Lou Reed

by Anthony DeCurtis

  26

  THE MEASURE OF A MAN

  AS THE BLOWBACK FROM the Metallica collaboration eased, Reed returned to the regularity of his life with Anderson. If it was not the perfectly idyllic romance that it was often portrayed to be, it had all the sustaining qualities of a solid marriage. Indeed, in the spring of 2008, it had become a marriage in fact. Anderson was speaking to Reed by phone from California when she began enumerating things that she had always wanted to do but had never done. “I never learned German,” she said. “I never studied physics, I never got married.” Ever impulsive, Reed immediately suggested that they get married the next day. “I’ll meet you halfway,” he said. “I’ll come to Colorado”—where Anderson had a show the following night. They got married in a friend’s backyard in Boulder wearing their “old Saturday clothes.”

  “I guess there are lots of ways to get married,” Anderson later wrote. “Some people marry someone they hardly know—which can work out, too. When you marry your best friend of many years, there should be another name for it. But the thing that surprised me about getting married was the way it altered time. And also the way it added a tenderness that was somehow completely new.” Of course, marriage did not ameliorate the tensions in their relationship. “Like many couples, we constructed ways to be—strategies, and sometimes compromises, that would enable us to be part of a pair,” she wrote. “Sometimes we lost a bit more than we were able to give, or gave up way too much, or felt abandoned. Sometimes we got really angry. But even when I was mad, I was never bored. We learned to forgive each other.” Of course, it was Reed’s fears of abandonment, and his anger when he felt Anderson’s distance, and her anger as a result of that. Reed spent many hours on the telephone and in conversation lamenting Anderson’s peripatetic ways with people close to him. When Anderson wrote that she and Reed “shared a house that was separate from our own places,” she was referring to their Hamptons home—and to the fact that they often lived apart in New York. Without a doubt, her independence was not simply her natural inclination as an artist, but a strategy for helping their relationship survive. Reed’s tendency to subsume whomever he was involved with and then resent her for living in his shadow was a fate that Anderson had no interest in enduring. Her detachment both drove Reed mad and made him value and respect her.

  Reed was out constantly, often with Anderson, frequently with Hal Willner. I personally ran into him outside a Buena Vista Social Club concert at Carnegie Hall, leaving a performance by Antony and the Johnsons at Joe’s Pub, waiting outside Town Hall to see Joanna Newsom, at a reception for Amnesty International, and many other times. He frequently had lunch at the French bistro Les Deux Gamins, near Sheridan Square, and would sit there reading quietly after his meal. Alone and together, Reed and Anderson had become ubiquitous, accessible, and friendly while somehow still managing to maintain their subversive edge. In 2010, they served as King Neptune and Queen Mermaid in the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island, a zany, low-rent, faux Mardi Gras event that featured old-school Brooklynites, seminude hipsters, and all-purpose revelers who gathered to kick off the summer season at the famous beach community. Dressed in blue and green robes, they rode along in a rickety float, protected themselves from the sun with a parasol, wore beads and necklaces, and waved to the crowd. Reed wore a white T-shirt, black shorts, a white baseball cap, and sunglasses. Reed and Willner cohosted a radio show titled New York Shuffle that aired on the Loft, a channel on SiriusXM satellite radio. The two men chatted about music in the most relaxed way possible, their topics ranging seamlessly from a Leadbelly song to the Angels’ “My Boyfriend’s Back” to a Jimmy Durante track to an obscure reggae song to a Staple Singers’ classic to the most current music that had caught their ears. While Willner, a music obsessive, was clearly the show’s talent spotter and archivist, Reed enjoyed himself as he evoked both the radio shows he had loved as a boy and his own free jazz rantings while at Syracuse University. Reed even crossed the line into writing criticism. He reviewed Kanye West’s album Yeezus on the website the Talkhouse, and while his piece is rambling and unfocused, it’s riveting to witness him tangle with one of the thorniest artists of the new millennium.

