Interviewer: And the sense there are just in your words, to talk about that.
Speaker Well, as part of the exploding plastic inevitable, they were they were functionary, if that’s actually a word, you know, OK, you need to.
Speaker OK, I’ll get the rhythm of this. Otherwise, you’re perfect.
Speaker OK, well, the Velvet Underground, when they played with the exploding plastic inevitable were a soundtrack band. To some degree. They were a dance band. The idea was that they would play they were a part of the experience pop concerts at that time where you were an artist, you play your hit, everybody comes to see you. Warhol didn’t look at pop music that way and he didn’t look at pop culture that way. You know, his whole trip was it’s an experience. It’s a it’s a whole there’s just a lot going on. You pick what you want. You grew to what you want. You reject what you don’t. If you don’t like the movies, watch the band. If you can see through him, if you like the band, you know, dance, do whatever you want to do. But what happened was the Velvets became more important because what they had were real songs. There was not just a lot of noise, there was noise, but there was noise for a reason. It was madness with a method. And so what to any other band would be an opportunity to just jam and do midnight hour for 30 minutes. They would do heroin for ten minutes or they would do melody laughter for 30 or 40 minutes, you know, which is stuff that’s actually on bootleg record now. So Warhol actually had the sense to know that the Velvets and Lou was a songwriter, had something that would enhance his notion of this traveling pop art circus, as opposed to just someone who was going to give him a lot of noise to back up films of his friends dancing. He knew that they were actually going to be art in and of themselves, but also part of the art that he was trying to generate through the entire entourage.
Speaker Wow, perfect. And then maybe talk about after that, after they really I think it was a bar and that kind of went around you. I talk about that in your own words.
Speaker Well, the Velvets, in their own kind of strange way, were a bar band because they did not have the kind of record company support that a lot of the the big 60s acts had, especially the ones from San Francisco and L.A. They didn’t have the kind of clout that Columbia was putting behind the Byrds or that RCA was throwing at the Jefferson Airplane. People like that, you know, they having left Warhol, they actually gave up patronage. You know, he was like these Viennese kings that were like giving Mozart money to go off and write symphonies. Warhol was paying them whatever he was paying them to, you know, be a part of his thing. As soon as they decided to go on their own, they lost that. They lost the cliche, the cachet. I’m sorry. They lost the cachet. They lost the clout. And they lost a lot of probably support from their record company because in many ways they were signed because of Warhol. You know, they were signed as his project, his album cover, his whole, you know, pop trip. So they were forced to just tour and play like any other hard working band. They were playing, you know, second and third on bills underneath second and third rate bands, you know, with much better record company support. But what they did and I remember Sterling telling me that Sterling Morrison saying that, you know, they played where they were wanted and that was something that was both a key to their subsequent success as a legend and also meant that they had to be kind of focused and realistic about the kind of money they were making. And they had it hard as a working band, but they were, in fact, a working band. They toured all over the Midwest. They played a lot in the South. And in fact, they played a lot of places where a lot of the big name acts didn’t go. They were always going to Cleveland and playing Lakoff. They were always going down south into Texas, in Austin, in Dallas. There are some amazing bootleg recordings from those from those days. And this is we’re talking like 68, actually, a lot of 67, too, with Cale.
Speaker There are some amazing recordings of Cale with the Velvets at Lakoff, you know, the legendary, you know, Sister Rey, you know, bootlegs that are out there.
Speaker But they were working band. What they did was what they did was they played remarkable songs, but they played them as a band that, you know, needed to go out and connect with people. And they really did want to connect with people. However, they were very particular about the people they connected with. You know, they weren’t interested for playing, you know, interested in playing for just anybody. They wanted people to listen to what they were doing to relate to them and to, you know, to some degree understand what it is they wanted to accomplish. There’s one amazing bootleg that’s been around for years. Part of it was on an actual record at one point of them playing in Texas. And the show opens with Lou asking the audience, you know, do you want two short sets or we could just play one long one. Do you people have school tomorrow? You know, how about those Dallas Cowboys? You know, he’s just rapping with the audience as if they’re like friends and then they go on and play for, you know, a good hour and a half to two hours, you know, doing all of these remarkable songs. So as a as a working band, they were extraordinary because they they worked hard and they worked under extraordinary circumstances with without the kind of support that a lot of a lot of musicians were getting. There was a lot of money floating around in the 60s for rock and roll. The Velvets weren’t getting in.
Speaker Stop for a second. What is all that noise?
Speaker All right, we just stop for a second, but I made it perfectly frank that you can not keep your cool and try to keep my mouth setter because I just think it looks cooler and don’t cut his head off unless you’re really going in tight.
Speaker I’m trying to avoid the point at the top. Yeah, OK.
Speaker So whatever the question was always about, OK, I.
Speaker Let me see if I can address this in a way that gives you the intro you want, because basically you’re asking me about the difference between the audiences that they play to.
Speaker I think maybe a big part of the flaw was that they turned their backs on the audience. Right. OK, hippie love takes care of their audience. Yeah, that’s OK. Is that true or isn’t it true or is it a progression over the way as a solo artist? All right.
Speaker Well, I think contrary to the general reputation that the Velvets had as a live band, they were not aloof and they were not snobs. They were anything but snobbish. But the reputation and the lore about them, you know, turning their backs on audiences, just turning up the amps and walking away and have to remember that they actually played to two different kinds of audiences. The first group of audiences were people that basically hated them. You know, they ended they started out playing on their own just before Warhol when they were doing the stuff in the village. You know, people hated them. The club owners, you know, telling them to get out. Don’t play Black Angels Death song one more time. Well, these guys were punks. They were essentially punks and attitude and that you don’t tell us what to do if you’re paying us to do our thing. This is our thing. You don’t like it. You know, we’re leaving. So a lot of times when they were playing with Warhol, then a lot of the audiences they were getting were celebrities. They were like the IT crowd in the in crowd and this crowd. And, you know, and they’re more snobs, essentially, you know, people in films, people in art who think they all know what’s going on. In fact, Sterling, John, Lou, they were already artists. They already knew about drama. They knew about theater. They knew about classical music. They knew all the cold. So for them to then be told, well, just be a party band, no way. You know, we will give you feedback. We will stand in the shadows and we will turn our backs if we feel like it. However, when they started going out on their own, they were actually playing to people who came to see them, people that small coterie of fans and hardcore who had heard the records, made the connections and wanted to see them live. They wanted to see the music for themselves. And so they paid attention. And I know Maureen told me once about like a guy who used to just drive by motorcycle from gig to gig and follow them around. You know, it was, you know, velvet heads. But the fact was that these were people that really wanted it. It was not a big crowd, but it was a crowd that was there for them all the time. And those were the people that they played directly for.
Speaker And as far as you know, stage presence goes, you know, leaping around and asking people to sing along. You know, that was just not their nature. It didn’t mean they were snobs. It meant that they had other things on their list of priorities that were a lot more important. Playing, loud, playing, hard playing, soft playing, you know, playing the songs so that they bring on life changing arrangements.
Speaker There are multiple versions of Sister Rae at all kinds of tempos, at all kinds of volumes. So the idea that they were snobs or that they had this reputation for being hard asses on stage, they were hard, but they are not asses.
Speaker I’m sorry. It’s a great.
Speaker You know, I’d like to talk about now before we get out of this.
Speaker Moment is the sound of the billboards having to try and describe this sort of sound and also in the context of what the generations later taken from that sound.
Speaker Well, the sound that the Velvets had was a lot more complex than you would think from actually just listening to the, let’s say, the first three records, the fourth one being much more pop and kind of commercially oriented. But you listen to the first three records and basically what you think you hear is really loud, ugly noise and then really soft ballads. There was actually a lot more interplay between the two styles and two grades of volume. But because they worked at such extremes, I think initially people found it hard to understand why something like European Sun, which is just, you know, flat out intensity, you know, squalling, atonal, whatever, you know, there’s no word for it actually, you know, could be on the same record. Next, I’ll be your mirror or femme fatale. But they were they were dealing with these things. You know, they were dealing with an emotional range and trying to illustrate it through volume, through texture. And unfortunately, the first record was not recorded under ideal circumstances. And in fact, none of their records ultimately were recorded under ideal circumstances. So I think that the kind of textures and the kind of differences in an emotion and in drama that they wanted to get to never really came across. You end up having these either or situations or something like murder mystery, which is this long, almost Joycean type of thing with two different voices going on at the same time. And the speaker, you know, they were trying to get a particular effect. You know, the engineers that they were dealing with, these guys are not exactly hip to this, you know, or if they were, they didn’t they didn’t know how to to grok it, you know, how do you deal with Sister Ray? Well, you turn up the pots and then you walk out of the room for 17 minutes. As the legend goes, you know, it’s you couldn’t really produce the Velvets and the Velvets were probably, you know, they had the freedom to make their records the way they wanted. That also could be problematic because there were probably times when they weren’t quite sure how to translate what they thought or what they felt or what was in blues songs or in his mind or what John wanted to bring to the party or what Sterling was doing, how to get all of that into something that would be complete on record and be there for posterity. So in a sense, their records are like snapshots. They’re portraits of them at a particular time, white, light, white. He has a lot of the intensity of them being on the road and being cut loose from Warhol and tensions probably between Lou and John as well. You know, and, you know, all just sort of like gradually coming to the fore and ending up on that record, which was recorded at lightning speed. You know, same thing with the third record, more acoustic, more laid back, but also a band that’s kind of weary. You know, they’ve been through a lot. You know, they went from literally starting out at the top with Warhol to like going down and playing bars and playing, you know, dealing with management and record company jive. You know, you can you can hear that weariness in there. And so even though their records are not perfect in the sense that I think that they are not complete realizations of everything they had in mind, they capture a lot about who they are at those particular junctures. It’s almost like kind of a movie or a novel in progress was always said that his songwriting is like a novel in progress. I think the same is true of the Velvets records. It’s like their autobiography in progress, except they never got to finish it. So, again, except they never got to finish it.
Speaker Talk about did you can’t I’ll be your mirror as a sort of.
Speaker This perfect way of seeing Lou innocense and.
Speaker Oh, that’s an interesting.
Speaker I you know, I should I would have listened back if that was a particular song, I would have listened to song to the lyrics because the lyrics are very key.
Speaker And I got the sense. I see. And I know Lupin’s ever said, yeah, always without the mirror.
Speaker So it’s now he’s been doing that recently. OK, that’s well, that’s a new trick because he didn’t do that. I saw him last year and he was, you know, starting out with the more, you know, Sweet Jane, you know, pick up the crowd stuff with a very beautiful version about the mirror.
Speaker Oh, like at the Supper Club and the Knitting Factory. All right. So you have that book. Yeah.
Speaker I just stopped the easier to.
Speaker So he told me that in a way that’s the way you see.
Speaker It’s right there in the first line so that we really, you know, you look OK, I’ll be your mirror.
