“Billy, You Do the Stills” – The Silver Factory Man – Billy Name

Billy Linich was working as a waiter in a popular dessert café in Manhattan called Serendipity 3 (Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy were regulars) when he met Andy Warhol for the first time in 1959. A few years later they met again when Warhol turned up at one of Billy’s “Hairdressing Parties” (his father was a barber by trade and he’d cut hair for free to anyone who turned up). Billy had trained as a set-designer and had decorated his flat completely silver using foil and paint (“I even painted the silverware silver”). Warhol loved it and invited Linich to do something similar to the old hat factory he had acquired on East 47th Street. It was a big job so he asked to move in and he and Andy became lovers.

Sean O’Hagen in the Guardian wrote:

Linich was overseeing the everyday running of the Factory. “I was the foreman and I made things operate. I took photographs and I kept my eye on Andy.” Linich happened on his Warholian pseudonym while filling out the first line of an official form and simply reversing the instruction “Name: Billy”.

Andy Warhol in his diary wrote:

[Billy] had a manner that inspired confidence. He gave the impression of being generally creative, he dabbled in lights and papers and artists materials…I picked up a lot from Billy.

Andy Warhol once wrote:

Why he loved silver so much I don’t know. But it was great. It was the perfect time to think silver. It was the future, the space age, and also the past, the silver screen and old Hollywood. Maybe more than anything, silver was narcissism — mirrors were backed with silver.

Edie Sedgwick and Bibbe Hansen at The Factory by Billy Name, 1965

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thats the story of my life
Thats the difference between wrong and right
But, billy said, both those words are dead
Thats the story of my life

The Story of My Life MORRISON, STERLING / TUCKER, MAUREEN / CALE, JOHN / REED, LOU