# It was good what we did yesterday
# And I'd do it once again
# The fact that you are married
# Only proves you're my best friend
# But it truly, truly is sin
# Linger on
# Your pale blue eyes
# Linger on
# Your pale blue eyes. #
During a career lasting over five decades,
Lou Reed transformed rock music.
With his band, The Velvet Underground,
he never achieved commercial success,
but virtually invented the alternative rock scene.
A solo artist, he never lost sight of his desire to disturb,
shock and thrill.
# What goes on in your mind?
# I think that I am falling down... #
Tonight, friends, colleagues, and fans remember him.
Guitarist Lenny Kaye, who became part of the Patti Smith band,
was one of the countless musicians inspired by the Velvet Underground
during their now legendary summer-long residency
at Max's Kansas City in 1970, shortly before Lou left.
Lou really had this romantic streak.
He told me about a song by a group called Alicia & the Rockaways that
was very close to him when he was growing up on Long Island,
and over the next three years,
I made it my point to search it out and find it for him.
# Why can't I be loved?
# Why doesn't someone take me?
# If I've been asleep
# Won't someone please come in and wake me? #
Lou loved pop music, that was what his root was, in a sense.
He loved a beautiful, simple lyric, a heartfelt emotion.
He could push the limits of what was possible within rock'n'roll,
sexually and pharmacologically, and sensually.
But you could always feel his beating heart underneath that.
His songs are so, so beautiful, you know?
I'm Set Free and Pale Blue Eyes, I mean...
these are songs that come from not something that wishes
to confront, but something that wishes to heal.
Lou could be very prismatic.
He liked creating alter egos to reflect different
sides of his personality. Lisa says, you know, Jenny says.
And yet, they were all resolutely him.
# Candy says...
# Caroline says that I'm just a toy...
# Lisa says...
- # Stephanie says - Stephanie says
# When answering the phone...
# Caroline says
# As she gets up off the floor... #
His solo career is really... It just keeps moving back and forth.
# Last great American whale
# Last great American whale... #
And then, you know, in the glorious late '80s and '90s
when he started doing those beautiful song cycles about his environment
and his past in New York.
# Last great American whale
# Well, Americans don't care very much for anything
# Land and water the least
# Animal life is low on the totem pole
# And human life is not worth much more than infected yeast
# Well, Americans don't care too much for beauty
# They'll shit in a river and dump battery acid in a stream
# They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beaches
# Complain if they can't swim... #
His meditation with John Cale on Drella, Andy Warhol.
He's getting more reflective.
You could feel his questing mind.
# There's only one good thing about a small town
# There's only one good use for a small town
# There's only one good thing about a small town
# You know that you want to get out
# When you're growing up in a small town, you know
# You'll grow down in a small town
# There's only one good use for a small town
# You hate it, and you know you'll have to leave. #
I think Lou understood that, as Lou Reed,
he had a certain sense of power.
But, at the end of the day, you've got to come home, close the door
and live with your creation, your Frankenstein creation.
I'll be your mirror, reflect what you are in case you don't know.
You look at his work and what you're seeing as the Lou Reed
you are seeing was really yourself.
Writer Victor Bockris worked for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine
in the early '70s
and went on to write books on The Velvet Underground,
William Burroughs, Warhol himself, and John Cale.
His first Lou Reed biography, Transformer, was published in 1995.
I'll get back to you in a few minutes
and let you know what else is going on.
He's a poet, he was inspired by poets.
He comes out of poetry, he comes out of Baudelaire and Poe
and all that - Rimbaud.
He saw that rock'n'roll was a totally adolescent musical form
at that time.
It was really written for adolescence and sold to adolescence and so on.
And he made a conscious decision -
how about making rock'n'roll for adults?
Which is sort of like writing a more complex,
existentialist novel, as opposed to an adventure story for kids.
And so therefore, when you write War And Peace or whatever,
of course there are great ecstasies and there are great depths.
He really studied very hard the short story form,
Raymond Chandler particularly, to see how to translate that into song
lyrics, where you tell a story in a song, even though it's fragmented.
Because Lou originally wanted to be a writer.
