 

Ed Sanders’ Language — Charles Olson [74]

Music — Joe Ceravolo [74]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 11 (Summer 1965)

Cover: Joe Brainard [i]

Title page and table of contents [1]

On Frank O’Hara’s Birthday — Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan [2]

Adios Lecture — Ken Weaver [3]

Police Lock — Aram Saroyan [4-5]

The Luis Armed Story — Tom Veitch [6-15]

From Looking For Chris — Ted Berrigan [16-23]

From The Bingo — Dick Gallup [24-26]

From Motor Maids Cross the Continent — Ron Padgett [27-32]

Two Stories — Barbara Guest

Another Daddy [32]

The “Adventures of Tin-Tin” Story [32]

Selections from a Novel — John Stanton [33-34]

Barbie and Ken — Kenward Elmslie [35-39]

From A Sonnet Sequence — Edwin Denby

(“New York, smog dim under August”) [40]

(Neighbor sneaks refuse to my roof”) [40]

(In tooth and claw red, not nature”) [40]

(“Disorder, mental, strikes me; I”) [41]

(“In a hotelroom a madman”) [41]

(“Nocturnal void lower Fifth, I”) [42]

“Drenched saw Doris home, midnight gale” [42]

Sonnet 18 (“Sunday on the Senator’s estate”) [42]

Sonnet 19 (“The size balls are sudden Lamarch”) [42]

Sonnet 20 (“The grand republic’s Poet is”) [43]

Sonnet 21 (“Blue grey ridge, green grey leafage”) [43]

Sonnet 23 (“Heavy bus slows, New York my ride”) [44]

Sonnet 24 (“New year’s near, glass autumn long gone”) [44]

Sonnet 30 (“Roar drowns the reproach, facing him”) [44]

Advertisement for an Ed Sanders Catalog [45]

From The Red Robins — Kenneth Koch [46-55]

Frost – Harlan Dangerfield [56]

Saturday Night at the Movies — Harlan Dangerfield [56]

A Fine Thing — Tom Veitch [56]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 12 (NEVER ISSUED)

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 13 (May 1966)

This issue has printed page numbers in the upper right corner beginning with page 2 after the cover and title page. As a result , the page numbers are not placed in brackets.

Cover page: Image of a stencil cutter by Joe Brainard

Table of contents and title page [1]

In Praise of the Postal System — Stéphane Mallarmé p. 2

From The Bingo — Dick Gallup pp. 3-7

Mortality — Théophile Gautier p. 8 

The Suitor – Théophile Gautier pp. 8-9

From Julius Caesar — tran. John J. Murphy p. 10

The Heavenly Skater — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

At Dawn — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

The Traveller and His Shadow — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

Fetish — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

Natural Greatness — Pierre Reverdy p. 12

The Hard Heart — Pierre Reverdy p. 12

From Clear the Range — Ted Berrigan pp. 13-15

The Great Melancholy of an Avenue — Phillipe Soupault p. 15

Fragment — William Saroyan p. 16

Saving Japan — Theresa Mitchell p. 17-18

Two Sad Birds — Harry Mathews pp. 19-20

Brunswick Stew — Joe Brainard p. 21

Alas! — Max Jacob p. 21

History of France — Kenward Elmslie pp. 22-23

Valiant Warrior on Foreign Soil — Max Jacob p. 23

Juile ou la rose — Guillaume Apollinaire pp. 24-29

Julie ou j’ai prete ma rose pp. 24-25

Corona di Cazzi p. 25

Epithalame p. 25

In Vase Proepostero p. 26

Petit Balai p. 26

Le teint p. 26

VIII (“Linda la noire aux paumes roses”) p. 26

CartesPostales pp. 27-28

Le Chat p. 28

Le Negre p. 28

Quelques Distiques Pour Plaire a Dupuy pp. 28-29

Bibilographie p. 29

Justification p. 29

Notes on this C Edition p. 29

The Julie or the Rose Newsletter — Ron Padgett ed. pp. 30-31

Introduction p. 30

Commentaries, blurbs p. 30

Two letters from Pascal Pia pp. 30-31

Letter from Leroy Breunig p. 31

Notes p. 31

Notices p. 31

Blank back cover [32]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 14 (1967)

Behind the Wheel — Michael Brownstein

No Empty Hands [2]

Nations [3]]

Sunny Barn, Special Guests [4]

Behind the Wheel [5]

The Plains of Abraham [6]

Large Blue [7]

Fingertips [8]

Janice [9]

*Lily Flower [10] — Missing from Harter Index

*Waitress [11] — Missing from Harter Index

*News [12]

*Florence Was Fine in the Summertime [13]

*Clean & Clear [14]

*Poem (“Yours the taught climb borne security”) [15]

*Navel [16]

*Pond [17]

*A Final Storm [18]

*Coincidences [19]

*Moving You Along [20]

*Massachusetts [21]

*Against the Grain [22]

*Typhoon [23]

*A Modern Instance [24]

*Pounds and Ounces [25]

Colophon [26]

Author Bio [27]

Why did you write a book about Burroughs? He’s not nearly as glamorous or popular as most of your other subjects, or was he?

At the time I started to write the book, January 1979, William Burroughs was one of the most glamorous and hip people in New York. We were deep in heroic chic. But, much more importantly, I set out to write a mythology for the counterculture. And my guide was to first tackle those legendary leaders of the whole thing like Burroughs, Warhol, and Keith Richards, going back to the beginning of the sixties, whose heavy metal images had too long obscured their real personalities.

William Burroughs and Mick Jagger. Photograph by Victor Bockris.

The bottom line was even simpler. I was Burroughs’ aide during the three-day Nova Convention celebrating his life and career in December 1978. I was struck by how many of the young men who asked me to get Bill to sign their books were shaking so hard they could hardly hold them. When I urged them to approach him themselves, they fled in sheer fear. I understood this because the first time I had dinner with William, I fainted.

Anyway, my perception was that after operating from behind their oracle like monosyllabic responses, dark glasses and bluer than ice cool, these icons would be far better appreciated and much more widely received if they revealed the very funny, romantic, and empathetic sides of their personalities. William Burroughs was the sweetest guy I ever met. He was so sensitive to the blows of life he could hardly stand it. As he admitted to me in our last interview, “I am so emotional that sometimes I can’t stand the intensity. Oh, my God. Then they ask me if I ever cry? I say, ‘Holy shit, probably two days ago.’ I’m very subject to fits of violent weeping, for very good reasons.” 

Looking back from the present and knowing the William Burroughs of his days in Lawrence, it is almost strange to think of an icy unapproachable man. The stories of the many random visitors showing up at his house unexpected are numerous. Did he change over time in New York City, or was he really initially that stern in regards to his fans?  

Holy shit! What are we dealing with here, time travel? Are you really telling me that you are so annealed to your Lawrence Burroughs that you have completely lost touch with Burroughs’ initial image as an icy unapproachable alien? Burroughs’ entrance onto the world stage took place at the Edinburgh Writers’ Conference in August 1962, where he famously said, “I am not an entertainer.” Burroughs’ carefully constructed image in his books, interviews, photographs, films, and rare public appearances in the 1960s never let his audience relax or get to know him. Comments, like “Love is a con put down by the female sex,” mirrored his alter ego Inspector Lee’s attitudes. With his banker’s drag, pale enigmatic blue-lipped face, and uncomfortable aristocratic distance, Burroughs faded into the boardroom portraits of his faceless ancestors. He was a sheep-killing dog. He did not want to be recognized.

In this composition of negatives, he was similar to Warhol. Back then this was not so much a pose as a defence. The leading, ground-breaking artists of the counterculture were taking on the most powerful establishment of all time: the FBI, Time/Life, CIA, the military industrial complex, the syndicates and cartels of the earth. It took the establishment thirty years to stop them by incorporating all art forms. The terrible thing is that we so recoil from history in America that we have even ignored our own history. The counterculture was the only global movement of a non-military people to campaign effectively for peace. It is currently being studiously written out of history by the Department of Education, and I have not heard a single word of protest. Man, you should have seen them kicking the great satirist Terry Southern. Where is Lenny Bruce now that we need him? Burroughs’ career is counted out in transformations. There is no one Burroughs.

“In America,” Poem by Victor Bockris

What did Burroughs mean to New York in the 1970s?

Burroughs returned to New York in 1974, after twenty-five years of self-imposed exile from America. At that time he was burned out by too many isolated years in London and did not even think he could continue to write fiction. Most of his American fans thought he was dead. Nobody recognized him on the street.

Shortly after he arrived Allen Ginsberg introduced Burroughs to a young man from Kansas. James Grauerholz would be Burroughs’ amanuensis for the next twenty-three years. The first effective thing James did was quickly set up some readings. As soon as Burroughs started to give public readings of his work in New York and beyond, a brush fire was lit. Apart from that great record Call Me Burroughs recorded in Paris around 1964-1965, his voice had rarely been heard. And Bill was a great reader of his writing, with perfect timing and the delivery of a stand-up comedian.

In 1979 when I started having dinner with him several nights a week, Burroughs was the worshipped King of the Beats and Godfather of Punk as well as King of the Underground. He was definitely one of the coolest people in the city. I think the fact that he had never sold out, and had come back to seize his throne at the same time that great yahoo Nixon fell from his, was a true and irresistible story. Plus William loved his life and had lived it to the hilt ever since the breakthrough with Naked Lunch in ’59. By the publication of his new novel, Cities of the Red Night, in 1981, Burroughs read to ten million people on Saturday Night Live, kicking off the Red Night reading tour of the nation. You also have to bear in mind that in Europe and Japan he was considered the greatest writer in the world. Even now who has gone past Burroughs?

The Godfather of Punk moniker was already branded on Burroughs by the time he was in living in New York City because you refer to it in your book With William Burroughs, and of course he flatly denied any association with the punks, just as he denied being associated with the Beats. Nonetheless, he was adopted as a Godfather by the punk movement of that time, whether he liked it or not. Did Burroughs care that much about this need people had to associate themselves with him?

He became the Godfather of Punk in approximately 1977. Bill was not consistent in interviews. He was ambivalent about these associations. On the one hand he rejected the concept of the hero and role model as a Hollywood trap. On the other hand he did not want to reject the very people he had in part written into being. He had a real affection for artists who took risks to push a shared agenda. The Beat-Punk Axis formed under the umbrella of a shared reaction to World War II. He claimed he wrote a letter of support to the Sex Pistols on the release of God Save The Queen. He had written his own version, “Bugger the Queen,” two years earlier. On a parallel track, he remained best friends with Ginsberg till his death in ’97. He was equally loyal to Kerouac and Corso. In his final journals he describes the experience of being applauded on stage before a U2 concert as some kind of mass hug. He appreciated his fans. He was consistent in his great, battered Viking heart.

This fits into an image I have of Burroughs as someone not ignorant enough to pass up good press because he had lived through so much want and poverty. In 1957 he’s cleaning blood off a very old, dirty shirt sleeve, saving up a reserve of smack in the lapel. In 1997 he’s the most respected artist in the Western World, pushing a cart through a U2 video. He seems like he just wanted to be liked, sometimes. And the desire to be liked was important to him, even when he pushed it aside and wanted it called respect instead. Do you think he ever really “sold out,” as they say?

I do not think William Burroughs ever sold out! The idea is preposterous. He was sometimes paranoid about the press in America. (See my crazed flip out in the 1990 Kansas interview regarding this). In fact when I first interviewed him in 1974 I was working with a partner, we wore Brooks Brothers suits and bowties. In 90 minutes he answered monosyllabically and denied knowing who Solzhenitsyn was!! It turned out he thought we were from the C.I.A. But that is not as strange as it sounds when you consider that the last time he tried to move back to New York in 1965, Huncke told Bill that he had been asked by the police to set him up for a bust. As William said, a paranoid is a man in possession of the facts.

You’d have to walk in his shoes before you start accusing William Burroughs of selling out. Hell, the very fact that he didn’t sell out, didn’t go over to Madison Avenue to drink coca-cola and make it! is why he liberated generations to live real life instead of the antiseptic heirloom life of the cardboard dead. People need to be reminded that we learned how to live from William Burroughs and Andy Warhol and all the heroes of the counterculture who dedicated their lives to their callings and lived alone.

I want to try to clear up once and for all the idea that William was manipulated into anything. This is the man who told me, it only takes one man to stand up against this tissue of lies and horseshit… clearly referring to himself. Bill Burroughs was one tough hombre. He changed the world. However, he was also your classic artist who wants to be left alone to dream his dreams and write his books. He wouldn’t remember to eat if you didn’t put a plate in front of him. And there was a side of Bill which remained adolescent and innocent. He was also vulnerable in love, because he was so passionately emotional and had such a poor self image. These conditions led him at times to be overly impressed by one friend’s opinions. There was a period in the 1960s in which he was almost totally under the influence of Brion Gysin. If Gysin didn’t like Warhol, Bill didn’t like Warhol. If Gysin told him to wear tight trousers and Beatle boots, Bill wore tight trousers and Beatle boots, despite making a spectacle of himself. 

