BOCKRIS: How long were you there?
JORDAN: For an hour.
BURROUGHS: Do you remember anything else that Beckett said, or anyone said?
JORDAN: Allen kept the conversation up with questions about Joyce. He then asked Beckett what he was doing in Berlin. Allen was the most active interlocutor, but it was getting darker and darker, and there was no light in the room.
BOCKRIS: Why no light?
JORDAN: There was a light, but Beckett didn’t turn it on.
BURROUGHS: Quite a signal, I think. Do you remember any direct exchanges between Beckett and Susan Sontag?
JORDAN: Afterward she said he was the sexiest man she had ever met. I don’t remember any exchange between them.
BURROUGHS: I think this is a terribly interesting exercise. A number of people saw someone on a sort of momentous occasion and each has a different version of what happened.
JORDAN: Do you remember how he was dressed?
BURROUGHS: He had on a turtleneck sweater, a very hard flat kind of tweed sports jacket, it looked thorn-resistant, not the furry kind, and some kind of slacks. On his feet I have an impression of sandals.
JORDAN: Had you known him before you saw him in Berlin?
BURROUGHS: I met Beckett once in Girodias’ restaurant in Paris.
JORDAN: Was that the time when, apparently, you explained to Beckett the cut-up method and he responded by saying, “But, but that’s plumbing, that’s not writing!”
BURROUGHS: Oh, yes, he was quite upset by the whole thing. “You’re using other people’s words!” he said at one point. I said, “Well, the formula of one physicist is after all available to anybody in the profession.” When I saw him in Berlin I reminded him that “I think we’ve met before, Mr. Beckett.” And he said, “Yes, in Maurice Girodias’ restaurant,” and I said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I remember it very well.” That was my opening exchange.
BOCKRIS: Had the Paris meeting been standoffish, had the conversation dribbled to a close?
BURROUGHS: John said we were both really pretty much drunk at that point, so it just trailed off into amnesia …
DINNER WITH LOU REED: NEW YORK 1978
In our last dinner with Lou Reed, he confronted Burroughs with the rumor that he was purported to be a very cold person, capable of murder. He asked Bill if he had any comments.
BURROUGHS [short silence]: I neither deny nor confirm these rumors, Lou. It doesn’t do any good to deny them anyway. Last week Robert Duncan told me a story. According to him, I was walking along the banks of the Seine with Beckett in Paris discussing random and vicarious murder and Beckett said, “If it’s random it’s not murder.” I said, “Sam” (as I suppose I would address him if I were walking along the banks of the Seine with Beckett—never having walked anywhere with him I don’t know), “this is not correct at all and I will prove it to you,” at which point I am supposed to have pulled out a pistol and shot a passing clocharde, throwing her body into the Seine. Then Sam and I walked on.
Lou asked Bill if Beckett had actually worked for Joyce as a secretary.
BURROUGHS: He did for a while, yes. In fact it is obvious that Watt is all about his apprenticeship to Joyce. It was an apprenticeship more than anything else—the master telling the pupil how to do it—but he had to handle a good deal of typing and secretarial work too.
Lou asked if Bill thought a pupil could do better work than his teacher.
BURROUGHS: In this case, I believe so. I think the whole body of Beckett’s work is wider in scope than Joyce’s.
NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT: WILLIAM BURROUGHS AND THE ROLLING STONES
DINNER WITH BILL WYMAN AND PETER COOK: NEW YORK 1974
Burroughs arrived promptly at 8:00 P.M.—he has never been late for an appointment in the six years that I’ve known him—accompanied by James Grauerholz. “What would you like to drink?” I asked.
“Two fingers of Scotch, no ice, and a dash of water,” Burroughs replied. I poured myself a gin and tonic. “A summer drink,” he murmured as if accompanied by ghosts. We began discussing the concept of the interview and how it could be improved upon. I told him about my best conversations with Muhammad Ali and Salvador Dali. Burroughs seemed interested. Looking across the room directly at me, he said, “Have you considered cutting up the tapes?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s very simple. Take three tape recorders and place them beside each other. Turn on the third so it is recording. Then run a section of your Ali tape. Stop it randomly, turning the Dali tape on at the same time. See where the Ali and Dali conversations intersect when you play back the results on the third tape recorder. Repeat the process indefinitely. You will be surprised by the results.”
It soon became evident that Bill Wyman was going to be late and I was getting nervous, trying to keep up the conversation in between making frantic phone calls to locate him. I could see that Burroughs was becoming slightly annoyed and would soon make motions to leave. If I had known how much this kind of thing annoys him I would have apologized and offered to drive him home, but I pretended not to notice and we kept chatting about inconsequential things.
At 10:30, Wyman, his wife Ingrid, and publicist Anni Ivil entered the apartment. Introductions were made, but William remained seated in his armchair while Bill settled into a corner of the couch across the room so that it was not easy to maintain a conversation.
I moved them over to a table in the hall where a large buffet dinner was laid out and said, “You’re both interested in science fiction; that should give you something to talk about.”
“Oh, really,” said Burroughs. “Who do you like?”
“Asimov, Bradbury …” Wyman began.
“Oh,” he sniffed, “that’s not very good,” and strode back to the citadel of his armchair.
As Peter Cook entered the front door with a girl I jumped up and dashed into the foyer yelling, “Judy! Judy!” (the name of a recent wife). Unfortunately, although the girl looked very much like Judy, it was only a carbon copy. Burroughs looked up from where he was staring at the carpet and said, “Yes, hello … ‘Judy,’” as if that were the gist of it. Cook took a chair. Nobody knew what to say. At eleven, William left.
Bill and Lou after their first meeting at the Bunker, New York, 1978. Photo by Victor Bockris
I insisted on accompanying him downstairs to fetch a taxi, as it was raining. Outside, I ran around the block, secured a Checker, and brought it back to the front of the apartment building. “Bravo, Victor!” he called as he ran past me in the rain and jumped into the cab. At least, I thought, he doesn’t hold this fiasco entirely against me.
When we met for dinner the following week, the first thing I asked William was what his impression of Bill Wyman had been. Drawing himself up in his armchair and sipping from the usual two fingers of Scotch, no ice, and a dash of water, Burroughs replied “I thought he was a very rude young man coming two and a half hours late like that and not even apologizing for it. You see, that’s the trouble with these rock stars: they think they’re so important that everyone will wait for them; they have no sense of courtesy.”
BOULDERADO HOTEL, BOULDER 1976
I was visiting William over the weekend to conduct an interview for Al Goldstein’s Screw. Around 4:00 on Saturday afternoon we repaired to James Grauerholz’s tiny attic room, because it was full of sunlight and looked out on the mountains, with two cups of tea.
BOCKRIS: When did you first meet Brian Jones?
BURROUGHS: 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].
WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK 1977
I visited Keith Richard at his country house, Frog Hollow, and asked him if he’d read Burroughs’ statement: “I think I am in better health now as a result of using junk at intervals than I would have been if I had never been an addict.”
It turned out Keith had actually taken the apomorphine cure with Dr. Dent’s notorious assistant, Smitty: “Dr. Dent is dead, see,” he told me, “but his assistant, whom he trained, this lovely old dear ’oo’s like a mother hen called Smitty, still runs the clinic. I ’ad ’er down to my place for five days and she just sort of comes in and says: ‘’Ere’s your shot, dear, there’s a good boy.’ Or: ‘You’ve been a naughty boy. You’ve taken something, yes you ’ave, I can tell.’”
Of all the Rolling Stones, Keith Richard would seem to be the most likely candidate to make a real connection with Burroughs and perhaps it really is a pity that they have never met, except briefly at parties, where Bill is never very relaxed.
NEW YORK CITY 1980
I brought Bill over to The Factory so Andy could take some Polaroids of him for a portrait. Bianca Jagger was there. She spoke with Burroughs animatedly about canes, interviews and London for about fifteen minutes. After he left she came running over to me and said: “Burroughs is such an interesting man! I’d love to talk to him some more. He looks so much better now. I remember when Mick and I visited him at his flat in London to discuss filming Naked Lunch with Anthony Balch in 1973, he had on these pants for a man forty years younger that were much too tight, and high heeled boots. He seemed very uncomfortable and was difficult to talk to. He seems much more open and relaxed now.”
Burroughs sips Coke, Bianca watches, at The Factory, New York, 1979. Photo by Bobby Grossman
BURROUGHS: David Dalton, who has written a book on James Dean and edited a book on the Rolling Stones, contacted me. He wanted me to write something on the Stones with the suggested title Their Satanic Majesties, about two thousand words. This was to be part of an anniversary book put out by Stonehill Press—the twentieth anniversary of the Stones by the time the book is out. I cleared my throat suggestively. “Uh, there is the question of my fee.” He found this a little crass but mentioned a figure—$500. I protest that I am not a music critic, can’t think of anything to say that hasn’t been said already. “Oh,” he says “this is to be more personal.” I told him I knew the Stones very slightly. But “Keith is very anxious for me to write something.” Well, the Stones have shown interest in my work and I felt a certain obligation, but when I got it down on paper—my God—it looked so dull: 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. I mean, who wants to hear about the cultural revolution at this point? It’s like the Vietnam War or the Irish thing. It takes me about ten days to write an article like this. It would take another zero in there to make it an attractive thing financially. Whatever the money involved on a job like this, I have to do it right or I don’t do it at all. And I wasn’t about to hand out platitudes about the cultural revolution and the worldwide influence of rock and roll. So Victor suggests we arrange a dinner with Andy Warhol and Marcia Resnick. However, it transpired that Mick and not Keith would be present at this meeting.
DINNER WITH ANDY WARHOL, MARCIA RESNICK, AND MICK JAGGER: NEW YORK 1980
BOCKRIS: I called up Liz Derringer and said “Could you ask Mick and Jerry Hall to come over to dinner with William at the Bunker? We’re going to tape it, but it’s not like an interview, it’s just an informal chat.” Liz thought Mick would probably like the idea and called him. He agreed. He’d be only too glad to drop by Burroughs’ place on the Bowery. Liz suggested that Marcia Resnick take the photographs since they had worked together before on interviewing and photographing Mick. I also invited Andy Warhol.
Andy arrived first and began running around Bill’s loft admiring the spacious rooms, Brion Gysin’s paintings, the Orgone Box and the white floors, walls and ceilings, much to William’s delight and amusement. I got them drinks. They sat down at the big conference table and began discussing Professor Shockley’s controversial theory of artificial insemination of women with higher than average I.Q.’s in order to create a super race.
“Bill, you should sell yours!” I said. “Imagine who would want The Sperm of William Burroughs.”
“You could do it right now,” Andy told him. “All they have to do is put it in the freezer.”
“I’ll do it right away!” Bill exclaimed, then mused, “I bet Mick Jagger could name his own price!” The phone rang. It was Marcia Resnick requesting entry to the Bunker with her camera equipment. She started to set up strobe lights and it soon began to look as if we were making an underground movie. We yelled at Marcia, asking her to take the lights down, stash them in Bill’s room, and only bring them out when dinner was over. Everybody would by then be relaxed enough to have their picture taken.
After a couple of delaying “we’ll-be-half-an-hour-late-we’re-on-our-way” phone calls, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall and Liz Derringer arrived in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln sedan. As they entered the loft, William got up from the table and crossed the room extending a hand. Andy already knew everybody. I tried to introduce Liz and Jerry to Bill, while taking their coats and making sure everybody sat at the right place at the table. Bill was sitting at the head of the table. I put Mick on his right, myself on his left, and Andy next to me. The men were at one end of the table, the women at the other.
BURROUGHS: It soon transpired that far from approving Dalton’s project, Mick knew nothing about it. He assumed a suspicious attitude as if I was trying to hustle him into something when actually I was feeling more and more definitively that I wanted out. I ran through the notes I had made and found that Mick was as bored with the project as I was becoming. Mick apparently had been told that I had a proposition for him. I had been told by Dalton that Keith and Mick wanted me to write something for the book. So I felt that the Stones had a proposition to make to me. The result was a dead end of misunderstanding, a comedy of errors that wasn’t even funny. When Mick asked, “Do you have a phone in this joint?” I thought the conversation had hit rock bottom but I was wrong.
At one point Victor said that Andy had been shot and that I had shot someone, so Jagger asked who I had shot. There was a static pause. I said, “I haven’t shot anyone right lately, Mick. Been on my good behavior.”
Handshakes and farewells were perfunctory. That’s one article I won’t have to write, I thought.
BOCKRIS: After Mick, Jerry and Liz had finally left, Andy, Bill, Marcia and I stood around dazed. Trying to be encouraging, I offered, “I find with these interviews that if I feel it was good afterwards it was always terrible, and if I on the contrary feel really terrible it was usually good. So this probably will be very good!”
“You were really terrible,” Andy replied flatly.
“It was terrible. Nothing …” I began.
Burroughs with Joe Strummer after dinner at the Bunker, New York, 1980. Photo by Victor Bockris
“Happened,” Andy finished.
“There was no connection at all!” I started. “THERE WAS NO CONVERSATION! There was no … Nothing happened again.” I couldn’t help thinking about
Bill saying the same thing to Susan Sontag about their meeting with Beckett.
“Well, I really didn’t expect anything to happen,” Bill said fortuitously.
“I’d like to say something about Mick Jagger,” Marcia Resnick piped up. But I couldn’t stand to think about the concept of anybody meeting anybody and what it was all about, so I just turned around and screamed, “Marcia, you weren’t supposed to be taking photographs during the conversation! It changed the concentration! How can people talk if somebody is running around taking photographs the whole time?”
THE FOLLOWING DAY
BURROUGHS: Thinking it over, I decided that an opportunity had been missed here to say something basically new about rock and roll, and about the Stones, in relation to the origin and function of language. Now a phrase like “cultural revolution” gets tossed around until it loses its meaning. “Have you seen a cultural revolution around here?” Victor asks. “No I haven’t seen one,” Mick says. The cultural revolution is such a bore anyhow and stuff. Mick may not see a cultural revolution but he is walking around in one. Fifty years ago jazz was confined to nightclubs, country clubs, ballrooms and occasionally, when you got to be a classic, a concert hall. You were lucky to take in $200 a week. The jazz musician had no currency outside of jazz afficionados. There were no Bix Beiderbecke T-shirts, no screaming, no groupies. The sociological and political effects of music were virtually non-existent. Now rock and roll is a mass phenomenon performed before huge audiences and associated with a worldwide cultural revolution. The comparison of rock and roll audiences with Nazi rallies is not at all farfetched. Anything that can get that number of people together is political. So Mick may be right on when he says he wants to go into politics.
Granted that rock and roll is a powerful force, just what is the nature of that force and where is it going? The simplest questions are the most difficult. I remember having dinner with Jasper Johns, 1967, in the Connaught Hotel, London, and I asked him, “What is painting really about? What are painters really doing?”
With William Burroughs Page 22