Al Weisel

William S. Burroughs: Spare Ass Annie; “The Priest, They Called Him”

By Al Weisel

Rolling Stone, November 25, 1993

Spare Ass Annie And Other Tales William S. Burroughs

Island

“The Priest, They Called Him” William S. Burroughs and Kurt Cobain

T/K Records

He prefigured sampling with the “cutup,” gave heavy metal its name and influenced punk rock. Now a few of his heirs pay tribute to William S. Burroughs with two collaborations. On Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, he teams up with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Saturday Night Live musical director Hal Willner and, on the single “The Priest, They Called Him,” with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.

Spare Ass Annie is a good—if overly familiar—overview of Burroughs’ work, including such tried-and-true excerpts as “Dr. Benway Operates” and “Did I Ever Tell You About the Man Who Taught His Asshole to Talk?” While Burroughs’ snake-oil-soaked carnival barker’s snarl is in fine form, the musical accompaniment is a tad uneven, with standout tracks like “Words of Advice for Young People” and “One God Universe” backed by the Heroes and the weakest ones supported by Willner, whose hygiene-documentary-like soundtracks were already tiresome on his 1990 collaboration with Burroughs, Dead City Radio.

The Willner tracks only emphasize that the Burroughs of this collection at times verges on the comfortably campy. As in David Cronenberg’s film Naked Lunch, he’s degayed and somewhat defanged. Considering that some people are still shocked—shocked!—by someone ripping up a picture of the pope or the notion of gays in the military, though, it’s not surprising that there are some passages in Burroughs that are still too racy for a major-record-company release.

The Cobain collaboration, by contrast, is a more fitting tribute to Burroughs’ influence. “The Priest, They Called Him” is a later, less-sentimental version of Spare Ass Annie’s “The Junky’s Christmas,” a tongue-in-cheek ode to the spirit of Christmas about an addict who altruistically gives up his last fix. While “The Junky’s Christmas” is lamely backed by shopping-mall versions of carols, “The Priest” features the junk-sick feedback wail of Cobain’s guitar doing to “Silent Night” what Jimi Hendrix did to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”■

Al Weisel is the co-author, with Larry Frascella, of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, being published in October 2005.

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