When he went to college, he was a writer,
he was writing short stories and things in college magazines.
He actually published his own magazine.
And when he had the electric shock treatments, he couldn't remember.
He'd read something, and he couldn't remember what he'd read.
He'd open a book and didn't know where he was,
because it takes away your short-term memory for while, for a week.
Plus, you have to remember his parents made him do this
to cure him of homosexuality.
Can you imagine your parents... They took him there without telling him.
They said, we're going to go to see a doctor. OK.
You get there, and you're going to have shock treatments then and there.
That is such an incredible betrayal.
I think the betrayal of the parents, particularly the mother,
was as shocking as the actual treatments themselves, you know?
In terms of his whole psyche.
Bob Quine told me,
he said that all the time he hung out with Lou for a few years,
one time - he only saw Lou frightened once.
That was when they were walking up the street
and they bumped into his parents.
Lou particularly was into amphetamines.
His mind was full of images from his life, from his experiences,
from literature and so one, and he's pouring it out.
I don't think amphetamines or any drugs shape those images.
These people were working very hard,
these were very serious people doing something very serious.
They weren't taking drugs just for fun. We all took drugs to work.
That was the whole idea of drugs, originally.
I think Lou had a wonderful, wonderful life.
I think he loved all of it. He lived life...
He said, "My week beats your year."
I think he's absolutely correct.
He experienced things and he really went into the depths of them
and the heights of them.
That's why I think we should celebrate Lou Reed,
because he was one of those great explorers who went seeking
and brought back the goods, he kept giving us music.
It's very thrilling music, it's enthralling music, it's music that
changes your life, music you keep in your heart and you don't forget.
It becomes part of you. That's a great achievement, you know?
That's why I love Lou Reed, and that's why I love his music.
Actor Mary Woronov was one of the Warhol crowd
in the heyday of the Silver Factory.
She first met Lou and The Velvet Underground there in 1966,
when Andy was both their mentor and manager.
The factory was silver wallpaper, black floors,
silver couch full of come stains.
It was very grim.
The Velvets - first of all, they're dressed entirely in black.
They're very strange looking.
They seem to know what they're doing
and completely never acknowledge any audience.
They were using feedback,
they were using this stuff that you couldn't call music.
# Seasick Sarah had a golden nose
# Hobnail boots wrapped round her toes... #
I heard later on that they were going to play at this happening -
they called them happenings then.
Someone started dancing and then I started dancing
and then other people sort of started to dance,
but the music was so strange, it didn't have a beat or whatever.
It had a strange beat, a strange, I don't know,
echoey... It was just awesome, I'd never heard anything like it before.
People were leaving in droves.
The Velvets did not care, did not stop playing.
They started playing Heroin, and this guy runs up
and throws his works down on the floor and starts to shoot up.
Well, the cops came. It was awful.
We were always having these major horror stories.
Nothing ever went right.
Heroin was New York's answer to LA's The Doors' This Is The End.
That's how powerful it was.
And it was the answer,
because they were all running around like hippies
and we were in black and white.
You know, they liked free love, we liked S&M.
# It's my wife and it's my life
# Because a mainer to my vein
# Leads to a centre in my head
# And then I'm better off than dead... #
Lou loved the transvestites, he loved the absurd humour.
He loved the nightlife and the kinkiness of it. He just loved it.
He was not interested in entertaining jack shit, he was interested
in these bizarre things like Venus In Furs or like, you know, Heroin.
And so he wrote about what interested him.
It was just really entertaining and it was sexy and hot.
And... You know, if you were high enough,
I guess you could spend the whole night flirting with it.
Also, Lou used to go, he would go all night also, and then call a cab
and that would be that.
And I would take the subway back to Brooklyn Heights
cos I was still living with my parents, so there was one night when
Lou couldn't get a cab, and he had to come with me to my parents' house.
# Sunday morning
# It's just the wasted years so close behind... #
I put him on the couch and I went to my little room, you know, and
then I heard my mother saying, "You have to get up, you have to get up."
So I get up and I walk out,
and there's my father at the breakfast table,
and my mother is standing over the breakfast table, and there is Lou,
having conversation with them in his leather jacket, you know, like this.
