by Barry Miles
1. Enter the Seventies
The next live-in boyfriend, after John Lee, was John Culverwell, a Dilly boy from Piccadilly Circus. It was the usual story: at first he was industrious, cleaning everything, helping with the cooking, great sex. Bill bought him clothes and took him to Tangier in the summer of 1970, where he was exactly the type of boy that the English colony would expect someone to bring down to Tangier, so he fit right in. Edouard Roditi was there, someone whose humor Bill had always appreciated, so they had a very enjoyable visit. Back in Britain, Bill paid for Culverwell to enter the merchant marine, and he made one trip, but then decided he wanted to do something else. Then the quality of cooking—never good—began to fall off. He began to invite his friends over and to ask for more money. Bill’s principle of cleaning was to always clean something or straighten something up every time he entered a room. When John Culverwell entered a room he made another mess. Bill knew it would be like this, that things would slack off. These boys were used to making five or six pounds a night and having an easy life with plenty of drinks and a certain level of luxury, just for putting out sexually. It was a lot easier to find someone to keep them than working in the merchant marine or in a regular job, which paid far less money. The sex became more and more unsatisfactory. It lasted eighteen months, then John moved out.
Bill kept up his connections with the underground press, and on July 24–26, 1970, he attended the sci-fi conference at Phun City, organized by Mick Farren from International Times at Ecclesden Common, Patching, near Worthing, West Sussex. Mick Farren wrote, “William Burroughs stalked the night in his FBI man’s hat and raincoat, requiring hippies to talk into his portable tape machine while he baffled them with instant cut-ups.”2 Also at the conference were Alex Trocchi and J. G. Ballard, but the inflatable domes in which the conference was supposed to be held never inflated.
Bill’s mother, Laura Lee Burroughs, died on October 21, 1970, at the age of eighty-two. When Burroughs opened the telegram from Mort he read it and thought, “Oh Mother’s dead,” and set it aside. He walked into the other room and the realization hit him. He stood and stared at himself in the mirror and his reaction was like a kick in the stomach. “I can’t describe the incredible grief I experienced, it’s horrible, it’s nothing you would experience if you can avoid it. I just collapsed completely, just sobbed.”3 He lay on the bed for hours, until finally he had to say, “I can’t stand it any more. I can’t can’t. I can’t.” He wrote, “I still, after years, I still cry to think about her death. And I NEVER WENT TO SEE HER!”4
A great rush of emotion overwhelmed him. In earlier days they had always been close and he felt tremendous guilt at not having visited her at the nursing home in the last four years of her life; he just sent mawkish greeting cards to her at Christmas, and the occasional postcard. During the war she had once asked him, “Suppose I was very sick. Would you come to see me? Look after me? Care for me? I’m counting on that being true.”5 It wasn’t. She had remained loyal to him throughout, and on one of his earlier visits had told him, “I worship the ground you walk on. Inside, we’re the same person.” He had not known how to respond; he was a grown man, and only now that she was dead did he understand the connection she was talking about. Bill had always thought that the Freudian mother-and-son relationship had been sorted out years ago. He recognized that Paul Bowles was always trying to get out from under his mother and father but thought that was not the case for himself. He thought that the blame for any early traumas rested with the servants, not with his parents. “These were inflicted by criminal servants.” Reflecting on Laura Lee after her death, Burroughs now saw her as “a very charming woman and a very beautiful woman. Physically and in every way a beautiful person. She was warm and affectionate. She was a very great person.”6 He wrote to Billy Jr., “It makes me very sad to think how many years they worked and sent money and how little they ever got in return. They were extraordinarily kind, gentle, and well-intentioned people and that is something very rare now.”7 With his mother’s death, Burroughs received his last bequest from the Burroughs estate, $10,000, hardly the trust fund written into existence by Kerouac.8
On February 14, 1970, in the federal district courthouse in Chicago, Judge Julius Hoffman sentenced the seven defendants and two defense lawyers in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial to a total of fifteen years and five days’ imprisonment for contempt of court. This farcical case was the result of an attempt to show that Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and other members of the Youth International Party (Yippies) had conspired together to disrupt the Democratic Party Convention held in Chicago in 1968—the one Burroughs attended on behalf of Esquire magazine. Using the court transcripts, John Burgess and Charles Marowitz wrote a play, The Chicago Conspiracy, to be performed at the Open Space Theatre on Tottenham Court Road. Charles Marowitz wrote, “In the role of the petulant Judge Julius Hoffman, I cast William S. Burroughs, who had been a libertarian as long as he had been a drug addict. Burroughs was an excellent cast member who approached the entire project with a diligent austerity. He was an eerie and imperturbable presence throughout rehearsals and I found the actor-defendants as intimidated by him as if he had been the icy-hearted presiding judge himself, but in his case it was the literary reputation that was so awesome. In fact, Burroughs was gentle and unassuming; he submerged the character with a dry wit which was simultaneously spooky and hilarious.”9
The cast were mostly expatriate Americans who had fallen foul of the American authorities and were now living and working in London. Among them were screenwriter Carl Foreman (The Guns of Navarone etc.); virtuoso harmonica player Larry Adler; playwright Donald Ogden Stewart (The Philadelphia Story); and stage, screen, and TV writer Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H etc.).
