Open City, #78
IT’S 11 O’CLOCK AND THE CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY IS ON STAGE downstairs and I’m upstairs “interviewing” Lou Reed, lead guitarist with the Velvet Underground, doing a gig at the Whisk and here in L.A. to cut a third album with Verve. The group is composed of Reed; Sterling Morrison, rhythm; Maureen Tucker on drums; and a newcomer, Doug [Yule] on bass—replacing John Cale, who played bass, electric viola, piano and organ. Cale is now producing Nico.
Some small talk about rock criticism (Reed doesn’t take reviews seriously: thinks rock critics have much more important things to write about, and, since most critics know nothing about the music, he thinks all reviews suck). Then he characterizes the Underground’s music by calling it “simple rock and roll”:
LOU: The music is very simple . . . simple rock and roll. It never was anything else; it’s not advanced, doesn’t have any messages, and it’s very simple rock and roll. It’s just songs. Anytime anybody says “interpreting,” I immediately grow scales. . . .
JIM: Does the group still do “Sister Ray” (White Light/White Heat)?
LOU: We do “Sister Ray” every time we play.
JIM: In the second set?
LOU: Yeah, because you don’t want to follow it with anything. Mainly, the instruments are wrecked by the time we finish. We close out with it. You see, “Sister Ray” depends on whether we’re playing part two, part three. . . . “Sister Ray” in its entirety might run three days sometime, depending upon the energy level of the group, but, you know we have tapes of this, but we won’t release them because it’s more than an hour long already. . . .
JIM: Why not put it all on one album?
LOU: Uh, because it’s not practical; there’s no reason to. When it’s justifiable to put something like that out, we’d do it, you understand? There’s no point in putting that out now. One, no one would buy it, except a few local freaks, right? Two, the record company would lose money, so then, three, we’d get it in the end. In other words, why haven’t the Beatles put out something four days long? Well, the Beatles are just getting around to putting out something they’re allowed to now. If they’d done it in the first place they’d have bombed and it just wouldn’t have made it. You know, you understand? You have to deserve to be able to do it.
Reed now explains why he doesn’t believe in evolution.
LOU: I don’t believe people came from apes. . . . I mean, I won’t use the old riff about why hasn’t some chimp turned into a man? You know, at the local zoo or something. But evolution is just silly, it’s just one way of trying to explain unexplainables to children. I mean people keep trying to say you’re evolved, but it’s just that there’s one level showing through one week and another level the next, you know? . . .
JIM: Are you conscious of influences of any kind—musically, literarily, etc.?
LOU: Sure, everybody. I probably, you know, listen to everybody everyone else listens to. (Laughs) My influences wouldn’t be any different from yours.
JIM: You like Clapton, Hendrix . . . ?
LOU: (Laughs) I just like everybody. . . . I don’t like to say bad things about people. . . . I’ve seen Hendrix jam and when he’s jamming, he’s really lovely, a good guitar player, and I understand that Eric Clapton did the guitar thing on “Sour Milk Sea.” . . . I’m not sure I enjoy the groups they’re in. . . . I’m not sure I enjoy blues guitar playing. In fact, I’m sure I don’t. . . . I think Jim McGuinn is a very good guitar player, really exciting, you know: to this day, no one has done a better solo than “Eight Miles High.” I mean, people should really support the Byrds; the Byrds are divine.
JIM: But they keep changing all the time—
LOU: So WHAT? People are so fucked up, they say, “You changed, you didn’t stay the same”: so? Yeah, so WHAT? It’s the Byrds.
JIM: But if you liked something they did at one point and then they changed, and—
LOU: Tough. That’s ridiculous. I mean, people don’t own people; YOU don’t own people. On the one hand, you’re saying you’re in favor of evolution, and on the other hand, what if it evolves into something I don’t like. Maybe YOU should evolve.
JIM: In the performances of “I’m Waiting for the Man” at the Whisky, the VU plays the song at a slower tempo than on their first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (also Verve). Why?
LOU: Oh, yeah, we were tired of it fast. . . . The lyrics are made up on stage; they’re not written. . . .