Speaker It’s like what you are. That’s what a songwriter does that sort of writer does. You know, he might be looking in the mirror at himself for all you know. But, you know, looking at somebody, you know, reflecting that back through what he does, that’s in a sense, that’s what a reporter does. That’s what a poet does. It’s what any writer does. They are a reflection or a refraction of the things that go on around them, whether they go on to them or at them or from them, you know, all of the different variations that you’ve got. That’s what he does. You know, that’s as a writer and. It’s you know, he’s always talked about well, you know, my songs are never really 100 percent autobiography, but there are always portions of some kind of either autobiography or experience or some reference to something that he saw that, you know, was able to come back through through this work. You know, and that was one thing that he always said Warhol did, was, you know, Warhol said, you know, here, you know, here’s a subject, you know, here’s a line. You’re vicious. You hit me with a flower, you know? Right. Something like that. Or, you know, and Lou’s talked a lot about simply being at the factory. You know, people say, well, how could you write all these songs? You know, how could you not you know, what was there to miss? You know, what is it you’re not getting here? That all of these people are running around, they’re doing drugs, they’re making movies, they’re having sex deviant or otherwise they’re you know, this whole you know, this world has been basically built around him by Warhol populated. And so, you know, you see all this stuff. Why not write it down? Why just let it go off into the ether, into some other place? You know, and I think that’s an interesting thing about this third section here. I find it hard to believe you don’t know the beauty you are. It’s like as a writer probably finds it hard to believe that people don’t get that this is real, that this is, you know, a viewpoint of the world, that it’s that it’s his novel. It’s his book. It’s all of the literature that he aspired to. And, you know, coming out in these in this form, it’s not in prose. It’s not in like free verse. It’s in a pop song. But since when is a pop song, not literature? It doesn’t have to be and it doesn’t have to follow all of the rules and, you know, all the stuff that they teach you in school. But it’s literature nonetheless. You know, I’ll be your mirror. You know, it could be addressed to a person. It could have been it could be addressed to a very specific person in a romantic situation. Or it can simply be, you know, I’m here, I’m a mirror. I’m bringing it back. This is what I’ve seen. This is what you did, you know, and this is a new way to see it. This is my way to see it.
Speaker Let’s look down the Grand Canyon that a little bit of talk of that right in the first person, but then many people always sort of Herman Melville, why is it that we ask, why is it in pop songs and rock and roll that if you write the first person, we totally assume it’s you and it’s autobiographical, whereas if you’re Shakespeare, you’re Edgar Allan Poe or whoever it is, you can get away with writing in that first person.
Speaker Actually, that the idea that you can write in the first person and it has to be autobiography, I’ve never understood that, that I just don’t get it. You know, the kind of latitude that drama, drama, you know, writers, poets, anybody, critics for that matter, you know, that they can have these, you know, this latitude of of style and concept. And yet in pop songs, it has to be that way. I think a lot of it has to do with the way pop songs were reconsidered in the 60s. This is very much, you know, the poet you know, the rock songwriter as a poet, which obviously comes from Dylan in great part. It comes from Lennon and McCartney and also the fact that these artists were then being taken more seriously. They weren’t just puppets. They weren’t just, you know, being dangled at the end of a string by, you know, these old school record company producers or, you know, somebody like Phil Spector. They were working on their own. They were taking control of their work. And therefore, by, you know, addressing things in the first person, all of a sudden it becomes I mean, mind I’m saying this. I’m telling you, things are blowin in the wind or, you know, you know, all the things that we then took seriously in the 60s. But in fact, popular music can be anything. That’s the beauty of it. You know, it’s there to be popular. It’s there to appeal to people. So, you know, you can say you’re not in love when in fact, you are. Why? Because you can you know, there are no rules for this sort of thing. The fact that a lot of what Lou has written as a songwriter has been taken. His autobiography is because of a lot of the extraordinary circumstances of his life, the things that we know about his associations with Warhol and the people at the factory, the things that went down with the Velvets, his periods and his solo career. You know, everyone assumes he did massive amounts of every drug available because he would pantomime it on stage at the Academy and Academy of Music in New York, you know, while he’s singing heroin or whatever. So, oh, we see it. Therefore, it is you know, what he did, what he didn’t do. These are all part of the fabric, you know, the material that he draws from. He even he you know, he has always said, you know, there is autobiography, it doesn’t have to be 100 percent, it can be 50 percent. I actually I asked him this once. I said, you know, how much you know of a particular song is you. And he was he was actually, you know, doing percentages, you know, 50 percent, 85 percent. You wouldn’t tell me, what, 50 or 85. But it was like, you know, this is the point, OK? Yeah, I actually I was I couldn’t I can’t remember. It’s this was this was like in 89, this interview. But, you know, it was the same point I was asking. You know, people assume that heroin is about you. They assume waiting for the man is about you. They assume sister raise about you, you know, and as he says, you know, songs on the blue mass. You can run the entire gamut of his of his catalog. There’s a lot of him in there. It changes with every song. Why? Because he can do it that way. He doesn’t have there are no there’s no prescription that he has to follow. And there’s no such prescription in popular music anymore than there is in any other kind of music or any other kind of writing.
Speaker What about a song like Kill Your Sons? He talked about that little song, personal.
Speaker Well, something a song like Kill Your Sons obviously draws from a very personal experience, and he’s never he’s never denied that. But at the same time, if you listen to that song, OK, tell us what that experience is. Well, you know, a song like Kill Your Sons obviously relates to a very personal point in his life when he went through the electroshock therapy. And it’s documented in books and articles and such. And he’s never actually denied that. It’s this is obviously a song that comes from a very potent place in his life and his, you know, his adolescence. But the reason that song is so powerful. And it’s also because it’s actually on a record that’s not that great, you know, it’s on Salli Can’t Dance, which is, you know, even he admits is not that great a record. But the reason that song really just resonates is because it’s something that so many of us at any age have gone through, either as adolescents or as adults. And it’s not necessarily a hospital or psychiatric psychological thing, but the kind of, you know, cutting off, you know, from from a part of your your experience or going or some sort of intense trauma. And obviously, the whole parent child dynamic that that goes on day in, day out anywhere. You know, it’s this is not simply something that went on in the 60s and it didn’t go on. And like the dysfunctional 80s or any of that business, that’s a constant circumstances change. Not everybody goes through something as drastic as he did. But, you know, that song is really potent and remains so, you know, when he performs it because it deals with very universal experiences grounded in something very personal and very intense.
Speaker Um, can you talk? That’s great.
Speaker Can you talk about street house or maybe in the same sense because, you know, here’s.
Speaker There are many different people in that one saw there, and I’m not I have to really restudy street hassle because that’s 11 minutes long and yeah, and then it’s got that whole then it’s got that whole thing with Springsteen in it, too, which really kind of complicates the whole in some sense.
Speaker Well, actually, there is one Coney Island.
Speaker Well, there’s also, you know, that song it’s not one of his famous songs, but that song The Day John Kennedy died, which is on The Blue Mask. When I when I interviewed him several years ago, you know, we were talking we were actually talking about sort of like 60s culture. It was for a particular issue of Rolling Stone. And I asked him, you know, you wrote the song the day John Kennedy died, what were you doing? And he said, you know, I was in a bar at Syracuse, you know, and apparently it was the same bar where he used to go and hang out with Delmore Schwartz, you know, so this is really part of his college experience. And, you know, he just drew on it. You know, this is the way to open a song. This is what I did. You know, it’s not, again, strictly an autobiographical song, but it was an entrance into something else that he wanted to say or something else that he wanted to get to. And yet he drew on something very specific, you know, timed literally to a particular day on the calendar to a particular event that everyone could relate to. This is what I was doing on the day John Kennedy died. So, you know, that’s an instance where, you know, at least in those couple of opening lines, you know, that reference was entirely autobiographical.
Speaker You want to stop for a second? Yeah, of 19 parts of the whole album.
Speaker So it’s a yeah, it’s really an important song and it’s.
Speaker Yeah, that’s what I really would need to listen back to. So because it actually it isn’t entirely complete chronology.
Speaker We have one year of almost anything else you want to say about the stuff before we kind of get out of there? You know, you could also if you wanted to. We’re not rolling yet. OK, maybe about some bands today or just a whole list of things.
Speaker People you think are influenced by the Velvets, a song that.
Speaker And are you ready so.
Speaker Well, I don’t know, they’re just so there’s so many of them couldn’t even begin to pinpoint them. Because the other thing now, a lot of that that influence is not diluted, but it’s sort of spread enough that it’s it’s a fact of life as opposed to some remarkable, you know, thing that can come in or out.
Speaker And you’re done. Yeah, OK, we’re ready.
Speaker So they said again, because Penn Jillette talks about that one that said Lenny Bruce and the influence. And then today we don’t even understand it.
Speaker Yeah, well, with the Velvets, if you want to talk about who they’ve who they’ve influenced, you know, we could be here for hours because what they what their influence has done has really it’s permeated, you know, certainly rock culture and pop culture and even literature to some degree, you know, in a way that you don’t just sort of like follow a trail. It’s kind of dissolved into the to the entire fabric of what’s going on out there. You can pick particular people who have obviously spoken highly of of Lou and the Velvets and John and Sterling and all of them. Certainly, you know, the guys in RTM, Michael Stipe, you know, Patti Smith, David Bowie, you know, loads of them. And then there’s that punk generation, you know, Kurt Cobain, Nirvana covering.
Speaker Here she comes now. I’m pretty sure it was here she comes now.
Speaker Double check that, but the the the thing about their influence is that it’s so much a part of it now that it’s in a way it’s appropriate. It’s something you don’t have to remark on. It’s not like you trip over it. When you listen to a record, it’s there the same way people have been influenced by Dylan and the Beatles. And you know, or, you know, jazz musicians, the way they reflect the the the school of thought and inspiration from Coltrane or Ornette Coleman or Charlie Parker, whoever, you know, it’s a fact of life. And that’s kind of the best part of it. You know, they went through so much and were rejected so much in their original lifetime that I think their greatest triumph is that, you know, people can kind of take them for granted now. You know, they they are a part of it. You know, they are part of the pantheon. They finally got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you know, in a sense that makes them kind of a part of the establishment.
Speaker But that’s what they deserved in the first place. That was the whole thing that, you know, Velvet’s freak’s in the late 60s and all throughout the 70s, you know, and moaned about, you know, nobody thinks the Velvets, you know, nobody puts these reissues, these records out. You know, we’re all this and scratchy copies of the banana record and, you know, a little bootleg tapes and stuff.
Speaker You know, now it’s like it’s kind of almost like a Velvet’s industry. You know, there box sets, their reissues, their books. There’s TV shows like this one. That’s good.
Speaker You know, that’s that means that they made an impact that can’t be erased. It’s not something that was just temporal. You know, it wasn’t fan based or fan club based or it was not simply a part of this one particular window of opportunity that they had. In fact, their window of opportunity wasn’t big enough. They didn’t get to do all the things they were capable of for a variety of reasons. And to have those songs that material, their performances now regarded as an essential part of music history, not just of the culture in the time in which they existed. I think that’s their ultimate victory. They scored it took them a hell of a long time, but they scored and then started saying, OK, OK, we’re ready.
Speaker So well, the the worldwide impact of the Velvets in particular is actually quite interesting, given that they never actually performed in their original lifetime outside of the continental United States, never played in Canada. I don’t think they ever got, you know, much further south than Texas. They didn’t go any further west in California. And yet there was a real cult following for them in England. At one point, Brian Epstein was interested in managing them. The Beatles manager was interested in them. And certainly Europe and particularly Czechoslovakia. You know, the whole there was a whole, you know, sort of like underground fan club of musicians. They’re dealing with, you know, the communist regimes and that oppression and finding in the Velvets music and that of other very maverick bands like The Mothers of Invention and the Thugs, you know, finding inspiration in terms of what could be said in rock and roll and what could be said in ways that dealt with the issues that they had at home, their inevitable inability to play in public, you know, the kind of problems they had with secret police. You know, the things that you know, the people and the plastic people, the universe, the cheque band that were big Elvis fans. You know, I remember speaking to them once about, you know, the Velvet Underground and Lou and how those words were like, holy to them because they were emblematic.
Speaker OK, where was with those records? Oh, OK.
Speaker The the first all of the Velvet’s records, particularly the banana record, white light, white heat, the third one, these were almost totemic, you know, objects to these people. You know, you couldn’t buy them over there. So the tapes that were, you know, circulated around, you know, secretively, you know, we’re very important. And, you know, Vaclav Havel obviously has spoken very highly of Lou and of the role that he as a songwriter and the Velvets as a band and Lou, as a performer as well, played in, you know, keeping the spirit of their resistance, artistic, you know, emotional, political, social alive. You know, that was you can talk about the worldwide impact of musicians and mostly these are registered and record sales or they’re registered in, you know, magazine articles or the number of mentions you get on the radio.
Speaker The the way Lou has become, you know, a hero in in Eastern Europe, particularly at that time in Czechoslovakia. Now, the Czech Republic, you know, really shows that, you know, popular music does have an impact. It has a very strong social impact.
Speaker We don’t always see it. Yea, because we’re a democracy, you know, we can choose to buy whichever records we want, we can change the radio station, we can decide not to read certain magazines.
Speaker You know, at the time that, you know, people like Hovell and the people in the Czech resistance were listening to those records and listening to Lou and listening to the Velvets. You know, those were not options, you know, to do that was a political act and it was considered a contrary political act by the people in power. The fact that, you know, things have changed over there, you can’t say the Velvets did it all, but there’s no question that that music and the force of the songs and the force of what was being said in them was really, really important because it was emblematic of something that they wanted to do. And they took inspiration from that.
Speaker Any thoughts on different countries like Germany, Italy, and I know he’s he’s toured a lot. Yeah. Any thoughts there?
Speaker Before we talk about you see well, lose lose impact, particularly in Europe, has always been very strong. But I think there’s something in what he does that kind of appeals to European sensibility. You know, there is a real it’s a there’s an emphasis on art. There’s an emphasis on drama. It’s there’s a lot of there’s actually kind of a lot of almost I don’t want to say cabaret because it suggests a different kind of music, but that very theatrical thing that, you know, particularly came to the fore in Berlin, you know, Berlin, there’s the name of the album. There’s the name of the song. You know, there’s an incredibly rich and provocative European sensibility to that record, which I think has, you know, goes through a lot of his music. But, you know, there’s he’s you know, I think the problem with the Velvets in America and Lou, as a solo artist in terms of commercial success is, you know, that’s what happens when you speak your own mind and say your own piece. You know this he does not speak in commercial terms. He can actually write really great commercial songs. He was schooled essentially as a commercial songwriter. He worked at Pickwick Records. You know, he was writing Do the Ostrich. You know, it’s his way of like, you know, starting a dance craze. But right there you can see the contradiction. He wants to start a dance craze and then he’s telling people to, like, stick their heads in the ground. So, you know, I don’t know what kind of a dance craze you’re going to create, but it’s not the sort of thing that, you know, is going to make page six of the post. So the kind of sensibility that he’s working from, it’s not mainstream, but it’s but it’s got a common thread to it’s got a common resonance. That’s actually a contradiction in terms like guess a common resonance, but it’s it’s got an impact. But the impact that Lou and I, both in the Velvets and as a solo artist has had, it’s really been on a one to one basis. You know, his fan club has grown in very small increments and it’s grown because people have been willing to invest time in what he does and listening to the records that he’s made, both with the Velvet Underground and and on his own and different collaborations and projects that he’s had. And I think that, you know, in it’s possible that in Europe, you know, people have been much more willing to make that investment early on, you know, lose hit records in this country. You can count them on one hand. But there are important records that people have heard that they have related to and have made almost, you know, a personal connection with and I guess maybe in Europe, because, you know, a place like Germany and the populations are smaller, maybe he’s been able to have that incremental impact on people to a much greater degree here. It takes a lot longer and it’s a lot harder. I’m not sure if I answered that question correctly. I don’t want to sound like a euro phobe.
Speaker Yes, I know now, but, um, I guess I want to go away for a minute. Oh, OK. Uh, can you talk about the little boy connection?
Speaker In what in what way we produce and transform transformer, I guess, and set us up to well, Bowis interest in Lou predates Transformer Corp by quite a few years.
Speaker There’s actually BBC sessions that he recorded for the BBC Radio in England, and there are versions of White Light White. He you know, he was playing I’m waiting for the man on stage. And in fact, there’s a this doesn’t relate to Bowie specifically, but it just sort of shows what kind of impact he was having in Britain. There’s a bootleg record of the Yardbirds with Jimmy Page playing in 1968 of May of 68 in Los Angeles, and they actually play Waiting for the man.
Speaker So this is, you know, long before Bowie has even come out into like Space Oddity. And, you know, Major Tom, you know, already people were aware of those records. You know, the Yardbirds had actually played with the plastic inevitable in Michigan, in my chronology is correct. There was an interview in the reissue they got recently with Jim McCartney in which he talked about, you know, being there with with the inevitable and being there with the Velvets. And so, you know, within a year or so, they’re playing, waiting for the man. So the impact of the Velvets had was more by word of mouth. You know, they were crippled by the same kind of record company inefficiency, you know, elsewhere around the world as they were in the US.
Speaker But there was no question that there was a buzz about them. And, you know, Bowie’s always a smart guy. He’s a listener, you know, and he’s someone who not only borrows and knows the appropriate, but he sort of uses and uses things.
Speaker It builds on things that he’s heard. And at the same time, I think that he was actually such a genuine fan that he wanted to be almost like a patron. Here was a guy that he genuinely, genuinely admired, whose music he knew, whose music he was eager to perform himself.
Speaker And now all of a sudden, you know, he Ziggy Stardust, you know, he’s got all of this power. He can actually do the sorts of things, you know, with artists that he like, you know, with Lou, with Iggy Pop, the Stooges. I’m sure, you know, making a record like Transformer was his way of kind of, you know, not only, you know, bringing Lou to an audience, bringing Lou to his audience, but also showing David’s audience that a lot of what they were hearing and David, bits of that were little. You know, check this out. This is some of the sauce. This is a guy that you should be listening to. Why? Because I’ve learned a lot from him.
Speaker Can you tell us about the Lambright and describe what he looked like, but what is this period because it’s so different from the years before?
Speaker Well, Lou was beyond glam, if you really think about it. You know, there was his kind of glam was like really intense. You know, it was it was very it had a serious New York after hours, you know, vibe, you know, just shy of being sort of thug like, but really intense. You know, we think of glam now is like, you know, spangled heels, you know, three feet high and everyone’s got a little glitter stars and this kind of giggly bisexuality that David that was sort of like be gotten from from Bowie and then getting into bands like Sweet and Gary Glitter. And it almost becomes like a teeny bop thing. You know, Lou Reed’s one hit, you know, from that period walk on the wild side, it almost seems kind of like casual and relaxed. It’s got that jazzy rhythm. It’s, you know, the string bass, the doo doo doo doo. You know, the colored girls go, you know, this is actually kind of cute in a way, you know, if you think about it in a top 40 context. But the subject matter is like these like total freaks and people that were working, you know, living and, you know, kind of like living out fantasies on the very margins, not only of just society, but even of that culture. So, you know, the idea that he was glam rock was actually is actually kind of funny because, you know, he wasn’t glam. He was oh, he’s kind of mean, you know, but in a very theatrical and powerful way and at the same time writing really delicate, sweet songs, Satellite of Love. You know, Berlind, that entire record, even though that record is considered to be from his glam period with the glitter rock days, you know, in fact, it’s very theatrical. It’s very poetic and it’s very introspective. You know, there’s no big rockers on it.
Speaker OK, sorry. Are you going to Berlin? Yeah, just describe this look.
Speaker Well, I saw him in December of 72, was a club show in Philadelphia. That was the first time I saw him perform. And it was kind of a weird scene because it was actually kind of a foreclosure coffeehouse. There was no liquor in it. So it was like coffee and brownies. And this guy is coming in and he’s singing heroin and he’s singing waiting for the man. And he’s doing, you know, basically the best of the Velvets at the time. This was before Transformer had been released. It was just on the cusp of that record coming out. And he looked really intimidating. You know, he had you know, he had the shades on. You know, he had this kind of I’m going to say it was a grimace, but, you know, he looked like, don’t mess. You know, this is I’m serious. I’m getting it on. You don’t like it. The door’s right over there. There’s the fire exit. Don’t let the door hit yourself on the ass on the way out or whatever. It was that kind of vibe. And, you know, if I remember correctly, it was most of the like black leather, the jacket, black jeans, in fact, a lot of what he wears now. But I think the intensity of it and the the the hints of sexuality and even deviant sexuality in the songs actually sort of made it feel like it was part of this glitter thing. I think that, you know, people sort of thought of him as glitter rock and glam rock and bisexual rock. But a lot of it was by association. He wasn’t really part of any kind of fad. You know, he was doing this when everyone else was walking around in baggy jeans doing Hari Krishna, Om Shanti, you know, he was this was nothing new to him. In fact, everyone had caught up to him. And in fact, everyone was doing it with a lot more flair and a lot more sort of hubba hubba. You know, I’m wearing these spangled things and funny hair and all that sort of whatnot, you know, dressing up in dresses. And, you know, he didn’t need to do that. You know, that stuff was already in the music and it was already in the songs. And, you know, it was intimidating enough that, you know, here’s this guy standing there. And to the to the side of them were like these 15 year old kids. It’s like a bar band, you know? And here he is, you know, really intense. Lou Reed, that whole legacy of the Velvets and this is before even Transformer took effect. And when he went out with, you know, the sort of heavy metal, the harder metal kind of bands that are on like rock and roll animal and things like that. This was still rough stuff. And the that show is just that. That was a major imprint on my head, because as much as I had devoured the Velvets records and the extremes that are certainly on, say, you know, the bad banana record and white like white, he you know, to see that, you know, even if it’s just Lou, there was no John. There was no sterol that. Just to see that in front and broadcasting those songs, I was it was rough stuff, you know, but it was supposed to be that’s that’s that was why it was great.
Speaker Can you talk to explain, OK, I’m not sure I’m just sort of sympathy that perfect got the idea for me that it’s that building transformer to come next with this terribly difficult album, Guerlain. I mean, the obvious thing is that the artist would be let’s really capitalize that and talk about you as an artist in that sense.
Speaker Well, actually, I think for Lou to make Berlin right after Transformer to everyone who thought Transformer was the beginning of like his superstar days, like he was he was made in the shade. Now, you know, for them, Berlin was a shock. This is like, how could he do this? You know, but that’s to suggest that someone like Lou is strictly a careerist. Now, he obviously he’s always been very attentive to his career, to the continuum of his work and the the audiences that he wants to attract. He is you know, he’s never been shy about that, you know, but at the same time, to think that, you know, he was simply going to go on and make a transformer, too. I’m amazed that anybody figured that was something that was a natural. You know, you look at just the course of the music on the Velvets records. You know, another No. One of those four records sounds alike. They all have common elements. They all have things threading through them. But none of them. Sounds like the second issue of the first. You know, there’s no they’re not. He was never into repetition. And in fact, Transformer was kind of a weird record in between the very first one, which was kind of this grandiose kind of art pop record that he made mostly of like previously unissued velvet songs. But, you know, with like all these English session men and orchestras on Ocean and all the sort of business and, you know, he gets to transform it. It’s a lot leaner. It’s a lot more, poppy. In fact, you know, Berlin, you know, Transformers, the anomaly, not Berlin. You know, Transformer was a record made to be a successful record.
Speaker Lou has never really made records simply to be successful. And in fact, a couple of times that that he did. You know, you look at Saligman dance that was kind of made as a commercial record. It sucks. I’m sorry. It is not a great record. There are really great things about it, but. That it’s you know, it’s not a record that is highly regarded. They don’t people don’t speak of it in the hushed tones that they do the Blue Mask or New York or, you know, the songs for Drella Project with with John.
Speaker Can you talk about it?
Speaker Maybe you shouldn’t say it sucks. Well, if he agrees, then that’s cool. I don’t want him to think. I don’t want him to be coming up my house.
Speaker And he says, well, I was probably being a little extreme there. Say it ever again when you have the cover.
Speaker Well, you know, that door, you know, maybe we can say something other than it’s all right to say and say what you want to say about, say, I can dance without saying it’s it’s it’s kind of bloodless.
Speaker Sally Can’t Dance is really kind of a bloodless record, which is really unusual in his catalog. You know, it’s a record. It was it sounds like it was kind of made on automatic pilot. The songs don’t sound that way. You know, this is also the record that has killed your sons. But it sounds like a record that was made to give to a record company for them to sell. And in fact, it was one of his most successful albums of that of that decade. But I’ll take metal machine music over that any day, you know, and I’m sure no one at RCA would have agreed with that at the time, you know, for signs of noise.
Speaker Well, yes, I kind of like four sides of noise, much more than just kind of a resculpted pop, you know, let’s get it on FM radio. It was a big hit record and I would never deny him that. But I can’t say that I’ve listened to it much at all.
Speaker Ever go back to Berlin and that yeah, it was I have heard that it was not what we see with a major extent that John Rocker loved it and it didn’t sell at all. So but now we all look back and it’s like, oh, my God, it was a precursor to so many things for so many people.
Speaker Susan, uh, uh, I think.
Speaker Susan Rice said that she listened to it before she wrote look into that powerful talk about Berlin in the context of.
Speaker That they received, except for David Rockwell and Will Berlin was badly received and it certainly didn’t sell in the numbers that Transformer did or in the numbers. I’m sure RCA had hoped it would probably in the numbers that Lou hoped it would. But it’s actually a very characteristic record of Lou’s because it’s a record made to be heard in a one on one context. You know his records, you know, the Velvet’s records, the songs that he writes, they were always meant to be. I’m talking to you. You know, he once described it to me as like, you know, having a conversation with somebody. You know, you’re sitting here and they’re, you know, you’re you’re in the corner of a room talking to somebody and saying, you know, this is what’s going on. This is what’s on my mind. This is what’s in this song. This is what this experience is about. And his best records have always been made with that kind of intimacy in mind. Berlin was very low key and it’s in its music and it’s in its character. Now, even with all of the orchestration and all of the sort of opulence of those arrangements, it was also very direct and very personal. And, you know, big popular rock and roll records are meant to be you know, they’re supposed to hit everybody. You know, it’s like you hear a song, boom, everybody hears it on the radio at the same time, or it’s this mass communal thing that you see at a concert. Everybody jumps up, you know, claps along. You know, Berlin is not like that. It wasn’t meant to be like that. And I think that what happened and this is this is certainly true of the Velvets records as well. Berlin was a record that people heard one person at a time and in fact, probably took a lot of time to listen to it took me a while to really get a handle on Berlin, but you just sort of like sank into it and let it let it do its thing on you. And all of his best records have done that. You know, it’s no different than the people who thought that magic and loss was this really depressing record about death. Well, it’s it’s kind of low key. It’s very dark. You know, there’s not a lot of, you know, hubba hubba here. We’re not talking of a great electric guitar solos and, you know, all the big noise, but the kind of direct communication, the electricity that he’s trying to generate from one spot where he is to another, which is where the listener is. You know, that’s not that’s not something you just do with volume. You do it with intensity. You do it with, you know, by articulating what you want to say. And that’s what a record like Berlin was like that so many of his best records, which are also the ones that everybody thinks are so difficult, that’s what they’re like.
Speaker Can you continue that?
Speaker OK, I went out there and I was thinking, and it’s more of a mental direction.
Speaker Well, I would I wouldn’t say that Berlin is a record of, you know, that speaks to sort of an adult sensibility. I would say that it doesn’t speak to a juvenile one, which isn’t quite the same thing. They’re not direct opposites.
Speaker You know, it was not I love you. You love me. It wasn’t, you know, let’s go to bed. Let’s not go to bed. You know, why are you this, that and the other thing, you know, it wasn’t strictly about those very basic, almost banal expressions that you get in popular music. It’s it’s the old thing about, you know, there’s like eight million stories in the Naked City. Well, there’s eight million ways to say I love you or I don’t love you or what’s the problem here in pop music? And this was one of them. And it was a very thoughtful, very articulate and very difficult way to do it, because it was not it was like it was not common.
Speaker It was not something easily attached to, you know, it was orchestras, it was about orchestras and about singing rather than about guitars and about hooks. There are hooks in there.
Speaker There are guitars in here. There’s some amazing musicians playing on that record. In some ways, maybe he overplayed his hand.
Speaker Maybe he maybe he made a record that was too good and to mature to really appeal to a lot of people at once. But that’s really that’s that’s why so many people keep going back to it, because it wasn’t easy. Pop music is in many ways at its best about sudden impact. You hear something, you love it or you hear something, you hate it, you know, and that’s and it’s meant to be temporal. But at the same time, if that was all it was, then we’d kind of be cheated in artistic terms.
Speaker I’m sorry, am I doing something now?
Speaker OK, it’s the the longevity and the continued. Pleasure and inspiration and, you know, revelation sometimes that you can get from a record and you don’t have to have it on the first day and in fact, it’s more fun to work at it. And that’s why, you know, somebody like Lou, his music is continually talked about both pro and con people are still, you know, beefing about Sally can’t dance. There’s still people who don’t like Berlin. But that polarization means that, you know, he’s actually had a really significant effect. You know, people disagree. They’re not just saying, I don’t care. And I think that’s that’s the importance both of that record and so much of his work.
Speaker Can you talk about the kids in particular? Because he’s been playing a lot lately and we have some good recordings.
Speaker And actually, I would I actually did a lot of those. Yeah.
Speaker The article then was Rock and Roll Animal, which meant I sort of I guess I’ve read that it was kind of because the record companies were still. I’m pleased with and talk about rock and roll and rock and roll animal is.
Speaker Rock and roll animal was actually a great record, and it actually was a really important 70s because one of the great kind of stoner records, you know, like, you know, kids talk about, you know, what they were doing in the 70s hanging out in the park and, you know, drinking wine, you know, smoking joints and hanging out and stuff. You know, rock and roll animal was a really great party record. Know, it was there was a lot of noise. It was actually kind of cliched in a way. It was actually more the edges were more around that it was more heavy metal than the kind of extreme atonal hard rock that the songs on it, actually the way they originally made. You know, a lot of the Velvets material that was on those two records, Lou Reed Alive and Rock and Roll Animal, you know, they were done much more extreme with a lot more attitude and intensity. But, you know, in a way, it was it was a connection that a lot of a lot of kids who didn’t know the velveteen were actually coming after that, who had maybe cottoned on to transform or maybe even missed that as well. They could get into it. It was crazy. It was loud. The songs were intense. And he was you know, he was always a great, riveting stage performer in his own kind of stoic way. And I think that rock and roll animal captured that part of him. It was actually a really good band. They were really good. You know, Steve Hunter, great guitar player from Detroit, Dick Wagner, I guess, was on that record as well. You know, that’s that’s actually the kind of Detroit sound that the Velvets and themselves also kind of influenced. In a way, they came through with the plastic inevitable in the mid 60s, 66, I guess maybe 67. That’s when Iggy was sort of cottoning on. And the whole high energy Detroit thing that also came up with the MK five, you know, they were bringing their own vibe and their own urban angst to it. But you could see that there was sort of an exchange here going on, you know, and having people like, you know, Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner in that band. He was actually bringing back in an element of what he had left in Detroit when the Velvets pulled through. So, you know, he was basically pulling in elements of things that he had already done and actually doing it in a way that was really successful, you know, as nothing wrong with having a successful record. And the songs were good and it rocked. You know, that’s what the kids want to rock. Here’s some rock.
Speaker Would you say that in a way that maybe because the successive walk on the wild side transformer and their.
Speaker Well, the success of Transformer brought Lou back into Moore, actually got him into the public spotlight, he hadn’t really been there before Berlin for all of the problems that he had in terms of reaction and bad reviews and no sales was talked about so much as in reaction to the success of Transformer that, you know, he was still, you know, a very significant person. You still he was a very significant artist. Even people didn’t like him. They talked about him. The success of rock and roll animal and the fact that what he was performing to a large degree were velvet songs meant that those songs, which for a lot of people had been unheard. They didn’t know them. They didn’t know they existed for the most part, suddenly or common, you know, there in the common coin. Now, they’re now being talked in a current way. I’m sorry.
Speaker No, continue. I just say what the songs were. Oh, Sweet Jane, heroin, white lady de Rock and roll. Yeah.
Speaker You can say, oh, well, Sweet Jane, heroin, rock and roll. He was also performing. I think he was doing Sister Ray at a couple of points on that tour.
Speaker Turn that thing off. I’ll try that again. And we’re the ones on Lou Reed live to our version.
Speaker It’s just around a little bit like this vicious Saveliev walk on the wild side and waiting for the man.
Speaker Oh, that’s right. Said, Oh, that’s right. They didn’t they don’t have a sister. Animal is sweet, Jane. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Right.
Speaker OK, well, you know the songs on rock and roll, animal heroin, white light, white heat, rock and roll, sweet Jane, Sweet Jane and Rock and Roll had already been on the radio to a large degree when Loaded came out. That’s actually you know, that was one of the first serious successes. The Velvets had their last. But to hear these songs played every night and to have them suddenly become part of the listening habits of, you know, 15 year old guys and girls, you know, hanging out in parking lots and, you know, going over to the Academy of Music here in New York or, you know, that whole sort of 70s rock experience, you know, meant that these these really kind of intense and, you know, very articulate and also very dark songs are suddenly being heard in a party context. It meant that the songs were now being given a new life. And I think what happened to a large degree was that, you know, punk in the 70s happened because of a whole lot of reasons, including the Velvets. But I think the fact that the kids that were becoming disenfranchised from mainstream music and mainstream rock and roll and the big arena shows and all the the the grandeur of the the progressive rock and the art rock stuff, you know, these songs like Heroin Waiting for the Man, White Light, White Heat, they became like source material. And so go back to it. You know, they’re hearing Lew do it. So, you know, you get these people then, you know, going back and looking for the original records. I remember Thurston Moore telling me about, you know, how there was a guy that he once you met that became a very close associate of his. And, you know, they met, you know, at a record store, like standing over the Velvets bins going, you know, is any new velvet stuff this week. You know, it was that kind of again. And it goes back to the incremental quality, the the incremental movement of the audience and the momentum of it, you know, picking it up one by one. In the case of rock and roll animal, whole lot of people started hearing it. The ones who took it seriously and started going back. They’re the ones who started making changes.
Speaker That was perfect because we have there’s some more telling us that.
Speaker So then after Rock and roll, Animal Dance 74, and I guess you’ve covered that.
Speaker We assassinated that record. Yeah.
Speaker Then comes the New York and the movie live from issues that you talked about.
Speaker Yeah, that’s basically that was like, well, we need we need more product. Yeah. That was that was the outtakes from the either one. Yeah.
Speaker Yeah. Comes our favorite record. Yes. It’s just another machine music.
Speaker Your take on that metal machine music. I’m very proud to own a copy. And I’ve you know, it’s the thing about metal machine music is that it’s both a great gag and it’s also a really serious enterprise. You know, on one hand, you know, it’s him standing in a room feeding back for sixty four minutes. You know, this is this is obviously not done to make anybody at the record company happy. You know, he puts it out, comes out through like, you know, RCA, you know, Morgan is almost like a classical record. You know, is this is some sort of. Harry Parch, you know, our trip, you know, Edgard Varese thing, and then you read the liner notes and, you know, cycles per minute and I’m reading, I you know, I bought the record Arrhenius. And I think, what does this mean? You know, I don’t get it. You know, and people I think a lot of people thought it was, in fact, synthesisers that this was some sort of like a music concrete tape recorder, you know? Well, you know, the real Edgard Varese stuff, you know, mad scientist things, when in fact, it was just him standing in front of an amplifier, you know, with his guitar feeding back for sixty four minutes. You know, now everybody sees Sonic Youth do it. And it’s like, you know, it makes sense at the time. It certainly didn’t. But the one thing that I remember from the liner notes about that record, and I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was like my weak beats your year.
Speaker And I thought, man, that is this guy is just saying, you know, if you don’t like it, I don’t care.
Speaker And in popular music, there’s so much emphasis put on appeal, you know, making the big play, making the big, you know, the big superstar leap to, you know, multimillions and, you know, forever being loved. And he’s just telling people like, you know, screw you and there’s bizzle. That’s a lot of what rock and roll is about. It’s meant to be a reaction. It’s meant to be a stance, and it’s meant to be, you know, a challenge. And in this particular case, having been through all of these crazy, you know, changes in style and, you know, in his own in his own life and the sort of things that he went through with the Velvets, you know, the business stuff that was like just a total drag on him in which, you know, he continued to have to fight for years, you know, to make a record like metal machine music was basically, you know, this is this is something this is part of what I am. And I’m going to give it to you, whether you like it or not. And again, it’s one of those records that people love because of it. It’s so extreme. But, you know, there aren’t enough extremes in pop music. And, you know, the idea that this has no no songs, no words, no hooks is it’s it’s so pure that it’s kind of beyond rock and roll. It’s it’s a Lou Reed record. It’s not even a Lou Reed guitar record. It’s not it’s not a Lou Reed rock’n’roll. It’s just a Lou Reed record. It’s just a it’s a piece of his personality. He put it down on double vinyl. And, you know, I would have loved to have been in the office at RCA when they heard this thing. I really would have. I can imagine the jaws must have been just like drag. And that’s I wish somebody had caught that on film. We should all see that for posterity and put it in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker Yeah. So that’s good. I hear I have my notes here. That’ll be music. July seventy five USA. No British release.
Speaker No, no, no, no, no, no release.
Speaker You know it was like it came and it when you know you start that over again and talk about what was going the other day actually was that I think after three weeks they pulled it from the stores because they told them that they were sending returns or something that would ruin his career forever. Guys, keep the record straight and not take the records again. Yeah, maybe talk about that.
Speaker Well, the idea that that anyone actually would release metal machine music, you know, even on a dare is really incredible. And you got to kind of give RCA a little bit of guts for even just going with it, whether they were forced to contractually or not. But, you know, the reaction in stores, it was not an easy record to find. You know, I ended up having to find like a used copy, you know, a few years later because it was just impossible to find. But the idea that, you know, people, you know, sure, record stores were sending them back. And, you know, the whole reaction to, you know, this is music. But in a way, I thought it was kind of appropriate because when I got my very first copy of the banana record, I got it from my college roommate who didn’t want it. But he had gotten it as a stereo demonstration record when he bought, like a record player, you know, so here’s like this store selling stereos. And what you’re supposed to listen to to test the quality of the stereo is heroin. OK, great idea. Just the sort of thing it really shows you, like the quality of what you’re getting in a stereophonic music reproduction machine. I’m actually probably metal machine music is a great stereo demonstration record.
Speaker You know, try testing that out with your massive seed. Nine hundred dollar system. You know, if they can withstand that, it can withstand anything.
Speaker That’s unbelievable. It’s true. It’s so true.
Speaker Nineteen seventy five actually got three releases. Seventy five Lou Reed live and build machine music. And then I guess in December very quickly.
Speaker Yeah, which is crazy feeling Charlie’s girl, she’s my best friend, kicks again. Oh, baby, nobody’s business in Coney Island, baby.
Speaker Can you talk about I actually asked should I’d like to listen back to kind of the thing that’s interesting. You mentioned that, you know, in 19 was at 75. You know, he’s got three records out. You know, there’s the Loory live metal machine music in Coney Island, baby. Well, when you think of it, two of those three records, one of them was probably the record company saying, you know, what else are we going to do? We got to throw something out there. It’s a marketing thing. Metal machine music was his reaction to those sort of shenanigans. And then Coney Island has him getting back, you know, recalibrating, saying the things that, you know, that he wants to say and actually sharpening and focusing his sound, because it’s actually a very it’s a very user friendly record. It is not extreme.
Speaker It’s actually got a lot of beautiful melodies to it. You know, the tone of it is it’s it’s not quite pop. It’s not quite rock. It’s in this kind of weird, kind of almost soulful melancholy quality to it. And yet, you know, the first two records are basically it’s almost like reactions of, you know, attitude. You know, I dare you to do this. Therefore, I’m going to do that once he got that out of the way. And I think a lot of it has to do with just the incredible instability of his career commercially during that period that, you know, these the swing back and forth between like, you know, weirdness versus, you know, the crass commercial gesture, like RCA putting out a stopgap live album taken from old tapes to him, you know, doing metal machine and then sort of like coming right back into this really great medium place with Coney Island baby. And in fact, Coney Island baby is really, you know, the beginning of a really strong period for him that also ends up giving a street hassle. And if you look at it over the long haul, you know, there are a couple of missteps and records that I think people disagree about a lot now. But, you know, from Coney Island, baby up through, say, Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts and New York, you know, that’s that’s a really strong period. You know, there are very few people who can say they put out that many quality records in that kind of a time span and put out as many as he did. You know, we’re talking about almost like a record a year.
Speaker Yes. Seventy six is rock and roll. All right.
Speaker Yeah, I hear that.
Speaker But I would just like to see that, like you said, just keep it. Yeah, OK.
Speaker OK, let’s just go into rock and roll artist.
Speaker Second, I really love bang my drum. Follow the leader. You wear it so well ladies. Hey, rock and roll hard shoes and the chosen one. Senseless and cruel which I know the love. It’s not so appreciated.
Speaker Claim to fame vicious circle another one.
Speaker Yeah I like that temporary thing. Another one and the sheltered life but senselessly the cruel vicious circle.
Speaker A temporary thing. Anything particular that does.
Speaker I think Rock and roll heart is actually quite an underrated record. I think there it’s because of the sound of it. It’s almost sort of muted in a way. It’s not it doesn’t have the edge of a transformer or even Berlind in its own peculiar way. And it’s not quite as crafted as, say, Coney Island baby is, I think, Coney Island baby. It’s a very distinctive sound. So as a result, I think a number of the songs on Rock and Roll Heart have actually been kind of missed. And it’s also interesting that he, in addition to having things like, you know, senselessly cruel and, you know, rock and roll heart, there is the bringing sheltered life back from like deep in the Velvets past. You know, it existed on like a scratchy demo acetate, a wonderful song. And I think that he was he was actually reconnecting in some ways with the kind of writing that he had started out doing and actually trying to sort of, you know, find the connections, you know, because a lot of his solo career in the early 70s, in addition to the changes in style and you know, what people were thinking of as changes in his image, you know, from Transformer to the rock and roll animal and et cetera. But I think that a lot of the material, you know, actually was coming from the Velvets place. You know, those first several records have a lot of Velvets unused Velvets material on it. I think by bringing back sheltered life when Rock and Roll Heart, just a really underrated song. I’m really glad that it was reissued on the Velvet’s box that, you know, he was actually maybe subtlely or maybe too subtlely making a point saying, you know, this is where I come from. This is where I am. There is a connection. There’s a thread here. And I think in some cases, I think at the time, people, those people who knew that, you know, sheltered life, you know, was an old velvet song. Well, you know, just going back to the well, you know, something to fill out the record, I don’t think it’s I think it’s a little subtler than that. You know, it’s a good song. Should never go to waste no matter how old it was. And I think he was he was actually kind of making a point, you know, that this is the way I’ve always written. These are this is the style I want to get back to. I need to center myself as a writer and an artist. And I think Coney Island baby enabled him to really get back into that. And I think Rock and Roll Heart and a lot of those records that followed Street, all the bells, et cetera, were really, you know, part of that that motion.
Speaker The next one, which was well said, the best would be the same old, same old, the next really important as the Eighth Street.
Speaker So that’s when I really got to listen back to that. And that’s such a deep record for that. Yeah, that’s a really heavy record, things like that.
Speaker When I hear this, like there’s like really weird on there, but and then then you have something is epic and intense street hustle, which, you know, to see him do it, you know, it’s actually fun. I’ve seen I’ve seen, you know, you to do parts of it. You know, they’ll do the sha la la la stuff. You know, it’s for a record for a song that’s like eleven minutes long and is, you know, graphically graphic sex in there, you know, and not all that nice either. It’s it’s an incredibly beautiful song. You know, it’s got the Waltzing Matilda, you know, that sort of very Victorian, elegant, you know, feel to it and you know, just the way you could have la la la la la la la la la. You know, and with all this other stuff, you know, it’s his whole thing for for, you know, since Jump Street has been about trying to reconcile extremes. You know, you have intensity, you have beauty. Why can’t you have intense beauty? Why can’t you have beautiful intensity, you know, to have, you know, talk about bad luck and straight hassle and then have something as lyrical and almost buoyant as, you know, the sha la la la, as you know, is that’s the sort of stuff that just, you know, it’s actually hard to sort of describe and it’s hard to analyze because it’s actually meant to have an impact at a place where you just don’t have words. You know, that’s I don’t know.
Speaker It’s I’m not saying it’s right, but we can come back to that where we could.
Speaker Yeah, because it’s because in a funny way, street hassle is actually. Yeah. And I’m just riffing here the same thing. It’s in some way it isn’t by no means a perfect record, but the parts of it that are great or glorious and the parts that don’t quite work, you know, they’re at least they’re amusing. I want to be black, you know, who’s he kidding?
Speaker You know, but that’s the whole idea, you know, who’s he kidding?
Speaker You know, the ultimate, you know, sort of white guy from Long Island, Queens, you know? But then again, he’s always been an RB freak, you know, Mr Doo Wop.
Speaker So anyone, can you take this opportunity to talk about some influences like, oh, yeah, yeah, talk about that.
Speaker When you think some of this comes from.
Speaker Well, people don’t think of Lou as a soul man because he’s he’s so stoic, you know, he’s so intense. You know, he seems to, you know, not show great deals of emotion, you know, on stage. But, you know, his connection with RB music, certainly 50s vocal sounds, doo wop, streetcorner stuff. You know, his love of Dionne. He made that quite plain when at his induction speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the elements of R and B and soul in his writing and actually in the music, not just the lyrics, you know, he can you know, some of the stuff on legendary hearts, you know, really comes from the very fifties are in place. But, you know, that lick that kind of strange little guitar hook and I guess it’s there she goes again on the first Velvet’s record. You know, that’s that’s How To Hitchhike by Marvin Gaye. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. You know, that’s a Motown thing. You know, freely admits it. There was actually one track unloaded. I guess it was. It was I found a reason where, you know, Sterling was telling me about how this came from, like some really obscure or indie record. I had to look it up. You know, I’d never even heard of it before. And sure enough, there it was, you know, like it was nineteen fifty eight or something. You know, it’s a really great old, you know, record, actually. I got a I have to check back on that because in the liner notes to the Velvets, to the loaded thing, he actually talks about that particular record. Where was I. Oh just. Oh yeah.
Speaker Well he’s well, you know, Lou’s first record was with the shades. You know, they were streetcorner, they were in and B banned from from Long Island. You know, it was we’re talking late 50s. You know, that’s that was his first record. That was his first love.
Speaker You know, he’s he’s talked a lot about, you know, the impact of listening to the radio and listening to rockabilly and the, you know, the stuff that he was hearing on the New York radio.
Speaker Sterling, you know as well that was actually a connection that he and Sterling made at Syracuse was through records, you know, through their shared interest in old rockabilly, old chest blues. You know, John Lee Hooker. You know, actually, I remember still running down some of the names, you know, records that they would play, you know, and. Lou also was a big jazz freak, you know, he talked about going to see Ornette, you know, he had a radio show on the Syracuse University Station named after a Cecil Taylor track on an old school excursions on a wobbly rail. It’s an old Cecil Taylor record. So, you know, all of that atonality that, you know, sounds like just random feedback, you know, that was coming from a place, too. It was from his, you know, hearing Ornette free jazz or listening to Cecil and, you know, Coltrane and things like that. You know, he was as a for someone who actually wrote records to be heard, kind of like by shut ins, you know, people who were just needed some kind of connection with the outside world. And he’s sort of talking in his way. He was very worldly in his musical interests and the things that influenced him.
Speaker And yet it’s rare that you get a fine if you play the blues.
Speaker That’s from my interview. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe try that in a second.
Speaker Well, the whole notion, though, the story about Sterling, I think well, actually, Lou told me this, that, you know, when they were in the Velvets, you know, you got fined if you were going to play a blues lick. That’s not because they didn’t like blues. They didn’t like cliches. Big difference. You know, this was they were actually taking a lot of inspiration from blues, really deep, intense stuff. You know, guys who didn’t water down their emotions like Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin Wolf, you know, real, you know, tough characters. But the idea that they would simply play a blues lick, you know, blues licks were common coin. You know, there were bands all over New York, all over Long Island, all over the country, you know, recreating Chuck Berry or recreating, you know, Willie Dixon songs or Muddy Waters. What they wanted to do was take it to another level. I remember Alan Vega of suicide, you know, telling me that what they did, you know, just him and Martin read with their keep their keyboard. And him singing was supposed to be urban blues. That’s kind of what the Velvets were. And so much of what suicide did came from the Velvets as well. You know, Alan knew them, you know, knew their music really well. So, you know, it’s almost like a tradition of urban blues, but it’s a tradition that is very it’s sort of a very particular place and almost like a particular mentality.
Speaker I sort of wandered off. And can you give me the context of the 78 street hassel, what was popular in the real world that places you never know?
Speaker No.
Speaker I mean, even we could even go back to The View a bit like, you know, would be nice if you could just tell me, like, early and what was what was Gwendoline was playing and wasn’t popular.
Speaker What was popular in 70, 73, 73, 74? Well, what was popular, what was popular when Berlin came out? Carole King, you know James Taylor. Yes. Emerson Lake and Palmer. You know, there’s a lot of good music. Martha Huber was happening and Bobby was certainly big then. But, you know, you could there was the audience was, you know, the mainstream was a really safe place. And even though there was a lot of good music and a lot of, you know, interesting and provocative things being done, you know, Berlin came out in an atmosphere of, I don’t know, it was just pop. You know, it was like it wasn’t that the music’s the music that was there out at the point didn’t have substance, but so much of it was kind of fluff. It was meant to be fluff. It was like it was a reaction to all this political, social, you know, broiling action of the late 60s and the turn of the 70s.
Speaker You know, the way the whole Vietnam civil rights thing ratcheted up Black Panthers. This, you know, Watergate. Nixon was a crook.
Speaker You know, everybody’s you know, it’s like all of that utopian promise had really hit a brick wall. So a lot of the music that followed was meant to be very not mindless, but less, I don’t know, less serious and maybe less and almost more more personal. You know, like they were songs about love, songs about going to the country and the Eagles and and also getting back to this kind of like get back to the land thing. You know, we tried to change society that didn’t work so well.
Speaker So what we’re going to we’re going to go out to the country. I’m going to ride horses and be, you know, sort of like hippy desperadoes and stuff. And, you know, Berlin comes out and, you know, basically, you know, hippie desperadoes, they’re, you know, a lot of people on some heavy trips, you know, it was not the Eagles, it was not Jackson Browne. And it’s that’s not meant as a problem. That’s that’s not meant as an insult to them because. They made really good records that were of their time, Lou is making records of his time and the two were just not coinciding, did the same thing for me.
Speaker What was in the air on the airwaves particularly popular?
Speaker Well, in 1978 when we had to yeah.
Speaker In 1978, when Street Hassel came out, there was a question of what was popular. Then there was also what was interesting. And Street Hassel actually came out at a point when things were changing to a degree, not in a commercial sense.
Speaker You know, punk rock was not going to be big in this country for another 15 years. But nineteen seventy eight was was a year when a lot of the things that had started out in New York at CBG because with television and Patti Smith, you know, people who were very admittedly influenced by the Velvets and Bilu, you know, we’re starting to have a national impact, certainly, you know, beyond the Bowery, you know, beyond Corgies. And at the same time, 1978, you’re talking to the year foreigner. You know, sticks are really huge. You know, it’s that it’s arena rock. And, hey, I like arena rock. You know, I like a lot of noise. I like that kind of, you know, I just, you know, good fun vibe. But, you know, one does not live on Arena Rock alone. And I think that, you know, there was also the result being there was a very disenfranchised audience that didn’t they didn’t want to hear from Styx. They didn’t want to hear from that sort of thing. They did. The other thing they didn’t want to hear from was, you know, this 60s, you know, this aging 60s contingent of people who were still, you know, doing it, not that they shouldn’t, but, you know, people like Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Stones, you know, the various solo Beatles, they were having their ups and downs in terms of their creativity and in terms of, you know, the records they were making, you know, how much they meant as opposed to how much they sold. And I think there were a lot of people who felt that, you know, a lot of young people who felt that, you know, there’s got to be something harder. There’s got to be something more intense. It has to be, you know, rock and roll must mean something more than going to an arena with 20000 of your closest friends and, you know, hanging out with Bachman Turner Overdrive. And so those are the people that were it was Perabo in Cleveland, the Dead Boys television, you know, all the stuff that was going on in New York. You know, the hardcore scene that was starting to develop in L.A., you know, X bills, you know, the whole search and destroy vibe that was going on out there and regionally as well in Texas, Minneapolis, you know, there was there was these pockets of like discontented people. And Street House was basically a record of being discontented. You know, it’s a record about, you know, not having any kind of equilibrium. And it’s a record about, you know, dealing with some, you know, heavy business, you know, on, you know, hot, empty sidewalks. And in that sense, it was completely out of character with everything that was popular, but it was completely in sync with everything that was happening down below in the underground.
Speaker Yeah. Then the next thing moving right along you live, take no prisoners so fast.
Speaker It’s the name of it.
Speaker Well, take no prisoners. It’s actually one of my favorite Lou Reed records because it is just so it’s like it’s metal machine music with words, you know, it’s just like him go into town and, you know, full of whatever kinda. You know, emotion or wit or bile or, you know, it’s just all there and it’s like metal machine music, it’s four sides of feedback except it’s him talking it instead of the guitars playing it and the stuff on there. I think I think I can’t remember it was him or someone once. It was just one of the greatest comedy records ever made.
Speaker You know, it’s just stand up, improvised stand up, you know, all the stuff that, you know, he was saying about the rock critics and, you know, wailing on about particular songs and, you know, having a go at somebody.
Speaker And, you know, it’s just it’s great. It’s a wonderful record. It’s not one that you sort of play for somebody and say, well, this is what Lou Reed’s about, because it’s a particular part of his character, you know, probably amplified at a particular point in his career.
Speaker But, you know, it’s again, it’s that my weak beats year year vibe, you know, it’s like not only can I do stand up and rap with the audience, but I can give it to you, you know. With, you know, shotgun shells, which is exactly what he did, it’s a great record. I love it.
Speaker It’s great because I never thought that in the context of verbal metaphors, beautifully said. The bell swallows in 1979, which has a stupid man, disco mystic, which I love.
Speaker I want to be with you looking for the lights all through the night.
Speaker Those are the both bells and public art and growing up records I really need to go back to because I think I really like the bells at the time. Never really liked growing up. And I just the sound of it didn’t do it for me. And I think I lost the songs as a result. But I’d like to live I like to listen back to those because there is that’s also a very kind of forgotten period.
Speaker And he’s never really said we’ll come back to the bells and growing up.
Speaker Yeah, I mean, growing up, growing up in public is kind of as Lou Reed, who grew up in public and then there’s little know maybe you could talk about in that context.
Speaker You want to say that?
Speaker Let me say that because, you know, because I’d like to really listen to those songs again to reach out to and is the Blue Mask.
Speaker You wanted to say with that, no, well, the blue mask is the blue mask is a very interesting record because it is a reconnection with the basic sound of the Velvets. He really rediscovered or reconnected with that two guitars, bass and drums.
Speaker And in Robert Quine, he found someone who was not only a really provocative and I think extraordinary guitar player, but someone who had listened to the Velvets a lot. You know, Robert had seen the band in San Francisco. He’d been at The Matrix, you know, when some of those tracks on, you know, that live double album that came out in nineteen seventy five, I think it was on Mercury. It was it was in the mid 70s. He was actually there, you know, at those dates and, you know, saw the Velvets loads of times. So he had really, you know, taken in and really digested in his own way a lot of the ideas musically, you know, guitar wise that the Velvets were were dealing with, you know, trying to get across, you know, blue and still together and to a degree early on, Khail with the violin, the way that was almost like a third guitar with like a lot more attitude and a lot more, you know, screech. But, you know, in the blue mask, you know, he really felt the focus of the sound enabled the strength of the writing to come through. And, you know, you have something, you know, almost as kind of lyrical as the day John Kennedy died.
Speaker And then you get to, you know, the title song and the whole thing about the horse and, you know. That’s that’s deep that’s heavy imagery, and the thing is that the sound, because it’s so basic and so spare and so direct and so live, it amplifies all of the, you know, all of the dark, bloody imagery of that song in a way that I remember asking him once about the song. And it was hard for him to even talk about it, not because it was a bad there was bad memories or experiences. It’s just how do you talk about a song that explicit? When it’s performed in such a bear and direct way, you know, it’s like everything that’s there is what needed to be said, you know, you don’t analyze something like that.
Speaker You know, it’s a moment. And I think the blue mask is really considered, you know, by and certainly considered by a lot of both critics and fans to be a major turning point in that it’s for all of the strength and the power and the the creative extremes that he went to in the 70s. Blue Mask was really a consolidation of all those things into the format that that he’s always admitted. He works in best basic band, two guitars, bass, drums, worked with the Velvets.
Speaker You know, it’s worked ever since on that album with Waves of Fear, which I think is an extraordinary, extraordinary song. And can you talk about that? Because it’s about playing it for people who are suffering and depression and stuff in his personal life. That’s true. And I’m not really sure.
Speaker Again, I’m not really sure what you can add to it.
Speaker You know, it’s a very sort of people we’re talking about, you know, waves of fear, which is on Blue Mask. Again, that’s another song that’s very hard to take apart, to analyze and to dissect because it is so very up front. You know, the percentage of autobiography in there, I’m going to guess is fairly strong. I couldn’t venture what the percentages, but the delivery and particularly the way his voice, the way his voice is sort of ratchet it up. You know, in those choruses, you know, there’s there’s some the waves are pretty. There’s tidal waves of fear going on in there. And again, the directness that the very spare blunt, you know, I think is another word. You can just describe it sound again, getting back to that Velvet’s thing, you know, and I think he’s found he initially found that to be a very essential frame. You know, that kind of sound. Not too much going on, not too much clutter. You know, the rock and roll animal band, bit more heavy metal, a lot more show off guitar stuff. You know, Sterling Morrison, Lou Reed, they were never show off guitars, you know, unless you include, you know, turning up the volume to the point where your ears bleed. But, you know, they were always about direct physical impact as musicians with the underlying layers of the emotions, the the poetic meaning and the poetic flourishes that come with the intersection of words and music. That’s basically a long winded way of saying, you know, how much more can you add in terms of analysis and discussion to songs are so blunt and rendered so. And that’s the strength of the Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts, New York songs for Drella, which is just Lou and John magic and loss, you know, which is, you know, it’s almost like chamber music. You know, he’s never, you know, since that period, you know, he’s done a lot of different things and, you know, certainly never shied away from doing something different. But I think he he knows that that format. To six during guitars, various amounts of distortion in very various points, bass and drums, you don’t need a whole lot more because the song tells you the rest. You know, the music is the momentum, the music is the frame. The music, you know, gives you extra power when you need it. And you can pull it back for, you know, color and tone at other times. But you don’t need a whole lot else. You know, that’s not you know, those are those are the basic ingredients of rock and roll, always have been. And so what he’s done is he’s just gone back to the basic ingredients. And it also enables his writing to, you know, have, you know, even more direct impact. You hear more of him. You don’t hear what some producers concept is. You don’t hear, you know, some filter that’s, you know, is or is not commercial. You don’t hear a particular fad. You don’t hear a particular style. In fact, the records that the best records that he’s made do not belong, you cannot listen and say, well, that’s a particular 70s record. Berlin does not sound like a 70s record. It sounds like 1930s Berlin is what it sounds like. You know, you listen to the blue mask, New York Magic and loss. You don’t hear them as 80s or 90s records. You can probably hear differences in his vocal delivery, you know, maybe a deepening quality in his voice, a different way that he’s, you know, addressing Melody as a singer. But you’re not hearing you’re not hearing a style that’s associated with a period of time. You’re not hearing a fad. You don’t hear a lot of synthesizers or rhythm machines or anything like that. What you hear is the basic ingredients of rock and roll used as a format and a a podium, you know, some sort of a structure foundation for his words, his verse, his lyrics, his personality.
Speaker Said sounded like I just doesn’t usually I edit this sort of stuff before people we have to see it, read it for you live in Italy, which I guess it’s you know, that’s that’s basically the bluegrass band.
Speaker Eighty four, again, is new sensations. Any thoughts that. He played the other night. He played.
Speaker Yeah. He’s been playing out of the really cracked up version. Yeah.
Speaker I think it’s I think actually new sensations and it was the record after that. It was some of those video violence, which is mistrial, a mistrial. I think the new sensations and mistrial two or maybe a lesser degree, I think are kind of underrated records.
Speaker I think there’s some really strong songwriting on those on those albums. And I think and new sensations is something that he’s been playing a fair bit and actually a lot more in recent years.
Speaker And it’s a funny period because it’s just after having really come back with that really dry, intense sound of blue mask and legendary hearts and, you know, sort of, again, keeping it in a very basic format with maybe a little more, you know, pop elements to it. And so they seem like lesser records. They seem like, you know, kind of mid 80s commercial records. But there’s there’s there’s one particular song and I don’t remember is a mistrial on your sensations. It’s the one about so I could do wapi thing at the end of. I know the name of a song. Well, there’s also doing the things that we want to write, which is, you know, I went to see Sam Shepard’s play the other night. You know, it’s it’s got that kind of walk on the wild side rhythm to it. But, you know, there it is. It’s just like I’m hanging out in New York. I’m a New York guy. You know, we went and did this. You know, we’re doing the things that we want to. It sounds very kind of throw away and very kind of casual, but it’s got sort of that relaxed New York kind of, you know, attitude to it, which know, I’m sort of not doing this slip in here.
Speaker I mean, I’m running into things. It’s either yeah, it’s a new sensation. That’s what I thought. Yeah.
Speaker Yeah. They’re written after saying Fall for Love. Yeah, right. For me, it’s the Raging Bull.
Speaker Yeah. Right. Travis Bickle. Yeah.
Speaker You know, you know, it’s like taking, you know, Travis back on, you know, the Raging Bull and, you know, put with a Sam Shepard play, you know, it’s not like, you know, the Sam Shepard, you know, fool for love. It’s not like a quiet evening at the theater. So, you know, you’ve got sort of, again, the sort of adding up that that New York thing. And there’s so much New York and what he does and. You know, he said to me, I guess he said to me once, you know, Faulkner had the South, you know, Joyce had Dublin, I’ve got New York. You know, what’s not to love is the subject matter all over the place.
Speaker Yeah, can you say that thing again and say what he said, he said to me, Ah, Louie, Louie, Hasni. Oh you mean that whole thing again?
Speaker But say Lou Reed said to me, OK, well, yeah.
Speaker Now, again, starting at nine. Well, Lou said to me once in an interview, you know, I had asked them about, you know, why you write so much about New York.
Speaker You know, it was kind of a self-evident question, but his response was, well, you know, Faulkner had the South, Joyce had Dublin. I’ve got New York.
Speaker Well, in this trial, there’s the song, Tell It to Your Heart, which I think actually has been kind of overlooked because it really it’s a record that’s not considered one of his best.
Speaker And yet that song, Tell It to Your Heart, I think is really an example of not only how much New York, the city is in his music, but also a certain kind of New York experience, a certain kind of romantic New York experience, like he’s talking here about standing by the Hudson River edge at night, looking out across the Jersey shore at a neon lights, spelling out some call his name. I thought your name should be dancing, being from satellites, satellite of love, larger than any billboard in Times Square. You know, all of the references are very specific to place, you know, Hudson River, Jersey Shore, Times Square. And yet it’s the same kind of universal feeling of romance that people still get from Dán Records and from a lot of the, you know, 50s doo wop stuff, you know, Frankie Lymon. And again, these are all records that were very important to him as a as a teenager and as a budding songwriter, both in Syracuse and when he went to Pickwick. And that’s that’s still there. You know, it’s not something he’s ever grown out of. And I think that it’s it also shows that as so-called rock stars get older, there’s a quality of maturity in in one’s work that can be reflective of experience and a certain passage of time. But it doesn’t have to be a denial of things that you felt as an adolescent. You know, it’s you know, child is the father to them. And you bring that back and I think tell it to your heart, even though it’s not considered a big hit and it’s not, you know, considered you know, I don’t think anybody’s ever covered it. So it’s just great. I’m up on the roof. It’s five a.m., I guess I couldn’t sleep. That could be happening anywhere. But you think about it, people stand on the roof of a tenement in the village or going up to the top of their apartment building, maybe on the west side or in midtown or something. And looking out, you see all this kind of weird ambient light part stars, part street light reflection. You know, it’s all evoked in here. And it’s also very it’s very adolescent. And then it’s really talking about. Love, romance, and almost the almost kind of a puppy love your name should be dancing beam from satellites and then later on he gets to, you know, weirdo teenage movie that ends in tragedy. You know, we’re no teenage movie. It doesn’t end in tragedy. But there’s a lot of other stuff going on here. And it’s not explicit, but the the the intent and the kind of things that he’s implying. And then he gets right back to the specific. Please don’t be afraid. New York City lovers tell it to your heart. You know, New York City loves, you know, New York City, we’re tough enough that we can say this sort of thing, you know, we’re not afraid to.
Speaker I just thought that up OK then from three, but, oh, for my drying up for three years, there are no albums released and he does some sports, you guys with your show or some stuff with them. But basically name seven, eight, nine comes out in New York.
Speaker How do you talk about the New York and.
Speaker Wow. It did for maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I get shiny like you talk about in terms of what he did for his career.
Speaker I think it is considered what was actually he was going to qualify the best records.
Speaker We put him on the cover. Yeah. You know, long time. Long time coming. Yeah. Had he not been on the cover ever before? No, really. I don’t think so. I think so.
Speaker When he was first time maybe a little to.
Speaker A little too much, but.
Speaker Me, that’s the. A fine art here, I know, and I’m sure it is.
Speaker Romeo and Juliet, Halloween parade. Yeah, to cycle, they’re getting of a great adventure last great American.
Speaker Well, beginning of a great adventure. I love that first love they think of you.
Speaker Hold on. Good morning, Mr. Veining. Mr. Wall. Christmas in February. Strong man.
Speaker Diaster mystery. We rolling. OK, so let’s talk about New York. Three years since this man.
Speaker Well, New York was a very it wasn’t a huge commercial success, but it had a sort of rejuvenating effect on his career.
Speaker He actually had, you know, a song that became, you know, kind of an airplane hit, you know, Romeo Dirty Boulevard. I was about to say Romeo and Juliet, you know, Dirty Boulevard became an airplane hit. And, you know, he was touring and, you know, Rolling Stone, we put him on the cover. There was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm for the record, and rightly so. It was again, going back to that bass to guitar, bass drum thing, writing about the city he knows best and using it as a launch pad for all of the, you know, the other things that are going on. And it’s a very dense record lyrically, but that’s part of its charm, you know, and you have to sort of work getting at it. You know, the language just sort of flows out. You know, I just it’s sort of it’s a torrent of words, you know, Dirty Boulevard, Romeo and Juliet, you know, these lyrics. And then at the other extreme, you get it’s almost like there’s this kind of not softening, but almost like a diminuendo quality. I’m not even sure that’s the right word. You know, you get to Dime Store Mystery, which is very elegiac.