As the audience filed in for the one-night performance, they were brusquely frisked by actors dressed as American cops. Every indication of contempt for the proceedings or support for the defendants was firmly gaveled down by the judge. New York Times theater critic Irving Wardle reported, “One could not ask for better casting than William Burroughs. […] However remote his resemblance to the judge, the author of ‘Naked Lunch’ occupied the bench with a most chilling authority; immovable and expressionless, as though a smile might tear his parchment features, occasionally favoring the more obstreperous speakers with a mild gaze from his dead pale eyes before dropping on the offenders like a ton of bricks. Perhaps it was not like that at the time, but it felt true in the theatre.”10
Burroughs was so good in his role that he was asked to act again six months later, this time by David Zane Mairowitz, another American playwright living in London. This time Bill moved up from playing a judge to becoming the president of the United States in a play called Flash Gordon and the Angels, which opened at the Open Space Theatre in January 1971.11 Bill only appears on a monitor, first in a congratulatory public speech to the astronaut, written for public consumption, then in a nasty private communication telling the astronaut that the mission is terminated, and so is he. Before filming, Bill explained to Mairowitz that in order to get into character and truly be the “Ugly American” he had to drink a serious amount of whiskey. Mairowitz was worried that Bill would become incoherent,12 but his slurring, vituperative speech was loved by the critics.
2. The Rolling Stones
It had always been Antony Balch’s dream to make a film of Naked Lunch, and in 1964 they had filmed various sequences of Burroughs acting out scenes from the book (some of which were later included in The Cut-Ups). The project was revived in 1970 by Brion Gysin, who thought they could raise enough money to make it themselves. Friendly Films Limited was set up, with offices at 8 Duke Street Saint James’s and Bill, Brion, and Antony as directors. Brion wrote a treatment that put Burroughs in a difficult position because he didn’t like it at all. Brion had reverted to his old days with John LaTouche in wartime New York and turned Naked Lunch into a Broadway musical. Burroughs: “The script was terrible. Completely terrible. ‘I’m the choicest baboon…’ �
� Antony Balch spent a great deal of time and energy drawing the storyboards in colored marker pens, showing every scene and camera move, in four huge fourteen-by-twelve-inch volumes while Brion used his contacts to raise money and interest the stars. Ruth Ford was taken to La Capannina and asked to play the part of Pantopon Rose. From the way Brion talked, Mick Jagger was virtually signed up for the lead. Brion insisted on taking Bill clothes shopping in Jermyn Street, buying him flared trousers and new shoes to look suitably up-to-date and modern. Jagger was interested, but the meeting in May 1971 was a disaster and he never even read the script. Jagger wanted a name director, whereas Burroughs and Gysin were committed to Antony directing. Then Antony apparently made an inappropriate remark concerning the snug fit of Jagger’s trousers and Jagger’s interest evaporated. Burroughs recalled, “Mick Jagger was asked to play Lee and he hated Antony on sight.”13 A decade later, Bianca Jagger told Victor Bockris, “When Mick and I visited Burroughs at his flat in London to discuss filming Naked Lunch with Antony Balch, 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.”14 As Bill later put it, “Naked Lunch died slow and hard alienating VIPs on every side.”
Brion flew to Venice, to Hollywood, to New York, back and forth to Paris. He had a promise of $3 million, everything was all set, then the next day he couldn’t get past the secretary. Virginia Long, the widow of right-wing Texan oilman Clint Murchison, said she would back the film if James Taylor played the lead. Taylor didn’t want to; “that was a very strained encounter,” Burroughs recalled.15 Brion spent between $20,000 and $30,000—money he could have done with at the time—fruitlessly running around, making self-important phone calls, while all the time Burroughs was secretly hoping that nothing would come of it because the script was so appalling. Burroughs remembered, “Throughout I knew that it wasn’t going to work out just like I knew the Dreamachine wouldn’t work. […] It wasn’t a valid concept to begin with. Naked Lunch just isn’t a film.”
Nonetheless, Bill responded when Hollywood expressed an interest. In 1971 he and Terry Southern were sent first-class tickets to Los Angeles by Chuck Barris, the television game show producer—The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game—who wanted to see the Naked Lunch script. A Daimler met them at the airport to take them straight to meet Barris at a restaurant called the Coconut. Barris was there with his secretary, Miss Keister. They gave him the script and he said he would get in touch the next day. The Daimler took them to the Hyatt on Sunset Boulevard. The next day there was no word from Barris, but the day after, his office called to invite them to dinner at Barris’s place in Malibu to discuss the script. The Daimler had shrunk to a two-seater. After Bill had been seated uncomfortably on Southern’s lap for an hour, the driver deposited them in front of an unlighted house with a snicker and drove off. Terry couldn’t believe that Barris would stand them up like that, but Bill told him, “Terry, when your Daimler shrinks down to a two-seater, it is time to move on fast before they renege on paying our hotel tab.”16 Fortunately Terry knew people in Malibu, and a neighbor gave them cheese and snacks. They called a cab to return to their hotel, where they found that Bill’s warning had been prescient: a note had been put on their account to say that Barris assumed no responsibility for the bar or restaurant charges. The next morning they took a cab to the airport.
All through the early seventies Burroughs spent a great deal of time trying to sell a film script of The Last Words of Dutch Schultz to Hollywood as well as halfheartedly attempting to get the Naked Lunch film project off the ground, but all to no avail. Burroughs hated the whole celebrity business, even though it was only just beginning. He remained on the periphery of “swinging London” largely by resisting efforts by the principals to involve him and bring him more to center stage, though he attended such events as the premiere of Nick Roeg’s Performance in August 1970, in which he received a name-check, as did The Soft Machine and Hassan-i-Sabbah. He went to the premiere of Andy Warhol’s Pork in August 1971, Warhol’s Trash in November 1971, and the premiere of A Clockwork Orange in January 1972. One example of his aversion to celebrity life was the farewell concert given by the Rolling Stones at the Marquee Club in London on March 26, 1971, before their move to the south of France to avoid British taxation. Burroughs was invited and went along because they were still hoping to involve Jagger in the film script of Naked Lunch, but he left early because he wanted to avoid the rush. He later heard he had offended the band: “That’s it, I never paid court. I don’t like their music. I don’t like rock ’n’ roll at all!”17 Bill also attended their farewell party on March 30, held at a hotel in Maidenhead, Berkshire, along with John and Yoko, Eric Clapton, and members of the Who. Bill: “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.”18 Richards was probably trying to talk to Bill about the apomorphine cure he had just taken with Smitty. Richards: “I once took that apomorphine cure that Burroughs swears by. Dr. Dent was dead, but his assistant whom he trained, this lovely old dear called Smitty, who’s like mother hen, still runs the clinic. I had her down to my place for five days, and she just sort of comes in and says, Here’s your shot, dear, there’s a good boy, or You’ve been a naughty boy, you’ve taken something, yes you have, I can tell. But it’s a pretty medieval cure. You just vomit all the time.”19
The Stones made another gesture and Bill was invited to Mick Jagger’s wedding to Bianca in Saint-Tropez on May 12, 1971, but to Bill the idea of flying to the south of France in a private jet full of “beautiful people” was the last thing he wanted to get involved with. He explained to Jagger’s staff, “It isn’t my scene. I’m not gregarious, I don’t want to be involved in a massive thing like that,” but Jagger was offended.
