Lou Reed

by Anthony DeCurtis

  During one of the performances at BAM, a heckler yelled out, “Tell us something we don’t know.” It was the sort of incident that, ordinarily, would have provoked a scathing outburst from Reed—and, very likely, that’s what it was designed to do. Instead, Reed and Cale simply carried on with their performance. “The thing about that comment,” Reed said later, “is that if the guy had really been listening, I’m, like, telling him something he doesn’t know. I’m giving him a side of Andy that nobody knows. But I was concentrating too much to respond.”

  Much as they were meant as a celebration of Warhol, the performances had a serious, funereal air, if that term can be used in a positive sense, particularly at St. Ann’s, which was a beautiful, atmospheric, Gothic church as well as a performance space, with stained glass windows well over a century old. The audience sat in wooden pews and in the choir loft, and Reed and Cale performed in front of an altar. In their invocations of the dead, their no-nonsense presentation, and the silent concentration of the audience, the shows there had very much the feeling of a service. The death obsession that runs through Warhol’s work has often been attributed to his Catholicism, and Reed and Cale believed that the religious environment of St. Ann’s brought that element of his life to the fore. Reed said that the church “was a very powerful part of the thing. We didn’t realize during sound checks and dress rehearsals that when there were people in it and we were up there with the stained windows… you suddenly felt this incredible surge that this house devoted to belief can generate.” It’s relevant, Reed added, that “Andy always went to church, which was something that a lot of people either didn’t know, or didn’t associate with him even though they’d heard about it. Every Sunday he went to church.”

  Reed and Cale filmed a version of Songs for Drella at BAM but without an audience present, for release on VHS. Then they went into the studio to record an album of the songs, which was released in 1990. When the album appeared, the rock world was thrilled by the notion of half a VU reunion, though Reed had gone out of his way to dismiss any hope of that prospect. People had failed to appreciate the Velvet Underground when it existed, he said, “so here’s a little second shot for them. People have been moaning about, ‘Gee, I didn’t see it then,’ or ‘Why isn’t there a Velvet Underground reunion?’—which there isn’t going to be. But there is this particular thing. And we wanted to present it in as pure a state as possible.” At the performances at St. Ann’s and BAM, Reed and Cale played only material from Songs for Drella—nothing from the Velvets’ catalog.

  Though the project brought Reed and Cale back together, in the course of it, they essentially replicated their entire previous relationship, moving from initial enthusiasm to tense collaboration to frustration and distance. In the liner notes for the album, Cale wrote, “Songs for Drella is a collaboration, the second Lou and I have completed since 1965, and I must say that although I think he did most of the work, he has allowed me to keep a position of dignity in the process.” In its way, it was a pointed comment, especially from a musician as accomplished as Cale. It speaks to his desire to work with Reed and take a pragmatic approach to his idiosyncrasies, but it also has a passive-aggressive element. True collaborators don’t worry too much about who is doing “most of the work,” and allowing your partner a “position of dignity” would seem to be a bare-minimum requirement for any project involving an artist of Cale’s stature. As with the Velvet Underground, there is no question that Cale’s contributions to Drella are just as important as Reed’s. By making it public that he felt the need to acknowledge Reed’s generosity in this regard—or that Reed, at least implicitly, required such an acknowledgment—Cale slyly revealed the difficulties in their working together. Reed seemed to understand this and didn’t appreciate it. After telling a journalist, “You can just say that John Cale was the easygoing one and Lou was the prick,” he refused to respond to Cale’s comments in the liner notes. “That thing he wrote says what it says: it says Lou did the majority of the work,” Reed said. “That’s that.”

  As for the album, in a four-star review, Rolling Stone called Songs for Drella “a shining, tense merger of visions. Reed’s edgy guitar, fullness of heart, and clipped, journalistic poetry bring into sculptural relief Cale’s elegant keyboards and brainy lyricism. As their subject, Warhol is both immediate and mythic. The idea entrepreneur who produced the Velvets, he provokes an homage that’s romantic yet casual—and Cale and Reed pay their debt with an offhand pop epic.” Songs for Drella, the review concludes, is a “sweet and knowing tribute to these men’s mentor, prod—and friend.”

  Significantly, Drella was a sobriquet that Warhol hated. Though meant as an endearment in the context of the album, its usage had a sharp edge. Like Warhol himself, and like Reed’s relationship with him, and like Reed and Cale’s relationship, Songs for Drella is full of contradictory emotions; praise, respect, affection, and even love are inextricable from bitterness, envy, jealousy, and resentment. In that sense, just as Reed promised, Warhol got the epitaph he deserved.

