Friday 17 April 2009

Rock Magic: William S. Burroughs & Jimmy Page (Crawdaddy June 1975)

"...I felt that these considerations could form the basis of my talk with Jimmy Page, which I hoped would not take the form of an interview. There is something just basically wrong about the whole interview format. Someone sticks a mike in your face and says, "Mr. Page, would you care to talk about your interest in occult practices? Would you describe yourself as a believer in this sort of thing?" Even an intelligent mike-in-the-face question tends to evoke a guarded mike-in-the-face answer. As soon as Jimmy Page walked into my loft downtown, I saw that it wasn't going to be that way.
We started talking over a cup of tea and found we have friends in common: the real estate agent who negotiated Jimmy Page's purchase of the Aleister Crowley house on Loch Ness, John Michel, the flying saucer and pyramid expert. Donald Camel, who worked on Performance; Kenneth Anger, and the Jaggers, Mick and Chris. The subject of magic came up in connection with Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Anger' film Lucifer Rising, for which Jimmy Page did the sound track.
Since the word "magic" tends to cause confused thinking, I would like to say exactly what I mean by "magic" and the magical interpretation of so - called reality. The underlying assumption of magic is the assertion of will as the primary moving force in this universe -- the deep conviction that nothing happens unless somebody or some being wills it to happen. To me this has always seemed self -- evident. A chair does not move unless someone moves it. Neither does your physical body, which is composed of much the same materials, move unless you will it to move. Walking across the room is a magical operation. From the viewpoint of magic, no death, no illness, no misfortune, accident, war, or riot is accidental. There are no accidents in the world of magic. And will is another word for animate energy. Rock stars are juggling fissionable material that could blow up at any time . . . "The soccer scores are coming in from the Capital ... one must pretend an interest," drawled the dandified Commandante, safe in the pages of my book, and as another rock star said to me, " You sit on your ass writing -- I could be torn to pieces by my fans, like Orpheus."

Full article here.

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