  On another note, Keith Richards encountered Reed, who was vacationing with Anderson in the Caribbean, and Reed asked if Richards could provide him with some weed. Richards happily obliged. How did Reed respond? “Well,” Richards said with a catarrhal laugh, “I didn’t hear any complaints!” The idea of these two reprobates in winter—men who had spent decades battling each other for the top spot on the list of the rock stars most likely to croak—sharing weed while on vacation says so much about the quotidian joys survival can make possible.

  Sarth Calhoun toured with Reed and Anderson and experienced the uncanny connection that the two very different people had developed. “It was intense hanging out with them every day, going to lunch with them and then being onstage between them,” he said. “Onstage, it couldn’t have been more different from the Metal Machine Trio. It was so delicate, where the slightest breath would affect the music. They understood each other very well, and they both had this great ability to be succinct, so in conversations with them I would always feel like I was rambling on. It was like hanging out with two poets. Everything they said was like a perfect koan, and I’m just like, ‘Blah blah blah.’”

  “Some people marry themselves, but they brought different worlds together,” Willner said about the contrast between Reed and Anderson. “You’ve got Laurie, who’s in the art world, very edgy and experimental, and she brought Lou into that world. Laurie became close friends with David Bowie and other of Lou’s rock friends. And as artists they’re very different. Lou doesn’t throw anything out, and some of Laurie’s best stuff we will never hear. But they brought their two worlds together, and it was just magic.”

  Suzanne Vega was a downtown neighbor of Anderson’s as well as a friend of Reed’s, and she took note when the two became a couple. “To a certain extent, I wasn’t surprised because I knew Lou had broken up with Sylvia and was looking around,” she said, “and Laurie’s beautiful and clever and a New York icon. Love works in unpredictable ways. There was a transcendent thing going on when you would see them together, but that’s not what I would have predicted. I would have predicted that they would each be somewhat defensive or ironic, you know? I mean, when I was around Lou, I never let my guard down, so I would only imagine that others would do the same. I knew that Lou could turn on you. But the way Laurie describes what happened between them is that they started talking and they never stopped, and there didn’t seem to be this ironic shield. They were both so clever that you would think that they would be like two shells banging against each other rather than the beautiful thing that it was.”

  Often when Reed and Anderson were together, it seemed as if Reed was doting on her and she maintained a certain distance, a bit of emotional remove that was certain to keep Reed alert. However, Vega noted that that dynamic worked both ways. “Lou could be flirtatious,” Vega said. “Just because he was madly in love with Laurie didn’t mean that he wouldn’t occasionally flirt with some blonde or some this-or-that. And Laurie would just walk over and tap him on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, let’s go sit down.’ Or she would just go over and play with him until his face turned around to hers again. He would sort of joust with her, and she would defend herself or just slip out of the grip of it, transcend it.” Reed’s own way of handling such situations was typically more blunt and frontal. At a birthday dinner for the novelist A. M. Homes at the Greenwich Village restaurant Il Cantinori, Reed noticed Anderson, seated across the table from him, enjoying a conversation with writer Lee Smith. Reed leaned across the table, glared at Smith, and challenged Anderson. “Who the fuck is this guy?” he asked. A devoted fan of Reed’s, Smith defused Reed’s anger by asking him about Delmore Schwartz.

  “Lou and Laurie’s relationship was like this beautiful, shimmering thing that seemed to be directed at each other very much,” Vega said. �
�But it wasn’t exclusive. I still felt very comfortable, even if it was just the three of us there. I never felt like, ‘Oh, I should leave.’ I felt friendly with both and included in whatever dynamic was going on. But the relationship between them had its own life, and that’s nothing I could have predicted.”

  Michael Dorf, who ran the Knitting Factory and later established the high-end club City Winery, came to know Reed and Anderson quite well. As a young man, he had come to New York enamored of Warhol and the Factory scene, and viewed the outpouring of creativity of that time as embodying “the appeal of wanting to do something in the live arts in New York. Even the name Knitting Factory had its odd connection to the Factory. So getting a chance to meet Lou was as high up on my check-off list as possible.” Dorf was present in the early days of Reed and Anderson’s courtship, and he was continually struck by the quality of Reed’s behavior around her. “I never saw anything but absolute reverence,” he said. “I don’t know how anyone can do that with their lover. He would act like her bodyguard and handler, always monitoring to make sure that she was being taken care of. He really put her on a pedestal in a way that was special. They were a cute couple and you saw them together all the time. You could see the incredible love he had for her.” Like Willner, Dorf spoke of Reed’s kindness and affection. “I’ve heard the stories of him yelling, being angry with people,” he said. “I never had that. My memory of him was soft skin, very soft skin, his being very physical, giving me a kiss every single time I saw him. The last time he was onstage at City Winery, he kind of pushed my head down to kiss me on the forehead. It was fatherly, just very warm.”

