Despite poor sales when their LPs were released in the ’60s, the Velvet Underground were and are one of the most influential rock bands of all time—and we mean influential in every imaginable sphere of modern and . . . let’s just say “postVelvets” rock ’n’ roll. A quote that’s been attributed to many people, but probably originated with Brian Eno, suggests that every person who bought the Velvet Underground albums went out and formed their own rock band. And be it the whole punk explosion of the ’70s (or its forebearers like the Stooges, Roxy Music, Patti Smith, etc.), Annie Lennox singing “Satellite Of Love” in front of thousands, David Bowie singing “White Light/White Heat” in front of millions, R.E.M. including not one, not two, but three Velvet Underground covers on their last record, John Cougar telling Lou Reed that “I’m basically here because of you,” the white noise of speed metal, a battle of the bands in Austin, Texas in which the groups play nothing but “Sweet Jane,” a clever Honda commercial, or a sad, lonely kid out there whose life is saved (literally) because of a Lou Reed song— the Velvets’ influence continues to be phenomenally pervasive, almost overwhelming at times.

In a year that’s been rife with 20th anniversaries, we thought it fitting to pay tribute to one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll bands in the history of the world. We had interviews with John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker, Nico, Doug Yule and LaMonte Young. Would Lou be willing to talk about the band? “Well, I’m talking to you” came the monotone reply— so away we go...

(Special thanks to Pat Baird for making this article possible.)

CREEM: Lou?

Lou Reed: Yeah.

Hi, how are ya?

Fine. I just wanted to say that I appreciate your magazine doing this for the Velvet Underground.

Well, uh, uh, we’re very pleased that you called us back. I don’t know if you read the stuff I sent...

Yeah, I read it. You’re like one of my biggest heroes, so I really appreciate you doing this for us.

Anyway, some people think you wanted to create a great artistic band with the Velvet Underground. As a result, you end up with all these people talking about how the Velvet Underground was some sort of great artistic statement. It always seemed to me that, above all, you guys just basically wanted to be a rock ’n’ roll band. Is that true?

Well, I can only talk about me, personally. I wanted to expand the perimeters of what a rock ’n’ roll song was all about. John and I wanted to build on that. And still be a great rock ’n’ roll band. But there were definite ambitions above and beyond just being a great rock ’n’ roll band. And it had to do with lyrics and the music.

I’ve read quotes from John Lennon where he said the Beatles set out to change the face of rock ’n’ roll. You had similar plans, then? You wanted to change rock ’n’ roll?

I wanted to elevate it.

That’s a good description. Can you tell me about the song “So Blue” that’s from the first band you were in? I heard it, and it’s like this great ’50s almost doo-wop song from the white New York street scene...

When I was 14 and in high school, myself and these other guys got a recording contract. We called ourselves the Shades. We got a recording contract through a guy with Mercury Records, and we formed a thing called Time Records. We released a song by a group called the Bell Notes called “I’ve Had It.” They were from East Meadow, Long Island, and we were from Freeport. We released “So Blue,” and the other side was called “Leave Her For Me.” It’s actually out on a bootleg now.

Yeah, I’ve got it on one of those bootleg compilations.

I don’t even have a copy of it.

Was that one of your compositions?

Yeah.

So that’s the kind of stuff you were writing when you first started out?

Yeah. I mean, that was like my very first recording. It’s like the stuff that was on the radio at the time. That’s what I like about rock ’n’ roll. Anybody can play it. The thing I always liked about a Lou Reed song is the fact that anybody should be able to sit down and play it—and, within that form, anybody should be able to sit down and write a song like it. Anyone who can swing a bat can hit a home run in rock ’n’ roll.

Well, it seems like, even up to this day, you still have a great love for doowop music and that ’50s New York street sound.

Yeah, I really like that. I like a cappella and I like rockabilly. I also like jazz. I like Ornette Coleman. I wanted to play guitar like he plays saxophone. You ever hear of him?

Oh, yeah, definitely.

He did a thing called Free Jazz. I wanted to play music like that. That’s why it was such a big thrill later doing those things with Don Cherry. He’s another guy I greatly admire.

Lou, there’s always been these rumors over the years that (Beatles manager) Brian Epstein was interested in signing the Velvet Underground. Is that true?

Well, I met him. He wanted to meet me, so I met him in New York. Whether or not he wanted to sign us, it never got to that point.

He died shortly after that?

Yeah. But someone told me “Brian wants to meet you.” So I met him. I don’t really think he wanted to sign the Velvet Underground. He said something like “Oh, John (Lennon) and I were on vacation, and all we listened to was the Velvet Underground.”

Was just the first album out at that time, or was White Light/White Heat out as well?

Uh, at least that. See, the first Velvet Underground album would’ve been out a year—or even possibly two years—earlier than it was. But there was a picture of this guy named Eric Emerson on the back cover. He was travelling with us and a bunch of people, and he wanted money for being on the cover. He held everybody up. He held Andy (Warhol) up, he held the record company up. He said, after the album was printed, that he wanted an exorbitant amount of money for having his face on the back cover. We argued about this for over a year, and we finally had to airbrush his face from the cover. So the album would’ve actually been out in ’66, or even late ’65.

The guy’s name was Eric Emerson?

Yeah. He died from a drug overdose not too long after that, and I wrote a song about it called “Street Hassle.”

Andy Warhol. How much was he really involved with that first album? Did he have a lot of input?

Well, the thing about Andy is that he was like the umbrella. He made it so we could do anything we wanted. But when we recorded the album, we had our sound. No one would make the record, so we made the record ourselves. It later got bought, but we’d already made it. Andy was just there, but he made it possible to do it the way we wanted to do it.

How about Nico? How much artistic input did she really have into that first album?

None.

(Laughs) I’ve always kinda suspected that.

She was Andy’s idea. Andy wanted us to use her, and we went along with it at the time. We didn’t really feel we needed a chanteuse, but Andy asked me to write a song about Edie Sedgwick, so I did and called it “Femme Fatale,” and we gave it to Nico because she could sing the high chorus. That’s why at the end of the song, you get those “oh-woa-woe”s. And... that was it. Now, with all due respect to Nico—but Andy wanted her so he got her.

Were you pretty much responsible for the direction of each album? They were all so different.

John (Cale) and I were. I mean, it was a group effort, but the major thrust was by myself and John.

You guys were producing this great music and these great albums, yet you didn’t get the respect and sales you warranted at the time. Was there a lot of disappointment—or even resentment towards that?

Oh, I don’t know. We were all just out of college. You know, John had his scholarship to the United States, the Leonard Bernstein scholarship. And I had my B.A. in English. So.. .you couldn’t really criticize us. I mean, we didn’t have much regard for anything else, and that included criticism in all forms.

Did you realize that your influence would still be this pervasive 20 years down the road? Or didn’t you think about it at the time?

Didn’t think about it at the time. And I’m very surprised now. Back then, we were surprised at how vast the reaction against us was. You know, I thought we were doing something very ambitious, and I was really taken aback by it. I used to hear people say that we were doing porn rock. The Man With The Golden Arm, which was a Frank Sinatra movie—now, that wasn’t a big deal being about drugs. But you write a song called “Heroin,” and you put it in a rock ’n’ roll song, then you’re corrupting the youth and encouraging them to use drugs. I mean, Ralph Gleason, who was one of the original editors of Rolling Stone, wrote an editorial about how much he loved Lenny Bruce—and he said the only problem with supporting Lenny Bruce is that it forces you to have to defend the likes of Lou Reed. And I thought that was just a fantastic comment to make. You had to face that. But as I say, we were fresh out of school, and we were kind of prepared for some of it. But certainly not all of it. I mean, I never expected to read editorials against me! Especially with records that we didn’t think were that big of a deal. It wouldn’t have been that offensive in a novel. That’s what I mean when I say we wanted to elevate the rock ’n’ roll song, so that the rock ’n’ roll song could be about anything. Which is not such an original thought. But I mean, think about it. Can you imagine reporters standing up and accusing you of corrupting the youth of this country? I still get that.

You still do?

To this day. Over the Velvet Underground stuff. I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s a good thing there wasn’t a P.M.R.C. back then. The record company took some heat for it.

Didn’t Mike Curb kick you off the label because of drug references or something like that?

He didn’t kick us off.

No? That isn’t a true story?

No, I don’t think so. I remember that whole Mike Curb thing pretty clearly, and I remember we wanted to get out of there. But he didn’t kick us off. Why should he? I mean, they signed us. We didn’t make a lot of money, but we had a certain level of respect.

When I interviewed you back in college, you said that, for awhile, Lou Reed was like a character you had created, particularly during the earlier part of your solo career. When you were in the Velvet Underground, did you feel you were playing a character then as well?

Well, we were playing the characters that were in the songs.

So you had a different character for different songs?

