by Lou Reed
AUSTER: Well, Wayne saw it in San Francisco and thought it might be a good premise for a film.
REED: Can I ask you a question? Now I get asked the same question all the time. And it’s great for me to ask you. Did you really meet someone like Auggie who was taking a picture every day from that corner?
AUSTER: No, it’s all made up. In fact, I wrote the story for the Times in such a way as to confuse everyone. I tried to blur the boundaries between what is real and what is not real, and the proof that it worked was that Mike Levitas, the editor of the page, hired a photographer to do the pictures, and half the letters that came into the Times were letters of protest, saying, “Why didn’t you publish Auggie Wren’s photographs, how could you rip that poor man off?” When he doesn’t exist! So Wayne read the story and thought a film could be made on the strength of it. For over a year I didn’t participate, I didn’t want anything to do with writing the screenplay. Little by little, he lured me in.
REED: But you gave him permission …
AUSTER: I gave them permission because he’s a good filmmaker.
REED: So you said, “If you want to pursue it, go ahead, I’m not gonna stop you,” right?
AUSTER: Exactly. But Wayne led me into it, and I enjoyed working with him. He brought me in as a real partner. He’s the only filmmaker in the history of American films, I think, who has actively courted the collaboration of a writer and has worked with him so closely that finally both our names are on the film. It’s an extraordinary thing.
REED: “30th Smash Week!” I remember passing that and saying, “That must be a very pleasurable thing to see.”
AUSTER: It was very nice; we didn’t expect anything like that to happen. Blue in the Face was born during rehearsals for Smoke. Harvey was there with Giancarlo Esposito, and they said, “Can we improvise just to warm up?” Of course they could, and what they did was so funny and interesting that Wayne, in one of his bursts of enthusiasm, turned to me and said, “Why don’t we make another movie when we’re done with Smoke?” So we started working on that too. That’s when you and I spoke. And why did I call you? Simply because we had become friends and I liked you very much and I admired your work and I thought there was something about your voice that was going to work in this film, because it’s a New York voice. We didn’t have any plan; as you know, we were winging it, and it worked. I’m glad we did it—such a nutty project. Six days to shoot and ten months to edit. But back to you, Lou, there’s something else I wanted to ask you. As you keep making music, do you feel that it gets easier or harder? That you’ve learned anything or are you constantly having to teach yourself all over again?
REED: I have to teach myself all over again, but it’s much quicker, because I’ve done it before and I remember, and I remember fairly fast.
AUSTER: You get to your mark faster.
REED: Absolutely. I have learned some things not to do, and I’m careful not to do them.
AUSTER: I find that it gets harder, that I get stupider as I get older and have to keep relearning or teaching myself all over again. The only thing that experience has helped me with is not to get too depressed when it’s not going well. That’s a big improvement, because when I was younger and got stuck, which happens to writers all the time—you run into dead ends or go down the wrong path—I would get desperate. I rarely could work my way out of the problem. Now, I run into that wall and I say, “All right, time to stop, just leave it alone, just walk away and come back in two or three days. Maybe even a night’s sleep is all you need.”
REED: That’s the thing. If experience only taught you that, you’d be miles ahead of the younger you.
AUSTER: I am in that respect.
REED: I think of it as a trick. If you sat there saying, “Oh my God, it’s gone, it’s this, it’s that, I’m finished, oh, da-da, da-da, da-da,” but in fact you say, “You know, I’m gonna go get a pizza …”
AUSTER: Exactly; read the sports page …
REED: … Maybe watch the Knicks, “We’ll come back to this and not be worried.” It’s the lack of worry, everything will be okay. It’s a natural ebb and flow taking place. I think it’s the single most important thing I’ve learned. And there’s one other thing I’ve learned and that is, when the flow is going, stay out of the way. Don’t get hung up on a word or singular detail, or you’ll stop it.
AUSTER: Yeah, just keep pushing ahead.