And I sat down, you know, "Hi, Mom, hi, Dad.
"Are you going to work yet so Lou can get some more sleep?"
I don't know what to say to them.
But it was stuff like that,
everybody sort of didn't plan anything,
or didn't have anything in mind.
Things just happened.
I think the real difference - besides the kind of music we played,
which was a big difference - we were there with Andy Warhol.
And all the attitudes that brought with it.
And all the talent
and incredible creative force that went along with Warhol.
The nice thing about being with Andy is it made me brave.
Being mean to us or dismissing us didn't mean anything,
no-one ever heard of us to dismiss us, so they would go after Andy.
When we were going to record, he pulled me aside.
His advice to me, he said, "Everything is really great,
"make sure you keep the dirty words in."
That was it.
He meant, keep it rough.
Don't let them turn it into this...
This thing anyone else could do.
Don't let them tame it down, don't let them make it
so it doesn't disturb anyone. Andy wanted to disturb people.
Shake it up.
Harvard graduate Andrew Wylie met Lou in 1972 in Max's Kansas City,
where the Velvets had played regularly
and where the Warhol crowd were still hanging out in the back room.
It was an achievement to get into the back room.
Usually, you would be hounded out if you didn't pass the depravity test.
What's the depravity test?!
You had to be fairly oblivious to odd behaviour.
- You couldn't be too straight. - You got through, obviously, anyway. - Yup.
He had I think Swastikas dyed on the side of his head,
and he was fairly lean, I would say.
He was dramatically interesting.
Well, I think if you grow up in a middle-class setting -
as he did - and you don't embrace it -
and he didn't -
then you can either head uptown or head downtown.
And he headed downtown.
# I'm waiting for my man
# 26 in my hand... #
Forgive me, but it's interesting on the wild side.
# Up to Lexington 125... #
Everyone assumes it's just about depravity, but it's not.
It's interesting.
Lou was particularly verbal.
The most intelligent, verbally speaking,
person I've met in rock'n'roll by miles.
So I don't think he cared that other groups were more
successful at all, actually.
I think he knew how good he was.
The most important thing about Lou is the writing.
Lou's lyrics are really, really interesting to read,
absent the music.
He is comparable to Francois Villon.
He's as good as they get on the page.
This room costs 2,000 a month, you can believe it, baby, it's true.
Somewhere there is a landlord laughing till he wets his pants.
No-one dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything.
They just dream of dealing on the boulevard.
Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I'll piss on them.
That's what the statue of bigotry says.
Your poor huddled masses,
why don't we just go club them to death, get it over with?
Dump them on the boulevard.
Get it out.
# To the dirty boulevard I'm going down
# To the dirty boulevard Get it out
# To the dirty boulevard going down... #
When he died, the first thing that passed through my mind
and out of my mouth was he's as good as it gets.
You don't get better than Lou as an artist.
People don't get made better than that.
Lou's second album, Transformer, was released in 1972.
It was a huge success,
despite cataloguing the sexual shenanigans of Warhol's factory
in the hit track Walk On The Wild Side,
the hymn to Lou's fascination with the transvestite superstars
Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn.
My friends called me up and said, "Oh, turn on the radio.
"Lou Reed just wrote a song about you."
# Holly came from Miami FLA
# Hitchhiked her way across the USA... #
And then we went to a party and he was there
and he was in the corner, a shy, quiet guy.
So I asked him, how do you know so much about me?
He said, "Holly, because you have a big mouth."
What he said was the truth.
I plucked my eyebrows and shaved my legs and became a she.
# In the back room, she was everybody's darling... #
He was surrounded by that, because of the factory, the Warhol crowd.
So I think he was...
..I want to say voyeuristic,
but he just wrote songs about what he saw and knew.
# Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do-do do, do-do, do-do... #
When Lou wrote Walk On The Wild Side, he made me immortal.
So now, honey, whenever you...
..drop a quarter in the jukebox
and there's, "Holly came from Miami FLA."
One of the things people forget about the songs is how
compassionate they are.
Irony, detachment, is just a method of telling a story, after all,
and it doesn't mean you're not sincere.
