Another living connection to the Beats is gone:
Bill Heine, jazz drummer, magician and artist, who was closely associated with Beat writers Alexander Trocchi, Herbert Huncke and poet Janine Pommy Vega, died September 15 after a long illness, aged 83.
Heine 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.
For more, check out Bill’s work at http://www.billheine.com/
Ill. - cover of Sheeper, presumably showing ‘Bill India’, the evil magician figure based on Heine…
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