REED: Keep going in a straight line. You can always come back, but if you intrude you can do something that can derail everything and then you will go into that panic state of “uh-oh.”
AUSTER: Okay, last question, because this is something that I don’t do and I can’t share with you. After all these years, does performing still thrill you?
REED: When I haven’t done it in a while, I can’t even imagine how you do it. That’s also true though, for me, regarding writing. If I haven’t written anything for a while, I can look at the lyrics and I can’t even imagine who wrote it. It’s very, very strange and I really wish that didn’t happen. I really wish that I looked and said, “I know exactly how I did that, I know how to get it back,” but it’s not true. With performing, I know that I really like playing with the guys and I know the show can be an enormous amount of fun. It’s just at this particular stage of the game I can’t for the life of me figure out, “Who does that?”
AUSTER: It’s like contemplating swimming. It’s a chilly day and plunging into the water is the last thing you want to do. Then you’re in the water and it feels good.
REED: I know that I do it, I know I get off on it. It’s like one of those things you were saying about trying to teach yourself to remember. It must be something like that. But I’m gonna be remembering real soon. But every time I do it I really love it, there’s nothing like the exhilaration of a live show.
AUSTER: I’ve given many readings, but it’s not quite the same thing. You’re just reading your book, you’re not really “performing” it.
REED: Well, reading is performing, isn’t it?
AUSTER: In a more subtle way, perhaps, it’s much more subdued. Although I must say, my friend Art Spiegelman and I read at SummerStage in Central Park last July.
REED: I did that.
AUSTER: On this big rock and roll stage with five thousand people in the audience and that was a new kind of reading for me. Mosquitos flying in your face, helicopters whirring overhead.
REED: Don’t you think there’s acting involved? Don’t you think it’s a performance?
AUSTER: Definitely. But it’s not as though … it’s just something I do every now and then.
REED: Don’t you think of putting some music on the back of it?
AUSTER: [Laughing.] No. We can try that sometime.
REED: Like jazz. Like those old fifties guys used to do.
AUSTER: Bongo drums. [Laughing.]
REED: This is a good place to stop.
AUSTER: I think so.
REED: The melding of word and music.
AUSTER: We’re all on the stage here.
THE SPIN INTERVIEW
LOU REED
INTERVIEW BY DAVID MARCHESE
SPIN
2008
With the Velvet Underground, he was the epitome of downtown cool. As a solo artist, he played the part of glam god, noise provocateur, and critics’ bête noire. Still, Lou Reed insists, “There’s nothing complicated about me.” Kind sir, we beg to differ.
Lou Reed does not abide. Nor should he. Not when the lifelong New Yorker exploded rock’s borders with the Velvet Underground and invited cross-dressers and speed freaks onto the charts with “Walk on the Wild Side.” Sure, Reed’s restless muse often leads to the likes of 1973’s sepulchral concept album about suicidal lovers, Berlin, and 1975’s feedback opus Metal Machine Music, but he doesn’t care what you think anyway. “Do I feel vindicated?” he snaps over artichoke salad at a chic West Village café, as he discusses those albums’ recent critical reevaluation. “For what? I always liked Berl
in.” Reed’s 2006 live performances of that album are out now on DVD and CD.
Testy moments aside, Reed has aged well, being feted at this year’s South by Southwest and, last April, finally marrying performance artist Laurie Anderson.
Despite his iconic status, he, like mentor Andy Warhol, was never one for nostalgia and, as always, brooks no bullshit. The implication, as with so much of his work, is this: Take nothing for granted.
MARCHESE: You’re so closely associated with New York. But you haven’t written explicitly about the city since—
REED: I wrote a song for Cartier that you can download from my website. Have you heard that?
MARCHESE: Yeah. “Power of the Heart.”
REED: I did two songs for [2007’s] Nanking documentary: “Gravity” and “Safety Zone.” Have you heard those?
MARCHESE: Not “Safety Zone.”
