A Meeting of the [Blown] Minds

Excerpted from Living With the Dead by Rock Scully & David Dalton

Simon Vinkenoop meets us at the airport and takes us into town, to this Gothic little hotel, two old buildings put together. [Jim] Carroll and Buroughs are staying here, too. Burroughs, in porkpie hat and raincoat, looking like a ghost, is checking out as we arrive. He says the hotel is not seedy enough for him. It makes him nervous.

I introduce them — although they've met many times before, Burroughs doesn't have a great memory for rock stars. "Mr. Burroughs, do you remember Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead?"

"I've always like the name of your band," says Burroughs. He repeats the words "the Grateful Dead" solemnly. "...wonderful occult ring to that. Never heard your music, though." Jerry offers him a tape, which he politely pockets, but you know he'll never play. In his esotero-pedantic strange Midwestern way, Burroughs wants to know does the name come from the old folk tale or is it from the Egyption ship of the sun?

"Well we always thought of it more as, uh, the death of the ego than any specific legend," says Garcia.

"Good," says Burroughs like an indulgent tutor of occult sciences. "That's the way Jung would interpret it, too."

Garcia and Burroughs have a good old laugh about the name of the hotel — in Dutch "The Turtle" — the traditional name given to dealers. They always keep you waiting.

23½