The fact that you have distance
and aren't frothing all over yourself about something...
..doesn't mean you're not sincere
and doesn't mean the songs don't carry any emotional wallop.
I think things sometimes carry more of an emotional wallop
if when you tell it, you are a bit detached.
You catch people a bit off guard, they're not looking for that.
And I also think that it makes things sound true.
Because you're not trying to impress somebody,
you're not trying to make them cry, you're not trying to make them
say it, you're not trying to make them scared.
You are telling a story in a straightforward way.
Photographer Mick Rock first met Lou in London in 1971,
when Lou hadn't sold any records, as either the Velvets or a solo artist.
They were introduced by one of Mick Rock's constant photographic
subjects, David Bowie.
That night, he took the pictures that were to fix Lou's image
for years to come.
The Transformer image.
I went backstage to meet him.
David took me back to say hello to him before the show
and he was in a corner on his own, and it was kind of dim.
There was something kind of bat-like about it.
It did seem to confirm all of one's suspicions. Not exactly Nosferatu.
It was very organic, the whole thing.
There was no record label bungling in trying to control anything,
because Lou would've bitten them if they'd tried to do that.
He actually took the best photographs of me taken in the '70s.
I remember staying up with him for two or three days once,
and at some point, he said, "Give me the camera."
They are actually all, for the most part, in focus.
He'd come over, he would be on a tour, I would go
and see the show, hang out with him a bit, and then just have a session.
But they were very simple affairs. Lou was self-styled.
I've got a lot of great pictures of him just laughing.
I threatened to publish them too many times.
I said, "I'm going to punk with your image, Lou, you know that?"
# You do what you got to do You do what you can
# You do what you want to do But I love you, Suzanne
# You'll try anything once
# Try anything twice
# You do what you want to do
# But I love you, Suzanne
# I love you when you're good, honey I love you when you're bad
# You do what you want to do
# But I love you, Suzanne... #
He wasn't really such a dark person as a human being.
I mean, look at the beautiful love songs,
and how, in a way, how simple they are, lyrically, how direct.
Like A Perfect Day. I mean...
..my mother loves that - she's 93.
He could touch many...
And of course, I'll Be Your Mirror, which, I think
he wrote that while he was in college.
One of the most beautiful love songs ever written.
What's curious about that is that he gave it to Nico to sing to him.
While they were having their love affair.
# I find it hard to believe you don't know the beauty you are
# But if you don't, Let me be your eyes
# A hand in your darkness So you won't be afraid... #
Lou wanted to plumb the depths and check it all out,
and I understood that.
We went to visit this mate of his.
He lived in an apartment that was absolute chaos.
Lou said he was the best B&E guy in New York.
B&E is Breaking and Entering.
I mean, you've got to remember how intelligent the guy was.
This is a super intelligent, super cerebral, very informed guy.
I mean, Lou was a born contrarian, you know?
- Would you describe yourself as a decadent person? - No.
- How would you describe yourself? - Average.
No?
I think so.
If people were just talking very superficially to him,
he would bite them.
I thought I knew what I was saying,
but if I listen to you much more, maybe I won't.
He was always very sweet with me, but I saw him torture a few journalists.
Tell me when the thing is running.
Sometimes he did it just for the sport, I think.
But once he got the reputation, he thought, "OK, I'm going
"to live up to it."
- Are you a transvestite or a homosexual? - Sometimes. - Which one?
No. I'm not going to sit here and do the lecture circuit.
My God.
David, you should keep in mind I got a BA in English,
I graduated college.
I'm aware of irony and distance.
I come from a middle-class background.
So I'm street with a BA.
You know, it's like an interesting combination,
because it gave me the ability to phrase some of these
things in something other than the vernacular of the street.
So I wasn't just a one-trick pony.
There were more sides to me than that.
The Transformer album was Lou's brief glam period.
Produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, its fusion of sex,
drugs and glamorous androgyny became an inspiration to those who
were anything but straight.
For me, the most important thing about Lou Reed was what
he did musically, and I think, you know, if you're a kid
and you want to be cool, there's two albums,
The Velvet Underground & Nico and Transformer.