Despite all this, Bill’s tenuous connection with the Stones continued, and the next year he was asked by Playboy to cover the Stones’ 1972 American tour. Brion had arranged it, to Bill’s irritation because he was just beginning work on describing his archives and could not leave London, certainly not for $1,500 plus expenses. Brion was quite insistent that he should go, but Bill was adamant. Then Brion suddenly realized that he would make money when the archives were sold, as he and Bill were splitting the money fifty-fifty because the archives also included Brion’s extensive correspondence with Alice B. Toklas and Paul Bowles. He now told Bill, “You can’t leave now.” Bill complained, “So he got me into it and then turned right around. I didn’t want to cover their tour in the first place.”20 The editor from Playboy told Bill, “There are a lot of people going to be disappointed by this decision, not least the Stones.” But as Bill said, “What the hell, I was doing something a whole lot more important to me.”21 Terry Southern covered the tour in his stead, which turned into a disaster, with Terry even getting into a physical fight with the Stones’ manager.
Though he eschewed the celebrity end of the London scene, Bill still had a number of friends and acquaintances whom he saw on a regular basis; as well as Ian, Brion, and Antony, Professor Eric Mottram of King’s College, London, would come for drinks and dinner. His 1971 book The Algebra of Need22 was one of the first studies on Burroughs’s work. Burroughs watched Charles de Gaulle’s funeral on November 11, 1970, at the house on Park Square East of his accountant, Michael Henshaw, who enjoyed a drink every bit as much as Bill. Early in that year he began seeing a lot of his French translators, Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach, who had moved to London from the Chelsea Hotel and were subletting Barry Miles’s house at 15 Lord North Street in Westminster. Bill became a frequent dinner guest; he could walk there across St. James’s Park, and soon got to know Graham Keen, who rented another floor in the house. Graham, who was the designer and one of the directors
of International Times, was planning to publish Cyclops, “The first English adult Comic Paper”—by which he meant a comic for adults, not pornography—and asked Burroughs if he would like to contribute a text for an illustrator to work with. Bill said he had a story, “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart,” that he thought would translate suitably into comic art form. Graham Keen selected Malcolm McNeill, a final-year student at Hornsey College of Art, to do the artwork. Malcolm McNeill explained, “I was simply handed a half page of text every month and left to try and figure out what the heck it meant. Even though I had no idea what Bill looked like, the character I came up with for Hart looked remarkably like him.” The first issue appeared, published from Lord North Street, in July 1970, and ran for three more monthly issues before folding for financial reasons. “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart” took up the center spread in all four issues and was regarded by Burroughs as a great success. He wanted to continue working with McNeill, whom he had not met, and Graham Keen put them in touch. They worked together on projects for many years, in particular Ah Pook Is Here, which was unfortunately published without McNeill’s illustrations (“too expensive to produce”), but with Burroughs’s permission, by John Calder and Viking Press in 1976.
Another project from this period, 1971, was a book on homosexuality. For some years Burroughs had been collecting tear sheets of articles in Time, Newsweek, Playboy, and others on the subject, and when Aldus Books approached him with an offer to write a book on homosexuality he gave the idea careful consideration. He wrote a six-page outline, giving his views on the subject, but unfortunately Aldus appears to have dropped the idea.
Throughout his time in London Burroughs ate most of his evening meals out. He liked the Scandia Room on the top floor of the Piccadilly Hotel, which was always empty, as was the Icelandic Steakhouse on Haymarket, which was so bereft of customers that Bill thought it must be a front for organized crime. He often ate at La Capannina on Romilly Street in Soho, usually with Antony Balch, who went out with several of the waiters. There were bells hanging from the mock rafters that the waiters rang whenever Bill and Tony walked in, much to Bill’s embarrassment. Another favorite was Lee Ho Fook in Chinatown, where he was often the only westerner present. Bill and Antony dined together several times a week, but if he was alone, Burroughs sometimes treated himself to caviar at nearby Prunier on St. James’s Street. Caviar was one of his great loves, though normally he was reduced to eating lumpfish roe. “Now son, when a man gets on the Beluga Caviar, well, there’s nothing he won’t do to satisfy the Caviar hunger eating at his bread-basket. He’ll lie, he’ll cheat, he’ll even kill for a gob of it.”23
