Sexy priest time!
Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman
Rolling Stone
February 28, 1974
by Craig Copetas
William Seward Burroughs is not a talkative man. Once at a dinner he gazed down into a pair of stereo microphones trained to pick up his every munch and said, “I don’t like talk and I don’t like talkers. Like Ma Barker. You remember Ma Barker? Well, that’s what she always said. ’ Ma Barker doesn’t like talk and she doesn’t like talkers.’ She just sat there with her gun.”
This was on my mind as much as the mysterious personality of David Bowie when an Irish cabbie drove Burroughs and me to Bowie’s London home on 17 November (“Strange blokes down this part of London, mate”). I had spent the last several weeks arranging this two-way interview. I had brought Bowie all of Burroughs’ novels: Naked Lunch, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded and the rest. He’d only had time to read Nova Express. Burroughs for his part had heard only two Bowie songs, ‘Five Years’ and ‘Starman’, though he had read all of Bowie’s lyrics. Still they had expressed interest in meeting each other.
Bowie’s house is decorated in a science fiction mode: a gigantic painting, by an artist whose style fell midway between Salvador Dali and Norman Rockwell, hung over a plastic sofa. Quite a contrast to Burroughs’ humble two-room Piccadilly flat, decorated with photos of Bryan Gysin - modest quarters for such a successful writer, more like the Beat Hotel in Paris than anything else.
Some of Russell Harty’s questions when Bowie recently recorded a segment in the London Weekend Chat Show were in fact concerned with poking fun at David’s clothing and manner.
“Yes, that’s because he’s…
Bowie caught himself in mid-sentence, and slowly a broad grin expanded outwards across his face. He sank his head in his hands, and muttered “Shit”, and then began to laugh. “Everybody has fantasies, and I’m sure Russell Harty probably has as many fantasies as I do.”
— Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express (February 1973)
A slightly odd interview from Argentina, but it is rather cute how Bowie pretty much ignores the interviewer in favor of flirting with the translator.
Una entrevista un poco extraña de la Argentina, pero es lindo cómo Bowie prácticamente ignora el entrevistador y coquetea con la traductora.
On the last stop of the Station To Station tour, Bowie meets the head of his French fanclub, an elderly seamstress. Some rare, gorgeous footage of the Duke here, both onstage and off.
This is one of my very favorite Bowie videos; I could go on about it for ages.
