Transformer

by Victor Bockris

  In order to inject the prescription pills, the amphetamine group prepared an intravenous solution. Essentially they put the pills in a pan on the stove and boiled them. The water would rapidly turn yellow from the drug released from the tablets, as much as three hundred milligrams of methamphetamine hydrochloride. The water could then be drawn into a syringe for injection into a vein.

  The effects of such intense speed consumption were severe. “It was enough to take the top of your head off,” remarked Bob Jones. The shots explained Reed’s often temperamental states of being. “We never ate,” stated Bob Jones. “We were very, very wired. Everyone’s weight went right down. Lou weighed nothing. I lost forty pounds. And we never slept. The effect of having no REM, rapid eye movement sleep, was that we were deprived of dreams. So we would literally go for months without dreaming. The effect of this is that we would begin to have dreams in our waking state, which accounts for the paranoia and the delusionary style of the amphetamine addict.”

  The first soaking of the pills produced a dark yellow in the water, representing a strong dose. When for one reason or another, the Lister group became low on pills—which happened a few times in the two years Reed was involved—they would pour more water on the used pills, in what they called a second soak. The result would be a faint yellowing of the water. Shooting this diluted mixture produced a weaker effect and a limited amphetamine high. It was enough, however, to hold them for a few hours while they went looking for more pills.

  When amphetamine could not be found, members of the Lister group would convince themselves that putting sixty twice-used pills in a tube and boiling them up would result in some small amount of speed. However, the third soaking of pills failed to yellow the water. Deceiving themselves into believing that there was some speed in there, they would end up shooting water into their veins. Of course, impurities would go into their veins along with the water, which wasn’t such a good idea.

  “What would happen,” Jones explained, “was that your temperature would go through the roof almost immediately, within five minutes; you would feel a strange aching in your body and the next thing you’d know is your temperature would be about one hundred and three. You’d be drenched in sweat and in terrible, terrible pain in all of your joints. Appalling pain. And you would take your clothes off because it was too painful to keep them on and lie down on the bed racked with shivers and diarrhea and agony, drenched in sweat. That was called a bone crusher. You would lie there with your knees drawn up to your chest and retch and cry out in pain. And this would go on for five or six hours. At the end of Lou’s involvement with the amphetamine scene, this happened three or four times in a studio. He’d get a bone crusher and couldn’t record. It was hopeless.”

  Jones believed that the drug created the fodder for Lou’s songs, and the drug lifestyle was the ideal atmosphere for Lou’s work. After taking their shots, Reed and Jones would often sit around the former’s apartment. “There was nothing but drugs at Lou’s place,” Jones recalled. “There was never any eating. I guess in the course of time I gravitated towards Lou because I was interested in the way he spent his time in between shooting up, which was more interesting than what the rest of the group was doing. He was an international star at the time, it must have been hard to maintain his humility. Especially if you’re whacked out on drugs all the time. There would be acts of friendship, but Lou was very selfish. Lou probably had a few real relationships which would fulfill some kind of purpose. And I think in a funny sort of way the relationship he had with Rachel was a symbolic relationship. The relationship I had with him didn’t really exist except in the supplying him with drugs and with a pair of ears to listen to his speed rap about music and the drug world and crime. And someone who shared his interest in Warhol and was literate. There was a lot of strung-out, camp talk.”

  The two devoted a lot of time to listening to music and discussing their ideas of what was interesting about a particular piece. Lou showed Jones, who was an intelligent sounding board, the new, speed-induced lyrics he was working on, and he would also play the songs in draft. Lou was constantly playing, trying out songs, playing little riffs, and working the words into the music. He was extremely prolific and experimented with all sorts of different styles. On one occasion he recorded a whole cassette tape of Bob Dylan parodies. Lou also incorporated many of his experiences on the speed scene into songs of his “criminal” period. “If you analyze them, all of those songs on Coney Island Baby and Rock and Roll Heart are about this little crowd and its comings and goings,” reported Jones. “Having an attitude was a big thing for Lou. Attitude was the sort of drug equivalent of what is called in the black world ‘signifying.’ Talking from the sides of your mouth.”