William Burroughs and Andy Warhol at Dinner, Collage by Victor Bockris and David Schmidlapp

This tendency led years later to attacks on James Grauerholz for manipulating or controlling Burroughs, which I find disturbing. These attacks came in part as a result of Burroughs leading a larger life, complicated by his post-’83 financial success and painting career. And from his greatly increased fame. It was James’ job to handle all the offers and requests that poured in equally from businessmen and old friends. As Bill got into his later seventies, he was less inclined to travel and more aware of using what time he had left to finish his work. Thus when James had to admonish some of Morgan’s missteps in Literary Outlaw, he earned the writer’s life-long hate. When James had to turn down this invitation or that deal, he earned the resentment of the people he refused. If an old friend couldn’t get through to Bill, James was blamed with cutting them off. And this small army of second-rate losers found in sharing and expanding their complaints some comfort. What seems inexcusable to me is that when these same people, who claimed they cared so much for Bill, caterwauled about how his life was completely manipulated, they seemed not to recognize how much that would have hurt the man they claimed to adore. Revealing the underbelly of their shallow and small-minded aims. 

Nobody is perfect. Life isn’t a magazine. But James Grauerholz dedicated his life to Bill. And gave him twenty-three years of the most splendid, productive, and enjoyable life imaginable which, coming at the end of an often deeply painful life, seemed like a much deserved magic prize for what Burroughs gave the world. Those years would not have been possible without James, and they were not always easy for him. In the long run these rumors will float away like dirt erased by rain. And we’ll get the real story of Bill and James, one of the great examples of an amanuensis rising to the needs of his subject and easing his way to depart. Bill never dipped into old age; he never looked down; he only continued to rise. How many people can you say that about? His life, which seemed so long to be cursed, was finally blessed. Let it be blessed. He was after all a Saint.

William Burroughs and James Grauerholz. Photograph by Victor Bockris.

In With William Burroughs I get the impression he was something like an event that people attended — “Oh, have you been to see Burroughs? No? Oh, you just have to go!” — rather than a writer. It is such a contrast to his life in London. Is this what it was like?

This perception is the fault of my book. I remember when it came out I was visiting Ginsberg who opined it was a trifle chic. I laughed and said, “Évidemment, Monsieur.” I love that book because it was truly a labor of love and, you know, since its publication in the States in 1981, it has been translated into eight different languages, and the 1996 edition remains available here. Plus it is truly a unique book. Nobody has ever used that form of cutting up and re-assembling interview tapes to create a series of fictitious dinners to draw a portrait in the round. But I always thought that once you learned the ropes, writing is largely a matter of character. Each time I write a book I am ferocious in protecting what I’m doing and getting it done. Later, there is always room for the realization that you could have done it better. So what? There is no point in rethinking a war. It’s like rethinking sex for Christ’s sake! Should I have done it this way? If only I had… 

How is it a mistake? These famous people coming in and out of his house at all hours really were doing that. Was William really more of a recluse than the book presents or was he really constantly entertaining and meeting people?

Oh dear oh dear, no, they were not coming in and out of his house! William met Mick Jagger perhaps three times in the 1960s. Once thereafter in 1980. He liked Andy, but after the three meetings I set up, he only saw him on two brief visits to the Factory in the mid eighties. William much preferred and really thrived on a quiet inner circle social life. This dates back to the forties. Meeting at his place for drinks, dinner and conversation, interspersed with boy-scout weapons practices. Spot of fun! It was a boarding school existence, with Bill as the headmaster. He did not like to go out unless it was to small dinner parties in restaurants or friends’ apartments, or for special meetings. His life revolved around the Great Work he had been blessed to deliver. He husbanded his time to its daily demands. I wrote the Bunker book with the express purpose of popularizing the humorous raconteur side of Bill, to get his work more widely read for its humor than its apocalyptic overview. But now I wonder. Maybe in the same way Ted Morgan was the wrong man to write his biography, I was the wrong man to write his portrait. I don’t know how he put up with me after I gave him this image to drag around for the rest of his life! 

Ted Morgan’s biography of Burroughs, Literary Outlaw, refers to the large heroin scene in New York City at the time and how it affected Burroughs’ work. In your book you also refer to a lot of heroin in Burroughs’ neighborhood around the Bunker. What was the impact of heroin to the artistic community? 

Devastating. Let’s get some background straight. This was the Persian heroin the C.I.A had paid the Shah of Iran to block from distribution. When Khomeini took over in Tehran in ’79, it was released straight into the USA among other places to poison several levels of the U.S. population. (It is a damn effective tool). Up until ’77, I never saw heroin in N.Y. You had to go to Harlem if you wanted to score, just like Lou Reed said. In late 1978-1979, a heroin supermarket opened up on several blocks directly across from Burroughs’ building at 222 Bowery. They used to sell a bag called Dr. Nova.

I had never been interested in heroin because I would never stick a needle in myself. However, when it became widely known that you could snort it just like cocaine, many people who had never considered taking heroin started using it. In light of feeling that everything they had been told about drugs by the authorities was totally inaccurate. They said marijuana was addictive. Marijuana was not addictive. Maybe heroin was not addictive either. Junkie was a favorite among our generation, but how deeply had anybody read it? The great, unspanked class of ’79 had to find out for themselves. In the uptight insecure underground, H was the perfect drug to stop you from committing suicide. And punk was the first ultra cool movement that made using heroin chic. Heroin Chic on the cover of the Soho Weekly News opened the gates. Soon it replaced cocaine as the cool drug to bring to a party. We are all so sick with our delight in hearing about people who destroyed themselves with drugs. About the prettiest little girls who fouled their perfect bodies with their minds. What is that about? And what did William Burroughs have to do with it?  

Stewart Meyer entering the Bunker from the Bowery. Photograph by Victor Bockris.

You make the reality of the New York punk scene seem like a bunch of insecure suburban kids what come to the city and tried to live up to the stories in Rolling Stone and Creem and Crawdaddy. Was that what it was? Or was it the first time the middle-class kids suddenly saw that there was an option between pop music and respectability?

No no no no no!!! First of all I love the punks, particularly that first generation, Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, David Byrne, Patti Smith, Richard Hell etc. who are all neo-beats really. I mean rock-n-roll never changes; you just speed it up. Keith Richards speeded up Chuck Berry to produce the Stones. Steve Jones speeded up Chuck Berry to produce the sound of the Pistols. What I love most deeply about punk is that it was the first rock movement to treat girls equally with boys. There are many great girls in punk. They were new. After all rock is a feminine thing. It is based on girls. It’s just that rock journalists in their own hang-ups about wanting to be rock stars continue to deny the existence of females in rock books. The only people I would ever interview in a rock book would be THE GIRLS.

