John Walters interviews William Burroughs for ''Walters Week'' a weekly arts programme on BBC Radio 1 . Broadcast - 11-11- 1982 - includes ''The Do - Rights'' and ''The Wild Fruits'' .
I actually remember taping this excellent broadcast by John Walters on my cranky hitachi tape recorder in my fusty Mr Bleaney bedsit. His broadcasts I thought were always very intelligent and thought provoking. A real shame he died so early. Him and John Peel really set the bar high and its been downhill all the way since.
One of the most gifted readers of his own work that I've ever heard. If anyone ever needs a working definition of the term "sardonic," all they need to do is to listen to readings like the ones excerpted here.
15:15 That reading on "Do-rights" Bill did was probably one of my favorite passages of his. He was most famous for his surreal cut-ups, but I prefer his more down to earth and humorous observations on life.
thank you, a thousand times, seems the front end is all some fluff, interviewer trying to really hammer in to the listeners that he is oh so intelligent... while trying to maybe stretch it out cause burroughs is late :D
The dumbing down of society is alive and well it seems ,can you imagine radio 1 commissioning anything like this nowadays, hah! No way ,stuff like this requires an attention span for a start. I miss this kind of programming on radio.
+Neil McCormick SHIT I AM 38 AND I WAS ONE OF THE FEW READING BOOKS AT ALL WHEN I WAS IN JUNIOR HIGH/HIGH SCHOOL I MEAN BOOKS LIKE NAKED LUNCH ON THE ROAD AND HOWL THOSE THREE LEGENDARY PUBLISHED WRITINGS BY THE BEATS I MEAN BOOKS THAT WERE BANNED! MY FRIENDS THOUGHT I WAS A WEIRDO OR A NERD OR FREAK READING BURROUGHS AND KEROUAC FIRST CUZ THEY NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THEM AND SHIT ALL MY GENERATION KNEW WAS BULLSHIT! LOOK AT IT NOW A MILLION TIMES MORE FUCKED AS FAR AS ART/MUSIC/POETRY/ HELL HAVE WE ALL FORGOTTEN PHILOSOPHY!
The interviewer seems to be trying to trick him up. It seems to be cultural thing, a British intrerviewer thing. It's a bit annoying, but it's still a pleasure to hear Burroughs chat.
Great ideas man with a prescient imagination. A writer who wasn't afraid to take his preoccupations and desires and the darkness in his soul to the very limits of intellectual and artistic exploration. Sex dwarves sucking spinal fluid through straws, fishboys smearing gel in rectums and Dr Benway opening up some poor unfortunate on the operating table as mystical Morrocan music wafts in from the nearby Nova Express cafe. All the shocking Burroughsian images seem almost nostalgic now. Creativity should have no limits. But in our present times the likes of Burroughs would be hung drawn and quartered by the creative police the moment he appeared. If the thought police in his own brain telling him what he could and couldn't say didn't get to him first..
That's the duty of the artist, to transgress, to push the boundaries of the human mind and to speak truth to the flawed and beautiful human condition. We'll never see great artists like this today unless more start fucking shit up, being courageous and shitting in the face of fake moralists and cowards. All great stars are monsters!
@@GodSquadPartridgeas if you know any modern artists. Should we repeat what has already been done? The beats were necessary in suppressed times. We are more free now.
WSB was almost never interviewed by his intellectual equal, sadly. Most of them come off as both condescending and short attention-spanned, and frequently interrupt Burroughs in mid-sentence. Shame. He and his work deserved rigorous minds in the opposite chair.
aoxomoxoanyc yeah, Walters constantly is cutting Burroughs short and answering his own questions, kind of annoying actually. Also the questions he asks him aren't all that interesting. He seems to have this idea of Burroughs and more or less is wanting WSB to reassure him of his idea.
donotseemecricket yes, true.. re-reading the ''cut-up trilogy'' and the years-ahead depth of the ideas within were hard-earned by WSB, he had to live through dark interior times to reach that awareness. a nice-enough but generic journalist won't have the mindset to dig way in.
aoxomoxoanyc watch Larry King interview Marlon Brando, it's fucking terrible. if i ever got to interview one of these ol' boys i'd let them go on the biggest tangent they like. that's where the nuggets of gold are, especially if recalling on old times.