  According to Jones, Lou’s social life outside this speed scene was limited. Although he was seeing some people in the music business, such as the singer Robert Palmer, his peculiar habits and long, erratic hours made it difficult for many friends to relate. He’d see guitarists, who’d come around and be moronic. He was very interested. They’d talk about music. He’d get interviewed and go into diatribes about lawyers. Outside of that, he’d see Rotten Rita, a real character from Warhol’s novel A, an account of twenty-four hours at the Factory with Lou talking about desoxyn. “Rita was about six foot two, a hundred and ninety pounds,” recalled Jones. “He lived under the elevated subway tracks in Queens in an absolutely terrible apartment. He had recently gotten out of jail in Bermuda, which he loved, and he had tapes of himself singing opera there. He was very wild, campy, and lonely. A very funny, potentially quite dangerous character, but at the same time quite sweet. You felt that he could tip a little bit and be capable of murder. And it was that side of him that was appealing to Lou. He was very much an outré camp figure who loved Callas; there was a lot of talk of Callas, there was a lot of playing of Callas albums, always opera, opera. He also became one of the main dealers.”

  For Lou, one of the appealing aspects of such large doses of amphetamine was the effect it had on making the most horrible, chilling experiences, as well as horrible, chilling people, interesting. This accounted for his attraction, for example, to Lister and some of the other characters on the scene, like Rotten. For a writer and rock star, faced with a constant assault of painful experiences such as the chaos of touring, as well as the ever-present need for new material, the drug was an effective tool. According to Bob Jones, “There seems to be some kind of deprivation of the normal blocks against certain kinds of interest in the macabre. I became fascinated with the police, for example; it was a fascination Lou and I shared. There was a big police book that I bought at Barnes and Noble about gunshot wounds. And it showed in color people who had put shotguns in their mouths and pulled the trigger. It showed people cut up, shot, all kinds of wounds. You’d see their brains spilling out all over the place. And it was very much that attitude that Lou was involved in at the time and that I became involved in, and I think understood as he did. It was that kind of erotic fascination with death.”

  Despite the drug’s seeming ability to open new vistas of creativity, in reality it was wearing him out. As his health deteriorated, his mental state and professional responsibilities suffered. Lester Bangs noted that “Lou’s sallow skin was almost as whitish yellow as his hair, his whole face and frame so transcendentally emaciated—he had indeed become a specter. His eyes were rusty, like two copper coins.”

  A salesman in a record store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, described the people who were buying Lou Reed records: “You get like these twenty-eight-year-old straight divorcee types, asking for Transformer and The Velvet Underground, but the amazing thing is that suddenly there’s all these fourteen-year-olds, coming in all wide-eyed: ‘Hey, uh, do you have any Lou Reed records?’”

  In retrospect, while rejecting his two most commercial RCA albums, Lou insisted that he made them in order to get the Velvet Underground albums back into print, claiming, “I kept going with Rock ’n’ Roll Animal because it did what it
was supposed to do. It got MGM to repackage all those Velvet things, and it got the 1969 Live album out.”

  That September, the double Velvet Underground album 1969 Live was released in the U.S. at the same time as several other Velvet Underground compilations were released in Europe. Patti Smith, on the verge of her entrance into the rock world as the high priestess of punk, but then still just a dog of a rock writer, reviewed the album in Creem, finding it oppressive and likable.

  By releasing his commercial solo albums, Lou was able to service the audience who had come with him out of the sixties as well as the crazed and dazed younger fans who were now attending his concerts like hyenas in droves.

  In retrospect, Lou was responsible for keeping the VU music alive by recording his albums and by pressing his former bandmates to release the music. His strategy was successful. Sterling Morrison, who had cut himself off from the music world, recalled with some annoyance that in early 1974 he began getting calls from Steve Sesnick: “And I thought, ‘What is this bullshit?’ Then Lou even called. Apparently his lawyer had told him to turn on the charm. They wanted me to sign the release for the 1969 Velvet Underground Live album. I did not want it released. There is a certain clean feeling that comes from not dealing with the people you’d have to, to collect royalties on anything like that. And I’d listened to the tapes and I thought, ‘Oh, man! I can’t see this selling ten copies!’ Musically I much preferred Live at Max’s Kansas City—it has much more energy. I said I was not going along with it. Then Steve Sesnick finally convinced me. I signed the release for a pittance because he told me he needed the money. I’m sure he was in cahoots with Lou in some strange way.”