For a song to really work, you have to make it real. In the interview you’re running with John (Cale), he says that we were trying to do music that was different, and then we’d look out on the dance floor and see Jackie Kennedy dancing to us. So we were a failure. But I didn’t think that at all. I didn’t think it mattered who was out on the dance floor. What mattered was the person who took that record home and listened to it, lying alone in their room. That’s what mattered.

That’s great. Getting back to characters, it’s almost like Lou Reed singlehandedly created this William Burroughs type New York street punk school of rock ’n’ roll...

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Well, I wouldn’t call it William Burroughs. I was more interested in the writing of Raymond Chandler and Delmore Schwartz. I think people say Williams Burroughs because of the subject matter in books like Junkie. But what I was much more interested in was a style of writing exemplified by Raymond Chandler and Delmore Schwartz-meaning short, staccato sentences that were very vivid with very "few words. Like with Raymond Chandler, you get a vivid image immediately. For example, with Chandler, you get a bodyguard standing in a nightclub, and he writes: “That gorilla was so big, you could fit into the palm of his hand.” See how quick you get it? Delmore could do the same thing. So that was my jumping off point. The subject matter was a different thing, but the songs that were out there were basically about nothing.

I think the William Burroughs comparison may have come about because Patti Smith was always singing your praises so much.

I had nothing to do with William Burroughs. My friend Jim Carroll actually has more in common with him. He actually knows him, whereas I don’t know Bill at all. I’ve met Bill maybe twice.

I see that Jim Carroll has a new book out.

That book is fantastic. I read an advance of it, and it’s absolutely wonderful. Very brave, very funny. I would recommend it to everybody. I’d give it five stars. Five stars out of four. A great book, seriously. It really is.

Lou, what I was trying to get to with that last question is: you once said “I play Lou Reed better than anyone,” and it’s like you created this whole persona—it’s not associated with you as much today...

I created it, and it sort of got out of hand.

Yeah. Do you think it’s sort of like a dead end today? You were like the only one to build on it and keep it interesting.

Oh, I don’t know. It’s a fun way to be. It’s a funny character, and sometimes I’m very close to it. Sometimes I felt close to it, and sometimes I didn’t. It eventually grew to become very one-sided. Like that Clint Eastwood movie, Tightrope. Do you know that? Well, he played a cop in that, but it wasn’t Dirty Harry. It was a cop with a different character. And I had to open up my character because I didn’t want to be associated with things like buying dope for the rest of my life. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and once that fish is shot, you go onto other things.

Do you think there were dny bands that adopted the old Velvet Underground attitude or the Lou Reed persona and did it fairly well?

I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I mean, it’s like Marlon Brando doing The Wild One. You end up with a lot of people wanting to be that. Now, I don’t know, there may be some people who’ll turn around and say, “He’s lost it.” I don’t think that’s fair, but, you know, each to their own. I realize there are people who have gotten into me at various points in my career, and they get locked into it. There are people who are locked into 1967 with the Velvet Underground. There are people who are locked into 1972, and there are people who are locked into 1984.

On Another View, the last Velvet outtakes compilation that Polygram released, were those final versions of songs like “Ride Into The Sun” and “I Think I’m Falling In Love”? You never got a chance to put any vocals down on those?

I have no idea. I mean, I didn’t want the thing to come out in the first place. They got in touch with me to come to listen to the tapes, and I said “OK.” I went out there with Jim Carroll. It sounded pretty good at first, and they said I could be involved in the production of it. Then, after listening to the whole thing, I said “Well,

I don’t think it should come out.” They said, “Why?” I said, “Well, now I know how this thing about the fourth album being the great unheard album—I’m not so sure about that.” You know? I took the position that we didn’t want it out, so it shouldn’t come out, period. And then the second one, I said really shouldn’t come out.

Can you briefly tell me the real story behind the making of Loaded? There have been so many rumors about what happened, that you didn’t get to finish it, and so forth.

Well, Doug Yule wasn’t the reason the Velvet Underground broke up.

He wasn’t?

No. He was just this really young and naive kid, you know? A really nice and naive kid. And, you know, people would say things to him to get him going one way or another, but he wasn’t like a bad kid. He was just more like naive. The real snake is a guy named Steve Sesnick, who I wish everyone in the Velvet Underground would’ve gotten together and sued. We still should... if he’s alive, which I hope he isn’t. He was our— quote—“manager,” and he was a very bad person, trying to divide everyone, telling one person one thing, telling another person something else, and pitting peopie against each other, starting with John and me, and then working his way down through the band. That way he could maintain power. I quit in the middle of Loaded because I couldn’t stand it anymore. So as a consequence of that, they didn’t give me credit for playing and writing—which I sued him over. And I won. Of course, the album was already printed. But I gave him the right to the name “the Velvet Underground,” and I got my songs back. The suit was settled out of court, and I gave him the name. He was a real piece of shit.