I thought the interviewer was very good, he obviously knew and understood Burroughs work. Burroughs had so much insight into the human condition, but I can't at all understand this compulsion to go into space. Wouldn't that be just transferring the problem elsewhere? I'm waiting for all of the billionaires and their slaves to go to Mars and then we can get back our Earth back.
I mean No offence here, but it clearly seems to me, that Burroughs is "literally" dancing circles around interviewer John Walters. Still a great show. Thanks so much for uploading this.
A little confusing, though -- his comments on space travel sound as if he's talking in the late 1950s or early '60s; we weren't going into space in "aqualungs" in the early 1980s!
Yes we were - he’s referring to spaceships. His references to ‘going into space’ are about to his belief that we needed to evolve as a species to survive beyond planet earth without the need for technological apparatus to help us breathe.
Younger viewer here - sorry but this Walters guys is so infuriatingly patronising and talks over Burroughs all the time. Such a shame that he doesn’t realise that his guest is the legend here and needs to be heard.
I hate how the interviewer takes this "superior" stance when talking to William, asking questions with the "remember we are on national radio - we need to keep it civil" attitude. It makes William feel awkward and fumbles to answer each of his "correct" asked "out of the box" questions. He never feels he got a living human being next to him. There's no room for improvisation and digressions. That said, probably not a common occurence to have guests like William over to the BBC national radio. So kudos to him for chosing him as his guest.
It's because of his beard. That's what makes him take that superior attitude. You said it - he really *wasn't* a living human being; he was more beard than man at that point. All those thick strands of wiry beard hair burrow deep into his skull, pulling at his brain levers. They're the ones running the show, working together as a hive mind. Basically an external parasite. And by the time it establishes itself on the outside - enough to get the odd comment, like "Nice beard!" "Oh, I see you're growing a beard. It suits you!" - by then you can be assured that a coup has taken place, the beard's seized control and it's the one calling the shots. So, that's where the arrogance comes from - beards are all arrogant bastards. A few strands of hair are more or less harmless by themselves. Just aimless. But when they get together and form a collective.... well, you've seen the results in this video.
He talked too much, interrupted too often and laughed too heartily at his own jokes, otherwise he done well, teasing one or two gems out along the way.
Interesting his explanation 57:00 about minorities having no rights and 'now they can at least protest and people listen.' Ha! And now the SJ- era people are turning fascist. What the heck would he have thought of that??
The sjw movement is on the left and Burroughs wrote that the leftists were the biggest enemy of freedom and always anxious to stick their noses into your private life. He was no fan of the right but he thought the left was less desirable.
Not many people especially middle or upper class were beaten up or harrassed as television would make you think. No more than people beaten up for looking gay...long hair. sexual revolution occurred in the sixties you people seem to forget. The left is absolutely the party of endless departments to hassle invade and general harassment and always has been. I doubt he would have said either was better or worse than the other. The idea of 2 party has always been an inside joke to those part of it, working together to fuck you.
@@johnparker7784 Some of his most viscous and savagely well-honed satire was against racism, and he also tore into economic/class inequality (e.g., "Le Gran Luxe"). Doesn't necessarily make him a "leftist," but I don't see much room for tolerance of right-wing ideology, either.
this journalist is really irritating with his stupid giggling at his own jokes or after asking a dumb question. Burroughs seems annoyed by this constant giggling. Also, his questions are boring and below WB's intellect/art level, even those about his life experience. His attitude is of some forced 'spontaneity' and fake intimacy with the guest. i don't see why people here praise him as "legendary", " brilliant ",i suppose the are just nostalgic.
Even as he is considered one of America's best writers. On close reading, most of his earlier books, portray all women in such pathetic, weak and inconsequential roles, that it shows how patriarchal and hegemonic William Burroughs himself was...