JIM: You improvise?
LOU: Right. I mean, like “I’m Waiting for the Man” was written, “Venus in Furs” was written, “Sister Ray” evolved. . . .
JIM: The group doesn’t do “Venus in Furs” anymore.
LOU: Listen, if you were playing “Heroin” every night, you could understand what could happen to you, you know? See, we have to be careful that we enjoy doing it each time, and like we really do enjoy it each time, and when we don’t enjoy them we don’t do it.
JIM: You played at the Avalon in San Francisco recently?
LOU: Yeah, I didn’t enjoy that one, because, uh, I’d never, we just got, we’d never been in a room that big in our lives, and uh, our amplification wasn’t ready for it, and we couldn’t really hear what was going on, so it was really very difficult for us. You should always try to show up wherever you’re going to play two days ahead and get a chance to test out the sound system. With them, you couldn’t, because you’re interested in changing with the other people. And in a big place it really becomes hard, you have to go through the motions not because you want to, but because you can’t hear. You have to hear, right? I mean, even if Beethoven was deaf, he wasn’t gigging with Brahms or something in, uh, you know, the middle of the Avalon; you know, it would have been a totally different thing. . . . Can you imagine that? I mean, if all the dead people who played music were suddenly around gigging? You know, Beethoven meets Mozart, you know. They could bill it “Battle of the Keys,” yeah, right in the middle of Shrine Pinnacle, you know, Ludwig. . . . You know, . . . that’s what people are kind of doing now with Lesser Mortals; they’re just gonna destroy them all, you know, because people they’re doing that to are not at that level. It’s just like saying, you know, “Battle of the Blues Guitarists: Betty Grable Versus Kate Smith.” Yeah. Who cares, right? It’s on that level. A toy level. That’s the level everything’s on these days, what’s being done. . . . People who are, like really attempting to do something, like I think the Doors now and then . . . like Jim Morrison’s trying to do something, which is a lot more than anyone else around here is doing . . . he’s like, trying to do something for people, you understand? I mean, he’s getting up there in front of all those kids, and he’s not dumb, he knows exactly what he’s doing; he’s going through all this whole number—for them, and that’s very nice, very religious: rock is getting very religious. I know they’re doing it, and I think we’re doing it and I can’t think of anybody else who’s doing it on that level.
JIM: But you don’t have a religious feeling, except in the sense that there’s almost a ritual-like quality to your sets—
LOU: I believe in rituals. I firmly believe in rituals and traditions. Like, I believe in dressing up before you go on, and wearing certain things you don’t wear any other time. And, I believe you get up there and everything is set up a certain way, and everything’s counted off a certain way, and it’s very methodical, you know, because it’s like a litany, you know what I mean? And it’s your own, you know, which is much more groovy anyway and like if people are there something takes place that doesn’t take place in any other situation, and like that’s why, you know, I really enjoy playing; I mean, there’s certain things you do up there you just can’t do in any other place, and . . . continually working with people—that’s fantastic, man.
JIM: But some audiences may be dull. What can you do with an audience which won’t respond?
LOU: Make them respond. . . . I try to do whatever it is to get them going, so that I can get going. In other words, I see no point in haggling over details, you understand? The thing is, I’ll select whatever it is within our realm. I mean, we’re not going up there and doing “Louie, Louie.” One of the reasons I won’t do “Louie, Louie,” by the way, is because of the guitar solo involved. It’s one of the classic guitar solos of all time. I mean, the Kinks tried to do “Louie’, Louie” and couldn’t. No, you know I really believe like, people paid money, and I’m accepting it, you know? I’m not out there playing free, you know—that doesn’t mean you bend over 100 percent—I mean, we’re up there to play certain things and we’re going to make it happen with them or without them, hopefully with them.
JIM: How did the group come to do the film Exploding Plastic Inevitable?
