Who knew that William Burroughs, the Beat Generation’s leading author and Godfather of Counterculture who lived out his last days in Lawrence, Kansas, and hung out with The Beatles but didn’t like The Rolling Stones? Barry Miles, the author of Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now and the new book Call Me Burroughs, definitely knew that and a lot more.
Miles (yes, he says, “Call me Miles”) journeyed from London to Kansas City recently to participate in the February 5th 100th Birthday Anniversary for Burroughs which coincided with the 50th Anniversary of The Beatles first American appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday, February 9, 1964. Miles was both a participant and a chronicler of the London Underground in the l960’s. He co-owned Indica, the Bookshop/Art Gallery where John Lennon & Yoko Ono famously met and it was said “everyone who was going to be anyone passed, or claimed to have passed” through his door.
In conversation, Miles explored the epic life of the complicated author of the once-notorious Naked Lunch, who saw his life as “an evil river,” and spent most of it trying to exorcise what his artist and poet friend Brion Gysin named “The Ugly Spirit” in Paris in 1959.
Miles explained that Burroughs’ life was quite colorful from the beginning. His family was very interesting, and well off in St. Louis. His grandfather invented the adding machine. His uncle Ivy Lee, one of the early public relations gurus, consulted with Goebbels for Hitler. His mother (he believed that she was clairvoyant) told her son “I worship the ground you walk on.” His father was more distant, but paid “Bill” an allowance until he was 50 years old. Still, his early social milieu was one that he came to reject completely. He went on to reject both Buddhism and Communism at Harvard, where as a loner and an outsider, he transitioned into his persona as “El hombre invisible.”
Miles addressed the common view that Burroughs was a misogynist by recalling that Bill developed “the bizarre idea that women came from another galaxy.” Still, Miles described the incident in 1951 when Burroughs accidentally shot his wife Joan Vollmer in a drunken game of “William Tell” as a huge catalyst in his life. He said that Bill would later often say,” I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death.” Burroughs as Miles described him was both a chameleon and a collaborator. “Everyone has their own William S. Burroughs,” he explained.
When asked about Bill’s musical collaborations with everyone from Paul McCartney (Bill is on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) to Kurt Cobain, Miles explained that Bill “really didn’t like rock and roll.” Miles explored the many roads taken and not taken in Burroughs’ life, but it was touching to hear that this peripatetic world traveler finally found a home in Lawrence, Kansas at age 69 and lived a softer old age with a support system of friends and cats while he continued his lifelong love of writing, photography, music, art, as well as guns and fishing.
Speaking of roads taken or not taken, if you want to know more about Bill “The Exterminator,” or how he might have been the head of the CIA, you’ll have to read Call Me Burroughs.