  Maureen Tucker got a phone call at work explaining that Lou wanted to put this album out, but that they all had to sign, giving their consent: “And we had to sign for like, two hundred dollars, or something. I said, ‘No, no, I won’t sign for two hundred dollars, what do you mean, two hundred dollars?’ Then some agent type was calling me at work like mad: ‘Well, how about three?’ So I said, ‘What, are you crazy? I broke my ass for seven years for three hundred dollars? Go to hell.’ Sterling and I held out for more. We said we’re not signing for anything less than fifteen hundred, which even then was stupid—fifteen hundred dollars, which we foolishly signed for.”

  ***

  If Lou’s London period climaxed with recording Berlin, Lou’s Rock ’n’ Roll Animal period climaxed in his autumn–winter 1974 tour of the U.S. “He was very big in New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and part of the Midwest,” recalled the ever-faithful Barbara Falk. Rachel, listed as his “baby-sitter,” accompanied Lou on the tour. To dramatize his self- destructive motif, Lou kept “Heroin” in the tour repertoire, playing it for all it was worth. In a San Francisco column in Melody Maker of December 7, 1974, Todd Tolces described a “gory Guignol” before five thousand raving fans. Lou “pulled a hypodermic needle out of his boot … as the crowd erupted into cheers and calls for, ‘Kill, kill!’ he tied off with the microphone cord, bringing up his vein. As the writer ran for the gentlemen’s toilet, Lou handed the syringe to a howling fan.”

  No one could be certain what had really happened, but the image lingered on and added fuel to the talk that these were Reed’s final shows, that he would be unlikely to live beyond Christmas. For even if he wasn’t. actually shooting onstage, he was shooting up somewhere, and the drugs and lifestyle were killing him.

  In the mid-seventies, Lou was hitting the zeitgeist smack on the nose day after day. Although at home Lou was still the sentimental little boy who liked nothing more than to play with his dog, onstage he appeared as ugly, violent, vicious, and stupid as the confused times seemed to call for. “The Stanley Theater was the perfect setting for rock’s king of decadence—Lou Reed—and he knocked them dead last night,” wrote Peter Bishop in Andy Warhol’s hometown, Pittsburgh. “Once he got onstage, the crowd already standing on the seats applauding, he proved himself a star, embellishing the glitter-language lyrics with a choreographic blend of go-go, jitterbug, free-form, and street-fighting moves that threatened to shake the painted-on jeans from his scrawny hips. And how the audience loved it when he made the raunchy lyrics of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ even raunchier. This song and Reed himself are definite vestiges of the decadent movement of the late 1800s, and how Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley would have loved to hear and illustrate that song. He gives you more than your money’s worth of music and show; he’s what rock and roll is all about.”

  In Cleveland, RCA got September 13 proclaimed Lou Reed Day. A couple of weeks later RCA proclaimed Lou Reed Impact Day in New York, where Lou played shows at the Felt Forum.

  Lou was not often able to receive backstage guests after his shows because he was more often than not so profoundly moved by the emotional impact of the music and audience that Barbara would find him alone in his dressing room, unable to face anyone but her, sobbing uncontrollably. As Barbara described it:

  “He’d be wrung out, drenched, shaking, and sometimes crying from sheer release of all this pent-up emotion. Especially if it was a good audience. Or if there was a really bad audience and he’d be upset that there wasn’t anybody there. It was a physical and emotional release. After a while I would leave him alone to help pack up, and then he wouldn’t want to leave. And he’d talk about it—he’d say, ‘Did you see these moves or that step?’ I think he fancied himself a good dancer, but he was terrible. He was best with just the cigarette.