  19

  MAGIC AND LOSS

  IN THE MID- TO late eighties, vast political changes swept across the Soviet Union and its satellite countries in Eastern Europe, behind what had been termed the Iron Curtain in the West. Uprisings by workers and students in Czechoslovakia toppled the Communist government there in 1989, and by the end of that year, playwright and activist Václav Havel had been installed as the country’s president. In 1990, he was elected president in Czechoslovakia’s first open elections since the end of World War II. Havel was an internationally acclaimed literary figure, and his activism, for which he was jailed many times, included support for the psychedelic rock band the Plastic People of the Universe, which was inspired by the Velvet Underground and whose long hair, bohemian lifestyle, and outspokenness incurred the wrath of Communist leaders. Havel himself was a fan of the Velvet Underground, whose music he had first heard when he visited the United States for six weeks in 1968. While exploring Greenwich Village and the East Village with his friend the filmmaker Miloš Forman, Havel bought one of the first two Velvet Underground albums. The Velvets’ music and Reed’s solo work remained inspirational to dissidents in Czechoslovakia throughout the gray decades of Communist rule there. The movement that brought Havel to power had come to be called the Velvet Revolution because of its aspirations to nonviolence, but the pun would not have been lost on anyone as sensitive to language as he.

  After Havel won election to the presidency, Rolling Stone approached Reed about going to Czechoslovakia to interview Havel. It seemed like a perfect story for the magazine, which had always combined its coverage of the music scene with progressive political stories. Reed had just appeared on the cover of the magazine for the first time, and Havel’s interest in the Velvet Underground and rock music in general had already become part of his myth. That Reed’s music could somehow have played a significant role in history surpassed even the artist’s most grandiose notions about himself. He was understandably flattered and accepted the assignment. Havel was delighted that Reed, one of his musical heroes, would be interviewing him.

  When publications make an assignment like this, it’s essentially an act of faith—faith that if you get two people of such significance in one room, whatever they talk about, whatever happens between them, will be more interesting than if a seasoned reporter had been sent to do the job. A complication is that, because both people involved in doing the story are notable in their own right, it’s not easy to provide direction or even make suggestions about what topics their conversation should take on—especially true in this case, given Reed’s prickliness, insecurities, and desire for control. So off he went to interview Havel in Prague.

  Reed flew to Prague after participating in Nelson Mandela: An International Tribute for a Free South Africa, a concert at Wembley Stadium in London on April 16, 1990, to celebrate Mandela’s release from the South African prison in which he had been held for twenty-seven years because of his effort
s to bring down that country’s apartheid regime. Despite the fact that he was about to interview a political and cultural figure of enormous significance, Reed treated all the preliminary steps as if he were going to do a concert date in a region with which he wasn’t familiar. He did not relax his desire for control a whit. He displayed no comprehension that he was dealing with a newly liberated country, some of whose citizens, however shockingly, might not even have been aware of who Lou Reed was. All requests that diverged from his ordinary travel routine—would he consider performing at a small club?—were flatly denied.

  The original transcript Reed turned in to Rolling Stone reflected a similar myopia. While Havel would occasionally attempt to explore some larger issues, particularly how the counterculture in the United States had made a strong impact on him, Reed continually nudged the conversation toward his own preoccupations—which is to say himself and his world. Pressed for time and eager to get to the substantive issues he wanted to discuss with Reed, Havel spoke affectingly about the history of the dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, emphasizing its musical and cultural aspects—most notably, the rise of Charter 77, which emerged, in part, in opposition to the government’s persecution of the Plastic People of the Universe. “By this I mean to say,” Havel said, “the music, underground music, in particular one record by a band called Velvet Underground, played a rather significant role in the development of our country, and I don’t think that many people in the United States have noticed this.” Reed’s response? “Joan Baez says hello.”

  When Havel described at length his visit to the United States in 1968 and his participation in the historic student uprising that year at Columbia University, Reed responded, “Did you go to CBGB’s?”—which, of course, did not exist in 1968. Havel’s remarks on all these matters were nuanced and insightful, but Reed reduced them to a truism: “You obviously feel and prove that music can change the world?” Havel’s response was characteristically thoughtful: “Not in itself, it’s not sufficient in itself. But it can contribute to that significantly in being a part of the awakening of the human spirit.”

  Reed, as it happens, intentionally set out not to do the type of interview a journalist would do. “I don’t like it when the interview’s so cleaned up that the interviewer and subject sound like the same person,” he said. “I like to keep the real rhythm of the way the person talks.” What journalists know and Reed didn’t understand is that spoken words and words on a page are two different things. Some cleaning up is always necessary. Reed also spoke about how nervous he had been to interview Havel, which makes some of its awkwardness more understandable. It’s not surprising that his seeming offhandedness and brusque attitude masked insecurities. “With Hubert Selby,” Reed said, referring to an interview he’d done with one of his literary idols, “I came in with typed questions, because I was sure I’d be nerve-racked and I didn’t want to forget anything. Same with Havel.… It’s just really hard work. I’d much rather go out for a drink with them.”

  What Reed turned in to the magazine was not what Rolling Stone was looking for. The assignment had not been made by a music editor, but by Robert Vare, who handled much of the magazine’s political coverage. He was taken aback and asked me to have a look at the piece. I, too, was surprised by how one-dimensional it was. My suggestion was to see if Reed, whom I had not yet met at that time, might be willing to write something longer—or perhaps something shorter—in which the best material from the interview could play a part. Given that working with him up to that point had not exactly been a joyride, the feeling at the magazine was that he was unlikely to want to do that. Finally, it was decided to simply give the piece back to Reed and let him do what he wanted with it somewhere else. (The publication that had commissioned Reed to interview Hubert Selby also turned down the resulting interview.)

  Reed was livid. In a smart move, he showed the piece to Rob Bowman, a critic and professor of musicology who was producing and writing liner notes for Between Thought and Expression, a three-CD anthology of Reed’s solo work with RCA and Arista. Wisely concealing his own estimation of the piece—“It was definitely terrible,” Bowman said later; “I could see why Rolling Stone rejected it”—he suggested that Reed contact Bill Flanagan at Musician. Flanagan had interviewed Reed a number of times and was one of his staunchest supporters. Musician was a smaller magazine than Rolling Stone, and while it was highly regarded in the music industry, it did not have anything like Rolling Stone’s reputation for political reporting to live up to. Having a Lou Reed interview with Václav Havel would be a coup for Musician regardless of its quality. Flying a bit under the media radar ultimately freed Musician to turn the piece into something idiosyncratic and quite readable. Perhaps chastened by Rolling Stone’s rejection, Reed did write a longer piece of which the interview was just a part. A few moments remain cringeworthy, but at many other points, Reed seems genuinely stirred by Havel and wonder-struck by the role his songs had played in such a monumental historical moment. Even in its difficult spots, the story reveals—consciously or unconsciously—aspects of Reed that he ordinarily took great pains to conceal.

  In the piece, Reed complains that arranging to get to recently liberated Czechoslovakia was “Kafkaesque” because “It was hard to get clear answers to the most basic requests.” Beyond that, his Czech facilitators “wanted me to play. At a club.” The horror. But as Reed spends some time with Havel, he seems increasingly to become aware of what the situation requires of him. As Havel is ending their conversation, he asks Reed, referring to a Prague performance space, “Is it true or not that you will play at the Gallery tonight?” Reed demurs. “It was never true that I would play at the Gallery,” he says, explaining that he is a “private person” and prefers “controlled situations.” As a compromise, he offers to play for Havel in private. Havel gracefully deflects that offer and gently attempts to educate Reed on why it would be important for him to perform publicly in the newly liberated country. “I think it would be sort of embarrassing for me if only I could enjoy it and tens of my friends who would like to be there as well could not be there,” Havel says. He had earlier explained to Reed how many musicians and activists had risked imprisonment simply by listening to bands like the Velvet Underground and their progeny. He tells Reed, “The bands that I was talking about would be there, and people who had been arrested for listening to this kind of music, and friends.” Reed continues to hem and haw—“I’m not aware of the circumstances, and it’s difficult for me”—until, after endless reassurances from Havel and his interpreter, he finally relents, graciously saying what he should have said in the first place: “If this is something you would like, it would be an honor to do it for you and your people.”

  When Reed and Sylvia arrived at the Gallery, he marveled at the band onstage, which was “playing Velvet Underground songs—beautiful, heartfelt, impeccable versions of my songs. I couldn’t believe it. This was not something they could have gotten together overnight. The music grew stronger and louder as I listened.… It was as though I was in a time warp and had returned to hear myself play.… It was as though they had absorbed the very heart and soul of the VU.” As for Reed’s irrational fears about who was going to be at the club and how many of them, the three hundred people there primarily consisted of former dissidents who were thrilled to be in the presence of the man who had created music that inspired them so much. Eventually, after he got word that Havel had arrived at the club, Reed went onstage and played songs from New York, as he had done at the Nelson Mandela concert. When he was finished, he was asked if the band that had been onstage earlier could join him to perform some Velvet Underground songs, and he agreed. As Reed wrote, “we blazed through some old VU numbers. Any song I called, they knew. It was as if Moe, John, and Sterl were right there behind me, and it was a glorious feeling.”

  When he came offstage, Reed went to sit at a table with Havel, who had removed his jacket and loosened his tie. Havel introduced Reed to some of the people who were
in the audience that night, and Reed finally came to understand the value and significance of his willingness to visit the club and perform. Havel, Reed wrote, “introduced me to an astonishing array of people, all dissidents, all of whom had been jailed. Some had been jailed for playing my music. Many told me of reciting my lyrics for inspiration and comfort when in jail. Some had remembered a line I had written in an essay fifteen years ago: ‘Everybody should die for the music.’ It was very much a dream for me and well beyond my wildest expectations. When I had gotten out of college and helped form the VU, I had been concerned with, among other things, demonstrating how much more a song could be about than what was currently being written. So the VU albums and my own are implicitly about freedom of expression—freedom to write about what you please in any way you please. And the music had found a home here in Czechoslovakia.”

  After a while, Havel got up to leave. Late as it was—he had arrived at the club after 11 p.m., just before Reed’s set—he still had affairs of state to attend to. “Oh, you must have this,” he said to Reed as he handed him a “small black book about the size of a diary” just before he headed out. “These are your lyrics hand-printed and translated into Czechoslovakian. There were only two hundred of them. They were very dangerous to have. People went to jail, and now you have one. Keep your fingers crossed for us.”