LOU: I wasn’t even there. I was in the hospital. All they did was some character filmed the show, I mean, we did the first light shows; some people don’t know that, but anyway, light shows have evolved into another thing, and we just don’t have any control over light shows, except we keep telling them to please don’t use strobes; you know we try to inject some of our own taste, somehow, but now light shows are all over the place. What happened then—this was in ’66, you know?—a cat came down and he filmed them in Chicago. It was all just a lot of fun. It was misinterpreted up and down the line. You know, we were supposed to be some strange leather freaks, drug addicts, S&M, you know, on and on; I mean, until this day, you know—
JIM: Well, you were being produced by Warhol—
LOU: Yeah, but what does that mean? Some people think he’s the greatest artist not only of our time but maybe of a lot of other times. I don’t want to go into it. . . . He made a 25-hour movie that, probably, may not even in your lifetime get to be shown. It was shown just once, in New York. . . . It was called Four Star. He’s so good; the Factory is so fine, and he’s so great, I mean, that’s why we’ve never been touched by him; I mean we can’t take that, I mean we learned very early in the game, I mean, we knew how good we were and we knew how good he was, and yet we were hearing all these things; so he never touched us, but he is simply—and I don’t want to get into a conversation about Andy Warhol—but he is simply the Best, that’s all there is to it; he is the Finest. And should it come out, and it’ll be coming out soon. . . . He said the Empire State Building’s a star, which, I’m telling you, where his head is, he’s you know, right there. You know, in New York, you look up in the sky and you say I can’t see any stars. . . . There’s no way of communicating with where he’s at. . . . He’s just been shot; he’s lucky to be alive, and he’s scared. . . . A 25-hour movie, man, is just fantastic. . . . Like he did silk screens of the Mona Lisa. Sixty Mona Lisas and when they all wind up you look at the hands, right? Who else but Andy could get you away from the smile? . . . He tape recorded all the conversations in Grand Central Station and published them. There’s gonna be a book coming out, Ondine’s book, Andy turned on his tape recorder and got Ondine for like 24 hours. Ondine is the most incredible rapper going, and it’s published. . . . He transcribed it over a period of two or three years; like one chapter’s missing because one of the high school girls who typed it up, her mother found a chapter and burned it. But anyway, Ondine is the Pope. This book, it was just like Ulysses; and you read it like it was James Joyce revisited. It’s fantastic. You see, it’s the most fantastic book you’ve ever seen. . . . It includes everything everyone said in 24 hours. And that includes the grocery man, the taxicab driver; if you couldn’t understand what they said, it says “Inaudible.” . . . All right, that’s the end of the Andy rap. We’re not connected with Andy anymore. . . .
JIM: What happened to Tom Wilson (producer of the second VU LP)?
LOU: Tom Wilson went independent. He was very good at discovering self-contained groups that can handle themselves. Like we’re a self-contained unit that can handle ourselves. . . . I like Tom Wilson, personally. . . .
(Inaudible)
I dig L.A. by the way. I think the kids are just fabulous. You gotta understand what it’s like being from New York. You can’t put us down for being from New York just like we don’t put you down for coming out here. Like, everytime people find out you’re from another place, they go through a whole rap, you know, like “Oh, how do you like it . . . ?!” You know, that whole crock of shit, right? But I think the kids here are great. The Whisky is a great club. Like all the people put it down, but it’s still a great club, like we do a show up here and play, and nobody bugs anybody else. You know the Strip and the cops it’s really scarey, and I don’t understand that, but I remember the last time we were here: those cops, I mean really, you know, I’d stay far away from them, but the kids, they’d walk right up to them. You know, last night when we walked out, they were beating somebody up. But the kids, it’s . . . they’re just great. You see, in New York it’s a totally different scene; it all happens faster and you become enamored to a lot of things and then, on the other hand, you’re kind of callous to a lot of other things. Out here it’s just more relaxed, you know, like what happens when you get involved with a person there and you become pushy and aggressive, and they’re out here saying, “Hurry up, why?” You dig it? They say, like you know, the sun’s out, here’s some pot, and you know? You’d say, come on let’s go, right? It’s just a different way of going about it. You know one’s not better than another: they’re just different. But I’m tired of running into this, you know, the New York freak image. I mean I don’t wear my motorcycle jacket anymore just so I don’t get involved in that.
JIM: How did you happen to come to call yourselves the Velvet Underground?
LOU: It’s a dirty book. (Laughs) There’s a dirty book, you know, it’s the funniest dirty book I’ve ever read. Not only that was super-funny, but like we played a Philadelphia club and we found out that, like the daughter of the guy who wrote the book was taking tickets at this club in Philadelphia and we said, “How fantastic!” and we sent down and said, “Would you autograph this book?” and she said, “How dare you?! He’s dead of cancer. . . . ” But it was such a great time with the book, you know? . . . “Into the murky depths of depravity and debauchery with the Velvet Underground” . . . this is TOO good, I mean just the name, I love the ring of it, Velvet Underground: it sounded so nice. . . .
JIM: What does it mean?
LOU: It couldn’t mean anything, you know? I mean, if you just think of “velvet underground” that’s kind of a nice, pleasing, womb-oriented thought, you know what I mean? Cabbages and kings? It doesn’t mean anything.
JIM: About the titles of your songs—
LOU: They’re supposed to be in order, like for instance, I had a dream, you know I had an eyeball store, you know, and you’d walk into the store and they’d have all these glass cases with all these different eyes there. I won’t be able to unscrew my head and wash out the blue and everything, and I figured if I had new eyes, it would clean things up and make it easier. You could put in one green one and one yellow one.
JIM: Did you ever get them?
LOU: Yeah, I went into a taxidermist’s in the garment district and they had eyeballs there, glass eyes, but they had bat wings and everything, you know, ’cause a friend of mine was turned away from customs for witchcraft because she was covered, you know, with rat’s tails. . . . That’s Oreon, she was the female Ondine . . . a witch.
JIM: Do you like electronic music?
LOU: Not at all. I think if electronic composers could play rock and roll then electronic music might get interesting.
JIM: I recently got hold of John Cale’s “Loop,” a seven minute piece for guitar distortion and feedback, published recently in Aspen Magazine. It is beyond what instruments can do, normally, and it—
LOU: I have to make myself perfectly clear on this: that was something John did, and I’m not interested in that kind of thing, per se, very much. . . .
JIM: But it’s, I mean I can hear it in your music—
LOU: You’re reading it into it: I don’t know how to explain it to you. But, once you get up to a certain level, I mean, I don’t play my guitar like a guitar, I think of it like a tuba, you understand? It’s not a guitar, it’s a tuba. . . . I usually think of myself as a renaissance chorus on the guitar. . . . I mean, I know a lot of guitar players do that. You go like this on the fuzz, daaaaaaaaaa—and what happens is that you don’t get just one note like a guitar, you may get eight notes, like daaaaahhhhheeeee. . . . You start hearing some really strange things. . . . We used to call it the Cloud, and like, on certain songs, we used to consciously enter the Cloud and you just hear all these funny things. They’re not you, but you know they’re being caused by the guitar, right? . . . and it’s not just me, I mean, I’ve had people come up to me and say, “Man! Who was singing those choir parts? Who was playing trumpet?” There’s no trumpet. The thing is, if you know how to operate an amplifier and make all these things happen . . . and like, we do, but I don’t want to spend all my life doin’ it. Like, there’s no candy stores. I’d like to go for a soda.
JIM: I noticed that Gary Kellgren of the Record Plant in New York engineered the second album (and, later, Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland). Did he have much to do with it, really?
LOU: We haven’t had much experience with Gary, because we weren’t in the Record Plant, which is his studio, but at that time, his studio was about the size of this room (about 18′ x 25′). Now, can you imagine us recording in a studio the size of this room? Listen, in three years of playing, we’ve had less than three days of recording time. . . . Our first album was released six months late, right? because the record company was afraid because of “Heroin” and, two, because the manager of the Mothers didn’t want Frank’s album to be like our first one—there were no psychedelic albums no hip albums, then, and theirs was coming out first. . . . I’m not saying anything evil towards anybody, but there was panic, and ours came out six months later. That’s what goes on. Three days in three years in recording studios.
The telephone rings from downstairs. Someone answers. “Is that it?” Reed asks. “We’re on.”