Those two records are so much part of the rock'n'roll rites of passage.
You know, you can't really be considered credible or cool
if you do not have those records.
My first kind of experience of Lou Reed was Walk On The Wild Side,
I think. That was the real beginning of my love affair with Lou Reed.
You know, because that song I think was...
If you were a little gay kid in suburbia,
that song had you walking on invisible heels.
It was just so otherworldly.
Even more than Bowie because I think although Bowie was sexually
ambiguous, Lou Reed delivered it with a kind of so what quality.
It was almost like, who cares, you know?
That's why I love the '70s, because the '70s, you know,
a lot of stuff was just made up - Mick Jagger and Bowie in bed,
Marc Bolan and Mickey Finn having an affair.
It was all great stuff but it probably wasn't true.
But, you know, you don't really want like that to be true,
you just want it to be glorious gossip.
I had to see him and it was around the time of Rock'n'Roll Animal
and Sally Can't Dance, the bleached hair.
Looking back, I think he was pretty wasted at that gig
but I didn't notice. I just thought, "He's fantastic."
I discovered recently that Lou Reed wasn't very fond of Transformer,
which is really shocking. He didn't like it.
He would never talk about it. So, it's one of those weird things.
With certain rock stars, they embrace a kind of sexual ambiguousness
but when they get sensible and marry, they want to just say,
"Oh, no, that I don't want to talk about the camp bit."
# What is in the mind... #
If I was going to describe Lou Reed, I would say
he was always effortlessly cool, even as an older man.
# Caroline says... #
I don't really think of Lou Reed as druggie, hard, brutal and savage.
I think of things like Caroline Says or They're Taking Her Children Away.
# You can hit me all you want to
# But I don't love you any more... #
If you are a kind of quirky kid in ten years' time,
you probably will find Transformer.
It might be in your dad's record collection
or your grandfather's record collection, whatever.
But I think if you've got an ear for music, you'll hear that
and it will resonate with you.
I think that's the power of all great music.
The whole glam thing, like, was kind of great for me
when I met Bowie and he was into that. So I got into that.
All it was was, it was something I'd already seen...
..with Warhol.
But I hadn't done that thing so the '70s was like a chance for me
to get in on it, in a sense, no-one knew me from Adam particularly.
I could say I was anything, be anywhere.
I mean that was one of the great things. You could...
And I learned that from Andy. You could be anything.
Perversely, Lou followed the hugely commercial Transformer
with a disturbing concept album, a tale of drug addiction,
domestic violence and suicide that is Berlin,
produced by Bob Ezrin in London and released in 1973.
Back home, Lou's personal life was crumbling
And his appetite for narcotics was keener than ever.
# You were five foot ten inches tall
# It was very nice
# Candlelight and Dubonnet on ice... #
He was an amazing combination of being slightly awkward
within his own skin and yet being completely consumed with,
and focused on, a particular idea.
And so you put the two of them together
and what you get is this kind of nervous determination.
I felt really connected to Lou, emotionally,
very sensitive to what he was going through and so I tried to...
I tried to use his state of mind as an advantage, a resource,
and I tried to get to him to see it as a resource.
He doesn't come in and feel like I'm not in the mood today
and I'm sorry and I'm letting you down.
He would come in and say, "I'm not really in the mood today."
And I would say, "You're not in the mood for that but wow,
"what if we did this one?"
And he'd think about it and go, "Yeah. I can do that one."
# How do you think it feels
# When you're speeding and lonely?
# Come here, baby
# How do you think it feels
# When all you can say is if only? #
You know, drugs were a big factor in what happened to all of us
around the record.
And at certain points during the day, it, I think...
..stalled what we were doing but we quickly recover
and then get back on track.
Those musical moments, those things that
happened in the performance, those were transcendent, clear-headed.
They were above and beyond whatever substance
we may have ingested four hours before. Do you know what I mean?
I think on a certain level,
I may have misjudged how London would affect Lou.
People were surrounding him, pulling at him, outside of the sessions
so there was a lot going on in his mind while we were making Berlin.
When I delivered it to RCA, I said, "OK."
