Sean

“Burroughs’ conversation with Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale covers a dizzying array of topics—from Jordache jeans to religious fundamentalism to the likelihood of America becoming a fascist state. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny: JOHN CASALE: William, you and David Bowie had a discussion in Rolling Stone in 1974 about whether to use sonic warfare onstage. Bowie said he was not interested in doing that to people. He said he would never turn it on a crowd and make them shit their pants. I suppose we would. . . . WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: In a sense, if any artist is successful, he would do exactly that. If you wrote about death completely convincingly, you’d kill all your readers. JC: What’s going too far, though? Making them shit their pants? WSB: Would it be going too far to kill them? I’ll ask that question. JC: Well, I suppose there’s still some liberalism left in Devo; we’d say yes. We want ’em to come back and shit again.48”
― Casey Rae, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll