Geff Rushton aka Jhonn Balance
[Feb 16 1962 - Nov 13 2004]

"Le Soleil Noir has known all the time,
that you have to burn in order to shine"

Some time, these pages will be filled with my adventures with C O I L during the second half of the eighties of the 20th century, and beyond.

William S. Burroughs is the man in my life. I know it makes me a hero in circles here, and a bastard in circles there. I discovered him at a young age, maybe 16, not by chance, but probably because his name was dropped here and there in the punk tabloids and other underground literature I was reading at the time. His writings, and other works of art for that matter, dragged me through puberty and further. My head exploded in slow motion.

But this will be all about C O I L . Or won't it?

[AB 10.XI.2004 e.v.]

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Peter Christopherson [L], Geff Rushton [R],
photo by Lawrence Watson [1984]

Six days after Geff Rushton's unexpected tragic death, I feel obliged to write something about it although I find hardly any words these days. But there's too much coincidence surrounding the start of this particular text. I had been planning to write this one for a long time. Only last week I felt ready for it.

Geff and I were close pals from the mid till the late eighties. I visited the London house in 1984 for the first time after the release of How To Destroy Angels and interviewed him while having tea. It was a short stay, but an intensive correspondence and plan-making followed, lasting until 1988, maybe 1989. Most plans failed but at least one succeeded; the Dutch translation of William Burroughs' Electronic Revolution, with an introduction by Geff and a cover design by Peter Christopherson aka Sleazy, one of Stichting Maldoror's first publications.

The interview was finally published in 'occultural' magazine Abrahadabra which I had started with some friends in 1984. The first issue contained the C O I L interview and was published on the 23.I.1985 (click on the cover to read it). In a letter dated 8.IV.1985 Geff wrote "I liked the magazine. I still think, realizing the short time you did the interview in, that it was very good indeed." We had a shared love for books, so Geff was searching bookstores in London for rare-to-find-books by occultists such as Austin Osman Spare, while I was tracking down stuff by Salvador Dali for him.

Within a year I made plans to visit Chiswick, London again, and I asked politely if he'd know a place to stay (I was staying at David Tibet's Vauxhall squat first time round, but he soon went to live in Island for a while...). Geff wrote back quickly, "You can probably stay here - if you feel safe enough. People sometimes have this strange idea we fuck everyone who comes to the house - but as with many other ideas people have about us - this is totally incorrect." I wasn't worried at all. I packed my bag and crossed the Northsea again.


To be honest, all my visits to the C O I L residency are mixed up in my brain. As usual I went by touristbus and boat and was exhausted when I arrived. But I do remember Geff had to leave soon after my arrival, firstly introducing me to Stephen E. Thrower. We got along very well, and early in the day we got terribly drunk on wodka, having intimate conversations while listening to Diamanda Galás' 45 RPM record Wild Women With Steakknives on 33RPM.

Stephen E. Thrower,
photo by Peter Christopherson

(P.S How embarrassing... By lack of inspiration to continue writing this text I started to translate my first interview with C O I L in 1984. That's how I learned I had met Steve the very first time, not the second time I visited the London house. I completely forgot. I have this vague picture in front of me that tells me I spend an afternoon with Geff, and Steve arrived one hour before I had to catch the ferry bus back home. So the interview was quite a seperate event from the chitchat and the tea Geff and I had.)

The house, as I remember it, simply was amazing. I immediately loved the Virgin Mary dolls, the dildos, the distant smell of excrement, the scraped off wallpaper. Geff came home around dinnertime, finding Steve and me utterly drunk, and cooked us a fantastic dinner. As most evenings spend by me at the house, they ended with everyone being drunk or stoned. Geff showed me the guestroom when it was turning late. I wondered if he didn't mind me smoking in there. It was "alright", 'Gavin Friday sometimes stays here too and smokes two packages a day.' I felt right at home and Geff was being a terrific host.

So it was only the next day that I got to know Geff in a sober state of being. Our previous meeting had been so short, it was like we had to get acquainted all over again. My biggest worry was to get the message across that it wasn't me who wrote all the detailed theoretical texts in the magazine. Geff didn't seem to care less about my magical knowledge. In fact, when I came up with my literary "secret" love, Samuel Beckett (and I may add, my musically "secret" love, Kate Bush - "We wanted her to mix 'Horse Rotorvator'!"), he was pleasantly surprised. That short week was mostly spend on visiting bookstores like Aquarius, and instead of spending my money on hash and speed - which I would probably have done back home - I bought a pile of books. Both of us, so it seems, have always been wondering whether this was a good buy, or maybe we should have spend all our pennies on dope after all.

