WAITRESS: Would you like some more coffee?
BOCKRIS: Maybe that’s a crazy question to say, “What’s that?”
MAPPLETHORPE: Well she’s a genius in one sense or another. In a certain way she’s brilliant. In other ways she isn’t but everybody has certain …
BOCKRIS: Are you into music or not?
MAPPLETHORPE: No. But I know when something’s right. I mean I’m always looking at photographs and paintings and trying to find something that I think would be great and I have a terrible problem with painting and sculpture right now. Photographs as well. I don’t think it’s good enough. In a way we’ve had a low point.
BOCKRIS: Yes, we have had a low point. But when did it start?
MAPPLETHORPE: Post Pop. Pop was great.
BOCKRIS: Do you like to live alone or with someone in the best of all states.
MAPPLETHORPE: Alone.
BOCKRIS: You don’t ever get lonely?
MAPPLETHORPE: Well I go out a lot. No I can’t stand having people around in the same environment. I mean, I usually have a lover of one sort or another. Patti’s the only person I ever lived with. We lived together for seven years.
BOCKRIS: How old are you now?
MAPPLETHORPE: 29.
WAITRESS: Can I take this away from you, are you finished?
MAPPLETHORPE: Umhum. You know Sam, whom I’ve known very well for the last four years, had a great painting collection and decided he wasn’t getting off on painting and he was selling it off when I met him and he was into something called Arica at the time and he diced he wasn’t going to collect anything, but he’s an obsessive collector and he’s a great collector, one of the best. And I knew him for about a year and I was just getting more and more involved in photography at the time and I suggested to him that he collect photographs. And he started looking a little and anyway he became obsessed about it and put together the best collection in America, but the reason I suggested it was half because if you have that money you have to think of it. If you’re putting over a million dollars into something you can’t just do it for fun. Although people hate the term ‘investment’ when it comes up in relation to art. It really annoys me, they think they’re beyond it. I mean bullshit, anybody that buys something for more than a hundred dollars is not just … Anyway that worked perfectly because the things are worth three times what Sam paid for them.
BOCKRIS: What do you think a collector is? It seems to me a collector is an artist in the sense of being an audience.
MAPPLETHORPE: The great ones are. I mean Sam’s an artist. I’ve met people like that guy Colin Tennant who owns the island. I mean I may not think the island is the way I’d make it, but he’s an artist. He’s created something that no artist has ever done. Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is nothing compared to creating a whole excitement and glamour about a little island called ‘mosquito’ in French. It’s like great businessmen are too. I sold a couple of photographs to Steve Ross, the President of Warner Communications. Talk about high-powered executives. It was so impressive. First of all, he’s quite attractive. And he has a very attractive office and he’s the boyfriend of Amanda Burden and you know with a conference room on one side and a private secretary. He only had ten minutes for me and I went up there with the pictures and he had bought something from Holly before and the secretary sat there and sort of helped, but the whole thing he had it really down. He was trying to eat his lunch because he had another conference.
BOGKRIS: You must have a lot of confidence basically.
MAPPLETHORPE: I certainly do have that. I mean I have confidence about my work.
BOCKRIS: That’s confidence about your life.
MAPPLETHORPE: I mean I don’t think of anybody as being competitive with me. I don’t worry about that. I don’t see anything that is about what I’m doing.
BOCKRIS: It’s unusual not to have any competition with particular people. Most people do I think.
MAPPLETHORPE: I’d almost like that in a way.
BOCKRIS: It gets you out of bed in the morning.
MAPPLETHORPE: I’ve always wanted to find some sort of school I could attach myself to.
BOCKRIS: That always helps so much. A school provides instant publicity.
(I get up to get a fresh pack of cigarettes. When I come back Robert is staring across the airport at the runway. Jets are floating in and out. The tape has ended.)
