by Lou Reed
MARCHESE: Tell me about having folks like Moby and My Morning Jacket play at your tribute concert at South by Southwest.
REED: That was amazing. Dr. Dog played, too. And they were all songs I wrote. It was astonishing to see. I couldn’t believe all those songs.
MARCHESE: It’s funny, you can tell which bands are into White Light / White Heat and which ones are into The Velvet Underground. What’s interesting to you about the influence you’ve had?
REED: My work goes from “Pale Blue Eyes” to “White Light / White Heat” and all stops in between. Generally speaking, you wouldn’t figure that one person is going to write both those songs. But I haven’t a clue about my influence. I mean, I really don’t. Someone will say, “Have you heard that so-and-so sounds like you?” Why? Because they sing out of key?
MARCHESE: How did collaborating with the Killers on the 2007 track “Tranquilize” come about?
REED: They asked me. It was a good song. I liked the singer. I did it.
MARCHESE: What other younger bands do you like?
REED: I’m not gonna list bands for you. I mean, I could look at my iPod. Battles. Holy Fuck. Melt-Banana.
MARCHESE: Tai chi training inspired your most recent album of new material [2007’s Hudson River Wind Meditations]. Has studying martial arts affected your approach to music?
REED: Everything affects the way I make music. I don’t understand what you want to know. I could say yes. Would that be better?
MARCHESE: From what I understand, tai chi has a spiritual component as well as a physical one. Has that spiritual component found its way into your music?
REED: It’s a really profound study. I couldn’t possibly sum it up for you. The problem is that I don’t think you know what you’re asking about. When you say tai chi, you’re just saying a generic thing like yoga. If you want to ask a question, you should know what you’re asking about, don’t you think?
MARCHESE: It’s hard to find a story about you that doesn’t mention your reputation as a difficult interview. Does that perception bother you?
REED: You could judge for yourself, can’t you? You want me to comment about other critics as though they matter. You save this question for last? I don’t know why you brought it up, seeing as we got along fine. Unless I’m mistaken. What answer do you want?
MARCHESE: I want to know how you feel about the way you might be perceived.
REED: You’re talking about critics and journalists. Listen, you’re not talking about music. I don’t want to get into this stupid subject with you. You brought it up. You shouldn’t have. We had a good conversation, and now we’re done. You feel better now? Did you find your angle? Do you think you did a good job?
MARCHESE: The question wasn’t a trick.
REED: I didn’t think you were trying to trick anybody. This is the kind of shit you wanted all along, and you saved it for last. What should I say?
MARCHESE: I’m not looking for any particular answer.
REED: You could’ve talked music, but this is what you wanted.
MARCHESE: Haven’t I been asking about music this whole time?
REED: You’re not interested in music. We’re done talking.
THE FINAL INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW BY FARIDA KHELFA
ROLLING STONE
NOVEMBER 8, 2013
KHELFA: Why did you do music? Why did you start music?
REED: I love it. You do what you love or you get arrested.
KHELFA: You start to play guitar, by yourself?
REED: When I was nine.
KHELFA: Nine?
KHELFA: But your father gave you a guitar or …?
REED: My father didn’t give me shit.
KHELFA: So where did you find the guitar?
REED: Very cheap.
KHELFA: You bought it?
REED: Of course.
KHELFA: It was your pocket money?
REED: From working in the forest and chopping trees down and taking care of chickens on the farm.
KHELFA: And you played and you learned by yourself?
REED: Yeah.
KHELFA: Just like that?
REED: Yeah. Rock and roll you only need three chords, I was very lucky, very easy then.
KHELFA: Do you play everyday, then?
REED: No. I don’t practice, I don’t play every day. I’ve never gone to school, I play from the heart.
KHELFA: But sometimes you take your guitar and you play, or …?
REED: Sure, well, I sleep with my guitar.
KHELFA: Ah, you sleep with your guitar?
REED: And my amp.
KHELFA: How did you tune the Zik? How did you tune it? [She is referring to the headphones he was helping to tune—Parrot Zik.]
REED: I know the way I like things to sound, so I could hear where it was missing, I knew what was missing.
KHELFA: What was missing?
REED: Certain frequencies in the bottom and then in the top a little, mmm, not clear.
KHELFA: But not clear for rock music, or not clear for all music?
REED: For rock. But I wouldn’t want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba, I mean, you know, it’s very important. Hip hop has thunderous bass, but so does Beethoven. If you don’t have the bass it’s like being amputated, it’s like you have no legs. Usually in the past it was the bass player, it was the first thing you didn’t hear, because with vinyl a lot of bass would make the needle skip. Then with CDs, the CDs sounded so bad, it was just horrifying, but the technology now—much, much better and part of the idea is from the twelve-inch vinyl. One song, twelve inch vinyl—now you had bass. So, how do you do that with CD? They had to have better programming, better software, and now they do, there is no excuse. I just remastered every album I have to take advantage of the new technology. And it sounded—it was so beautiful it made me cry. I am very emotionally affected by sound. Sound for me is like a dress for you.