REED: Research, research, research. It means everything. [Sighs.] You were saying?
MARCHESE: Has the fact that the city has been cleaned up made it a less interesting subject for you?
REED: I would hope to write about more than just the city. Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn’t work that way.
MARCHESE: How does it work?
REED: I write whatever shows up. That’s good enough for me. I’m part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act. You know, Chuck Berry is still out there playing. No one can play his music like he does. My stuff’s the same way. [His phone rings.] Sorry, I have to take this. [A minute passes.] That was my 99-year-old aunt. You know how it is. Someone will say, “Have you heard that so-and-so sounds like you?” Why? Because they sing out of key?
MARCHESE: You put together the track list for 2003’s NYC Man career-spanning anthology. As someone who doesn’t listen to his own music much, did you hear anything in your old songs that surprised you?
REED: I heard the same things wrong that were wrong the first time. The first generation of CDs sounded terrible. Any chance to remaster would make the music sound better than what was already out there. People at the record company do not give a shit. They don’t care if the tapes are sitting on a warehouse floor somewhere. When they say music is disposable, they’re not kidding.
MARCHESE: Aside from sonic issues, did the songs mean anything different after hearing them again?
REED: Sound quality was the reason I listened to those songs. That’s it. They sound better now. They’re not vinyl, but they can be killer. The Berlin DVD, I’ll match that up against anything. The sound is murderous. Murderous.
MARCHESE: Okay, let’s talk about Berlin. It was pretty poorly received when it came out. Then, in 2006, you were approached to make the album into a concert film directed by Julian Schnabel. Did you get a sense that people’s feelings about the album had changed over time?
REED: You know, it’s funny. It’s making me think, like, if you were talking to Bill Burroughs, would you have said, “Now, Bill, they put together the new version of Naked Lunch. What do you think? Do you still feel the same way, Bill?” Can you imagine being put in a position where you’re trying to justify Naked Lunch? How are we supposed to answer that? You gotta be kidding me. Berlin, you know, we tried. It’s such a simple idea that it barely qualifies as an idea: Instead of all the songs having different characters, why not have the characters come back and deal with each other? How much simpler can it get?
MARCHESE: Does it matter to you that the album has been given a second life?
REED: I mean, I’m glad people get to hear it. People never really got to hear Berlin because of the critics. Then critics ask you if you feel vindicated by other critics. I didn’t like critics then, and I don’t like them now. There you go. I’ve always been outside the mainstream, and it stayed that way.
MARCHESE: The year before Berlin came out, you released “Walk on the—”
REED: I followed up my one big hit with Berlin; Berlin has got this rap that it’s depressing. Are you joking me? You can’t handle it? You ever read Hamlet? Who are you talking to that’s so stupid? Are you joking? You’re kidding me.
MARCHESE: When you were touring behind Berlin in the mid-’70s, you were doing some risqué stuff onstage. [Reed would feign injecting drugs during concerts.] You were singing about domestic abuse. And people clapped. Did you ever wonder if they were clapping for the wrong reasons?
REED: I have no control over the audience. I have no idea what they think. My heart’s pure. I can’t do anything. I really can’t do anything. I don’t know what goes on in the crowd. I’ve had them show up and throw beer cans at me. I caused riots in most of the major cities. What can I do?
MARCHESE: Singing about gay life on albums like [1972’s] Transformer was definitely transgressive at the time. But now, playing with sexuality and gender is part of the mainstream. Do you feel like the center has come to you?
REED: That’s truly a critic’s kind of question. I have absolutely no idea about anything.
MARCHESE: Is that really true, though? Do you think your music has been something of a guide for people to learn about behavior they might not otherwise encounter?
[Reed stares and remains silent.]
MARCHESE: Is there a moral aspect to a song like “Heroin”?
REED: I don’t know what to think about something like that. I don’t think anybody is anybody else’s moral compass. Maybe listening to my music is not the best idea if you live a very constricted life. Or maybe it is. I’m writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn’t pay any attention at all. Sometimes it’s me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it’s not me at all.
