Illustration by Cecillia Torquati
Leslie Winer doesn’t feel like talking about herself. It’s the month leading up to the 10-years-in-the-making compilation When I Hit You – You’ll Feel It, a much needed assessment of her musical peregrinations, tracks scattered into the wind and left behind over a three decade period, at last brought together in a single package. Even on a good day, Winer was never one to play the game of ‘chatty interviewee’, but this has been a bad year for just about everyone, and a personal tragedy in her own life makes the void widen. “Yes, I’m having a hard time right now – my life being somewhat more wavy than usual, like a lot of people,” she writes via email. “I’m just going to write down some words – don’t hesitate to ask for clarification or more questions.” My email interview with her spans a week and it turns out to be the only interview she’ll conduct.
Given that words remain her primary comfort, it’s fitting Winer is turning to writing during these hard times. Growing up, it was her adopted grandmother who instilled in her a love for language that continues today, where Winer relies on her glasses and a magnifying glass to read (most recently Rudolph Wurlitzer’s Hard Travel to Sacred Places [1995]). I ask if she is the Leslie that Beat grandfather William S. Burroughs mentions in a diary entry dated December 15, 1996 published in Last Words (2000): “Many spiritual disciplines establish as a prerequisite of advancement the attainment of silence. Rub out the word … rub out the word – laughable if you will, Leslie.”
At the mention of her old mentor – who lent her The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Wallis Budge, Denton Welch, Marguerite Duras, and encouraged her own writing – her heart quickens: “Felt that moment of frisson, something like when the world stands still & somehow weirder for a sec like certain polaroids – not a Big big deal but notable, like you do when you’re pretty sure that that’s a ’71 Chevy Nova, but you want that game show confirmation feeling – those snare drums. That Roar. Those Chemicals.”
That rush of snares, chemicals; that body-quivering roar; that pursuit of the visceral and transcendent has been Winer’s engine throughout life. It’s a career that’s led Winer to bond with the likes of Burroughs and ur-Beat Herbert Huncke, as well as a career modelling for the likes of Valentino, Dior, Westwood and Gaultier (you might have caught a glimpse of her alongside Harry Styles in a recent campaign for Gucci, too). But it’s the intersection of words and beats that became her real thrill.
Modelling in NYC starting in the late-Seventies, by the time the Eighties rolled around, she was deep into music, dancing at the Roxy, catching ESG and Spoonie Gee live, hanging with graffiti artists and earning the tag “3375537” along the way, rolling up into the Bronx to hear Hip-Hop booming at asphalt level. Her boyfriend at the time was Jean-Michel Basquiat. “Are you pronouncing a hard ‘t’ in ‘Basquiat’? Like chalk on a board. At the time, in NY, one of us would have to hide if we were trying to get a cab. It was like that. Didn’t matter which one of us – it was when we were together that no cabbie would stop,” she writes, admitting that she still owns the one record Basquiat produced, Beat Bop (1983) featuring Rammellzee and K-Rob: “I have one framed record in my house (here) & it’s the funk, the funk, the funky beat … shake it up rodeo … Love Rammell still.”
Modelling took Winer to London, where she came into possession of her own Akai 1000 sampler, allowing her to apply NYC’s Hip-Hop aesthetic and London’s booming African-Caribbean culture to her own music. She began to practice doing vocals to Gee Street singles and started working with Renegade Soundwave’s Karl Bonnie, former PiL bassist Jah Wobble, and Boy George backing singer Helen Terry, along with a clutch of other players. Winer was the hub, but preferred anonymity, hence an artist name that combines the Ouroboros symbol and ©. “My little experience being asked about my music is mostly people trying to find out whether my so-called connection with Burroughs or Basquiat is real,” she writes. “Never fails: I’m on the dock being cross-examined from the git-go [sic]. Then the part of how I look. Check. Then the ‘who really made This Music?’ part. AKA: How did this monkey make this pretty good cup of tea?”
Winer’s cadence is still so strong and singular that even on a glowing screen, I – or any of her fans – can instantly recognise her low, glib growl. There’s no space or separation between herself and her performance; they are one. That distinct quality of self runs throughout When I Hit You. No matter the music: dobro guitar, Irish jigs, classic breakbeats, H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. press conferences, the Sleng Teng riddim, modern classical, all of it goes into the chipper, giving Winer ample space in which to muse atop the debris. “For me, it’s the making of the tracks that’s the fun part. No matter how carefully I plan it out in my head, it’s never like I thought it would be. Always seem to choose the ‘surprise me’ option. It’s a game that I like,” she writes.
Her words can be heard as stream-of-consciousness, embedded with countless allusions to other songs, references, poses struck. But how does she explain the line “I got a couple of drops of Indian blood”, sung on Dunderhead (2011), released years before she realised that she actually is related to Grand Chief Henri Membertou of the Mi’kmaq First Nations tribe? And what about the words “There was a strange virus on the loose”, uttered on The Boy Who Used to Whistle (1993), which seem to foreshadow the current pandemic?
Leslie Winer deflects attention away from herself one last time: “I don’t see myself having to describe it. At gunpoint. That’s what it does, what it’s for, maybe; carries information that we don’t exactly have words for. Ferryman style. Make it hail.”
Written by Andy Beta
As featured in SLEEK 71 – POWER