William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs (born William Seward Burroughs II, 5 February 1914 – 2 August 1997) was an American writer, visual artist and cultural theorist, best known as a central figure of the Beat Generation.

Burroughs exerted one of the most profound intellectual influences on David Bowie, particularly through his ideas about language, control, fragmentation and the destabilisation of narrative.

Key facts

Name: William S. Burroughs
Born: 5 February 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Died: 2 August 1997, Lawrence, Kansas, USA
Role: Writer, visual artist, cultural theorist
Bowie link: Cut-up technique, lyrical influence and conceptual inspiration
Core idea: Language, power and control systems

The Beat Generation and beyond

William S. Burroughs emerged alongside writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, but quickly distinguished himself through darker, more confrontational subject matter. His work explored addiction, power, surveillance and the mechanisms by which societies control thought and behaviour.

Burroughs viewed language itself as a virus — something that programs human consciousness rather than merely expressing it.

The cut-up technique

One of Burroughs’ most influential methods was the cut-up technique, developed and expanded with artist and writer Brion Gysin. Texts were physically cut apart and rearranged, allowing chance and disruption to generate new meanings.

This method challenged linear narrative and authorial control, opening space for subconscious and unexpected associations.

Bowie’s adoption of the cut-up method

David Bowie directly adopted Burroughs’ cut-up technique in his songwriting, particularly from the mid-1970s onward. Bowie used fragments of text, rearrangement and later computer-assisted methods to produce phrases that felt alien, prophetic and emotionally ambiguous.

Songs and projects such as Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise), Station to Station, Blackout, African Night Flight and later Outside show Bowie exploring fragmented language, fractured identity and non-linear narrative in ways strongly aligned with Burroughs’ influence.

From scissors to the Verbasizer

Bowie later modernised Burroughs’ cut-up principle through the Verbasizer, a computer-assisted lyric randomisation program developed with Ty Roberts. Used especially during the 1990s, it extended Burroughs’ chance-based methods into the digital era.

The Verbasizer allowed Bowie to feed in words, phrases and source material, then generate unexpected combinations — preserving the spirit of Burroughs’ cut-up practice while adapting it to new technology.

Shared themes: control, identity and fragmentation

Burroughs’ obsession with control systems — governments, media, addiction and language itself — resonated deeply with Bowie’s recurring themes of identity fracture and alienation.

Both artists treated the self not as a stable core, but as something mutable, constructed and vulnerable to external forces. Burroughs’ dystopian imagery also shadows the decayed urban landscapes of Diamond Dogs.

The 1974 meeting

David Bowie and William S. Burroughs, 1974

Bowie and Burroughs met and conducted a now-famous interview in 1974, during the period when Bowie was moving from the glam-rock universe of Diamond Dogs toward the more fragmented and paranoid language of his mid-1970s work.

Bowie approached Burroughs as a writer whose methods had already changed the way he thought about lyric construction, time, control and artistic responsibility.

The filmed exchange remains one of the most fascinating encounters in Bowie’s history: not a promotional interview, but a genuine conversation between two radical minds exploring art, control, mythology and consciousness.

Influence beyond the 1970s

Burroughs’ influence on Bowie did not fade with time. Themes of surveillance, fractured narrative and coded language re-emerged throughout Bowie’s later work, especially in 1. Outside, where murder, art, identity and investigation are assembled through an intentionally unstable narrative structure.

The same lineage can also be felt in Bowie’s final period, where ambiguity, symbolic fragmentation and coded language became central to the emotional force of Blackstar.