Well, how long was he the manager?

He became the manager when we left Andy. Andy said, “You got to figure out what you want to do here. Do you want to just keep playing these art shows? Do you really want to keep on doing this? Or do you want to go out into the big wide world?” We said we wanted to go out in the big wide world, and he said, “Well, you better get somebody to do something.” Sesnick had been recommended to me, so we got rid of Andy and got Sesnick—which was my complete undoing. He’s a very sick (person)—and, as I say, I still think he’s suable because there are tapes I think he has that keep appearing.

So when you left the Velvets, the resentment was towards Sesnick? There really wasn’t any resentment between you folks in the band?

Uh, well, I had a lot of resentment at the time.

Are you still in contact with any of the old Velvet Underground members?

Oh, I still see Maureen now and then. She was up to the house last year. She was playing at a place in New Jersey called Maxwell’s. And I just talked to John about two months ago. He’s got a possible project that he’s working on, and he gave me a call and asked if I’d like to get involved with the recording of it. And, of course, I said “Yes.”

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Wow, that’s great. Are you familiar with this Velvet Underground fan club? It’s called the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society. I think it’s based out of Florida.

Well, the original guy that had it—I think his name was Phil Milhouse (Phil Milstein was actually the name.—Ed.)—used to write real rotten shit about me. And he’s also the guy that was behind a lot of those bootlegs. That’s when it was located in Boston, which is what makes me think he was getting the tapes from Sesnick, because he was living in Boston, too. So I lost interest in the Velvet Underground Society when they started writing really vile shit about me. I mean, it was a lot fouler than the things you write for your captions in CREEM.

It seems that over the past few years, you’ve been more politically oriented. You’ve been involved with things like the Sun City project, the Amnesty International tour. Does this go back? Have you always been political, and does it connect with the personal politics or the ideas of personal salvation that have always been a part of your songs? Or is this something new for you?

No, this is something new for me. I was always more interested in the personal side, and it seemed that you had to first work on the inward personal thing and then move outwards. And it was always harder for me to move outwards. I mean, for example, when Bob Dylan was going out on his Rolling Thunder tour, he asked me to be on it. And I really would have liked to have been on it, but, again, I was involved in one of my many lawsuits. I was fighting another of my many managers—another discovery of mine. His name was Dennis Katz. But I’d have gone out on that if I’d been able to, but I was tied up in one of my lawsuits.

Are you still being managed by Eric (Kronfeld)?

No.

It doesn’t seem like you’ve had real good luck with managers over the years.

No, I don’t. There’s some real bad people out there.

And it’s usually in the business end. It’s generally not the fault of the people making the art or the music.

No, no, it’s usually the business end. And people who are trying to get started in this business should remember that. If you take the attitude, “Well, I just make the music,” you’re going to end up in trouble.

Do you have a favorite Velvet Underground album?

I like them all at different times, for different reasons. But I like White Light/ White Heat a lot. There’s a real drive and raw energy there that I like. And then sometimes I like the gentleness of The Velvet Underground—the third album. And then, of course, how could you not like the first one because it was the first one?

How about Loaded? Do you like that one?

Loaded has some of the greatest songs. But for that real sound—White Light/White Heat.

Oh, yeah. I don’t think anything’s ever really touched that.

One day, I will.

You’ll touch it someday?

Yeah. I’ve been working. But it’s very difficult recording in New York. They’ve made all these technological advancements in the New York studios, but as a result, it’s very hard to make a raw album because everything is so technological. The sound in New York City studios today is for making hit singles. But I’m going in and doing it, anyway. I know the guitar sound I want, and I remember the way we did it with the Velvet Underground stuff. Basically, we just turned the tape on and let it run.

Are you still working with (bassist) Fernando (Saunders)?

No. I’m playing with a new band. Fernando did recommend one of the guys to me. We’ve got a guy named Yossi Fine on bass, and a drummer named J.T. Lewis. This guy is phenomenal. There are only two kinds of drummers as far as I’m concerned. There’s this guy with all the technical abilities—and there was Maureen. No one else has that kind of passionate energy, and I’m interested in creating energy when I play rock ’n’ roll. That’s what I’ve always been most interested in. We’ve got a guitar player, Michael Rathke. I’d just been playing with him a lot, so I figured I should put him in the band. And I’m playing with a saxophonist named Rick Bell, who’s absolutely amazing.