Well . . . actually, he despised the "weak and inconsequential" stereotype women had been forced into by society, just as much as most feminists do (e.g., his comments here on "southern womanhood"). Bryon Gysin was a negative influence on him, as far as the more egregious descents into misogyny that cropped up in some of his writing; but he also often used extreme, almost self-mocking excesses in his rhetoric in his writing. As a gay man he certainly had little or no interest in women sexually, and there's no doubt that he was most comfortable in the company of men. But all accounts suggest that he was always courteous around women (even old-fashioned, such as rising from his seat when a woman entered the room) and, at least at times, he could be downright gallant; in 1937 he agreed to marry a Russian woman named Ilse Herzfeld Klapper to help her come to America to escape the Third Reich.
I actually remember taping this excellent broadcast by John Walters on my cranky hitachi tape recorder in my fusty Mr Bleaney bedsit. His broadcasts I thought were always very intelligent and thought provoking. A real shame he died so early. Him and John Peel really set the bar high and its been downhill all the way since.
This gentleman is an absolute genius. A spiritual and literary shaman. I bow to thee.
Please write me a script, Dr Burroughs
not only Burroughs, I always love to hear (Barry) Miles talk as well. thanks for sharing, Burroughs is and was my all-time hero
He sounds like Thunderf00t or Sargon.
Those pin-point pupils and the nasale voice..... didn't know this interview existed. thanks for the upload.
Omg. Some great music. 😮
One of the most gifted readers of his own work that I've ever heard. If anyone ever needs a working definition of the term "sardonic," all they need to do is to listen to readings like the ones excerpted here.
THANK YOU for uploading this :)
"Possibly, to some extent" is a great answer to a question that you think is stupid.
Thank you much!
This is just fantastic! Thanks for posting.
The beginning sounds like Roger Waters getting interviewed about Burroughs eh?......;)
Burroughs never let anyone from the outside world in too deep. This guy had no chance.
15:15 That reading on "Do-rights" Bill did was probably one of my favorite passages of his. He was most famous for his surreal cut-ups, but I prefer his more down to earth and humorous observations on life.
He was a peculiar genius.
Yes indeed he was full of it !
21:30 When the actual WSB interview began.
what's he on about before then?
thank you, a thousand times, seems the front end is all some fluff, interviewer trying to really hammer in to the listeners that he is oh so intelligent... while trying to maybe stretch it out cause burroughs is late :D
Thanks
this was fascinating
I do love British radio
I never knew (or maybe had just forgotten) that he'd met Beckett. Christ, to have been a fly on the wall then...
min 33:50 "The only place for us to go is into space (...) Its the only goal worth striving for : Space travel" 💯💯💯
Thnks
The dumbing down of society is alive and well it seems ,can you imagine radio 1 commissioning anything like this nowadays, hah! No way ,stuff like this requires an attention span for a start. I miss this kind of programming on radio.
+Neil McCormick SHIT I AM 38 AND I WAS ONE OF THE FEW READING BOOKS AT ALL WHEN I WAS IN JUNIOR HIGH/HIGH SCHOOL I MEAN BOOKS LIKE NAKED LUNCH ON THE ROAD AND HOWL THOSE THREE LEGENDARY PUBLISHED WRITINGS BY THE BEATS I MEAN BOOKS THAT WERE BANNED! MY FRIENDS THOUGHT I WAS A WEIRDO OR A NERD OR FREAK READING BURROUGHS AND KEROUAC FIRST CUZ THEY NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THEM AND SHIT ALL MY GENERATION KNEW WAS BULLSHIT! LOOK AT IT NOW A MILLION TIMES MORE FUCKED AS FAR AS ART/MUSIC/POETRY/ HELL HAVE WE ALL FORGOTTEN PHILOSOPHY!
i like your comment but all caps is like listening to something unpleasant. Also pretty sure theres research about all caps being less easy to read.
Neil McCormick
morse
i guess joe rogan has some intellectually challenging guests though
Kevin Gill sorry but I don't see WSB as a Beat writer. The Beats were of their time. WSB is so much more than that so much more interesting.
A young American's new TH-cam Channel begins with his take on Burroughs
The interviewer seems to be trying to trick him up. It seems to be cultural thing, a British intrerviewer thing. It's a bit annoying, but it's still a pleasure to hear Burroughs chat.