At certain moments I noticed Geff would take a distance, which he later in a letter explained as moments he felt weak because he missed Sleazy, who was that week in the United States for work, and would only come back the last day of my visit. But Steve would drop by pretty often, so in a way there still were plenty of opportunities to socialize.

I really lose track when I try to remember my first encounter with Sleazy. Was it that really weird evening when Geff, Sleazy and me went for a long walk to end up in this amazingly authentic British fish 'n chips shop?


Recent weeks have been confronting, painful and confusing, not just for me but also for the world I live in. I can't really focus on chronological facts. It has sprung my mind that now that Geff has left us mortals, I feel less problems telling things that I would not have done if he'd still be here. (On the other hand, this still is a public document, so I can be my own censor and leave out stuff I regard as being too personal.) We both had an obsession for drugs at the time, and we gained no control over that obsession in later years. We both suffered from depression, I still do, his painkiller was alcohol, mine is a mix of nicotine and marijuana.

The second time I stayed for a few days I brought along a bottle of mexican mescal (the liquor with the worm), Geff's favorite drink at the time - illegal in the U.K., but freely available in the Netherlands. The worm was fed to one of the two rats, not sure if it was the one that bit me (not too hard). Sleazy's in too, and Kaos the Basenji dog was still a pup... It was even fun to clean up his turd in the hall.
Had the first time I visited been a rather dark visit (that's how I feel about it instinctively, but it could have been the weather), the second one feels like spring now. One of the strongest memories I have is Sleazy viewing boys playing soccer on the enormous field behind the house. And the enormous sky behind that enormous field was just brilliant in my eyes.
And then there was this tape Geff played for me on a sunny afternoon. I felt enlighted; I had experienced the Horse Rotorvator.

On the last day of my visit I had a second interview with the threesome for Abrahadabra magazine issue #10. Click the cover to read a translation of the article.

On the way back I hid my first ever acid trip in a Throbbing Gristle record cover.

(P.S. Since this particular interview was held in the fall of 1986, it's hard to imagine this was the second time I had stayed at the COIL residency. The second time must've been in 1985, bringing Abrahadabra issue #1, a quiet week, probably buying more books and watching TV in the evening, getting drunk, boys stuff).


Soon after the release of the Horse Rotorvator album, C O I L became underground celebrities, especially in the Netherlands. Geff had mentioned he and Sleazy pretty often visited Amsterdam, but the Dutch response to their musical output was rather a surprise to them. It seemed to be a good next step to release a "Dutch" record, in the end released on the follow-up album Gold is the Metal, the track being For Us They Will. The idea was to release this track plus a b side as a 10" record, coloured vinyl, silkprinted cover, including a special edition of Abrahadabra magazine, in a limited edition of 5000 copies. But I had to explain Geff I could never afford the costs coming along with such a project. So we came up with the plan to approach C O I L s Dutch record connection Boudisque / Torso records to ask them if they would like to finance the project. I made an appointment in Amsterdam and at the office I talked to this lady whose name I can't remember, this was my proposition:
C O I L would deliver the music and design, Abrahadabra would do the production (the name of the label was supposed to be Abrahadabra records), Boudisque would do the financing. For this they could have almost the entire edition, since C O I L only requested 200 copies or so (check) and I had no need to be involved in distribution. I just wanted the record to come out as Geff and I had planned.
The lady in question wondered why Boudisque should put money in a record if they weren't going to release it themselves. So no, she wasn't interested. That was hard for me to understand.
I contacted Geff again and we decided to give the project a rest; about a year later For Us They Will was released on Gold Is The Metal. Up to this day I have been thinking of realizing this project in one form or another. A remix project perhaps?