MARCHESE: Does that confuse people?
REED: You know, I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn’t any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That’s my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs. But I present it to you like: This is how it is. Simple. But a guide to doing things that are wrong and right? I mean, Othello murders Desdemona. Is that a guide to what you can do? The guy in Berlin beats up his girlfriend. Is that a guide to what you can do? Is that what you walk away with? I don’t think so. Maybe they should sticker my albums and say, “Stay away if you have no moral compass.”
MARCHESE: Let’s talk about the earliest days. In the early ’60s, you started out in what was essentially a bar band, right?
REED: It was a bar band. A really bad bar band. My first regular gig was factory songwriting for [budget label] Pickwick Records. It was real cheap, hack stuff. Whatever was popular, I’d write an imitation. Ten racing songs. Ten surfing songs. Some of them weren’t bad. Kids find this stuff now and then sell it online. Go figure.
MARCHESE: Given that you cut your teeth writing to order and playing covers, was it difficult to develop your own songwriting style?
REED: That happened when I was in college [at Syracuse] and starting to write the stuff that ended up on the first Velvet Underground record. That was me trying to write myself. I don’t remember if it was the first song I wrote, but “Heroin” was the first one where I remember saying, “I’ll leave that one alone.” This is 1963, ’64.
MARCHESE: Syracuse is where you met [Velvet Underground guitarist] Sterling Morrison?
REED: Yeah, Sterling was up there. Then we moved to New York. I met [VU multi-instrumentalist John] Cale in New York when Pickwick needed people with long hair to be a make-believe rock group and play a song I wrote called “The Ostrich.” Cale was one of them.
MARCHESE: Did you meet Andy Warhol soon after?
REED: That was a little later. I first met Andy when he came down to hear the Velvet Underground when we were playing on West Third Street in New York at a place called the Café Bizarre.
MARCHESE: How important was Warhol’s support?
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sp; REED: To have Andy Warhol say you’re on the right track … it meant a lot to me that he liked the material. It was everything.
MARCHESE: It’s easy to think of New York as this great incubator of bands. But that wasn’t the case for the Velvet Underground, was it?
REED: Is this going to be all about the Velvet Underground now?
MARCHESE: No. Did it hurt or help that you guys developed apart from a scene of bands?
REED: The Velvet Underground was part of Andy’s group, and Andy wasn’t part of anything. I suppose you could say he was part of Pop Art, but he was really off on his own thing. I don’t know what things would’ve been like if he hadn’t been there to support us.
MARCHESE: Did the confidence you got from Warhol help you decide to go solo?
REED: I’ve never been superconfident about anything. The work is never as good as it could be.
MARCHESE: How does an unconfident person put out Metal Machine Music?
REED: I’ve thought a lot about that question. If something of mine ever got popular, maybe I could’ve stuck with that. But that was never the point. I had other goals.
MARCHESE: Which were?
REED: Hubert Selby. William Burroughs. Allen Ginsberg. Delmore Schwartz. To be able to achieve what they did, in such little space, using such simple words. I thought if you could do what those writers did and put it to drums and guitar, you’d have the greatest thing on earth. You’d have the whole pie. It’s a simple thought. There’s nothing complicated about me. I’m as straight as you can get.
MARCHESE: Your popularity sort of waxed and waned in the 1970s. Then, in the ’80s, you did some film acting, you were on the Amnesty International tour with U2 and Sting, you did an ad for Honda that used “Walk on the Wild Side.” Were you making a concerted effort to enter the mainstream, like David Bowie?
REED: Those were projects that came up at the time. Warhol used to do all kinds of ads to fund projects. I thought I could do the same thing, but people got really upset, so I didn’t do it anymore. Now people have their music in ads all the time and no one seems to care. It’s very strange. This has nothing to do with music, so I don’t know why you’re asking, but fine.