"tell Diane , never Mind Ill tell her myself "Matt Dillion
He was actually born Feb. 5th, 1914 not 1908
"Front office, brown-nose fink to the bone!" Nice XD
Great ideas man with a prescient imagination. A writer who wasn't afraid to take his preoccupations and desires and the darkness in his soul to the very limits of intellectual and artistic exploration.
Sex dwarves sucking spinal fluid through straws, fishboys smearing gel in rectums and Dr Benway opening up some poor unfortunate on the operating table as mystical Morrocan music wafts in from the nearby Nova Express cafe. All the shocking Burroughsian images seem almost nostalgic now.
Creativity should have no limits. But in our present times the likes of Burroughs would be hung drawn and quartered by the creative police the moment he appeared. If the thought police in his own brain telling him what he could and couldn't say didn't get to him first..
Fuck wikipedia for starters. "Wouldn't You?"
That's the duty of the artist, to transgress, to push the boundaries of the human mind and to speak truth to the flawed and beautiful human condition. We'll never see great artists like this today unless more start fucking shit up, being courageous and shitting in the face of fake moralists and cowards. All great stars are monsters!
@@GodSquadPartridgeas if you know any modern artists. Should we repeat what has already been done? The beats were necessary in suppressed times. We are more free now.
WSB was almost never interviewed by his intellectual equal, sadly. Most of them come off as both condescending and short attention-spanned, and frequently interrupt Burroughs in mid-sentence. Shame. He and his work deserved rigorous minds in the opposite chair.
aoxomoxoanyc yeah, Walters constantly is cutting Burroughs short and answering his own questions, kind of annoying actually. Also the questions he asks him aren't all that interesting. He seems to have this idea of Burroughs and more or less is wanting WSB to reassure him of his idea.
donotseemecricket yes, true.. re-reading the ''cut-up trilogy'' and the years-ahead depth of the ideas within were hard-earned by WSB, he had to live through dark interior times to reach that awareness. a nice-enough but generic journalist won't have the mindset to dig way in.
aoxomoxoanyc watch Larry King interview Marlon Brando, it's fucking terrible. if i ever got to interview one of these ol' boys i'd let them go on the biggest tangent they like. that's where the nuggets of gold are, especially if recalling on old times.
exactly.
John Walters was a brilliant interviewer (RIP), this comment just comes off as very pretentious if I'm honest.
I thought the interviewer was very good, he obviously knew and understood Burroughs work. Burroughs had so much insight into the human condition, but I can't at all understand this compulsion to go into space. Wouldn't that be just transferring the problem elsewhere? I'm waiting for all of the billionaires and their slaves to go to Mars and then we can get back our Earth back.
La vie en paix music instrumental for Peace and LOVE 💙💙💜 music instrumental aisha 💜👏👏
Wasn't John Walters the radio producer who refused to allow John Peel to play Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV?
So, "Miles" here is Barry Miles....Christ he sounds as old here as he does _today!_ :/
I mean No offence here, but it clearly seems to me, that Burroughs is "literally" dancing circles around interviewer John Walters. Still a great show. Thanks so much for uploading this.
"literally"?
Yes. A bit of a Jest. No pun.
In every jest is a bit of truth
A little confusing, though -- his comments on space travel sound as if he's talking in the late 1950s or early '60s; we weren't going into space in "aqualungs" in the early 1980s!
Yes we were - he’s referring to spaceships. His references to ‘going into space’ are about to his belief that we needed to evolve as a species to survive beyond planet earth without the need for technological apparatus to help us breathe.
BURROUGHS was a total space cadet and encouraged internal psychonaught exploration! 😅
Where does he talk about Bob Dylan? I can't find it.
About 38 mins in ....
Younger viewer here - sorry but this Walters guys is so infuriatingly patronising and talks over Burroughs all the time. Such a shame that he doesn’t realise that his guest is the legend here and needs to be heard.
I hate how the interviewer takes this "superior" stance when talking to William, asking questions with the "remember we are on national radio - we need to keep it civil" attitude. It makes William feel awkward and fumbles to answer each of his "correct" asked "out of the box" questions. He never feels he got a living human being next to him. There's no room for improvisation and digressions. That said, probably not a common occurence to have guests like William over to the BBC national radio. So kudos to him for chosing him as his guest.
