All Tomorrow’s Parties: The Warhol Years 1965–1967, Part One
Factory people
Gerard Malanga
A poet and photographer in his own right, Gerard Malanga (b.1943) met Andy Warhol while still a student at Wagner College on Staten Island. He soon became Warhol’s assistant in silk-screening (where he probably did most of the actual physical work, and originated at least some of the ideas), also introducing him to New York’s literary, theatrical and movie crowds. Malanga also eventually assisted Warhol in his own movie-making. His habit of carrying a leather bullwhip everywhere led to his “whipdance” routine on stage with the Velvets during ‘Venus in Furs’ (Malanga had earlier been a dancer on DJ Alan Freed’s Big Beat TV show). He went on to found Interview magazine with Warhol. in 1983, Malanga co-wrote (with Victor Bockris) Up-tight: The Velvet Underground Story, the first book to appear on the Velvets.
Billy Name
A photographer and lighting designer who subsidized his artistic work with hairdressing, Billy name (real name Billy linich) once decorated his entire apartment with silver foil. Warhol liked the look so much (“Silvermakes everything disappear”) that he asked Linich to decorate his new studio — the original Factory — in the same way. Billy also worked with Gerard Malanga as an assistant on Warhol’s silk screens, designed the cover for White Light/White Heat, and claims to have been one of Reed’s lovers. Also a musician, Linich was in LaMonte Young’s group for a year, leaving them just before the arrival of John Cale. A genuinely eccentric character, Name was effectively the Factory’s caretaker, living in one of its black-painted toilets (which he used as a photographic darkroom) for years, studying astrological charts and books on the occult given him by Reed; when the Factory moved home, Billy simply moved into the equivalent space in the new one. In 1968, he sealed himself into this room, and was seldom seen at all between then and the time he finally left the Factory (in the middle of the night) at some point in Spring 1970, leaving a note behind telling Warhol not to worry. Linich subsequently gave up amphetamines, moved back home to Poughkeepsie and pursued his own individualistic spirituality. Today, his photographs of the Factory era are much in demand.
Edie Sedgwick
A Californian debutante from a rich but troubled Bostonian socialite background, Edith Minturn Sedgwick (b.1943) had spent her late teens in a mental institution (as had several of her brothers, two of whom committed suicide). In 1964, at the age of 21, she moved to New York and met Andy Warhol in early ‘65; for the following year, they were virtually inseparable. She dyed her hair silver to match Warhol’s wig and became a kind of mirror image of him, escorting him to society parties and appearing in a dozen of his movies. “She had more problems than anybody I’d ever met”, Warhol later said. Perhaps that was the appeal of their relationship, which was certainly not sexual (Truman Capote thought that Andy wanted to be Edie).
She became the face of young Manhattan; Vogue magazine dubbed her a “youthquaker”, and she seemed the archetypal poor little rich go-go girl. Reed wrote “Femme Fatale” about her (at Warhol’s request) and, according to some, Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman” and “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” are both about her. But though undeniably beautiful and pursued by innumerable suitors (including John Cale), Edie was not so much a femme fatale as a femme catastrophique. She might have been a mainstay of Warhol’s movies and danced on stage with the Velvets during their first couple of gigs, but most of the time she was out of her head on a cocktail of drugs of every description, many prescribed by the legendary “speed-doctor” Dr Roberts (immortalized by the Beatles as “Dr Robert”). She later blamed Warhol for her condition. “Warhol really fucked up a great many people’s — young people’s — lives”, she once complained. “My introduction to heavy drugs came through the Factory. I liked the introduction to drugs I received. I was a good target for the scene. I bloomed into a healthy young drug addict”. “Edie never grew up”, Warhol responded, probably accurately. However, comments of his such as “a girl always looks more beautiful and fragile when she’s about to have a nervous breakdown” don’t show him in too sympathetic a light. When Edie left him in 1966, Warhol joked bleakly to playwright Robert Heide: “When do you think Edie will commit suicide? I hope she lets us know so we can film it”. After Warhol, Edie attempted to carve a career as an actress (but didn’t really have the talent) and a model (but her reputation as an unreliable druggie preceded her), without much success. She died in 1971 of an overdose of barbiturates, at the age of 28.
Paul Morrissey
Underground filmmaker Morrissey (b.1938) had made his own movies ever since his teenage years. As well as managing Warhol’s business affairs for many years, from 1966 Morrissey worked closely on numerous movies with him, eventually making several of his own movies under the Warhol banner. The best known of these are the trilogy of Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat (1972), all of which starred hustler Joe Dallesandro. Morrissey parted company with Warhol in the mid-1970s, after two final exploitation films, Flesh For Frankenstein (1973) and Blood For Dracula (1974), made with Warhol’s backing. he continued to make movies into the late 1980s.
Ondine
Real name Bob Olivo (b.1939) he was also nicknamed “the Pope”. Ondine was a manic and charismatic actor and writer, the hub of the amphetamine-driven “Mole People” gay crowd at the Factory. he had nothing to do with the fashionable new York nightclub Ondine’s — Olivo had adopted the name of the lead character in Jean giraudoux’s 1939 play Ondine, which had been played on Broadway by the iconic Audrey Hepburn. He appeared in numerous Warhol movies, beginning with Batman Dracula (1964), and Warhol’s A: A Novel was simply a transcription of tape-recordings of Ondine’s speed-fuelled rantings over a 24-hour period. he toured the college lecture circuit during the 1970s, talking about Warhol and screening his performances in Warhol’s S&M movie Vinyl (1965) and Chelsea Girls (1966). In the 1980s, he appeared in numerous off off-Broadway plays, until ill health forced him to retire. After Ondine’s death from liver failure in April 1989, his mother burnt all his writings.
Brigid Polk (Berlin)
Brigid Berlin (b.1939) and her sister Richie, who also hung out at the Factory, were heirs to the Hearst publishing empire. Brigid created montage “trip books” — scrapbooks of anything that took her fancy, the most extraordinary containing the impressions of the scars, genitalia, breasts or navels of anyone willing to contribute. She appeared in Chelsea Girls (1966), and also with Edie Sedgwick in the film based on the Factory crowd Ciao! Manhattan (1972). She tape-recorded pretty much everything she encountered, from phone calls to orgies. This led to her taping Lou Reed’s last concert with The Velvet Underground in 1970 — eventually released commercially as Live At Max’s Kansas City in 1972. Her “Polk” nickname evolved from Factory slang — “taking a poke” meant shooting up with a needle. Berlin gave up amphetamines and alcohol in the 1980s.
Mary Woronov
Mary Woronov (b.1943) was an art student at Cornell University when she met Andy Warhol and became involved with the Factory. She was one of the principal dancers with The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, accompanying Gerard Malanga’s whipdance to ‘Venus In Furs’. Having appeared in Warhol’s movies Hedy The Shoplifter and Chelsea Girls, Woronov moved to Los Angeles and acted in a zillion B-movies, of which the most notable is probably Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975). She revealed herself as a talented comedy actress in Rock And Roll High School (1979), and Paul Bartel’s black comedies Eating Raoul (1982) and Scenes From The Class Struggle In Beverley Hills (1989), as well as making cameos in mainstream Hollywood movies. Liver damage caused her to give up all drugs and alcohol in the 1980s. She has been a writer-director for the TV show The Women’s Series and is the author of four volumes of fiction: Snake, Niagara, Blind Love and Wake For Angels, which also contains some of her paintings, and Swimming Underground (a memoir of her time with the Factory).
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Excerpted from The Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground, publishing 1 September 2007 by Rough Guides, a division of Penguin Group International. Copyright 2007 by Rough Guides. All rights reserved.