William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll
On sale
10th September 2020
Price: £14.99
William S. Burroughs’s fiction and essays are legendary, but his influence on music’s counterculture has been less well documented-until now. Examining how one of America’s most controversial literary figures altered the destinies of many notable and varied musicians, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll reveals the transformations in music history that can be traced to Burroughs.
A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs’s parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame, the stories of Burroughs’s backstage impact will transform the way you see America’s cultural revolution-and the way you hear its music.
A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs’s parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame, the stories of Burroughs’s backstage impact will transform the way you see America’s cultural revolution-and the way you hear its music.
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Reviews
The ultimate guide to Burroughs as counter-cultural contagion
There's a brilliant idea behind Casey Rae's William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll, which is that if you simply follow Burroughs through the rock 'n' roll years you'll see him achieve a flickering ubiquity - lurking here, eavesdropping there, photobombing the whole parade. It becomes a kind of alternative history
A timely reminder of the Pope Of Dope's influence on good music as well as tedious transgressive sludge. "Once you start looking, Burroughs is everywhere," Rae writes. "It's like a game of Where's WaMo? with a killer soundtrack.'