It's because of his beard. That's what makes him take that superior attitude. You said it - he really *wasn't* a living human being; he was more beard than man at that point. All those thick strands of wiry beard hair burrow deep into his skull, pulling at his brain levers. They're the ones running the show, working together as a hive mind. Basically an external parasite. And by the time it establishes itself on the outside - enough to get the odd comment, like "Nice beard!" "Oh, I see you're growing a beard. It suits you!" - by then you can be assured that a coup has taken place, the beard's seized control and it's the one calling the shots. So, that's where the arrogance comes from - beards are all arrogant bastards.
A few strands of hair are more or less harmless by themselves. Just aimless. But when they get together and form a collective.... well, you've seen the results in this video.
Anyone know who's singing Stardust at the end?
André Previn.
He talked too much, interrupted too often and laughed too heartily at his own jokes, otherwise he done well, teasing one or two gems out along the way.
+kenny durkin Better than many others I've heard....
Talked way too much, tedious interviewer
Interesting his explanation 57:00 about minorities having no rights and 'now they can at least protest and people listen.' Ha! And now the SJ- era people are turning fascist. What the heck would he have thought of that??
The sjw movement is on the left and Burroughs wrote that the leftists were the biggest enemy of freedom and always anxious to stick their noses into your private life. He was no fan of the right but he thought the left was less desirable.
less desirable then the right? pff wouldn't be so sure about that. at least they don't beat you up just because, for example, you are gay.
Not many people especially middle or upper class were beaten up or harrassed as television would make you think. No more than people beaten up for looking gay...long hair. sexual revolution occurred in the sixties you people seem to forget. The left is absolutely the party of endless departments to hassle invade and general harassment and always has been. I doubt he would have said either was better or worse than the other. The idea of 2 party has always been an inside joke to those part of it, working together to fuck you.
@@johnparker7784 Some of his most viscous and savagely well-honed satire was against racism, and he also tore into economic/class inequality (e.g., "Le Gran Luxe"). Doesn't necessarily make him a "leftist," but I don't see much room for tolerance of right-wing ideology, either.
I think his voice is akin to Allen Watts.
I think YOU'RE akin to Alan Watts.
Jules I love you love siobhan mckenna
Unfortunately, Walters was a victim of the over talking cocaine era.....
Walters is way more legendary than John Peel.
+David Sumtinelse
He's not you know! He really isn't.
+terrypussypower ...I concur.....Many percents worth.
this journalist is really irritating with his stupid giggling at his own jokes or after asking a dumb question. Burroughs seems annoyed by this constant giggling. Also, his questions are boring and below WB's intellect/art level, even those about his life experience.
His attitude is of some forced 'spontaneity' and fake intimacy with the guest.
i don't see why people here praise him as "legendary", " brilliant ",i suppose the are just nostalgic.
Agreed
Why the hell do interviewers talk so much? Who the hell do they think they are in the presence of an artist ?
the dumbest interview ever w WSB took place on KPFK-FM in ca. 1980. man, it was god awful....WB was really irked all the way through
"Do you like women?"....... yikes
the audience laughing at everything like he’s a standup comedian are such ldlots
Even as he is considered one of America's best writers. On close reading, most of his earlier books, portray all women in such pathetic, weak and inconsequential roles, that it shows how patriarchal and hegemonic William Burroughs himself was...
🗣💤💤💤
Well . . . actually, he despised the "weak and inconsequential" stereotype women had been forced into by society, just as much as most feminists do (e.g., his comments here on "southern womanhood"). Bryon Gysin was a negative influence on him, as far as the more egregious descents into misogyny that cropped up in some of his writing; but he also often used extreme, almost self-mocking excesses in his rhetoric in his writing. As a gay man he certainly had little or no interest in women sexually, and there's no doubt that he was most comfortable in the company of men. But all accounts suggest that he was always courteous around women (even old-fashioned, such as rising from his seat when a woman entered the room) and, at least at times, he could be downright gallant; in 1937 he agreed to marry a Russian woman named Ilse Herzfeld Klapper to help her come to America to escape the Third Reich.
Was he wrong?