Image Gallery
Andy Warhol at Muhammad Ali’s training camp in Deerlake, Pa., Fighter’s Heaven, August 1977. Warhol was there to take polaroids from which he would make six commissioned paintings of ‘The Camp’. (Victor Bockris)
Ginsberg, Giorno, Burroughs look at first edition of With William Burroughs in Italian (VB)
Burroughs reads at Mudd Club. Orlovsky and Ginsberg listen intently. NYC, 1979. (Marcia Resnick)
Jean Michel Basquiat and Debbie Harry yuk it up, Christmas 1986. (VB)
William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, and John Giorno at a Giorno album cover session, 1978. (Marcia Resnick)
Terry Southern admires Debbie Harry. NYC, 1978. (Marcia Resnick)
The Punks and the Godfather. Victor Bockris, Chris Stein, William Burroughs and Debbie Harry. (Bobby Grossman)
Dylan teaches Allen a few chords before they go to play over Kerouac’s grave in the movie Renaldo and Clara. Lowell, Mass., 1975 (Elsa Dorfman)
Lou Reed smirks as he makes Burroughs sign his last copy of a rare hardback copy of The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. He had forced Bill to give him the book. Burroughs’ soon-to-be biographer, Ted Morrigan, sits to Burroughs’ left. He looks so uptight throughout the visit that Lou put him away with an exclamation of “Ted!” when he heard his name, making it sound like the most ridiculous name in the world. Morgan was so enraged by the visit that he was forever after claimed Burroughs thought Reed was a horse’s ass. In fact, William thought that Lou was sharp and funny. They were two hispers from the same carny world, a world Morgan could not find if you gave him a map. (VB)
Peter Orlovsky, Allen’s companion for four decades, cops some zzzz’s during a Ginsberg-Burroughs political discussion at The Bunker. (VB)
Warhol on phone at The Bunker trying to find something to do after lagger walked out on us. NYC, 1980. (VB)
Chris Stein, Debbie Harry, Andy Warhol, and Jed Johnson, July 4, 1980 dinner in Harlem. (VB)
Victor Bockris and Patti Smith. NYC, 1971
The immortal William Burroughs limbering up on a massive medieval sword from the weapons collection of Chris Stein, chez Blondie, 1981. (VB)
James Grauerholz, Burroughs’ amanuensis, late seventies NYC. (Marcia Resnick)
Victor Bockris collapses during writing with Legs McNeil laughing hysterically, NYC 1979. (Jeff Goldberg)
Johnny Ramone and Phil Spector, LA recording session, 1978.
Liz Derringer, back of Warhol’s wig. Jerry Hall watch Mick clowning during the disastrous Captain’s Cocktail Party. NYC, 1980. (Marcia Resnick)
William Burroughs demonstrating how to draw and fire a handgun: three stills from Howard Brookner’s documentary, Burroughs. (VB) (top)
William Burroughs demonstrating how to draw and fire a handgun: three stills from Howard Brookner’s documentary, Burroughs. (VB) (bottom)
Victor Bockris and William Burroughs two days into the Nova Convention. Bockris shows strain. (Marcia Resnick)
Chris and Debbie and the Mudd Club. (Marcia Resnick)
Joey Ramone and Victor Bockris on the Bowery. NYC, 1979. (Marcia Resnick)
Party to end Nova Convention at Mickey Ruskin’s Chinese Chance. NYC, 1978. (Marcia Resnick)
Joey Ramone chats up Debbie Harry. Outtake from Punk magazine’s Mutant Monster Beach Party. 1978. (Chris Stein)
Debbie Harry parks her car. NYC, 1980. (VB)
William Burroughs demonstrating how to draw and fire a handgun: three stills from Howard Brookner’s documentary, Burroughs. (VB) (overleaf)
Blondie poster advertising a concert in Marseilles, France, February
8, 1978. Enough said! (Chris Stein)
Mary Woronov, star of Chelsea Girls, seen here in the great Rock ’n’ Roll High School directed by Alan Arkush, starring the Ramones.
Stein, Harry and Walter Stedding, the electronic violinist who Andy Warhol managed and Blondie took under their wing in the late seventies. (Marcia Resnick)
Jagger, Burroughs, Warhol, Bockris at the scintillating Captain’s Cocktail Party. (Marcia Resnick)
Andy Warhol’s grave, Pittsburgh. (VB)
Manuel Gottsching, Mr. Ashra of Ashra Tempel. Berlin, 1978.