Lou and Lou's manager at the time, I said, "Here we go. I got it.
"We're going to deliver it." They said, "OK, let's go."
We delivered it and I looked around and they were gone.
They had left the building.
# Mummy! Mummy! #
The aftermath of Berlin, for Lou, was fairly devastating.
It wasn't just a matter of the press writing crushing reviews about it.
And they got really personal. I mean, they were very nasty and direct.
But it wasn't even that.
I think the whole experience of living in that dark place,
you know, really, it's a place of this dissembling of the human being,
ending up in suicide. You can't get darker than that.
Days were short and nights were long.
It was raining and it was just sort of...
It was an overall fairly depressive experience,
while being artistically uplifting.
He said he couldn't stand to listen to it.
He locked it in the closet
and didn't want to see it again for years, which is actually the truth.
We didn't listen to it again for years.
I, on the other hand, came off of it having had my first
experiences with certain drugs and was just feeling like hell.
In 1972, Berlin was one of the darkest experiences of our lives.
In 2006, it was positively... uplifting.
It was the most energetic, spiritual, beautiful experience,
live on a stage, that I'd ever had and I think that Lou had ever had.
# They are taking her children away
# Because of the things she did in the streets, in the alleys
# And the bars
# She couldn't be beat That miserable, rotten slut.
# She couldn't turn anyone away... #
Berlin was used in a lawsuit against me,
by management, to show that I shouldn't be allowed to do
projects on my own, with people of my own choosing,
because if I did, this is the kind of album I would put out.
Can you imagine this? It's a nightmare come true.
I'm in court, having this baby that I love...
Ezra and I killed ourselves over this album.
We thought it was going to be like a cinematic experience,
except on a record with strings, this real grandeur
and there it is being used in court against me in a lawsuit where
they are really, really trying to hurt me, make no mistake.
Guitarist Steve Hunter played on the original
Berlin recordings and became part of Lou's band for the subsequent
Rock'n'Roll Animal tour.
They were reunited in 2006
when Lou played Berlin live for the first time.
I wasn't a fan, until I heard Walk On The Wild Side.
I couldn't believe he got away with saying some of the stuff
he got away with and it was on top 40 radio we heard that.
And I thought, "Now that's a true rebel.
"That's a guy who is pulling it off.
"There were always other people who thought they were rebels
"but this guy's getting away with it."
"Even when she was giving head," that's on the radio?
I couldn't believe it.
I was completely shocked and I was secretly saying, "Yeah, Lou!"
You know? That's way to go, man. I'm glad you got away with that.
I think that's very cool.
There was a side of Manhattan in those days that was just
under the surface. It wasn't way down. It was just under the surface.
So, when I would go to the studio,
you would get out on a summer's day at ten o'clock at night...
..and there would be people starting to coagulate around the area, you know?
OK, what's going on? Is it a parade or something?
I would come back out at two or three in the morning and there
are hookers and drug dealers and all kinds of stuff going on out there.
And here I am, this little skinny guy with a couple of guitars.
I thought I was going to get killed.
Any time you can meet a composer or even just a poet who doesn't
mind stripping away and looking at the ugly side
and making you see the ugly side as maybe not so ugly,
it's like driving by an accident - you have to look.
And I think Lou made you look.
When I heard some of the lyrics of Berlin, I was completely
blown away, that he was talking about a side of drugs
and drug usage that people who were doing drugs
didn't want to hear about.
I don't want to hear the ugly stuff of drugs.
I want to hear how cool it is.
# The rich son waits for his father to die
# The poor just drink and cry
# And me
# I just don't care at all... #
I would never have wanted to get into a fight with him, ever,
because I don't care how big...
Somehow I get the feeling he would tear things off of me
that I don't want torn off, you know?
Lou is a street New York guy and a survivor,
so whatever it took him to survive, he could do that.
Lou reminds me a lot of Edgar Allan Poe.
I read The Pit And The Pendulum and was just...
I couldn't believe someone could write
a story like that in eight pages or however long it is, that had
me scared to death, just reading the words.
But then Poe would turn around and do Annabel Lee,
this incredibly romantic, beautiful poem, to a cousin or something.
