Bill, James, and I had a ball out in Los Angeles: visiting movie sets, hanging out with Paul Getty Jr., getting high and laughing. This was when I went from being a journalist to a friend. I think they saw giving me the assignment as a way of helping me move on from Tom, with whom I had been very close. It worked out well for all of us. P.S. John Giorno would never have wanted my role. He was one of the stars of the show, plus he ran The Nova Con in tandem with James. The Nova Convention is considered a convergence that cemented Burroughs’ influence on music and established his reputation as “the godfather of punk” (a moniker he firmly disputed), with performances from Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, John Cage, and Laurie Anderson. What are your abiding memories of those three days? Jumping down from a shelf in Bill’s dressing room just before he went on stage and spilling my glass of red wine all over his trousers (“All over my trousers, man!”); making eye contact with him backstage right before he went on to do a great reading; telling him there was a bomb scare at the after-show party at Mickey Ruskin’s. “THERE AINT NO BOMB MAN and we’re not going anywhere,” he said. He was enjoying every moment of this once in a lifetime celebration of his life and work. From around 1974 to 1981 you organised the series of dinner parties that would ultimately be published as With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker. Warhol, Susan Sontag, Lou Reed, Tennessee Williams, Debbie Harry, Allen Ginsberg, Mick Jagger, Christopher Isherwood, Joe Strummer… The guest list goes on and on, it’s one hell of a roll-call, but how did you hit on the idea? Ah! Good question. After interviewing Bill over two days in Boulder Colorado for High Times in August 1978, I was having dinner with him and some amigos. At one point, when he saw me obviously astonished at the level of play in the ongoing conversation, he said, “The best stuff is
75