William S. Burroughs
Dead City Radio

About William S. Burroughs (1914 - 1997), writer, spiritual father of the beat generation, a symbol of alternative America, an eminent personality of the twentieth century, an artist who revolutionized literature and who, with his literature, influenced entire generations of artists, revolutionized customs, habits, ways of thinking, making movies, making music: many do not know that there are several albums where Burroughs "gives voice", in the true sense of the word, to his most famous writings.

"Dead City Radio", released in 1991, is probably the most intriguing work of the series.

The project was born from an idea by producer Hal Willner. Several years before, Willner, as the musical coordinator of the famous television program "Saturday Night Live", had the opportunity to come into contact with the elderly writer, who was invited to read excerpts from his most well-known writings.

It was a real revelation. A revelation that, after various difficulties, finally led to "Dead City Radio", released by the prolific Island: arising from several sessions, the work is composed of excerpts, poems, conversations, reflections and whatever else may have been resurrected from the personal archives of the American artist.

"Dead City Radio" is obviously a spoken word album: the raving voice of a Burroughs, now on the brink of eighty, is obviously at the center of everything. Of course, names like John Cale (!) and Sonic Youth (!!!) do not go unnoticed (Chris Stein, Donald Fagen, Cheryl Hardwick, and Lenny Pickett also participate), but it is important to clarify that the contribution of the aforementioned artists is strictly functional to setting up a background that serves as an elegant frame for the evocative narratives of the writer.

The predominant sections are by the NBC Symphony Orchestra directed by Pickett (author of most of the tracks): solemn compositions, at times epic, sometimes even gaudy, interspersed here and there with fleeting jazz piano notes, soft organ excursions, oblique flashes of ambient electronics called to evoke the nocturnal and metropolitan atmospheres that characterize Burroughs' literature.

Inevitably, the work ends up assuming apocalyptic connotations, and it's no coincidence that there are passages extracted from the Old Testament. Burroughs' voice is capable of instilling awe, unease, at times even terror. A slamming door, a creak in the dark, a shattering glass: at moments, you get the impression that our grandfather is possessed by the devil and is whispering an old horror story into our ear. "Naked Lunch Excerpts ("You got any Eggs for Fats?")/Dinner Conversation ("The Snakes")" and "After-dinner Conversation ("An Atrocious Conceit")/Where He Was Going" are the best examples of this, where noises and real sounds trace the narrative thread of the selected tracks.

But it all doesn't end with a simple musical setting of Burroughs' extreme and revolting art. As mentioned at the beginning, the writer is also the most worthy representative of a restless, rotten, degenerate, disillusioned America, far from the glitter of the much-fabled American Dream. For this reason, the work in question should be seen primarily in the light of a lucid, as much as cynical, reflection on America, its contradictions, and the hypocrisy that plague its society and dominant culture.

There will be no lack of sarcasm, irony, bitterness, scathing tirades, and the frank denouncement by someone who has never minced words: the Apocalypse is actually Burroughs' homeland, a place of barbarism, decay, and corruption (eloquent, in this regard, the nine minutes of "Apocalypse"). All narrated with enviable humor and passionate dialectical flair.

The real icing on the cake, however, is the concluding "Ich Bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe Eingestellt (Fall in Love Again)" by Friedrich Hollander, this time actually sung by Burroughs: a brief piano ballad with smoky noir contours, in which the graceless and drawling voice of the indomitable eighty-year-old continues to remind us of our grandfather, still possessed by the devil, and moreover, dead drunk.

The wheezing song of the clarinet draws a curtain on the visions transmitted by the radio of the city of the dead, leaving on the palate the bitterness, desolation, the infinite melancholy of a cold night lying motionless on the deserted and foggy streets of a filthy and corrupt metropolis.

It's obvious that the album carries within it all the limitations of enjoying a spoken word album, and because of this, its listening is recommended primarily to those proficient in the English language. Nevertheless, the album ends up enchanting even just for the meta-textual suggestions it can convey, so full of pathos are the narrations, so relentless and indelible is the charisma of this old man who, now on the path of decline, is able to preserve in all its vigor the traumatic, disruptive, and provocative potential of his immortal art.

Long live William S. Burroughs!!!