And on that note I would just like to say that Bill seemed to dig the punk girls I was involved with when I was writing his book. You can see their audacious faces in the photographs. I do think there’s something to say about punk being more of a movement of personalities than, say, glam rock. But that’s a positive thing. A positive hinge. Punk was about doing everything you were not supposed to do. In line with the English poet William Blake, BREAK ALL THE RULES. Looking back now, this feels like a lone trumpet call across a battlefield, the field of the cloth of gold, but it certainly was not a lost battle. WE WON. PUNK STANDS. PUNK WILL NEVER GO AWAY. Like real life it sticks.

Was Morgan’s account of William’s drug use at the time how it appeared to you? Was it really interfering with his work? I know you’ve said in other articles you’ve written that not all Morgan’s biography is completely accurate?

Morgan was particularly inaccurate on this subject, about which he knew nothing. So much of that book reeks of his prejudices it’s disgusting! The fact is William had severe writer’s block at several times while writing Cities of the Red Night. What one did not want to say at the time, but is made quite clear in the magnificent diaries of Stewart Meyer, probably the single most accurate account of the Bunker years 1979-1983, was that Burroughs was plagued by so many problems then — from poverty, through the death of his son and unrequited love, to writer’s block — that without heroin the book might never have been completed. In fact for the rest of his life, Bill never wrote without the parallel effects of methadone. And when you look at how much work he produced between 1983-1997, you begin to see that opiates released the best in him. For good reason. Burroughs was extremely self-critical. Heroin cuts out the self-critical track and puts you inside a warm cocoon in which you can carry out your desired work with a clear mind. 

I want to add this about the relationship between the great addicts, like Cocteau, Burroughs, Keith Richards, and their influence on their followers’ drug habits. First, no writer in the sixties and seventies made it clearer how horrifying and deeply destructive heroin is than Burroughs. Yet, in a strange translation that deserves attention, even his more perceptive readers appear to have taken his use as permission for their own. This is a troubling example of an increasingly common trait, in which the fan is more affected by the artist’s image than his work. And we all know no world artist can maintain control of his image. It differs country by country. William Burroughs and Keith Richards were undoubtedly the coolest guys in New York in the late 1970s. But if you want to immerse yourself in “Sympathy for the Devil” or Naked Lunch, you have to have a strong constitution and mind; otherwise you are as sure to flip out as if you read that book of horrors, the Bible. Lou Reed put it well when he said in defence of Andy Warhol, “the Factory was not a mental hospital.” Don’t you know that you can get run over by a car, or a girl for that matter, anytime you walk out of the house? Now, who you gonna blame? Ghostbusters?

Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, and William Burroughs. Photograph by Victor Bockris.

What did Burroughs think of your decision to write a book about him? At the time you did it the book was probably the closest thing to a portrait done so far.

A few months after the book came out I was having dinner with Bill when I came across a response he made to an interviewer who asked about the book. “I could have done without it,” he replied. At first I was shocked, because I had brought people like Christopher Isherwood to the Bunker, and we had had fun during a lot of those taped dinners. But I also saw the humorous side. “Hey, man!” I remonstrated in fake shock, “what’s all this about then?” He grinned sheepishly, but before I left he gave me a small press book in which he had written something like, “to Victor Bockris, a friend through the vicissitudes of time.” There was a clique who resented the hell out of my activities with Burroughs. They formed the opinion I was leading him on, which says little for their opinion of William. They kept pointing out that I was not gay, as if that were some kind of betrayal. But… well these are long forgotten struggles and of little import now. Besides that was in another world and the boys are dead…

How many biographies are there? One real attempt. (Publishers often stamp biography on a portrait). The Morgan book was to my way of thinking a mistake. For several reasons: Ted Morgan did not understand William Burroughs. He’s a French Count, Comte St. Charles Armand Gabriel de Gramont, who has written some very good books. But he had met Burroughs in France and Tangier in 1972, I believe. I encountered him at the Bunker on several occasions and he always looked like he had a brick up his ass sideways. He didn’t like the other people around the Bunker because they did not look up to him. And he only saw Bill formally. He couldn’t handle the homosexuality or the drugs, or the passion or the realism. He never hung out nights we came to at 6 a.m. wondering what the fuck happened, or had to be carted home by a sympathetic amigo. He was a stiff uptight, jaundiced motherfucker. The proof is that he never finds his or any voice in the book. He tries to write a lot of it in Bill’s voice, or worse still in Bill’s subconscious, and it was terrible. What a missed opportunity.

They chose Morgan because he had done Roosevelt and Churchill, and they thought it would put Bill in the right context! This was shortly after he had been accepted into the American Order of Arts and Letters, as you can tell by the very boring opening chapter. I mean, to open a biography of William Burroughs on his induction into this meaningless body would seem to me to indicate upfront just how very far the biographer is out to lunch! But, you see, being able to represent William Burroughs is an extremely heady experience. I am sure I would have turned into a complete asshole if I had ever been in Grauerholz’s position.

In Morgan’s defense, it was an authorized biography. He knew that Bill was going to read through it all and could vet certain things. And contractually he gave 25% of the advance and royalties to Burroughs for this dubious right. The whole thing stinks of an agent throwing his weight around and destroying the whole project before it got started. Morgan accepted all this bullshit because he thought if he wrote a biography of Burroughs, people would take him more seriously as a writer!!! And then too, few people understand the art of biography. It is a form as difficult and changeable as its subjects. I spent six torturous years writing the Warhol biography. Actually I offered to write the Burroughs bio, but that’s another story…

Victor Bockris at a party (with Burroughs, not pictured) in 1981. Photograph by Michael Heissman/Radar.

I know what you mean about the Morgan book. I found it hard to reconcile the man who rejected all groups with the man so proud of his inclusion in a group. That’s what I realized on this re-read of your book: you understood him more as a peer than subject. Why did they not choose you to write it? How much say did William have over things anyway?

I appreciate your reading of my book. At the time, 1983, I had no chops as a biographer, whereas Morgan had won the Pulitzer Prize and supposedly knew what he was doing. I had also only just published the Bunker book. The reason I tabled the notion was my agent, Andrew Wylie, was pushing me hard to do the Warhol bio and I just wanted to make it clear to Bill that I would rather have done Burroughs. In retrospect, I am really glad I did Warhol. Even though it almost killed me and took six years of my life, it made my name. Besides, biography is such a tough nut to crack. And on my first time around I would never have survived the authorized aspects of the Burroughs-Morgan deal. I should add that as a private in the Burroughs camp I agreed with it at the time. It is easy to say all these wise-sounding things in retrospect. We were all so young and naïve, including Billy Burroughs. I am currently working on a book called The Burroughs-Warhol Tapes, but that’s all I want to say about it.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The Date: February 14, 1965

The first thing I think about when I consider William Burroughs’ St. Valentine’s Day Reading is the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929. On that date, five members of the Bugs Moran Gang and two others were shot at SMC Cartage Company on the North Side of Chicago mostly likely under the orders of Al Capone. The crime was never solved.  