Richard Hell, aka Richard Meyers. This man, like his counterpart Patti Smith, was and is primarily a writer. A poet, novelist, essayist he also wrote and performed the song, ‘The Blank Generation,’ which in 1976 telegraphed the Punk movement to the media just as Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ telegraphed the Beat movement twenty years earlier in 1956. 1980. (Marcia Resnick)
Bockris reading at St. Mark’s Church in wake of Warhol’s death, hence the flowers etc. (courtesy St. Martin’s Poetry Project)
Ondine, star of Warhol’s movie Chelsea Girls, star of Warhol’s, star of Warhol’s a, a Novel, and Billy Name, Warhol’s factory manager, 1960’s editor of Chelsea Girls, editor of a. NYC, 1989, during filming BBC documentary on Warhol. (VB)
Ramones’ lighting man/choreographer and painter Arturo Vega with Punk magazine’s cartoon character and writer Legs McNeil. NYC, 1978. (VB)
Damita Richter, America’s No. 1 Punk Rock groupie and the author’s companion during writing With William Burroughs. NYC, 1979. (Marcia Resnick)
Allen Ginsberg at William Burroughs’ Bunker, minutes before leaving on a three week national tour of US campuses. What was he thinking? 1986. (VB)
Burroughs and Bockris entertain The Police at Bill’s 70th birthday. William thought they were real policeman. (Bockris Archive)
Victor Bockris and his companion Lisa Krug at the Groucho Club in London, 1989. (courtesy Hutchinson)
Brion Gysin, WSB, Albert Goldman, Keith Haring, Prudence Crowther. Kneeling: Bockris and Raymond Foye. (Jeff Goldberg)
WSB blows out birthday cake candles for his 70th at The Limlight, VB cheers in the background. NYC, 1984 (Bockris Archive)
John Girono escorts Allen Ginsberg out of the Bunker as Al hits road for a three-week US college tour. NYC, 1986. (VB)
The girl’s gym class led by PJ Soles works out to the beat of Rock ’n’ Roll High School.
Debbie Harry and Terry Southern at the Nova Convention. NYC, 1978. (Marcia Resnick)
Bockris and Burroughs sit on steps in front of Burroughs’ house in Lawrence, Kansas. (James Grauerholz) (top)
Bockris poses in front of Warhol’s Electric Chair with Making Tracks in arms, illustrating a feeling authors often have on completion of a book. (Stellan Holm)
Still from Rock ’n’ Roll High School with the Ramones. High school blows up in background.
Bockris and Burroughs sit on steps in front of Burroughs’ house in Lawrence, Kansas. (James Grauerholz) (bottom)
Velvet Underground lawyer Christopher Whent has his copy of Uptight signed by Gerard Malanga, Sterling Morrison and Bockris. (Bockris Archive)
The Ramones and Riff Randel (played by PJ Soles) take over Rock ’n’ Roll High School.
Allen Ginsberg talks to Victor Bockris at a publishing party for Bockris’ book on Keith Richards. NY, 1982. (Bockris Archive)
The beautiful Liz Derringer snuggles with her husband, the hotter than hell guitarist, Rick. NY, 1973. (Marcia Resnick)
Bockris at Groucho Club, publication party for Warhol. London, 1989.
About the Author
Born in England in 1949, Victor Bockris has spent most of his working life in the United States. He has written biographies of artists, writers, and musicians, including Warhol: The Biography, With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker, Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story, Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story, and Keith Richards: The Biography. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, Bockris cofounded Telegraph Books, an independent publisher of emerging writers, with poets Aram Saroyan and Andrew Wylie. Bockris moved to New York City in 1973, where he went on to work with many icons of the city’s art and literary community during the Beat Punk period of 1977–1983. Dubbed the poet laureate of the New York Underground, Bockris continues to publish books around the world. He is currently writing Scars: My Life in the New York Underground.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1998 by Victor Bockris
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5306-1
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
VICTOR BOCKRIS
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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