The book that inspired Bowie, Joy Division and Nirvana

A vast insurrection extends to the United States, with an epicenter in the Maghreb. Everywhere police repression tries to stop the “Wild boys”, rebellious, libertine, violent and anti-system young people who reject the rules of order and the Western family. In an apocalyptic novel of alarming prophetic, poetic, delirious, liberating and pornographic force, published in the early 1970s, William S. Burroughs, already known for “Naked Lunch”, published in 1959, with his hallucinated and unmistakable writing, outlines a dystopian universe which has inspired over time rock icons and in general the world of music, with which the American author, belonging to the Beat Generation, has created bridges several times during his career, so much so that he ended up depicted on the album cover “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles. The extravagant clothes, colored hair and makeup of the iconic 70s character created by David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, protagonist of the album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”were based precisely on the description of the wild boys present in the volume. According to Bowie “it was a cross between this imagery and that of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ that really started to put together the shape and feel of what Ziggy and the Spider-Spiders were going to become.”

In the early 1970s, in an interview with William Burroughs published in Rolling Stone, Bowie, who opened the doors of his house to the writer, spoke of his intention to stage the album as a kind of musical or to make it into a television show, in fact broadly embracing the wishes of Burroughs, who initially conceived his novel as the script of a red light film. The Australian director Russell Mulcahyin the wake of this aspect revealed by Burroughs, he said he was ready to direct a film adaptation of “Wild Boys” and contacted Duran Duran for writing the soundtrack, but the project was ultimately never realized. However the novel inspired the group’s song titled “The Wild Boys”, released in 1984. Again in the interview with Burroughs, Bowie also said that, contrary to the common opinion that had spread among people and insiders, Ziggy was not really an extraterrestrial, but a human who had come into contact with forces from another dimension through his radio which ends up adopting a messianic role on Earth.

Obviously different influences coexist within Ziggy’s world, in short it is the representation of a rebellious rock starbut much of his aesthetic, libertine and futurist universe has roots in the pages of Burroughs. There is an anecdote within the anecdote: that chat that appeared in Rolling Stone between Burroughs and Bowie was also an inspiration for a young Ian Curtisas he recalled in The Guardian Jon Savagejournalist and writer also famous for his biography on Joy Division. The band, over time, granted very few interviews: in January 1980, however, they gave an audience to the young writer and singer Alan Hempsall. That was the only time Curtis talked about his reading and he mentioned “Naked Lunch” and “Wild Boys” as two of his favorite books, Savage reported. Burroughs was also loved by another rock star: Kurt Cobain.

What linked them was not only the monster of the heroine, but also an anti-system and caustic vision of existence. The two met shortly before the singer of Nirvana committed suicide. A writer describes that day in 1993, Servando Rocha: he recalls it in a book published in Spain, “Nothing is true, everything is allowed”. Burroughs decided to invite Cobain after the making of the video for “Heart Shaped Box”directed by Anton Corbijn. On the cross that appears in the video clip there is an elderly man, according to the script it really should have been Burroughs. The latter refused, but invited Cobain to Lawrence, Kansas. Burroughs instead appears in the video for U2’s “The Last Night On Earth”.made shortly before his death, in 1997. Cobain, at the home of the author of “Wild Boys”, showed up with a record of Leadbelly blues singer. He had discovered it because Burroughs had talked about it in an interview: “The first punk rocker,” he said. The two also have an extravagant collaboration together: it is “The “Priest, They Called Him”, a spoken word by Burroughs who recites his short story “The Junky’s Christmas” accompanied by a guitar improvisation recorded by Cobain. On the cover of the project, a rarity for collectors, Krist Novoselic, bassist of Nirvana, appears disguised as a priest. Wild boys would certainly like it.