Genesis P-Orridge; Jon Savage

The Brion Gysin Interviews [transcripts and notes, signed by Genesis P-Orridge to Jon Savage with holograph]

Paris; [London]: np, 1980. Comb bound notebook titled “The Brion Gysin Interviews.” Jon Savage and Brion Gysin. Paris: np, 1980. 8 1⁄2 x 12 in. Xerox with some holograph notation. [70] pp. Comb binding with protective polypropylene plastic covers. Slight wear at top edge of front wrapper, sunning to top edge of interior of wrappers; else near fine. Assembled for Jon Savage by Genesis P-Orridge; signed to Jon Savage by Genesis P-Orridge.

Springback binder with red faux-calf boards. Jon Savage. [London]: np, ca. 1980. [59] pp., including 7 pp. of handwritten notes and 52 pp. of Xerox and offset sheets with occasional holograph notation. 9 x 13 in. Slight wear to some interior pages; else near fine. Item #6101

Two source materials from the research and editorial process of the fabled 1980 interviews with Brion Gysin, organized by Genesis P-Orridge, assembled by Genesis P-Orridge and Jon Savage, with the transcript inscribed to Savage by P-Orridge. Additionally included is the 1982 issue of Re/Search that published a short excerpt of Savage’s interview with Gysin.

Gysin was an underground poet and avant-garde artist, best known for inventing the cut-up technique. The technique in uenced a generation of the avant-garde, but perhaps no artist more than Genesis P-Orridge, who, after being introduced by William S. Burroughs, considered h/erself a student of Gysin’s.

P-Orridge organized a series of interviews with Gysin in 1980. As part of the project, s/he asked eminent music journalist Jon Savage to conduct an interview with the underground celebutante. A highly truncated version of it was published in Re/Search #4/5; the complete interview remained unseen and a piece of underground lore until P-Orridge published Brion Gysin: His Name Was Master in 2018.

The binder, assembled by Savage, contains manuscript notes, a transcript portion of the interview with Gysin, a press release from Industrial Records for the single “I Confess” by Dorothy, a text titled “Extracts from the Correspondence of Skot Armstrong,” and a text titled “Statement by Genesis P-Orridge on Correspondence Art Books Project,” with P-Orridge holograph, dated March, 1979. The comb-bound complete transcript of Savage’s interview with Gysin, conducted in Paris on October 28, 1980, contains some holograph notation and edits in the hand of Jon Savage. Together, the binder and transcript provide remarkable insight into Gysin’s life, work, and artistic practice, and the editorial process of one of England’s most important music writers.

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