For all those reasons, I was heartbroken when John left for another job shortly after the primary edit of this book was completed. He assured me, however, that I would be in good hands with Jean Garnett, who had coedited the manuscript with him. As usual, he was right. Jean has been a splendid comrade-in-arms—fun, energizing, sharp, and completely reliable, an absolute pleasure to work with. Indeed, everyone at Little, Brown—from senior production editor Ben Allen to editorial assistant Gabriella Mongelli and proofreader Leslie Cauldwell—has set a standard for both professionalism and grace. I would especially like to thank copyeditor Nell Beram, who, to use a term of art of which I doubt she’d approve, saved my ass more times than it’s comfortable for me to remember. Nell, I definitely owe you one!
My psychotherapist, Jim Traub, not only performed his primary task of sorting out my psychological and emotional life with characteristic insight and sensitivity, but he has been a superb teacher in helping me to comprehend everything that comes into play at every moment in a life. His deft interpretive skills are reflected in all that is worthwhile on every page of this book. No book I write would ever be complete without thanking my late father and mother, Ray and Rose Marie DeCurtis, or my sister, Carmela, and my brother, Dom, who helped make me the person who could write it.
Finally, my darling daughter, Francesca, who was eight years old when I began this book. At times, I feared I might never complete it, though, of course, I always tried to put a brave face on for her. But we understand each other too well—deeply, unspokenly—for her to be fooled. She became interested in origami, and one day last year, when I was in the depths of my fears, she casually handed me a small piece she had done. It was a ramshackle desk, sort of like the one I work at in my office, with a folded paper tucked into it that read: “Lou Reed: The Book, by Anthony.” I was so moved by her empathy, but I didn’t say anything, nor did she. I simply placed that little desk in front of me, beneath my computer screen, and every day it helped me visualize an end to this work. And, eventually, it did end.
So here it is, sweetheart: Lou Reed: A Life, by Dad. For you.
May 2017
New York City
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANTHONY DECURTIS is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, where his work has appeared for more than thirty-five years, and a distinguished lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of In Other Words and Rocking My Life Away, and the coauthor of Clive Davis’s autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life, a New York Times bestseller. DeCurtis is a Grammy Award winner and has served as a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee for twenty-five years. He holds a PhD in American literature and lives in New York City.
ALSO BY ANTHONY DECURTIS
The Soundtrack of My Life by Clive Davis (coauthor)
In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work
Rocking My Life Away: Writing About Music and Other Matters
NOTES
Chapter 1. From Brooklyn to the Crotch of Long Island
1. “beauty pageants”: Merrill Reed Weiner, “A Family in Peril: Lou Reed’s Sister Sets the Record Straight About His Childhood,” Cuepoint, April 13, 2015, https://medium.com/cuepoint/a-family-in-peril-lou-reed-s-sister-sets-the-record-straight-about-his-childhood-20e8399f84a3#.cir5z3hsf.
2. “if you walked”: Josh Alan Friedman, “Lou Reed: Ugly People Got No Reason to Live,” Soho Weekly News, March 9–15, 1978, http://joshalanfriedman.blogspot.com/2009/09/lou-reed-ugly-people-got-no-reason-to.html.
3. “I didn’t hear nothin’”: Friedman, “Lou Reed: Ugly People Got No Reason to Live.”
4. “Most of my childhood memories”: Blue in the Face, directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster (Miramax Films, 1995).
5. “thought that the opportunity”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
6. “It was a fantastic place”: Author interview, Doug Van Buskirk.
7. “I don’t think any of us thought”: Author interview, Judy November.
8. “a quiet guy. Very reserved”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
9. “If you wanted to cast”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
10. “I never got to know”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
11. “anxious individual”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
12. “Hempstead’s like the crotch of Long Island”: Friedman, “Lou Reed: Ugly People Got No Reason to Live.”
13. “He would refer to my father”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
14. “suffered from anxiety and panic attacks”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
15. “He started being disrespectful early on”: Richard Bloom, email to author.
16. “Lou was a good student”: Author interview, Judy November.
17. “Lou and I were always reading”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
18. “I saw him practically every day”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
19. “the dusky, musky, mellifluous, liquid sounds”: Lou Reed inducts Dion DiMucci into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, January 18, 1989, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eigDGXduHiU.
20. “made me believe that I could write a song”: David Fricke interview with Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker, and Doug Yule, New York Public Library, December 8, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrz0kilk8p8.
21. “I was looking for an opportunity”: Author interview, Judy November.
22. “We were in many of the same classes”: Olivier Landemaine, “So Blue: An Interview with Phil Harris,” updated October 26, 2008, http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/loureed/thejades/jades.html.
23. “I used to ask Bob Shad”: Landemaine, “So Blue: An Interview with Phil Harris.”
24. “We played openings”: Landemaine, “So Blue: An Interview with Phil Harris.”
25. “I used to go up to Harlem”: David Fricke, “Q&A: Lou Reed,” Rolling Stone, March 6, 2003.