Yeah. I think I saw him play with you at Meadowbrook in Detroit last summer.

Well, this band is much better than that band was. For one thing, we have two guitarists, and we got rid of the synthesizer. I decided you don’t need that. I’ve wanted to play with another guitarist for a long time now. I hooked up with (Bob) Quine for awhile there, and it was fun while it lasted. There’s one album that came out of that—Live In Italy—that was a pretty good guitar record. But this new band is awesome.

Yeah. I have a friend who saw you in Chicago last month, and he raved about it.

Oh, we were great in Chicago, particularly the second night. This band is the best I’ve had since the Velvet Underground. I know a lot of people liked the Rock W Roll Animal band. They were good—but it was a different thing. We were re-doing something. I figured no one had heard those songs the first time around, so I’d try it again.

Do you have any plans to come to L.A. with the new band?

We’ll be around. I don’t have the money to keep these guys on retainer, so we have to work.

How about a new record?

Well, I’m no longer with RCA.

So you’re shopping for a label?

Exactly. (A fairly reliable source told us that Lou was signing with Polygram, although Polygram couldn’t verify this at press time.)

You and the Velvet Underground sort of became associated with CREEM over the years due to those wild interviews Lester Bangs did with you in the ’70s. Do you have any memories of Lester? There’s a new book coming out this fall from Alfred Knopf that’s a compilation of some of his greatest writings, and it has the two post-Velvet Underground interviews in it.

Well, I’m not very happy to hear that.

Why? Was there a problem or some bad feelings?

I just don’t like reading interviews with myself from that time. It was me playing games with people, and those interviews were basically liquor talking.

I’ve heard this from several people, and the book makes a reference to the fact that Lester looked at you as almost a “father figure.”

Well, I know he liked me a lot. But then he hated me for a long time. He said I sold out in the worst way. Sold out everything I ever stood for. He said he wouldn’t cross the street to see me. Then I guess he forgave me, and liked me again. But then he died. I think that was a great tragedy and very sad—because, beyond the personal thing of a human being dying, he was one of the only writers who ever captured that real energy of rock ’n’ roll in his writing. Jim Carroll is the only other one who comes close, I think.

We keep talking about “rock ’n’ roll.” What do you think of the state of rock ’n’ roll right now?

Well, I always get in trouble when I talk about this. The way I like to answer it is that I think there’s “pop” music and there’s rook ’n’ roll. And what we have today is "pop.” There’s a few bands. We were just on tour in Europe with U2. They’re a very, very powerful band. And this may sound strange to you, but some of Prince’s stuff—not all of it, but some of his melodies. Like his new album. What’s the name of it?

Sign O’ The Times.

Yeah. There’s like two songs on it that are fantastic. I don’t really like the rest of it, though.

I’m going to the New Music Seminar in New York, next week, and that reminds me of when you were on MTV last year giving one of the seminar directors a hard time.

There I went shooting my mouth off again.

Weil, it was pretty funny.

Yeah, but that kind of stuff doesn’t do me any good. I just kept something pent up for two years, and then I exploded. Anyway, I may actually be down for it—but if you’re going to be there, they’re showing what’s called a “high definition” video of a concert that Peter Gabriel, Little Steven and I and some other people were involved with, it’s called University For Peace. It was part of Japan Aid. So I did a song on that.

I read in a book that “Goin’ Down” by the Monkees is supposed to be one of your favorite songs. Is that true?

No. That’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t believe everything you read. In fact, there’s an old guy who lives out here where we live, and he says, “You shouldn’t believe anything you read or hear.”

Speaking of the Monkees, what do you think of all this 20th anniversary hoopla? You had the Monkees last summer, the Summer Of Love this year. Even the Turtles celebrated a 20th anniversary. I read the comments you made about Sgt. Pepper’s in Rolling Stone. Was ’66 and ’67 really that great of a time? Or do you think it’s all much ado about nothing?

No, no. I think it’s very valid. It’s just different tastes for different people. The music you mentioned wasn’t my favorite. The Velvet Underground was my type of music... but that doesn’t make it any less valid. Different music speaks to different people. And I’m really looking forward to doing this project with John, if we can get it together. He played me some tapes, and it should be very interesting.

Well, I’m sure many people will be excited about that as well.

But the Velvet Underground are not reforming. Don’t give your readers the impression that the Velvet Underground are reforming because that will never happen.

Well, I really appreciate you doing this for us, Lou, and I wish you much good luck.

Well, I really appreciate you guys doing this for the Velvet Underground as well, so I’ll return the compliment.