The Revelator, The Neuromancer, The Control: William Control. LATEST BOOK INTERVIEW.

Now this interview, on an unprofessional note, has caused me to still be in shock because to know that I have got myself this far, far enough to be able to interview William Control on his beautifully twisted art is just surreal. William is an artist of all trades, in songs he has considered himself the liar, I consider him the honest one, almost fearless, maybe broken, but still fearless.

William Control released his book in October 2013 titled; Revelator Book One: The Neuromancer, which Control fans were extremely excited about. Before I take you into the interview with William on his latest book, here is the beginning segment from Chapter One that William posted on his official Facebook as a teaser;

(Scroll down to go straight to interview)

Chapter One.

Stranger we become through the blurred lens of violence. Visions drained of color and sound. Sometimes, I don’t recognize the monster looking back at me, and in the mirrors of my own sanity I try and gracefully look away as often as I can. An outsider in my own skin, a deteriorating sense of hope and all the music I have ever heard erased from my memory forever. Lost. I find myself wandering the halls of regret not knowing what door to open, or what staircase to fall down. Hush. Eerie silence in the dawn of a new world, it ends abruptly and I can hear the sound of gunpowder exploding from shells and glass shattering all around me. Sinew on fire, muscles bleeding out of time, and there’s an unfamiliar woman sitting next to me in a car that I don’t remember falling into. A melody is blaring through my insides, shattering me awake. Wailing and shaking, we are driving on the curb of my own mistakes and I fear, this may be my last night on earth. 

The first time I saw her I was sick, malnourished and in big trouble. A strict vegan diet of rum, PCP and cocaine will do that to a young man. It’s hard to clench the ceramic sink of reality when you’re doubled over in a manic state, heaving anxiety, but the moment I laid my eyes on her I began to recover. She was the antidote and I the disease. 


I’m fresh out of lock up for bogus charges of assaulting a federal agent. I had been running drugs for a big time dealer in the city that the feds were watching day and night. Normally I wouldn’t involve myself with that sort of felonious behavior, but the price of narcotics was on the rise and the degree I attained in college wasn’t exactly creating dividends. This big fat fuck of a cop cornered me down in the park just after midnight and tells me with his rancid breath that he is tired of waiting around for the chips to fall, and that if I didn’t start cooperating with him,

“I’ll simply choke the fucking life out of you kid. It’ll look like some crack head committed a violent murder in a drug deal gone bad.”
I’ve never been to keen on the pressure of authority. It makes me insane, creates in me the need to fight back and that night; perhaps the pressure was too much to keep a lid on. 

I kick him so hard that I rupture one of his testicles. 
He can’t breathe, drops like a sack of shit and I take off running. 
His partner easily catches up to me about a block away.
Proceeds to punch the living shit out of me.
I don’t even remember getting thrashed. 
One punch. 
I black out. 
I wake up handcuffed to a hospital bed the next morning with a beat cop reading me my Miranda rights. Super. 

A few days later, after my arraignment I’m released on my own recognizance. With a pending court date I return home to the eight by twelve foot room I rent in the University district. It’s in a derelict building used to house college students, but now it’s mainly comprised of dropouts and drug addicts. It was bleak, worn out, and smelled of dirty dishes. I never saw anyone cook in the kitchen, but somehow it was always torn apart. I’m pretty sure there are nothing but rats in the cupboards. 

In my room I have a small dresser of clothes and a futon in the corner without a sheet. A couple of old boxes of half eaten Chinese food carelessly discarded on the floor collecting flies. I am Ralph, the Lord of the Flies, the only thing I’m missing is a pigs head on a stick. The window is covered with broken blinds that don’t retract and the house faces east, so that when the sun rises, so do I. College had really paid of well. My wrists are still sore from the handcuffs and I think my ribs are broken. That cop must have kicked me while I was down. Dirty fuck. I lie down on the futon and wish for a new beginning. 

I get call from my aunt, she explains that my father, who has been tranquilly dying of lung cancer, has just passed away. I hadn’t spoken to or seen him in almost five years. Not since the night I left home at eighteen. He had packed a bag, left it on the porch and said three words as I walked out:

“Good Luck Kid”

General Anxiety Disorder. That’s what I suffer from. Perhaps I’m just generally a fuck up. The booze and the drugs and the insanity are merely symptoms of deeper issues that I’m too afraid to discover. Or maybe I just like making excuses. Maybe I just love getting high. 

Stub my toe? Take a shot. Have an argument with a friend? Take two Oxycontins. Lose my car keys? Three joints and a forty will fix that. Fail a midterm? Cocaine and a week with no sleep will do just nicely. Everything is an excuse to get loaded, to self medicate. I am not opposed to medication. Give it all to me, every single easy gram. I’m a functional mess, and I have been for quite some time. 

I don’t know why this news affects me so much. We had become strangers. I cringed at the drunkard he became, wallowing around in the catastrophes of his own demise. Maybe it was just the absence I detested, a yearning for a connection to the man who created me. Or perhaps this was just another great excuse to bring my self-deprecation to a whole new level. I can use this excuse. This is a good one. 