26. “We started a garage band”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
27. “Jerry had a good voice”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
28. “Lou was starting to become enthusiastic”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
29. “Allan was banging away”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
30. “As we got older in high school”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
31. “We all had long-term girlfriends”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
32. “There was a radio station”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
33. “We all knew everything”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
34. “limp and unresponsive”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
35. “suffered from delusions”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
36. “My father, controlling and rigid”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
37. “I watched my brother”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
38. “My parents were many things”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
39. “every day until the day they died”: Weiner, “A Family in Peril.”
Chapter 2. Corner Table at the Orange
1. “He thought it was the stupidest idea”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
2. “Lou and I really hit it off”: Author interview, Richard Mishkin.
3. “I knew I was in trouble”: Dylan Segelbaum and Erik van Rheenan, “Excursions on a Wobbly Rail: “Alumna Remembers Lou Reed’s Time at WAER,” the Daily Orange, November 4, 2013, http://dailyorange.com/2013/11/excursions-on-a-wobbly-rail-alumna-remembers-lou-reeds-time-at-waer/.
4. “Lou fashioned himself a rebel” and following: Author interview, Richard Mishkin.
5. “We knocked. No one answered” and following: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
6. “When I would come into a room”: Author interview, Shelley Albin.
7. “She was exquisite”: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
8. “Lou ended up with this gorgeous”: Author interview, Allan Hyman.
9. “I was very struck”: Author int
erview, Erin Clermont.
10. “It’s a strange word to use” and following: Author interview, Shelley Albin.
11. “he was invited to John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration”: James Atlas, Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet (Avon Books, 1977), p. 340.
12. “like Grant taking Richmond”: Atlas, Delmore Schwartz, p. 346.
13. “I’m not surprised by his friendship”: Rob Enslin, “Doin’ the Things That He Wants To: Lou Reed ’64 Honored for Achievements in Music, Writing, and Artistic Expression,” throughthejungle.com, 2014, http://www.throughthejungle.com/clients/art-sci/loureed.html.
14. “Those gatherings at the Orange Bar”: Author interview, Erin Clermont.
15. “Delmore was drunk all the time”: Author interview, Richard Mishkin.
16. “I don’t drink”: Author interview, Shelley Albin.
Chapter 3. Fellini Squared
1. “When all is said and done”: Author interview, Richard Mishkin.
2. “He wrote to Delmore Schwartz” and following: Lou Reed, letter to Delmore Schwartz, 1965, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
3. “Much of my income”: Lou Reed, “My First Year in New York: 1965,” the New York Times Magazine, September 17, 2000.
4. “They would put us in a room and say”: Author interview, Lou Reed.
5. “Phillips evidently assumed”: Victor Bockris and John Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography of John Cale (Bloomsbury, 1999).
6. “It was a period when a lot of new took place”: Author interview, Bob Neuwirth.
7. “My first impressions” and following: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
8. “I had a loft on Spring Street”: Author interview, Eric Andersen.
9. “before I met Lou” and following: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
10. “secretly I was exhilarated”: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
11. “I felt like someone turned a blender on”: Author interview, Rob Norris.
12. “At first, before they got to know him”: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
13. “I think Andy was afraid of him” and following: Author interview, Danny Fields.
14. “Moe and I were pretty young”: Author interview, Martha Morrison.
15. “I couldn’t believe what he was living in”: Author interview, Richard Mishkin.
16. “We were definitely observed”: Author interview, Martha Morrison.
17. “You just felt like you were at the center of things”: Author interview, Danny Fields.
18. “Can you imagine doing that to a band?”: Author interview, Danny Fields.
19. “I cannot make love to Jews anymore”: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
20. “I remember him saying to me”: Author interview, Shelley Albin.
21. “black-tied psychiatrists”: Grace Glueck, “Syndromes Pop at Delmonico’s: Andy Warhol and His Gang Meet the Psychiatrists,” the New York Times, January 14, 1966.
22. “a famous fashion model and now a singer”: Glueck, “Syndromes Pop at Delmonico’s.”
23. “I don’t think we would have been anything” and following: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
24. “I had never been in an environment like that”: Author interview, Richard Mishkin.
25. “It wasn’t really rock”: Author interview, Bob Neuwirth.
Chapter 4. The Destructive Element
1. “We were really excited”: Victor Bockris and John Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography of John Cale (Bloomsbury, 1999).
2. “‘Heroin’ was an incredible thing”: Rob Enslin, “Doin’ the Things That He Wants To: Lou Reed ’64 Honored for Achievements in Music, Writing, and Artistic Expression,” throughthejungle.com, 2014, http://www.throughthejungle.com/clients/art-sci/loureed.html.
3. “It will replace nothing, except maybe suicide”: Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POPism: The Warhol Sixties (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 210.
4. “We were pretty much appalled”: Author interview, John Cale.
5. “all very campy and very Greenwich Village sick”: Ralph J. Gleason, review of the Velvet Underground, the San Francisco Chronicle, May 30, 1966.
6. “I really didn’t need Ralph Gleason landing on me”: Author interview, Lou Reed.