A (probable) fourth time I undertook the journey I arrived at the C O I L house with a dreadful eye infection. On the boat I had fallen asleep still wearing my (hard) contactlenses. Geff and Sleaze had to rush me to the hospital where I was told I had just gotten there in time... The next days I was wandering around disorientated with just one contactlense. Guess it was time to do some reading... Image and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare by Kenneth Grant, which I later gave as a present to the wrong person (I realize now), Hakim Bey's CHAOS was discovered at the C O I L residency, where I made a start of a translation that still hasn't been published properly. Beautiful Asian (Japanese?) books on blood rituals, which fed my interest in the Vienese Actionists (in my last C O I L days I visited and interviewed Austrian Artist Hermann Nitsch through another C O I L fan, Kadmon from Allerseelen). And I was about to finish the translation of Burroughs' Electronic Revolution.

In 1987 I invited Geff to write an introduction to the Electronic Revolution, that I've published in its original form here. Sleazy designed the front and back cover. The next year I came over to pick up their creations and discuss them, by accident I overheard a conversation between Sleazy and Steve, discussing a video Sleazy was about to shoot for Diamanda Galás. "I need another drummer", he said. "I'm a drummer", I interrupted. So that's how I ended up in Diamanda's videoclip for the song Double Barreled Prayer, and got to know her personally, slightly. After the video shoot I asked her if I could interview her, which I never did in the next days ahead, although I was visiting her Mute records rented apartment on a daily basis, remembering especially the moment she recklessly crossed the street, not paying any attention to the traffic. And I remember the Motown tapes she played a lot. She is a very special somebody.
And returning to Sleazy, I have never seen anyone getting into his work as much as he did during that shoot. Genius.

Mentioning genius, that same year I met William Burroughs in person, handing over the ER translation, interviewing him for local (Amsterdam) Rabotnik TV, those memoirs I'll save for the forthcoming Burroughs tribute on this website. I'm quoting from a letter Geff wrote on 6.6.1988 e.v.:

"I'm still awake - wide awake at 7 am on monday morning. I am sure you can understand my problem, can't you. How are you! I didn't get the chance to ask James (Grauerholz, Burroughs' manager - AB) if you met him and William Burroughs in Amsterdam recently. James said William was overswamped by about 20 other young poets and was completely not expecting that. I think he thought he was the only performer in a gentleman's club type setting.
I was quite shocked to see how small and feeble looking Bill is getting. He also appears to speak/mumble utter nonesense 50% of the time, I have a guess it's an easy trick he uses to save energy for people he really wants to talk to. He gave me this incredible speech about languages in Europe - about the germans trying not to speak german, the dutch having to learn english because no-one will ever choose to learn dutch. And how the swedish/danish etc. also have to learn english because since the war (II) they refuse or feel guilty about choosing german. I got a copy of the dutch edition signed by him anyway. We gave him a #23 of the deluxe Gold editions - partly because we hope to get him to do an original artwork to be included in the Deluxe version of The Dark Age of Love - which we will do a lithograph or silkscreens of - and then send them to Bill to sign them all!
We are accepting advance orders for the new deluxe now - from now! Because we are planning 88 copies for general sale + other with A - K or whatever for people involved etc. Each is 100 U.K. pounds!! I am a bit worried people will not accept this insane price for they may feel it's just a record in a tarted-up box of collages or whatever. But we intend to make it a surrealist object/poem - or what the original surrealists called "an object with a symbolic function", a functioning object-box-poem. We will have a shroud of coarse linen surrounding the inner box - it will have a very faint fine graphic silkscreened onto the linen cloth. Also it will have luminous/fluorescent paint added - which will make it look a bit like ectoplasm in the dark - or at twilight. I have many ideas for the insides, including a specially made clock with all the numbers changed into symbols appropiate to us and the record, ie. a severed finger - an erect penis - a black sun etc. etc. Steve Stapleton has promised to get deeply involved and gave me what he said was his best piece of artwork for about three years - for nothing because he likes the project. There is a french-canadian surrealist called Jean Benoît - living in Paris - who I hope to persuade to help us too. Also I'm tracking down René Thom - Benoît Mandelbrot who is at the centre of recent FRACTAL and catastrophy theories - Yes - I have your paperback. I confess I saw it in your bag and stole it because all books with the word catastrophe or kaos/chaos in their titles are my property. It is an unwritten law of Threshold House!! Shall I post it back to you?!"

