Interview

GO: Did you see yourself as a photographer at that time?

BN: No. I was just-I considered myself an artist. I did a lot of collage work. I participated with the burgeoning of all the experimental art, experimental music, happenings, and dance, intermixed with the musical performers, intermixed with painters, intermixed with everything. It was that great assemblage of the arts that was happening in Manhattan. I always considered myself an avant-garde artist. Now, this whole photography thing came when Andy got the Bolex, the 16mm black-and-white camera, and was so interested in making films. He wanted to make films, but he wanted to make them as art, fine art movies that everyone could see. The disappointment came when he realized that it took a lot more capital than the painting did. If you're just a single underground artist, it takes up your total incoming revenue just to buy film and have it developed. That's why we started working in black and white.

GO: Have you seen the movies depicting that time-I Shot Andy Warhol [1996] and Factory Girl [2006]?

BN: Well, if you look at the credits in I Shot Andy Warhol, you'll see Billy Name is actually the artistic consultant. I was there on set a number of times. I worked with Mary Harron and I had worked with her previously when she was working on a documentary post-mortem about Andy and the Factory. I really liked the way the movie was made. I haven't seen Factory Girl and I had some intercourse with them initially, but they ended up using Gerard and Nat Finkelstein as their advisors.

GO: Can you give us a typical day in the Factory? Because in films, it seems like a 24-hour party.

BN: Okay, Andy's fame was becoming more like notoriety and the glamour magazines were covering him and doing shoots at the Factory. Like, Vogue would do a shoot of Edie and the other Warhol girl superstars. It popped into the chic world of New York, no longer just the avant-garde. There would be interviews, and, if there was a photo shoot that day, Andy would participate in it. But otherwise he would just come in and go over to his worktable, which was a large worktable I had found in the basement and sprayed all silver. I would have already gotten the mail and brought it up. There was a mailbox down on the ground floor. This is before I was Billy Name, so the mailbox said Warhol/Linich. I would put the mail on Andy's worktable, and he would come in, look through his mail, and then start working on a project-either selecting imagery to be made into silk screens or opening the silk screens that had come from the screen maker and getting his inks in order. Then he would start silk-screening. And this would go from maybe 11 to 2. Before 3, Andy would work by himself. By 3-for instance, by the time Edie and her friends showed up-it became superstar time with cohorts coming in. Then there would be talk about whether or not we were going to make a film that day. Nobody was usually there after 11 except me, because everyone would go out to whatever was Andy's favorite place at that time.

GO: Did you go out?

BN: Occasionally. But not until we moved down to Union Square and we were across the park from Max's. I could just walk over. But I usually didn't go to other places with Andy, because then I would be dependent on taxis and all that stuff and I couldn't just get home. But down there it was so easy, and also I had arranged with Andy that I could sign for my meals at Max's. Only a few people could sign for the tab at Max's.

GO: Why the new studio at Union Square?

BN: The building on 47th Street was sold, and so we had to vacate. There was then a search for a new place. I remember going around with Andy to look. The place I favored most was next door to the Academy of Music on 14th Street. It was this three-story building that had these huge plate-glass windows and would have made the perfect Factory. But Paul [Morrissey] overrode me. He didn't like the idea of being on the ground floor and so accessible to the public, which, as far as I can see at that period, was wrong, because it would have been the right move to further develop the Warhol phenomenon. Paul chose this building at 33 Union Square West, which had a beautiful terra-cotta façade. That was the first time that Paul's decision really overrode mine. It was the point where Paul really started taking over as the director. I was the inspirational type of avant-garde, synchronistic with Andy. He and I had a really nice, loving relationship. But when it started to become more Paul-oriented and business-oriented, that's when I left the Factory. I didn't feel it was like an art place anymore. It became too much like a business place. And the trauma-people don't realize the depth of the trauma of Andy being shot. When Andy came back and he was like a stand-up cardboard Andy. He had been so injured and he was so, so sensitive and so vulnerable. I was just so traumatized, because I had a love relationship with Andy. I knew the pain he was going through. I held him in my arms when he was bleeding on the floor. When Andy became the cardboard Andy, he couldn't be loved anymore, because you couldn't hug him. He would just shrink away from anybody who tried to touch him.

GO: I came to work for Andy in 1970, and you were locked up in the back room there, and we never saw you. And then one day you were gone.

BN: Well, that's the year I left. Yes. And I left a note on their door. "Dear Andy, I am not here anymore, but I am fine really. With love, Billy." I always loved Andy. He was a wizard. I mean, just sitting there with his finger on his chin-his legs or his arms crossed-and everything happens. [laughs] Everything goes on. In the mid-'60s, when we became the epitome of New York culture, when we were the top of the culture, we could feel the power we had.

GO: How did you become Billy Name from Billy Linich?

BN: Well, Billy Name is not a real person. He's a cartoon character that I made up to fulfill sort of an identity role in the Factory theme. It came about one day when we were doing tours with the Velvet Underground. Before the "Exploding Plastic Inevitable," there was the "Andy Warhol Uptight" show and we were doing a poster, like "Andy Warhol presents the Velvet Underground"-and then it said, "Featuring Edith Sedgwick, Billy Linich." And I said, "These are such strange ways to spell names, you know?" I said, "I don't think Billy Linich really sounds like a star name to be on a billing on a poster." So, I said, "I have to come up with something else." At the front desk by the telephone there was just some form there, or an application or something, whatever, and it said, "name, address"-you know. So on the line where it said name I put Billy and then I said, "Wait a minute, Billy . . . Name. That's it." You know? And it just had that sound to it that would be fine on that poster or an ad for one of our events, that it could be a Warhol Factory character. It was a superstar-type name. So, that's when I became Billy Name. And it was never really me, it was always my cartoon façade, a way to relate to all the attention that came to the Warhol Factory without having to be a real person. Because I'm not that-you know, I'm an avant-garde person. I'm an anarchist in that sense. I don't believe in society and all that stuff, so it was my way-my way of doing a Warhol. You know? I just became that ubiquitous name-Billy Name.