Burroughs was fascinated by the underworld and no doubt the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre played into his reading in 1965, which featured a tape-recorded version of the last words of Dutch Schultz. Schultz was murdered at the Palace Chophouse in Newark by Mendy Weiss and Charlie “The Bug” Workman in 1935. Famously, Schultz slipped in and out of consciousness for 22 hours after the shooting as police stenographers recorded his dying words. Burroughs viewed the transcript as a natural cut-up. The cut-ups were all about revealing hidden links — ones that Burroughs believed were a form of prophecy and time travel.

While writing about Dutch Schultz, Burroughs was pleased to discover that Schultz had arranged the murder of Mad Dog Coll in 1931 on 23rd Street. Coll was 23 years old. Dutch Schultz died on October 23, 1935 and Charlie Workman served 23 years of his life sentence before he was paroled. The number 23 haunted Burroughs and he kept a scrapbook dedicated to the number. This interest in numerology began when Burroughs met a Captain Clark in Tangier who piloted a ferry to Spain. Clark navigated the route for 23 years without incident, yet after talking to Burroughs the ferry sank. That same night a flight from New York to Miami, Flight 23, crashed. The plane was piloted by a Captain Clark. And the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred on 2122 North Clark Street.

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that the death of Joan was also on Burroughs’ mind as he dictated the dying words of Dutch Schultz on St. Valentine’s Day? St. Valentine’s Day was not associated with romantic love until Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s linked the day with the engagement of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia. Later, as the day became increasingly commercialized, the martyred St. Valentine was tied to marriage as well. A priest during the reign of Claudius, Valentine secretly arranged marriages for young soldiers to their brides despite the fact that Claudius had outlawed such ceremonies. Claudius discovered Valentine’s secret ceremonies and had him executed. Further embellishments suggested that the doomed Valentine wrote the first Valentine’s Day card to his beloved on the eve of his execution. Thus St. Valentine became a martyr for marriage. As I have suggested in my piece on the death of Joan, the William Tell shooting can be viewed as a perverse wedding ceremony, a shotgun wedding of sorts in which Joan is sacrificed on the altar to free Burroughs from family obligations into a life of creative freedom. Joan may have been, like St. Valentine, a martyr tied to love and marriage.  

Much has been made of the fact that the last words of Dutch Schultz fascinated Burroughs due to its cut-up qualities, but equally haunting is the forgotten fact that Joan did not die instantly after she was shot. Accounts vary but it is generally agreed that Joan clung to life for up to an hour. She received blood transfusions in an effort to save her life. As Joan was shot, she emitted a death rattle like a snore. She lost consciousness, but possibly, like Dutch Schultz, she muttered some last words in her final hour. If she did speak on her death bed, Burroughs did not transcribe her words. Did she curse her killer? Did she say good-bye? Maybe she remained silent. What is clear is that Burroughs did not speak of it.

The Time: Sunday 4:00pm

The American Theatre for Poets held poetry readings on Sunday afternoons. Plays were performed on Saturday nights. Given that Burroughs’ reading occurred not just on Valentine’s Day but on a Sunday, the liturgy comes to mind. Dutch Schultz died at the age of 33, the same age as Christ. “The Priest they called him.” Is the fallen Burroughs giving a Black Mass? Is he asking for forgiveness for his sins? Or is this all coincidence?  

Venue: American Theatre of Poets at the East End Theater on 85 E. 4th Street, near Second Avenue.

East 4th Street was known as Off-Off Broadway Row, the epicenter in New York City for experimental theater. The Fourth Street Theatre, located at 83 E. 4th Street, housed theater productions and poetry readings. The New York Theater Workshop was at 79 E. 4th Street. In 1958, the Royal Playhouse was located at 62 E. 4th Street. La Mama Experimental Theatre Club was at 74A E. 4th Street. La Mama became a landmark, staging work by Diane Di Prima, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard among others.  

The American Theatre of Poets evolved out of the New York Poets Theatre, which had been established by Alan Marlowe, James Waring, Leroi Jones, Diane Di Prima and others to provide an outlet for drama, poetry and dance created by the multitude of artists in their circle. By 1965, the theater specialized in one-act plays by New York School poets accompanied by set design by a host of local artists. The American Theatre moved around a bit, but found a home at 85 E. 4th Street, The Downtown Theater. By the time Di Prima and company moved in, the theater was renamed The East End Theater. The building was actually the Ukrainian Labor Home, a home base for Ukrainian socialists. Known around the neighborhood as the Ukrainian Dance Hall, the tenement building had a large dance hall on the first floor, and a bar and a club upstairs. The American Theatre for Poets rented the dance hall, which held about 129 people. The bar would be open at intermissions. Burroughs read in this dance hall. Alan Marlowe spent quite a bit of energy fixing the space up and Frank O’Hara declared that it was “a jewelbox of a theater” on par with European art theatres. Today, the KGB Bar and the Red Room Theater are at this location, continuing the long tradition of experimental poetry and theater at this location. The KGB bar has a nice history of the location. 

Burroughs’ return to the East Village must have come with bittersweet memories. In 1953, Burroughs had stayed in Allen Ginsberg’s third-floor apartment (No. 16) at 206 E. 7th Street in the shadow of St. Brigid’s Church and near Tompkins Square. It could be argued that Burroughs the writer was conceived here and not in Mexico City. In this cramped apartment, Queer and The Yage Letters were put together with Ginsberg’s assistance and the initial notes to Naked Lunch were jotted down. The view from the fire escape proved pivotal in the development of Interzone and The Composite City. Yet ultimately, the Lower East Side must have been a place of great sadness for Burroughs, since Ginsberg had rejected his “tired, old cock” here, thus spurring Burroughs into exile in Tangier. Maybe that is why Burroughs stayed in the Chelsea Hotel and the financial district (210 Centre Street) during his return to New York in 1964/1965. There were too many ghosts haunting the Lower East Side.

In the 1970s, Burroughs would live six blocks south at 222 Bowery. Leroi Jones and Hettie Cohen (Jones’ first wife) lived right around the corner from the Theatre at 27 Cooper Square at 5th Street. In 1965, Jones would leave Cohen and his children to become a black radical. He would relocate to Harlem. Diane Di Prima lived at 35 Cooper Square. She had an affair with Jones in this period and had a child with him. The Floating Bear was edited and published in this apartment.

The Program

The American Theatre for Poets issued a program to be distributed at Burroughs’ reading. It is a simple mimeo publication that looks just like an issue of Floating Bear. I suspect Diane Di Prima printed them up on her mimeograph. Around this time, Di Prima acquired an offset press and began Poets Press. The press operated out of 35 Cooper Square. The Beautiful Days was the first publication of the press with poems by A.B. Spellman and an introduction by Frank O’Hara. Di Prima self-published Seven Love Poems from the Middle Latin and Huncke’s Journal in 1965. The program, however, is clearly mimeo. The paper has a nice shimmer to it as silver sparkles appear on the paper. The seven-page program reprinted the official deathbed transcripts of Dutch Schultz as transcribed in shorthand by police stenographer F. J. Lang. As a result, I do not consider this version of Dutch Schultz an original Burroughs piece. Interestingly, the transcript of the last words of Dutch Schultz had appeared in The New York Times in 1935. In a sense, the paper of record printed a cut-up years before Gysin and Burroughs rediscovered the technique. This is hinted at in the Burroughs program, which concludes with a reprinting of The Coldspring News. This cut-up piece had appeared in a newspaper three-column format in The Spero in 1965. The version published in the program is not in the original three-column format but the references to the newspaper remain in the title and the listing of Burroughs as editor.

The Reading

On Saturday February 13, 1965, the American Theatre for Poets presented New York poet Barbara Guest’s play, Port: A Murder in One Act (collected in the June 2008 issue of Chicago Review). According to Di Prima, production for this play was disorganized at best and subsequently Di Prima became more involved in directing the plays. By 1965, the plays of the American Theatre were more East Coast, more New York than ever before. I wonder if the selection of a murder-mystery was a comment on the mysterious circumstances of the William Tell shooting?

The next day Burroughs read selections from Naked Lunch and Junkie, but the most interesting part of his reading was the tape-recorded cut-up derived from the deathbed ravings of Dutch Schultz intercut with news articles on Vietnam and air crashes. This reading shows Burroughs at his most Pop. Harry Gilroy, reviewing the reading in the New York Times, describes the audience’s shock and nervous laughter. In reviewing another Burroughs reading at Wynn Chamberlain’s apartment in April, Gilroy again focussed on the bewildered audience reaction. At this time, Burroughs was interested in Happenings and participated with Brion Gysin and others in such events.  

Gangster funerals, airline crashes, and Vietnam. Sound familiar? It should. The Dutch Schultz recording echoes the Death and Disaster series initiated by Andy Warhol in 1962 and concluded in 1965. Burroughs’ obsessions parallel Warhol’s closely. The Dutch Schultz cut-ups make me think of Warhol’s Gangster Funeral (1963) or his Electric Chair silkscreens. The 1962 silkscreen 129 Die in Jet touches on Burroughs’ fascination with airline crashes, such as that involving Captain Clark. Furthermore 129 Die compares in form and content with Burroughs’ scrapbook pages, particularly Tornado Dead: 223. Warhol used a June 4, 1962 Daily Mirror front page for this silkscreen. In fact, Warhol used newspaper and magazine imagery for much of the Death and Disaster series. In this period both Warhol and Burroughs manipulated and detourned mass media images for artistic and political effect.  

For me nowhere are the similarities between Burroughs’ and Warhol’s artistic obsessions more noticeable than in Warhol’s Death and Disaster thermofaxes of 1964-1965. Much of this imagery came from tabloids. This is Warhol at his most literary and most involved with the New York literary scene. Warhol thermofax work appeared in Fuck You, a Magazine of the Arts (the infamous Couch cover) and in connection with New York poets like Ron Padgett (2/2 Stories for Andy Warhol) and Ted Berrigan. Berrigan published C: A Journal of Poetry, and Issue 9, which featured Burroughs’ work, was published on the day of Burroughs’ reading.  

The Death and Disaster thermofaxes were collaborations between Gerard Malanga, who provided poems, and Warhol, who provided the images. These pieces merge text and image much like Burroughs’ cut-up scrapbooks such as Time or APO-33. The Dead Star by Burroughs as published by My Own Mag or Jan Herman‘s Nova Broadcast reads like Burroughs’ spin on Warhol’s Death and Disaster thermofaxes. Unpublished and largely unseen Burroughs works of the period have even more of a Warholian feel. “Birdie Does the Watching” or “Sturdy Steel Snap-Tight,” pictured in the landmark and hugely important monograph Ports of Entry, in particular, have the gritty, raw photocopy look of Warhol’s thermofaxes.

At one time, Warhol was closely involved with major figures of The American Theatre for Poets. Alan Marlowe and Diane Di Prima were filmed by Warhol and entered Warhol’s circle, but the major point of intersection was dancer Freddie Herko, an intimate of Warhol, Marlowe, and Di Prima. Herko committed suicide in his final “performance,” dancing out of Johnny Dodd’s apartment window on October 27, 1964. Warhol had little to do with the members of the American Theatre after Herko’s death, and this suicide served as an end of an era for the New York art and dance scene, much like the shooting of Warhol would for the art and film scene in 1968.

Despite the fact that by 1965 Warhol had moved on to other interests, I see Warhol present at least in spirit at Burroughs’ reading at The American Theatre. Perhaps those silver flecks on the cover of the program are a sly reference to Warhol. Probably not. I must admit that I consider Warhol and Burroughs the most interesting and important artist and writer of the post-WWII era, particularly in the 1960s. I find the Death and Disaster series to be Warhol’s finest achievement and the cut-ups of the same period to be Burroughs’ creative pinnacle. In short, I see Burroughs and Warhol everywhere. In that case, the program serves as a mirror, and my own interests and obsessions are merely reflected back from the mimeographed page.  

The Recording

At the reading, a tape was recorded of Burroughs. It is unclear to me if this refers to the Dutch Schultz tape itself, a recording of that tape, or a selected recording of Burroughs’ other readings on that day. It is merely a selection and not the whole reading. OU, a magazine run by Henri Chopin, which published the Electronic Revolution in 1971, issued a 10? LP in 1972 and 1973, which includes this recording. The 1972 LP (OU Revuedisque 40-41) provides 10’15” or 9’45” (accounts vary) of Burroughs’ reading on Side A and was included in each of the 500 copies of the magazine. The 1973 LP (OU Revuedisque 42-43-44) contain a slightly shorter portion of the reading at 8’40” and was tipped into the each of the 500 copies of the magazine. Like Aspen, OU came in a box and was a multimedia affair. In both cases, LPs were available separate from the magazine. In 2002, the complete recordings of OU were released on 4 CDs (1500 copies), which contain both versions of the reading. I have tracked down a standalone copy of OU Revuedisque 40-41 (roughly 75 copies were available in this format), which also contains recording of J.A. da Silva, Brion Gysin, Bernard Heidsieck, and Henri Chopin.

• Download Track 1 of the Valentine’s Day Reading
• Download Track 2 of the Valentine’s Day Reading

Bibliography

The program for the reading was reprinted in whole or in part in little magazines on rare occasion. Those that I am aware of include:

Krea Kritiek 5 (May 1965) (The Transcript of Dutch Schultz)
Intrepid 14/15: The William Burroughs Special (Winter 1969) (the entire program)

If anyone attended the Valentine’s Day reading and has photos or reminiscences, please contact RealityStudio to share. Thank you.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I just finished reading a catalogue raisonné of Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. For those who do not know, Warhol shot a series of portrait films from 1964 to 1966, one of the most long-term and ambitious projects in his career as a filmmaker. Each test was about four minutes long, roughly the duration of a hundred feet of film. Warhol would place his subject in front of a camera (a 16mm Bolex to start) with instruction to face the camera until the film stopped. In many cases, Warhol would walk away from the subject as the film was shooting.

Warhol directed over 400 screen tests, and they serve as a remarkable archive of the personalities of the New York art scene and the Factory. Artists, art dealers, collectors, critics and patrons are well represented, as are the celebrities of the Factory’s Studio System: Edie Sedgwick, Mario Montez, Ivy Nicholson, Baby Jane Holzer, Ultraviolet, and Taylor Mead. Poets find a place in the pantheon, particularly poets associated with the New York School. Or should I say the Tulsa School? John Ashbery sat for a screen test representing the first generation New Yorkers, and he labeled Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and Dick Gallup, the Tulsa School. Berrigan, Padgett, and Brainard all sat for screen tests.

The Beats are represented in the form of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Both poets sat on December 4, 1966. These were some of the last screen tests taken in the entire series. In an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery dedicated to Warhol, I saw a handful of screen tests. Ginsberg’s was one of them. Like many subjects, Ginsberg chooses to sit as still as possible and aggressively out-stare the camera. I also saw Ashbery’s test. Similarly, he aggressively confronts the camera, scowling for much of the test. In interviews, Ashbery admitted to being intimidated by the process. Ginsberg and Orlovsky appeared in another Warhol film, along with Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso, two years earlier. The film was Couch and it has an interesting backstory you can read about here.

William Burroughs never sat for a screen test. Given the hype and excitement that surrounded Burroughs during his time in New York City in 1964/1965, this is somewhat surprising. At the time, Burroughs was an underground celebrity, a perfect subject for a screen test. Yet Burroughs and Warhol did not hit it off in the 1960s. Panna Grady, a rich heiress and a groupie of underground poets and writers, took Burroughs to meet Warhol for dinner. They went to a Chinese restaurant, where Burroughs was offended by the manners of those in Warhol’s entourage. Burroughs walked out.

The personalities of the two men were quite a bit different, as must have been obvious when they met. Warhol cultivated a camp and effeminate gay persona that was the polar opposite of Burroughs’ gun-toting machismo. Burroughs’ letters of the 1950s are filled with his dislike for swishes, so coming face-to-face with Warhol must have aroused some level of distaste. Creatively, however, the two had much in common. Before their ill-fated dinner, Warhol arrived at Burroughs’ loft with a bag of tape-recording equipment. Surely this piqued Burroughs’ interest because Burroughs asked Warhol to leave the recorders at the loft.

I am fascinated by Warhol during the Factory years, and it is an interesting “what if” to me to wonder what a collaboration between Burroughs and Warhol would have been like. How would Burroughs have reacted to a screen test? If anybody could have out-stared a Bolex, it would have been Burroughs. I like to think that the camera would blink, tear up, or break down under the strain of Burroughs’ impassive, sullen gaze. Perhaps Burroughs would not even register on the film at all. In Mexico City, Peru, Panama, and Tangier, Burroughs stalked back alleys anonymously, melting into the shadows without leaving a trace on his surroundings. The banker’s suit and the grey hat were the uniform of the 1950s Everyman. Or maybe a Nobody. Not for nothing did Burroughs’ ability to blend in and disappear earn him the name “El Hombre Invisible.”

Ironically, Burroughs’ non-descript clothes became iconic by the 1970s. Immediately recognizable, precisely because he was invisible. The banker’s clothes disguised a revolutionary: a wolf in sheep’s clothing. When Burroughs returned to New York City from 1974 to 1981, Warhol was still holding court, although the Factory gave way to Studio 54. The screen tests were replaced by celebrity portraits painted for a sizable fee. Interestingly, it was at this period, when Burroughs truly broke into mainstream consciousness, that Warhol and Burroughs would connect. When Burroughs lived in New York City at the Bunker, he and Warhol met again for dinner, and the results were much more cordial than 1965. Victor Bockris taped several of their conversations and published them in With Willam Burroughs: At the Bunker. This title was a Richard Seaver book that was distributed by Grove Press in 1981. Warhol took several Polaroids of Burroughs in preparation for a proposed portrait, but it never came off. Burroughs never ponied up the requisite cash. Yet the attempt was made. Even more than in 1965, Burroughs was a celebrity. Burroughs appeared on Saturday Night Live, was the godfather of Punk, was profiled in People. Such flash and recognition captivated Warhol. The pinnacle of this type of attention would be the Nike ad in 1994 that capitalized on Burroughs’ iconic status in the realm of, not Punk, but Cyber-Punk.

Despite the coldness of their first meeting, Burroughs and Warhol briefly bonded in Burroughs’ loft over the tape recorder. This machine proved central to the creative work and philosophies of both artists in the 1960s. Burroughs: “I am a recording instrument.” Warhol: “I want to be a machine.” Burroughs utilized the tape recorder from the late 1950s on. In his essay The Invisible Generation, Burroughs proclaims such technology as an agent for revolutionary change. Warhol relied on the tape recorder for most of his literary projects. A: A Novel is at its simplest a transcription of Warhol star Ondine talking about the events of his day. Tape transcriptions made up the bulk of Popism and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol as well. Ideally, Warhol sought to just let the tape run and present verbatim transcriptions. There would be no stopping or re-starting of the tape, no edits, no cuts. On the other hand, Burroughs aggressively manipulated the tape. He inched it backwards and forwards, recording and re-recording. He cut and spliced the tape. The resulting transcripts were heavily revised and altered. These two creative icons are on the opposite ends of the spectrum concerning the process of editing. Yet the goal is the same: a dissolving of the control of the artist, a striving for the impersonal.

The major difference between the films of Warhol and Burroughs is, again, the cut. Burroughs’ films are full of aural and visual cuts, and Warhol uses the cut sparingly, if at all. Despite opposing editing techniques, the desire to displace the artist is the same. Of course, just the reverse occurs. Reading Burroughs cut-up texts, his personal obsessions and style shine through. The same occurs with his films. The selection of images and sounds betray his hand. He cannot help but impose his personal imprint. The same holds true for Warhol. Within the seemingly very strict parameters of the screen test, extremely individual, personal performances result. No screen test is exactly the same, even with the same subject filmed for several different tests. If you doubt this, view the several different tests taken of Baby Jane Holzer or Edie Sedgwick. Each test has its unique qualities. The personalities of the sitter show through as does that of Warhol.

Watching the films of Burroughs and Warhol from a drug perspective, I feel that their styles could have been reversed. The drug of choice for Warhol and his art was amphetamine, while Burroughs preferred heroin. One would expect rapid cuts of image and sound from Warhol, and yet it was Burroughs’ cut-up films that reflect the speed freak’s sense and sensibility. Conversely, Warhol films like Sleep and Empire seem to capture the perspective of the junkie on the nod. Burroughs famously wrote in Naked Lunch that while on junk he could stare with interest at his shoe for hours. What would Burroughs have thought of a movie like Empire? Given his interest in editorial manipulation, Burroughs might have found it boring, preferring instead a movie like Chelsea Girls with its split-screen projection. Burroughs’ fascination with multiple perspectives hammers home the point that the world he described is largely seen through the lens of withdrawal. The kicking junkie is besieged by sensation. Spontaneous orgasms, crawling flesh, runaway thoughts. Burroughs’ art, cinematic and literary, captures and reproduces the experience of withdrawal more than the sensation of the fix. The hardcore addict fails to experience the euphoria of heroin in the same manner as a first-time user. Part of the kick is trying to recapture that initial rush. Burroughs’ strong sense of nostalgia stems in part from the longing of the addict for the first fix.

As Warhol was making screen tests in the 1960s, so in a way was Burroughs (along with Brion Gysin, Anthony Balch, and Ian Sommerville). Towers Open Fire (1963) opens with a long static shot of Burroughs which mirrors the portraits Warhol would begin creating a year later. In Guerrilla Conditions, later to become the basis for The Cut-Ups (1966), Burroughs introduced chance / found techniques similar to Warhol’s. Barry Miles writes, “The Cut Ups was literally that, with four reels of film being cut into twelve-inch lengths and assembled in rotation by a lab technician… No artistic judgment was made, and Balch was not even present.” The similarities to the restraints imposed on the screen tests are obvious.

I am more intrigued in considering a film like Bill and Tony (1972) as a Burroughsian screen test. The movie consists of the image of Burroughs mouthing Balch words, and Balch doing likewise to Burroughs’ words. Balch and Burroughs experimented with merging images to form a composite person. Burroughs was very interested in such superimpositions. Burroughs states, “Anthony Balch and I did an experiment with his face projected onto mine and mine onto his. Now if your face is projected onto somebody else’s in color, it looks like the other person. You can’t tell the difference; it’s a mask of light.” He states further, “Another experiment that Anthony and I did was to take the two faces and alternate them twenty-four frames per second, but it’s such a hassle to cut those and replace them, even to put one minute of alternation of twenty-four frames per second on a screen, but it is extraordinary.” Burroughs and Gysin also played with such techniques in The Third Mind experiments. The New Reformers photographs, produced in connection with the Colloque de Tanger in 1975, utilized such superimpositions. In 1971, Jan Herman visited Burroughs and Balch at St. Duke Street in London. At this time, the two men were making Bill and Tony and performing the experiments Burroughs describes above. Herman took part in these experiments and recorded a session on videotape. The results are available exclusively on RealityStudio.

As the video shows, Burroughs introduces montage to the screen test. Montage, collage, assemblage, like the cut-up technique, all center on the cut. In the screen tests, Warhol avoided the edit, the physical cut. The duration of the movie was dictated by the length in feet of the packaged roll of film. No takes, no director yelling cut, no splicing of the film. On the other hand, Burroughs urged a generation to cut up everything. Film, text, audio tape all was fair game for the scissors. Warhol and Burroughs’ editing techniques differed but their goal of depersonalization (and eventual failure to achieve those goals) were the same.

Both Warhol and Burroughs were well exposed to the world of experimental film from Russian avant-garde film of the 1920s to Surrealist film of the 1930s to the New American Film of the post-WWII era. Warhol was a fixture at The Filmmakers’ Co-op and a friend of numerous underground filmmakers like Jonas Mekas, Jack Smith (before their falling out), Willard Maas, and Marie Menken. These filmmakers were subjects for screen tests. Through Gysin and Balch (who distributed European soft-core films), Burroughs would have been exposed to a number of experimental films. I suspect Burroughs and Warhol were well aware of each other’s films as well. Towers Open Fire was completed in 1963 before the underground film boom of the next year. Much of what became The Cut-Ups were filmed around that time. Sections of The Cut-Ups were filmed in the Chelsea Hotel in 1965, the year Warhol and Burroughs first met. Given his connection with Mekas and others, Warhol may have heard about Burroughs’ film experiments as early as 1963. Interestingly, despite Burroughs’ absence from Warhol’s films, particularly the Screen Tests, they are Burroughsian in spirit (alternatively Burroughs’ films are Warholian) as both men had similar obsessions and interests. Burroughs’ films of the mid-1960s have images of young men in bed, of static portraits, of artwork being created in Factory-type fashion.

In fact in 1968, a young man appeared at the Factory introducing himself as Julian Burroughs, the son of William Burroughs. The man was in fact Andrew Dungan, and his act was a con along the lines of that portrayed in Six Degrees of Separation. Dungan read up on Burroughs and his actual son, Billy, in the mainstream and underground media. Either Warhol was fooled or he went along with the deception. The idea of a doppelganger of this type would have appealed to Warhol. He played such tricks himself. Most famously, Edie Sedgwick dyed her hair silver and accompanied Warhol to parties and openings as a female version of Warhol. Less well known but more on point here, Warhol sent Alan Midgette (who sat for a screen test) on a speaking tour of the United States posing as Warhol himself in October 1967 around the time of the Julian Burroughs hoax. Quite possibly, the hoax perpetrated on the Factory inspired Warhol to try it himself, although forgery and impersonation were already staples of the Factory aesthetic. In any case, Warhol cast Dungan / Julian in Lonesome Cowboys and Nude Restaurant. So indirectly Burroughs was a Warhol superstar. Burroughs may never have set foot in the Factory but his presence was felt there and bled into Warhol’s films of the period. Similarly in the screen-test feel of Bill and Tony, Warhol proves to be a ghost in the machine in Burroughs’ films.