He was closely associated with Beat writers Alexander Trocchi and Herbert Huncke and poet Janine Pommy Vega (see the "Literature" page for links to memoirs of these times), reputedly makes a major appearance in Irving Rosenthal's 1967 novel Sheeper, and is remembered as a central player in the wild parties and 24-hour experimental creativity of the Lower East Side scene. Bill became renowned for his "tie-dye" wall hangings (these were actually created by injecting dyes into bundled silk with a hypodermic needle), which are said to have inspired the Bob Dylan lyric "The empty-handed painter from your streets/is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets" ("It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", 1965). Bill points out that Bob was only shown a hanging and didn't know the technique by which it was made.

Bill spent some time in the Pacific Northwest but did not leave New York City permanently until 1982, when he and his life partner, Anne Spitzer, entered upon a thirty-nine month retreat at an upstate Buddhist monastery, Kagyu Thubten Choling. Both had long been interested in Buddhism and at this point wished to make a change to a simpler and healthier life. They remember signalling to each other with flashlights at night, as men and women were separated for the entire length of the retreat!

Bill and Anne currently live in Woodstock, NY. Bill works on his visual art and his music daily.

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I am indebted to interviews by Renee Samuels and Carson Arnold for much of the information in this biographical sketch. Please see the "Links" page for links to the full text of these extensive interviews. -- Anne Loretto

When Bill moved to New York City in 1951, Martinelli advised him to check out the San Remo, a hip literary Greenwich Village bar. So began a madly productive social and artistic career.

Bill spent the 50's immersed in jazz. He played at jam sessions in lofts and at clubs like the Open Door, The Bohemia, and Arthur's Tavern with Charlie Parker, tenor saxophonists Zoot Sims and Brew Moore, and the Chicago guitarist Ronnie Singer. He socialized with Parker offstage as well, met Lester Young and Art Blakey, saw "everybody": Dinah Washington, Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, bassist Charlie Haden, trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins. Bill lived a peripatetic life, moving from pad to pad, rooming at one time with Willem de Kooning (he remembers that de Kooning's girlfriends used to "scream and scream" at him while de Kooning never uttered a word).

The explosion of poetry and rock'n'roll at the close of the 50's put an end to the intense downtown jazz world in New York. As jazz died down and the 60's started up, Bill shifted his emphasis back to the visual arts, although he also became known for carrying a flute with him at all times in order to provide musical commentary at any given moment. Bill was turned on by artist/filmmaker Harry Smith and poet Lionel Ziprin to mystical and occult studies and gained a controversial reputation as one of downtown's most feared dark magicians. (Bill suggests that this reputation be taken with a large grain of salt, as perceptions at the time were widely clouded by drug-fueled paranoia.)