He was just as weird and quirky and looked at the dark side of life, like Lou.
They both were able to be dark and romantic at the same time.
# On Avenue B, someone cruised him one night
# He took him in an alley and then he pulled a knife
# And he thought of his father as he cut his windpipe
# And finally danced to the rock minuet... #
I think New York lost its best reporter because he was
so observant, so keen, so gentle
and hard at the same time.
And it was always so heartfelt.
I don't know if you've ever heard a song called Rock'n'roll Minuet...
But that song, you can't listen to that song and not feel something.
# Paralysed by hatred and a piss ugly soul
# If he murdered his father, he thought he'd become whole
# While listening at night to an old radio
# Where they danced to the rock minuet... #
Lou's passion for sonic terrorism and the avant-garde inspired
Thurston Moore and the music of Sonic Youth.
Moore treasures Lou's double album Metal Machine Music,
released in 1974.
Despite being comprised of nothing but feedback
and guitar effects, Lou toured it in 2010.
I figured that nobody would really talk about Metal Machine Music
and how significant that record was.
To me, that record... was completely fantastic.
I mean, there was no such thing as a noise record
and that was the first noise record I ever heard and it
was by Lou Reed, who was supposed to be doing Sally Can't Dance part two.
It certainly wasn't that.
'Sing along with Lou Reed on his new Reed, Sally Can't Dance
'on RCA records and tape.'
I just figured it was going to sound like the way it looked.
You know, which was this bad ass kind of like glitter rock Lou Reed
on the cover with his leather jacket. That cover is just beautiful.
And the liner notes were just so striking and kind of just,
"My week beats your year," he ends those liner notes.
What a thing to say.
And then, the review of Metal Machine Music just had the word "no",
written like 100 times.
You know, I was talking to someone from Rolling Stone recently
about Metal Machine Music and the journalist was...
Like, well, you know,
"Nobody's ever listen to that record all the way through."
I was like, "Oh, I have, numerous times."
Like I still do.
I actually had it on quad. I had a quadraphonic version.
I had it on quad eight-track tape.
I have all variants of Metal Machine Music.
It's one of the most important records in the my life.
It was inevitable that sooner or later, Lou should bump into
novelist Paul Auster, another writer dedicated in his own
way to the dramas, dropouts and dangerous delights
of a New York City that by now, in the 1990s, was fast disappearing.
# Life's like a mayonnaise soda
# And life's like space without room
# And life's like bacon and ice cream
# That's what life's like without you... #
I remember there was a moment when, the time when
we were closest and seeing each other fairly often,
he told me that he wanted to write a novel. He had figured out a plot.
He wanted to write a crime novel. And I said, "Well, good luck, Lou."
And a few months later, he said, "You know, it's damn hard. I can't do it.
"I don't have the ability to make a big story."
So, I think his form was the short lyric and he did brilliantly.
His songs ARE the words. I mean, Lou was not a singer.
He was able to present his songs in a brilliant way but it's
the combination of the personality coming through the voice.
I remember a very amusing song, I think it was
a song about Laurie Anderson and their love for each other and...
The song had to do with all her ex-lovers.
He wants to throw them off the roof of her loft and see them
run over by cars on Canal Street.
I thought this was hilarious and so vivid.
Some of his songs are very funny, too. They are not all grim.
We worked on two films together.
The first one is called Blue In The Face
and Lou has a prominent role in the film.
He is Lou Reed, the resident philosopher
of the Brooklyn Cigar Company, sitting behind the counter
and I was the one off-camera, throwing questions at him.
I'm scared in my own apartment. I'm, I'm...
You know, I'm scared 24 hours a day, but not necessarily in New York.
I actually feel pretty comfortable in New York.
I get scared like in Sweden.
Each one of his comments is hilarious.
You know, it's kind of empty. They are all drunk. Everything works.
Acerbic, strange, unpredictable.
You go to the medicine cabinet, open it up
and there's little poster saying, "In case of suicide, call..."
You turn on the TV, there's an ear operation. These things scare me.
New York, no.
I really think in a way, he steals the movie.