  “Other stars admired him greatly. He never came out and said it, but I think he was touched when they found him pretty nifty. I’ll never forget Mick Jagger crouching down behind the amps at the Felt Forum so he didn’t detract from Lou’s performance. I would bring him little glasses of champagne. Mick wanted to come right back into the dressing room and tell him how fabulous he was.

  Mirror, mirror on the wall … Lou Reed gazes at his alter ego, 1975. (Gerard Malanga)

  “At the end of the year, he was more erratic. Dennis suggested that he go to his own doctor. Lou looked up to him so much that he trotted off. I can’t imagine his doing this for anyone else. The doctor reported that Lou had … slightly elevated cholesterol. Ha! Lou never let Dennis forget this. His idea of a real doctor, of course, was the notorious Dr. Feelgood. Sometimes he’d be waiting on that doctor’s step at six a.m.” By the end of 1974, many sixties rock icons had moved into the mainstream. On December 13, for instance, former Beatle George Harrison had lunch with President Ford in the White House. Lou determined to defuse any attempt on the part of the record company or the critics to classify Lou Reed in the middle of the road.

  ***

  In January 1975, he went into a New York studio with a stripped-down band and recorded the seeds of the raunchy Coney Island Baby—“Kicks,” “Coney Island Baby,” “She’s My Best Friend,” and “Downtown Dirt”—in four days. Dennis Katz told Lou flatly there was no way this music could be released. The songs were too raw, too negative. “Dirt,” for one was an obvious and brutal put-down of Katz. As a result, Coney Island Baby was temporarily shelved and Katz sent Lou back on the road, telling him he was broke. It looked like an insensitive move. Sending the unstable, overloaded Reed on an international tour was likely to push him over an edge he had been teetering on all year. Behind him lay a crumbling relationship with Dennis Katz, and the slithering Rock-’n’-Roll Animal himself, whose skin he was painfully shedding. Reed was desperate to find a new image that would free him from the prison of glam rock. But, for the time being, the only reality that Lou could hold on to apart from his music was Rachel.

  Accompanied by Rachel, the loyal Falk, and a surprise addition to the band, Doug Yule, Reed launched this tour in Italy. The country, unbeknown to Lou, was in political turmoil. On February 13, a Dada-influenced gang called Masters of Creative Situations disrupted his first concert in Milan. As Falk explained, “These riots had nothing to do with Lou; they just chose our arena as their battle site, because there were so many people there. The fascists a
nd the communists were trying to influence the elections, so they threw tear gas at the stage. The riot police were all over the place with big shields.” Throwing bolts and screwdrivers at the band, the rioters leaped onstage and denounced Reed as a “decadent dirty Jew.” Lou left the stage in tears. He refused to proceed.

  Barbara canceled the next show in Bologna and took him to Switzerland. Once he was in a neutral country, Lou demanded that somebody from the Katz team fly over to consult with him. Both Katz brothers declined the invitation. However, the bushy-eyed manager of David Bowie, Tony DeFries, who had been trying to manage Lou since 1972, jumped on a plane and went in their stead. “We were holed up in this very modern hotel in Switzerland,” Falk recalled, “and Lou called DeFries. Lou said Dennis should have been there, Daddy should have held my hand. Dennis was furious when DeFries came to Switzerland, that Lou would even consider talking to DeFries.”

  However, when DeFries arrived in Switzerland, Lou holed up in his Zurich cocoon hotel suite and refused even to have a cup of coffee with Tony in the lobby. The unfazed DeFries flew back to New York without so much as clapping eyes on Reed. He’d made his point, and both Reed and Katz knew that he was serious.

  From then on, the tour grew rapidly worse. The next concert was also aborted, the promoter claiming Reed had a nervous breakdown. Another riot ensued. In France, a fan jumped onstage and pulled a knife. In England, a fan bit him on the bum. But the final straw was when Dennis suddenly yanked Barbara Falk off the tour, replacing her with an antique car mechanic named Alec. Lou went ballistic. First, he smashed up Coca-Cola bottles and stuffed the shards of glass in the hapless road manager’s pockets, and Alec cut his hand. Then, taking a page from Elvis Presley’s tour guide, Lou smashed up an RCA car that did not meet his requirements. Barbara Falk returned: