William S. Burroughs: A Man Within Page #8

punk rock.

[ Smith ]

William had a vision

of the future...

that was parallel

to punk rock...

this idea of a pack of boys,

or a pack of androgynous souls,

scooting into the future,

you know, with sores...

and scarlet fever, visions.

And just the whole

movement of Johnny,

you know, in the Wild Boys.

And my first album, Horses,

is littered with

Burroughs-type references.

[ Vale ] Punk rock was

influenced by Burroughs.

Because I looked upon punk rock

as this huge...

international,

anti-authoritarian,

cultural rediscovery

and re-creation revolution.

I mean, you were trying

to up-end all the categories

and hierarchies.

You were totally

anti-authoritarian,

and you were after these voices

that had been neglected,

because they weren't

giving you the values...

of the middle-class,

bourgeois society.

In the sense that punk

was all about trying

to tell the truth...

and be anti-authoritarian

and be black humor,

I think Burroughs

is totally punk rock...

and a role model.

It's funny. The punk-rock thing

was really exciting for him,

more so than, say,

counter-culture,

'60s kind of music.

I remember, in '77,

seeing Burroughs.

He read that piece

"Bugger the Queen."

It was so hip that he did that.

The audience was just

completely amazed

that he did that.

He said, "The English rock group

the Sex Pistols..."

wrote a song called

'God Save the Queen.'"

I think he commended it.

He says, "I'd like

to further the sentiment..."

with a piece I wrote called

'Bugger the Queen.'"

And he would read these verses,

and then he would, like,

exclaim each one with

"Bugger the Queen!"

The whole audience

was starting to join in.

Every time he said it,

they were, "Bugger the Queen!"

We went to his house

a couple times and hung out,

shot Super 8 film

and photos and whatnot...

and just kind of hung out

with William a little bit.

[ Thurston Moore ]

He showed us around

his backyard.

We saw the different things

he had going on out there.

And he built this box

called the orgone box.

It was like an outhouse almost

or something like that

was what it looked like.

It was a bunch of plywood

sheets put together...

with a little hole

cut in the door.

And you would

sit in there and...

I think Reich's theory

was that sitting in there

would allow you...

to gather certain accumulations

of orgone energy,

as he called it.

They're kind of hard to explain,

but I gather they have...

something to do with him feeling

like any lacks in one's life

had something to do...

with not being able to achieve

a true and pure orgasm.

I think he thought

rock and roll was bullshit.

It mostly is, you know.

But then, so are most novels.

So, you know...

So, you know...

But yeah, I don't think he felt

any great affinity for all that.

A lot of the pioneers of punk

had read Burroughs extensively,

like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed...

and Will Shatter

from Negative Trend.

Some of the ideas kind of

trickled into people's work,

and then other people

absorbed that work...

not knowing how much of it

had come from Burroughs.

"Lust for Life" by Iggy Pop

has Johnny Yen,

and hypnotizing chickens and...

I just thought

it was really cool.

I wrote a song called

"Gimme Some Skin,"

which is one of my most

depraved-sounding numbers,

apparently, people say.

I love it,

and I talk about him in it.

I was 23 when I wrote it.

And there's one

of his characters,

in a reference to him.

And the lyric is,

Typhoid Mary, she got soul.

Sucks all night

on an old a**hole.

Whip it on out, whip it on in.

Give it to me, honey.

You gotta gimme some skin.

And then the second verse is,

Billy, Billy Lee ain't no fool.

All the junkies

think he's cool.

Typhoid Mary, she got soul

Sucks all night

on an old a**hole

She shoots speed

right up her ass

She shoots speed

and she smokes grass

It's a good vocal.

You should hear it some time.

[ Mock Screeching ]

It's particularly...

I can't even get the words out.

[ Lee Ranaldo ]

Certainly someone like Dylan

took a lot of inspiration,

as a wordsmith, from stuff that

Allen and William were doing,

in the way they were

approaching language

and what they were writing...

you know, a very sort of modern

approach to just language...

and using it to uncover

a different truth.

And I think that's why people

in the music community...

have responded

to William's work,

because there were

a lot of ideas that

he could take off from.

One of the early

Dead Kennedys songs...

The B-side of our first single

was "The Man with the Dogs."

The song itself, the lyrics

were just not coming together.

I couldn't figure out how

I wanted to tell the story...

or what belonged where, and it

was just kind of a big mess.

And so I finally threw up

my hands and figured,

what have I got to lose?

I'm going to try

the Burroughs method.

I'm going to cut up every

single line of this song...

and move it around

until I get something I like.

And sure enough, it worked.

I am no one

but I'm well known

For I am the man

with the dogs

I stare at you shopping,

watch while you're walking

Two dogs run around

your toes

You turn around

Two eyes break you down

Now, who does that guy

think he's starin' at?

Stop in your tracks

You're bein' laughed at

Your armored ego is nude

And I do, and I do

Crack up 'cause

I'm gettin' to you...

Some of the examples of this...

Sometimes when I realize I'm

going to do this in advance,

the rough drafts sometimes have

to be kept in plastic bags...

and come out more like this.

This is "Vulcanus 2000"

from a later Lard project.

[ Burroughs ]

"'Fight tuberculosis, folks.'"

Christmas eve, an old junkie

selling Christmas Seals

on North Park Street.

'The Priest, ' they called him.

"'Fight tuberculosis, folks.'"

[ Bockris ] The medium

of the counter-culture

was collaboration,

beginning with the obvious

example of a rock group.

We were having a good old time

in the Bunker there.

And in the midst

of the conversation,

we got to Marlene Dietrich.

[ Murmurs, Chuckles ]

Uh, well...

And he started singing

"Falling in Love Again"

in German.

And to me, that signaled

the beginning of the record.

Well, here's another William.

[ Burroughs Singing In German ]

[ Rifle C*cks ]

[ Gunshot ]

[ John Giorno ]

It's not so easy just to...

if you're a really great writer

like William...

to go over

and work with visuals,

and he succeeded.

Somehow it flowered

at the end of his life,

and he was able to do all of

these great visual works.

William always claimed that

it was Brion's death in '86...

that liberated him

to become an artist.

[ Aldrich ]

We had been shooting out here

for several years.

And one day, William

and the people that would

drive him out there showed up.

And they had some cans

of spray paint.

So they took the cans

of spray paint...

and they suspended them

in front of the plywood.

And William started

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