I'm almost certain Sleazy brought the stolen book (by René Thom) to my hometown The Hague because either in 1988 or 1989 I was in a position to invite him for a presentation of his work as a videodirector during an early version of the dutch World Wide Video Festival (still existing but moved to Amsterdam years ago...). (1) Another part of the festival was the screening of "The sound of progress", a video production by two dutch filmmakers Marc van der Bijl and Alexander Oey, interviewing David Tibet, J.G. Thirwell, Test Department and COIL. I'll close this chapter with a last quote from Geff's letter...

"I have telephonenumbers for them both from 1987 - maybe you can call them and tell them I am angry, upset and after their blood - no seriously. Your video was fine but I'd like to remove the strange electronic shadows that make me look like a polish peasant woman with facial paralysis - so insane I cannot recognise what I see on the TV as myself. I actually like the film and I like the subtle sense of humour throughout. The Spoiler is perhaps the last track I'd like to be remembered for so I'm not too keen on that aspect - I didn't recognise the music either. One is Spoiler and at the end in the studio we sound like early Sonic Youth or something, arty/guitar pioneers type. I think they should have contacted us about it all and sent a good copy!"

I don't think I ever tried calling them, or maybe I did. I was at the peak of experimenting with drugs, acid, heroin, mushrooms, anything really, and tons and tons of speed. When I felt like I had enough, I thought I'd be save from all that at Threshold House. I was wrong, ofcourse.

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It's october 2005, i'm offering more apologies, especially to Sleazy whom I promised to send a ripped version of the interview I did in 1985. I still haven't done it. (No, I did send a CD to the gentlemen of Cyclobe). The ending of this story is simple, but difficult for me to deal with.
The last time I visited COIL must've been around 1988. Arriving in Chiswick, Geff's first remark was he was in need of speed. And I had just decided to visit London in order to get clean. Several attempts to score the substance failed, and Geff became really moody. And so became I. Only the day before I left Geff managed to get some, enough for his bandmembers but not enough to treat a guest, and in the end the trio went into the recording-room, working on tunes now known as The Unreleased Hellraiser Themes, leaving me with my bad mood in front of the television. I never saw Geff and Steve again, only Sleazy waved goodbye as I left the house to return home.

It wasn't the final chapter of our relationship, but things certainly cooled off from that moment on. In the nineties I contacted Geff several times by phone, usually for simple enquiries such as phone numbers. Being busy with my own works, I didn't even notice releases such as Music To Play In The Dark I & II, but for the last seven years I have been aware the internet offers ways to update on COIL matters.
In 1996, in Berlin, I met Ossian Brown through Vicki Bennett of People Like Us. He introduced himself to me as a COIL member, but I was in such an alcoholic state that, after all the little pranks the COIL boys tried on me, I (probably) doubted if this guy was for real!
I did two more articles on COIL, one for Opscene magazine in the Netherlands, and one for Hungarian magazine 'Alte-rock' [here]. The one for Opscene to be published on this site somewhere in the future...
In 1999 I contacted Geff by email if COIL would be interested in participating in a project about my diseased friend Karlow (KK). Geff's response was definitely positive, but never heard of again after sending a record and tapes to the house up north. Till this day I have no idea why.
When COIL started to play live, I was sceptical. I was reminded by the story of a German organizer who almost contracted COIL for a gig in the mid-eighties. Unfortunately he couldn't provide the 200 sheep COIL insisted of having amongst the audience, so that one was called off in the end.
I have clear memories of three wonderful shows; The Hague show in 2002, and Amsterdam and Jesi (Italy) in 2004. In Amsterdam I had the nerve to hug Sleazy for a second, only to disappear as fast as I could, desperately trying to avoid digging up frictions. Only recent e-mails from Sleazy confirmed our long lasting friendship, and cleared up any frictions whatever they may have been. I am left to wonder since Geff has left us mortals , and can only wish all who were dear to him all the strength they need to overcome the seperation, especially Sleazy and Geff's new partner Ian Johnstone.
I'm listening to ...and the ambulance died in his arms. How I miss him now.

[Anthony Blokdijk / A.H. Erlebnis,
The Hague, 27.X.2005 e.v.]

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(1) "I have to make a correction about the episode with Sleazy in the Kijkhuis. That didn't take place as part of the World Wide Video Festival, but as part of the regular programmming I did under the name Sound & Vision (1987?). Reason for inviting Sleazy was the 'Infected' movie by The The." (EQ)