  The Reed who had shaved a swastika into his hair in the seventies and had not hesitated to sling anti-Semitic comments altered his relationship to Judaism as he got older. Dorf organized alternative public Seders to celebrate Passover at the Knitting Factory, City Winery, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and Lincoln Center, and Reed was a regular participant, typically playing the role of the Wise Child, one of the four children (Wise, Wicked, Simple, and the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask) who reside within all of us and who have complex, overlapping relationships with one another. Philip Glass and John Zorn were two other notable musicians who participated. One year, Reed brought his sister, Merrill, and an aunt to the Seder, an example of his warming toward his family. “We had this interesting bond,” Dorf said of Reed’s participation in the Seders. “It was a cool relationship that started around not so much exploring his Jewishness but his willingness to identify as Jewish. I still feel very much like a cultural Jew, and I think Lou connected in that way, that there was a way to express yourself and be connected to your identity and feel more Jewish without its having a religious focus.” For his texts, Reed read from Poe’s “The Raven” and from Bob Marley’s aptly titled “Exodus.”

  Reed, who had relatives in Haifa, visited Israel a number of times and performed there with Anderson in 2008. Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, a progressive spiritual leader based in Jerusalem, guided Reed and Anderson on a tour of the old city in 2011 and described him as having a “Jewish soul.” Rabbi Weiman-Kelman also described how, during their first meeting, he and Reed had “quite a long, complicated discussion about the origins of circumcision.” Reed also connected with his family and his Jewish roots in the sweet documentary he made about his father’s cousin Shirley Novick in 2010, as she was about to celebrate her hundredth birthday. Titled Red Shirley and directed by Ralph Gibson, the film captures Reed in conversation with Shirley, who fled Poland during World War II and became a socialist, union organizer, and civil rights activist in New York. The Nazis had murdered her parents and all the Jewish residents of her village. “This was an act of love,” Reed said. “I realized if I didn’t do this, a connection of a lot of things would be lost forever. So there was a great impetus to do this.”

  Dorf and Reed also forged a friendship based on a mutual love of good wine—a surprising interest for Reed, given his rehab experience and his struggles with both diabetes and hepatitis C, which he contracted from shooting drugs. The first time Reed played at the Knitting Factory, he and Dorf enjoyed a bottle of Domaine Drouhin Willamette Pinot Noir that photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders provided. Next door to the Knitting Factory was the restaurant Montrachet, which, according to Dorf, “had one of the best Burgundy collections in the world.” It became a tradition for Dorf to treat Reed and his band to dinner at Montrachet after his Knitting Factory shows. “That was rare for me, because we didn’t have enough money to do it,” Dorf said. “We were struggling at the Knitting Factory. But these shows were so successful for us that I was willing to take a chunk of the money and go to Montrachet. We really enjoyed our Burgundy indulgence.”

  Dorf recalled going with his wife, Sarah, to Reed and Anderson’s apartment on West Eleventh Street, ostensibly for dinner. “This was going to be a big Pinot Noir evening,” Dorf said, so he brought a magnum of Domaine Drouhin. Reed also contributed a magnum of the wine. Sarah was pregnant at the time, but she and Dorf had not yet told anyone, so they agreed that she would sneak her glasses to him. Anderson did not drink much, but she was dancing around the room, celebrating the feeling of the apartment’s radiant heat on her feet. They decided not to eat dinner at the apartment and instead brought the wine with them to the Spotted Pig, a nearby celebrity hangout. Reed and Dorf drank most of the wine, and, thrilled by the evening—and drunk enough—Dorf finally raised the topic he had always wanted to with Reed. “Wow,” Dorf said, “you were really in the Velvet Underground!” Reed seemed amused but simply said, “Michael…” and muttered some kind of response. “What was he going to say at that point?” Dorf wondered later. The moment was awkward in the way that drunken conversations between friends can sometimes be, but it was another marker of the connection between them.