KHELFA: What is sound for you?
REED: Sounds are the inexplicable. Sound is like light. What is light? What is sound? And yet we have these astonishing ears and we know when something is coming close to us without seeing it. Little Will the dog has ears that are 600 times better than me, he can hear things blocks and blocks away. But what is sound? Sound is more than just noise, and ordered sound is music.
There is a sound you hear in your head: it’s your nerves, or your blood running. It’s kind of amazing to hear that. Or if you’ve been in an anechoic room that has no sound at all and you hear your heart, that’s pretty amazing. Or if you’re in a hospital and you have an ultrasound and they turn it up and you hear your blood flowing, it sounds like a Mowk [Symphony]. It’s pretty amazing—sound, ordered sound is music. My life is music. If I couldn’t—well, Beethoven could make music even though he was deaf.
KHELFA: What is your very first memory of sounds?
REED: The first memory of sound would have to be your mother’s heartbeat, for all of us. So the thing that’s interesting is you grow up, from when you’re a peanut, listening to rhythm. And that’s why we love pwoh pwoh pwoh: it’s so simple, you know that.
KHELFA: So that’s the nature sound too?
REED: Of course, it’s, that’s it. But then there are nature sounds that are whoooo. The sound of the wind, the sound of love. Whoooo.
PAUL AUSTER is the bestselling author of The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, Sunset Park, and many other critically acclaimed novels. He was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in 2006. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
LESTER BANGS (1948–1982) was a head staff writer for Creem from 1971 to 1976. He wrote for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Penthouse, and Playboy. He also wrote lyrics, sang lead, and played harmonica; his album, Jook Savages on the Brazos, was released in 1981.
DAVID FRICKE is a senior writer at Rolling Stone. He has more than ten thousand albums in his New York apartment.
NEIL GAIMAN i
s the bestselling author of books for adults and children. The recipient of numerous awards, his works have been adapted for film, television, stage, and radio. Some of his most notable titles include the novels The Graveyard Book (the first book to ever win both the Newbery and Carnegie medals), American Gods, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the UK’s National Book Award’s Book of the Year in 2013. Born in England, he now lives in the United States with his wife, the musician and writer Amanda Palmer.
FARIDA KHELFA is the House of Schiaparelli’s ambassador. She has directed films on the life of Jean Paul Gaultier and, more recently, about the Arab Spring. She worked as an actress and model until 1995. She lives in Paris.
DAVID MARCHESE is an editor and writer living in Brooklyn.
THE LAST INTERVIEW SERIES
*
KURT VONNEGUT: THE LAST INTERVIEW
“I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.”
$15.95 / $17.95 CAN
978-1-61219-090-7
ebook: 978-1-61219-091-4
LEARNING TO LIVE FINALLY: THE LAST INTERVIEW JACQUES DERRIDA
“I am at war with myself, it’s true, you couldn’t possibly know to what extent … I say contradictory things that are, we might say, in real tension; they are what construct me, make me live, and will make me die.”
translated by PASCAL-ANNE BRAULT and MICHAEL NAAS
$15.95 / $17.95 CAN
978-1-61219-094-5
ebook: 978-1-61219-032-7
ROBERTO BOLAÑO: THE LAST INTERVIEW
“Posthumous: It sounds like the name of a Roman gladiator, an unconquered gladiator. At least that’s what poor Posthumous would like to believe. It gives him courage.”
translated by SYBIL PEREZ and others
$15.95 / $17.95 CAN
978-1-61219-095-2
ebook: 978-1-61219-033-4
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: THE LAST INTERVIEW
“I don’t know what you’re thinking or what it’s like inside you and you don’t know what it’s like inside me. In fiction … we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way.”
$15.95 / $15.95 CAN
978-1-61219-206-2
ebook: 978-1-61219-207-9
JORGE LUIS BORGES: THE LAST INTERVIEW
“Believe me: the benefits of blindness have been greatly exaggerated. If I could see, I would never leave the house, I’d stay indoors reading the many books that surround me.”
translated by KIT MAUDE
$15.95 / $15.95 CAN
978-1-61219-204-8
ebook: 978-1-61219-205-5
HANNAH ARENDT: THE LAST INTERVIEW
“There are no dangerous thoughts for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.”
$15.95 / $15.95 CAN
978-1-61219-311-3
ebook: 978-1-61219-312-0
RAY BRADBURY: THE LAST INTERVIEW
“You don’t have to destroy books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
$15.95 / $15.95 CAN
978-1-61219-421-9
ebook: 978-1-61219-422-6
JAMES BALDWIN: THE LAST INTERVIEW
“You don’t realize that you’re intelligent until it gets you into trouble.”
$15.95 / $15.95 CAN
978-1-61219-400-4
ebook: 978-1-61219-401-1