I hit the night running. Tequila shots at my favorite dive bar downtown and lines of heavy-duty cocaine off the back of the toilet with a toothless girl I meet hanging around the jukebox. She’s sad, in a pathetic sort of way. The kind of sadness that only comes from being used, beaten and thrown around like a cheap fuck doll by people who don’t care about her. She’s nice and lets me stick my finger inside her pussy while she tries to jerk my limp dick off in a filthy bathroom stall. It’s no use. I don’t even know why I let her try. We party and meet a couple of guys who ask us back to their place for a nightcap, or three. When we get there the place looks shady, like a graveyard filled with skeletons that are only half dead. Because of the paranoia that is seeping in, and the unsettling nature of these two guys we are with, I take off and leave the toothless girl to the wolves. I run into a guy I know from college on my way back to the bar and he says he has ether to huff. I tell him that I have some cocaine left, and we decide that two heads are always better than one. We sit inside his apartment without windows at the basement level and talk about things that don’t mean anything. Typical baloney jutting like diarrhea from the mouth instead of the ass. People come and go. They wash themselves with substance abuse, an angry army speaking of unspeakable issues and making hollow promises about living the good life. They fall in rapid succession down the drain of our reality and I can smell burning hair somewhere behind the walls. Three days later I’m still awake. The ether is gone and so is the guy I went to college with. He must have found god. I have re-upped my coke stash and in addition to my growing collection of drugs is a canister of Vicodins, 12 hits of check 25 acid, and a nice little vile of PCP I bought from a guy named “Wet Tony” down on 3rd avenue last night, or maybe it was the night before. The nights begin blurring together like the palette of a prolific painter and I’m not sure what day it is. The monsters I surround myself with are beginning to sprout wings and surely this is the entranceway into hell. I think my nose is going to fall off. I haven’t felt it for days and there is a ringing in my ears. It’s making me grip the smooth walls of insanity. I can feel a stellar sense of my own forgiveness and use the excuse of a dead guy to medicate, medicate, medicate, rinse, repeat. I’m floating. I go into a convenient store for a beer and end up under the harsh glow of florescent lights, staring at the floor next to the chips and teriyaki beef sticks for nearly forty-five minutes, I get ushered out by the clerk who thinks I’m having a breakdown, little does he know? I am breaking down, bit by bit. I’m holding myself together with the bright lights of my addiction. I welcome the destruction, like embracing a lover. My annihilation. I can see it coming. It’s beautiful, serene. Everything is ethereal, faint. I’m resigned to the fact that there is no way to back out of this stupidity and that I must push forward until my pickled brain and broken body just gives out. Sideways I will march through the psychosis. Laughing. I find myself laughing, at odds with my own reality.
Day five. I sit on the edge of a stone fountain outside of a crumbling apartment building waiting for Tony to show up with more of my liquid sanity. I’m grinding my teeth and the sun is just about to come out. I convince myself that this place isn’t dangerous and the situation I am in is completely natural. 

I hear footsteps and stand up thinking it’s Tony, but from around the corner steps and guy a large grey overcoat. He has menacing eyes. He walks straight up to me and pulls out a gun.

This is it. I’ve lived a meaningless life, a shining turd of an existence. I went to school to educate myself with the intention to better the world through an understanding of physics and philosophy, but ended up surrounding myself with people who would rather piss on my grave than help me achieve anything decent. I haven’t attributed anything to society thus far, and now I am going to expire, nameless and spun out on embalming fluid!? Fuck me.

He points the gun directly between my eyes. It’s a Ruger Nine Millimeter, a military issued P Series, semi-automatic with a black pistol grip…

Now I have put this up first so you, for those who don’t know him, can see who William kind of is and understand his simple answers, simple yes, but that they tell you all you asked for, all you need to know so here is my interview with William Control on Revelator Book One: The Neuromancer:

In a small summary, what is this book about?

Revelator is the prelude to the first concept album I did as William Control called Hate Culture. That album was about a nihilistic character hell bent on living one last night of debauchery, consuming putrid amounts booze and drugs in the hopes of destroying himself.

So the Revelator is the back story. How did this character become so self deprecating and nihilistic? Why does he crave destruction?

You are also a musician, what do you prefer being an author or an artist?

I don't know if I could choose either of those options. One inspires the other I suppose. Neither could exist if the other wasn't present.

Where do you want to take this book next?

I don't know. I just want it out of my head.

What are your inspirations, if any, when it comes to the book?

Life experience. The loneliness of being isolated and on the road most of the time. It comes from loving and having relationships shatter into a million pieces. It comes from all sorts of places that I couldn't even begin to explain.

What can we expect in the future?

I am writing the sequel now and it should be coming out this fall. I also have a record coming out next month. Touring . Music. Writing. Add lust, rinse, repeat.

You can purchase Revelator at: http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/william-control/revelator-book-1-the-neuromancer/paperback/product-21264400.html

Follow: @williamcontrol

Official Site: williamcontrol.com

Chapter One/Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/williamcontrolofficial?fref=ts

VF.