  Reed brought Václav Havel to the Knitting Factory to see John Zorn’s band Masada. Then the staff of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright contacted Dorf and said that Albright wanted to attend the show with Havel. Dorf closed off the club’s balcony and provided food and drinks. Masada was playing as all the dignitaries arrived with their security details, and lots of noise ensued as everyone greeted one another and tried to get settled. Zorn was not amused. He looked up at the balcony and said, “Shut the fuck up!” “All the Secret Service folks were about to draw their weapons,” Dorf recalled. “Havel and Albright stopped talking, and Lou, who was standing with me off to the side, looked at me, and we both started laughing very quietly. He put his arm around me to shield both our laughter and also not have Zorn get madder at us. It was a highlight of my life. The band continued and everyone was quiet. Lou had a smirk and twinkle in his eye for the rest of the night, and we had a new bond.”

  Strangely, this was not the first time that Secretary Albright had socialized with Reed. She was also present when Reed played a thirty-five-minute set at the White House in 1998, when President and Mrs. Clinton hosted a state dinner for Václav Havel. Reed had tangled with the Clintons’ social secretary that night about the volume at which he should play, but the evening came off without a hitch. Among the other attendees that night were Kurt Vonnegut, Mia Farrow, Henry Kissinger, and Stevie Wonder. Reed’s appearance came less than a week after special prosecutor Ken Starr issued his report about the Monica Lewinsky affair, and the White House was engulfed in scandal. The president, however, seemed in an excellent mood. After Reed’s set, Clinton said, “If you had as much fun as I did just now, you should give President Havel all the credit.” Speaking to a reporter from the Washington Post, Reed offered a strong defense of the president. “I think what’s being done to him is terrible,” Reed said. “Your private life should be your private life. I think it’s a smear campaign.”

  Reed’s private life provided quiet moments of pleasure that complemented the more public life that he and Anderson lived. Writer Brian Cullman described watching Reed search through the box of old 45s that Cullman had brought to a birthday party for Reed’s friend the si
nger-songwriter Jenni Muldaur. Cullman recalled Reed’s pausing to admire his copy of the Jaynetts’ haunting “Sally Go ’Round the Roses,” a number two single in 1963. Whatever else was happening in his life, Reed never stopped loving the music of that era. At a party in a West Village gallery to celebrate the publication of his disturbingly surreal book of photos, Emotions in Action—a stark collection of images that plunge beneath the surface of their subjects, whether human or landscape, into the realm of suppressed feelings—Reed stood with Anderson and their dog Lolabelle and reached to light a cigarette. “I can smoke in here, right?” Reed asked his publicist. The answer to his question was, of course, no: smoking had been banned in all public places in New York City. Reed didn’t wait for an answer. He leaned against the wall, lit his cigarette, and wryly said, “It’s my party…” I happened to be there and completed his reference to Lesley Gore’s classic hit: “And I’ll smoke if I want to.” Reed smiled and put his hand on my arm. “There’s not many of us who remember that stuff,” he said.

  The title of Reed’s photo book recalls Ernest Hemingway’s line about the goal of his writing being to provide “the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion.” That’s an apt description of Reed’s photos as well as his lyrics, his gift for describing events as simply and directly as possible and letting the listener’s emotional response emerge from the stated facts at hand. In addition to Emotions in Action, Reed published two other books of photos: 2006’s Lou Reed’s New York and 2009’s Romanticism, a collection of photos he took while traveling in Europe, Asia, California, and other locales. As with his music, Reed approached photography in rigorously technical terms, and he would often discuss his pictures in regard to how they were shot and printed rather than their evocative, impressionistic subjects. Reed’s photography was another example of Anderson’s influence on him, his adoption of her willingness to cross aesthetic boundaries and assume that her sensibility would lead her in a productive direction. It was also another expression of his desire to establish himself as an artist beyond the realm of rock and roll.