Speaker You know, that’s where the death of Andy Warhol comes in and this sense of loss and a kind of missed connection which subsequently led into songs for Drella. And also Moe Tucker comes back from the Velvets and plays percussion on that track.
Speaker So it’s there there are a lot of interesting elements to that record that if you’re a freak, you could really get into there, you know, could still go crazy when he plays Dirty Boulevard life.
Speaker And yet at the same time, you know, I think Dime Store Mystery is a really wonderful song and an interesting expression of his vulnerability. You know, the the images and the expression of his admiration and probably love for Warhol and at the same time not being able to say it to him anymore.
Speaker Can you talk about New York, the album, in terms of the lyrics, in terms of the maturity of this album and contrast maybe to other things that are not so mature? They’re big popular things in 1989. What’s the what’s the state of the lyric in the record business in 1989? Because this can’t be typical.
Speaker Well, OK. I’m not really sure what I did. And it was interesting. Now is that kind of interesting music gets caught up with Lou. Is that what you’re saying?
Speaker Well, I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t, you know.
Speaker OK, OK, so now I’m in New York, but when New York came out, it was it was OK. Let me sort of recalibrate this, because I’m not I guess I’m not really.
Speaker Sure, what the point is, you’re trying to get me to try to find out again what where Lou is and what else was going on in the context of nineteen eighty nine in the music world, who else was popular where their intelligence. Because I see this a very intelligent. Political album, in many ways, a very powerful album with a lot to think about, other lots of other albums out there like that or not?
Speaker Well, when New York came out, I think the the landscape, again, was a lot different, even in those three years between mistrial and New York. There was a whole movement. There was like this this rush of young musicians, young bands, you know, particularly in Seattle as a good example, you know, this sort of postpunk even post RTM thing with Nirvana of Soundgarden and all the people that were happening up there and with other scenes similarly going on all over the country, you know, it was like the underground had going further underground. And so, again, his influence, it was it wasn’t just spreading. It was kind of seeping down. And I don’t think you could say that, you know, Nirvana and Soundgarden were explicitly influenced by the Velvet Underground, but everything that had sort of come before them had sort of then become part of the texture and the fabric and all of the, you know, the music that they were were drawing from again already. You know, it’s like in a sense, it sounds like a specious kind of comparison, but it is sort of like if if people like RTM and David Bowie and whatever were, you know. Almost like children of the velvet’s, this they were, you know, that next generation, it was sort of like the grandchildren a bit another step removed with their own interests, with their own, you know, influences. But the connection is still there. And New York came out at a time when, you know, there were actually a lot more people ready to hear it. I think that there is a lot of political contact tent. There is a lot of political content in there. And it is very subject specific, which is sort of unusual. There are some references in there that are very related to time and place, which is something that, you know, Lewis said before he doesn’t usually do in his songwriting because he doesn’t want to date it. But I think that if you you don’t even have to pay too much attention to that. If there are references to Farrakhan or all time, because it’s the use of the language and the strength and actually the momentum of the language, there are a lot of words on that record. And I remember seeing him on that tour early on in the New York tour in Boston when I went to interview him for this Rolling Stone cover and being kind of surprised that, you know, for the first half of the show, which was all New York, you know, he had a music stand with the lyrics on, you know, who’s going to remember all this stuff? You know, even you know, I was a reviewer and I had to work from the lyric sheet. You know, he’s performing it every night. You know, there’s a lot of language and a lot of wordplay and a lot of it has to do with the delivery, the rhythm of what he’s saying and singing and, you know, watching him do that. I thought, you know, it’s kind of weird. It’s almost like he’s reading the words. But, you know, he kind of had to at that point. And I think it also underscored the seriousness of the record to him. You know, this was this was a show in which, you know, he came out it was a two part gig comes out, does New York almost in its entirety. I think there were one or two songs he didn’t do, but in its entirety. And I remember quite clearly the I think it was the second song it started doing Halloween Parade or it just finished it some clown up in the back and he starts yelling, you know, play some rock and roll, you know, you know, lose, you know, the master at dealing with hecklers, you know, says, you know, this is rock and roll. You know, basically it’s my rock and roll, you know, like it. Go back, give your money back. You know, I was it I never heard from the guy after that. He’s like, shut up. Totally like AIST. And the thing went on. And then, of course, you know, second half, you know, it was a lot of the hits, you know, satellite, you know, Velvets and whatever. But it’s again, it’s like it’s weird in a way, by having a certain kind of success and a certain kind of, you know, enthusiastic fan, you know, he was almost dealing as much with, you know, prejudice and preconception by coming out and playing this entire record. Knew, as he did, you know, when the Velvets would come out and people weren’t digging that, you know, it’s like he’s always fighting against some kind of current, you know, and I think he enjoys it. You know, it’s well, it’s part of the energy, the momentum that keeps you going.
Speaker Well, I’ve heard songs for Joe first when Lou and John performed it as a work in progress at St. Anne’s Church in Brooklyn, I guess it was about a year or more before the record was released and they played it for real at Brooklyn Academy of Music and. You know what what you being a fan, as well as someone who’s written and who actually reviewed the show and wrote about the record and actually talked a little about it, I find it very difficult record to talk about because it’s it deals with, you know, the passing of someone and someone important and also someone kind of problematic.
Speaker You know, that Lou and John and Andy did not it was not a swimmingly, easy relationship. They were all artists. They all had their own agendas. And, you know, there was all kinds of tension and underlying, you know, currents and priorities and yet the feeling of both loss and admiration. And then you add to that the elements both in Andy’s story, his life story and the kind of fictional license they took. You know, Lou, in some of the words and telling the story and sort of bringing in other aspects, you know, you listen to something like small town, you know. That’s not just Andy talking about getting out of Pittsburgh, that’s probably Lou talking about getting out of Long Island, anyone getting out of a town where nothing’s happened and nobody digs where you’re where you’re coming from, there’s nobody to relate to. You can’t talk about the same music. It’s almost like the kind of song that so many Velvet’s fans had. You know, these, you know, Velvet’s fans in small towns in the Midwest and the South. You know, you couldn’t just go over to, like, you know, the malt shop and, you know, rap with your buddies about European son and sister Ray. You know, this was a this was a very small club of, you know, intense, you know, devoted people. And I think that, you know, that element of not just being in a small town, but being isolated, you feel isolated in New York really came through. And there’s no question that the format of that record, which is simply Lou and John Lou’s guitar, John’s keyboards, the Vola, the two voices, it just amplified all of the the feeling that they were bringing to the music and the project and also the purpose of it in a really almost grand way, you know, hearing it at St. Anne’s. If you add the fact that this is a church, you know, with all of the kind of, you know, religious air about and, you know, the nature of the piece and just the kind of open space in the building, you know, the little the echo that was sort of added to just the two of them playing. It was amazing. It was just an amazing evening. And not to have heard any of those songs before and to hear them, you know, with such clarity really brought home, you know, how important this project was to them to do and get off and get out of themselves as a gesture to Andy and probably also as a almost as a partly an element of closure to their own relationship, like bringing it back full circle that, you know you know, as John said, even at the point of the Velvets reunion a few years ago, you know, they had a lot of unfinished business. Drella was a way to address some of that unfinished business. And they did it in a way that I think it’s actually one of the finest records either of them has ever worked on.
Speaker Um, I agree with you, I think I’d love you to say something about.
Speaker Is there anything else in rock history like this, this is a unique album in a sense, or are there any other examples of this type of record?
Speaker Wow, I think about that. I got to think about that, you know? Well, it’s interesting because, you know, it’s a.
Speaker It’s kind of a rock version of, you know, these kind of classical allergies, you know, the composers writing, you know, or, you know, poets, you know. You know, writing these kind of like great rhythmic obituaries for like. You know, famous people or.
Speaker It’s I’m sorry, just riffing here, I’m not really making sense, I’ve got I really have to sort of assess it out there of lyric driven.
Speaker But, you know, consider the people who are doing this. You know, John Cale went to, you know, serious music school. You know, so he knew about all this stuff, you know? And, you know, again, I’m just.
Speaker Well, that’s rambling, but, yeah, but the thing is, the thing is, it seems remarkable in rock because I think people feel rock when you get right down to it is not you know, it’s the old bugaboo. It’s not as serious as classical music, you know. That’s true, but the fact is that because it’s not sometimes taken as seriously as an art form. There is I’m just rambling, this is not making any sense, but I think that it’s the kind of a piece that succeeds as popular music because the people that made it, who wrote it and who did it for an obvious, you know, very personal love and admiration for and for the person being memorialized.
Speaker Andy Warhol, you know, also knew about these parallel ways. You know, you do it in poetry, you do it in writing, you do it in classical composition. You know, they brought all of that stuff to rock and roll to popular music, you know, when they first started working together. So this is, you know, kind of unremarkable in a way, not unremarkable, but it’s not unusual any more than, you know, some of the songs that Lou was writing were about, you know, other people that he knew or the references that he would make. You know, you deal you deal with you draw from what you know, draw from what you experience. And Andy had such an important impact on them that. They they they felt it both important and fulfilling to come together and do this for themselves as well as for him, and that’s part of the beauty that’s, you know, whatever.
Speaker That’s good. That’s not our last one here. Your daddy to magic and loss.
Speaker Oh, so now I know that I reviewed that record. That’s again, that’s a it’s it’s to tell us what it is.
Speaker Well, magic and magic and loss is actually another requiem. And it’s not a subject specific, although Lou has said that, you know, at the time that he started writing this, I was thinking that, you know, he was dealing with the the death of sickness, of permits for one.
Speaker So, you know, you’re talking about his experience of something with a friend, a close friend, and the kind of suffering that goes with dealing with a terminal illness and putting that into music.
Speaker Mice and mice.
Speaker OK, um. I’m sorry I lost my train of thought. Oh, well, you know, magic and loss is also a requiem. It’s not a subject specific, although it actually draws from personal experience. You know, we spoke to me in an interview about the record about, you know, going to visit Doc Pomus in the hospital while he was ill before and before he died. And, you know, the sort of things that he saw that, you know, the character that the doc had, you know, in and obviously, you know, terrifying and horrible situation, you know, the kind of personality he brought to it and, you know, the conversations that they would have. And, you know, again, bringing this back into the music now, because the record is not a subject. Specific songs for Drella, which is very much for Andy, I think there is actually a more universal tone to it. And I would find it hard to believe that anyone who listened to that record with any degree of concentration, I won’t even say seriousness because it’s just evidently a serious record. There’s also a lot of wit and some fun in there, you know, and it is not barren of humor, but it’s it’s got kind of a dampened quality to it. You’re meant to listen to it almost as if you’re just talking again, talking to someone or just thinking about it. You know, it’s almost like it’s playing inside your head. But, you know, the kind of feelings of magic and loss that anyone feels with the loss of a close friend or a loved one or, you know, you know, the magic of remembering the events and the associations from before and the things that have passed.
Speaker You know, it’s it’s actually it is a very adult record.
Speaker But, you know, it’s an adult record in the sense that, you know, death is more of an adult experience than a juvenile one. You know, you think about it more as you reach a certain age and you think about your own mortality and, you know, what are you leaving behind and what impact have you had on others? What have you done to others? What have they done for you? And it’s a it’s a very potent, not flashy, but very focused.