7. “his body had lain unclaimed at Bellevue Hospital for two days”: James Atlas, Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet (Avon Books, 1977), p. 354.
8. “I was one of the first Medicare patients”: Lou Reed, Between Thought and Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed (Hyperion, 1991), p. 5.
9. “Into the destructive element”: Atlas, Delmore Schwartz, p. 356.
10. “Sgt. Pepper was a theatrical statement”: Author interview, John Cale.
11. “Robert Lowell, up for a poetry prize”: Lou Reed, “The View from the Bandstand: Life Among the Poo-bahs,” Aspen Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3 (December 1966).
12. “So Far ‘Underground,’ You Get the Bends”: David Fricke, liner notes, The Velvet Underground: 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (Polydor).
13. “Warhol’s favorite of the Velvets’ songs”: Reed, Between Thought and Expression, p. 10.
14. “The idea here was to string words together”: Reed, Between Thought and Expression, p. 7.
Chapter 5. Aggressive, Going to God
1. “was talking to Lou Reed the other day”: Kristine McKenna, “Brian Eno: Lots of Aura, No Airplay,” the Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1982.
2. “The album’s sales were actually not quite that dismal”: Jeff Gold, “Lou Reed and Exactly How Many Albums the Velvet Underground Sold,” RecordMecca: Fine Music Collectibles, November 10, 2013, http://recordmecca.com/news/lou-reed-exactly-many-albums-velvet-underground-sold/.
3. “Mick Jagger said that the song ‘Stray Cat Blues’”: Nick Kent, New Musical Express, June 1977.
4. “Max’s at that time was kind of a metaphor”: Author interview, Danny Fields.
5. “‘Lou Reed’ was a character”: Author interview, Bob Neuwirth.
6. “That was the worst thing”: David Fricke, “Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone, May 4, 1989.
7. “I was always inviting Louie”: Author interview, Martha Morrison.
8. “Every time I’d go there” and following: Author interview, Rob Norris.
9. “You’d pay three bucks” and following: Tony Lioce, “When Backstage Was No Big Deal,” the New York Times, November 2, 2013.
10. “I don’t know how Sesnick ended up managing the Velvets”: Author interview, Rob Norris.
11. “Our lives were in chaos”: David Fricke, liner notes, White Light/White Heat: 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (Polydor).
12. “very rabid record”: David Fricke, liner notes, Peel Slowly and See (Polydor Chronicles).
13. “I had twenty-four shock treatments”: Lou Reed, Between Thought and Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed (Hyperion, 1991), p. 11.
14. “It finally got to the point”: Author interview, Lou Reed.
15. “When I think of the many wonderful producers”: Victor Bockris and John Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography of John Cale (Bloomsbury, 1999).
16. “We used to rehearse, basically, onstage”: Fricke, White Light/White Heat.
17. “like a finely tuned British racing car” and following: Author interview, Rob Norris.
18. “Live, they were like nothing we’d ever heard”: Lioce, “When Backstage Was No Big Deal.”
19. “They say rock is life-affirming music”: Fricke, White Light/White Heat.
20. “Come. Step softly into the inevitable world”: Fricke, White Light/White Heat.
21. “No one listened to it”: Fricke, White Light/White Heat.
22. “To Lou… everybody’s gay”: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
23. “We never had a booking agent”: Fricke, Peel Slowly and See.
24.
“Yule claimed that his astrological sign of Pisces”: Andrew Lapointe, “Interview with Doug Yule,” PopMatters, February 11, 2005, http://www.popmatters.com/feature/yule-doug-021105.
25. “I knew it would make some difference”: David Fricke, liner notes, The Velvet Underground: 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (Polydor).
26. “this all-enveloping cloud of heaven music”: Richie Unterberger, White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day by Day (Jawbone Press, 2009), p. 230.
27. “The greatest thing about the Velvets was the holes in the music”: Fricke, The Velvet Underground.
28. “Yeah, it’s about Candy Darling”: Fricke, Peel Slowly and See.
29. “You still don’t hear that kind of purity in vocals”: Fricke, Peel Slowly and See.
30. “missed very much”: Reed, Between Thought and Expression, p. 23.
31. “I didn’t want to hear any of those songs”: Author interview, Shelley Albin.
32. “How do you define a group like this”: Lester Bangs, review of The Velvet Underground, Rolling Stone, May 17, 1969.
33. “I was having fun with words”: Reed, Between Thought and Expression, p. 25.
34. “Their music is just impure enough”: Fricke, The Velvet Underground.
35. “I think he thought they were Warhol-esque”: David Fricke, liner notes, Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition (Rhino/Atlantic).
36. “loaded with hits”: Fricke, Loaded.
37. “The guy couldn’t dance either”: Fricke, Loaded.
38. “It may seem astounding in retrospect”: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
39. “The Velvets played there all summer for no apparent reason”: Author interview, Lenny Kaye.
40. “No slur on Doug”: Fricke, Peel Slowly and See.
41. “It’s still called a Velvet Underground record”: Fricke, Peel Slowly and See.
42. “‘Rock and Roll’ is about me”: Fricke, Loaded.
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