He's the heart of the movie and he's not doing anything,
just sitting there and talking.
My childhood was so unpleasant that I absolutely don't think
I remember anything I think before...age 31.
I don't follow the world of pop music that closely
but I can tell you that I look out at the scene,
what I know of it, and I don't see anyone like him.
There is no-one doing what he did
and so in a sense he's irreplaceable.
That is why, I think, we are going to keep needing him in the future.
I think his stuff is going to go on being listened to for a long,
long time.
One, two, three...
# If you are close the door
# I never have to see the day again... #
In 1993, the original Velvet Underground reformed.
Their music was as unrepentant as ever,
driven once more by their proto-punk drummer, Maureen Tucker.
If Lou had resented the lack of recognition for the band
first time around,
now was the time to remind everyone just how influential they had been.
We are looking forward very much to playing for people who have
always said, "I wish I could have seen a Velvet Underground show."
Well, now you can,
with the original four members, in great shape, up and barking.
Our reunion tour was like a dream come true.
That was really, really exciting, for me to be playing with them
again. It's really, really was.
Lou changing in those 30 years almost...
I would say, the major thing, the only thing really,
I guess that I noticed is that...
..in 1993, he was a big deal.
And in 1968, he wasn't.
# Na, na, na, na, na, na
# Na, na, na, na, na
# Na, na, na, na, na, na
# Na, na, na, na, na... #
We had a sound check one night for six hours.
And that was being pretty darn picky about how your guitar sounds.
The first time I saw Lou play in a long, long time, I think
it was 1986 or '87 or something, in Atlanta, and it was the first
time I had seen him play to a big audience and I cried. I truly did.
I was not hysterical but tears coming down.
I was so excited for him.
I always had a special...not a concern, I don't want to say
I was always worried about Lou. I don't mean that but...
Later on, after the Velvets, I would often really worry about him.
I don't want it to sound like more than it was.
# Some kinds of love
# Margarita told Tom
# Between thought and expression
# Lies a lifetime
# And some kinds of love
# Possibilities end
# Oh, if only to miss one
# Would seem to be groundless
# My body, ta ta ta... #
My friend Lou...
I miss knowing he's out there, knowing he's happy
and playing music and is out there in the world.
When the people who made up your life,
especially your young life, die and I don't mean just your friends
or your relatives but the people who made
up your world - the actors who are big at the time, the musicians,
the politicians, when they start dying, that's scary.
It starts getting kind of scary.
But...when it's someone...
..you've just loved for so long
and he's always been out there doing his thing
and you just know he's out there in the world,
that was very difficult.
That was really, and still is, I'm still feeling really weird about it.
But you have to understand what a nice, sweet guy he must have been
because he married Laurie Anderson and that was it.
That was a love affair. That was the love of his life.
It's hard to believe he's gone. I mean it just...
Thank God he had Laurie with him, to...
..you know, make it go gently.
Yeah, I cried. I cried.
He was a gladiator and he...
You know, he was an amazing artist.
He was an exceptional human being by any standards.
I carry Lou Reed with me in a way,
like I carry my family,
and losing him was surprisingly one of the biggest blows of my life.
Lou voiced to those things that his entire generation was feeling
and generations after, too,
but when he said, "My life was saved by rock'n'roll,"
he was talking for me.
The thing I'd like to add is I'm going to miss that guy.
You know, he was always... good for a nice hug.
The guy I got to know riding a motorcycle through
the wilds of Pennsylvania...
You know, he's in front and I'm on the back
and we're both kind of... We're hardly Hells Angels.
And he's like, waggling his bike like that and we scoot along...
It was just kind of a normal day, in a weird way, I have you think,
yeah, it was a perfect day and I'm glad I spent it with Lou.
Pff...
Erm... When he was sick before he died,
I went to see him in Southampton, in the hospital.
And...
He... Urgh.
He reached up and...
we held hands and I kissed him and he was crying
and it was just awful, awful.
Erm... I'll miss everything he was -
funny, brilliant, gifted.
There won't be another one like him.
# You're going to reap just what you sow
# You're going to reap just what you sow. #
Subtitling by Red Bee Media Ltd