23. “the end of something, the absolute end of everything from the Velvet Underground on”: “The 100 Best Albums of the Eighties,” Rolling Stone, November 16, 1989.
24. “If the late poet Delmore Schwartz”: Cullman, review of The Blue Mask.
25. “It was probably the worst thing I could have done” and following: DeRogatis, “Robert Quine: Such a Lovable Genius.”
26. “while there are no legendary loves” and following: David Fricke, review of Legendary Hearts, Rolling Stone, April 28, 1983.
27. “his great new band is just a way”: Robert Christgau, Consumer Guide review of Legendary Hearts, 1983, https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_album.php?id=2151.
Chapter 16. New Sensations
1. “I never felt that Lou was running from anything”: Author interview, Jeffrey Ross.
2. “Sylvia is one hundred percent for Lou”: David Fricke, “A Refugee from Rock’s Dark Side, Lou Reed Says Goodbye Excess, Hello New Jersey,” People, March 30, 1981.
3. “I’ve been practicing and practicing, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do”: Scott Isler, “Lou Reed: A Reluctant Legend Doffs His Mask—Briefly,” Musician, 1984.
4. “This is a positive album, looking at things positively” and following: Isler, “Lou Reed: A Reluctant Legend Doffs His Mask—Briefly.”
5. “Their house was in a very rural area” and following: Author interview, Richard Sigal.
6. “One day, he came over on his bike”: Author interview, Lenny Kaye.
7. “My expectations are high… to be the greatest writer that ever lived on God’s earth”: Lou Reed, quoted in Simon Reynolds, “Lou Reed: Alchemical Engineering,” The Wire, February 1992.
8. “That was just me shooting my mouth off”: Reynolds, “Lou Reed: Alchemical Engineering.”
9. “I really think I have it more together than I ever have in my whole life” and following: Bill Holdship, “Lou Reed: New Rock Sensations,” Creem, November 1994.
10. “stumbled through one of the most self-indulgent and self-defeating solo careers”: Kurt Loder, “Lou Reed Lightens Up His Life and Looks Like a Winner Again,” Rolling Stone, June 7, 1984.
11. “Who else could make a scooter hip?”: Ben Fong-Torres, “Lou Reed: The Prince of Darkness Lightens Up,” GQ, September 1986.
12. “I can’t live in an ivory tower like people would like me to”: Roy Trakin, “Lou Reed: New York State of Mind,” Hits, February 6, 1989.
13. “ad people play fair with you”: Matt Creamer and Sonya Chudgar, “The Famously Grouchy Lou Reed Had Good Words for Adland,” Advertising Age, October 28, 2013.
14. “Lou kept going, ‘My amp’s fucked up!’” and following: Author interview, John Mellencamp.
15. “What’s interesting is that after I wrote the song ‘Mistrial’” and following: Vic Garbarini, “Lou Reed: Waiting for the Muse,” Musician, July 1, 1986.
16. “I wanted to do a rap song—my version”: Rob Bowman, liner notes, Between Thought and Expression: The Lou Reed Anthology (RCA).
Chapter 17. New York
1. “I’ve become completely well-adjusted to being a cult figure”: David Fricke, “Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone, May 4, 1989.
2. “Lou obviously was a great artist and had great stature, but it wasn’t like Seymour had signed a superstar” and following: Author interview, Steven Baker.
3. “Generally speaking, I have to say that with most of my albums, I’ve felt that I was behind myself”: Jonathan Cott, “Lou Reed: A New York State of Mind,” rollingstone.com, October 27, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/lou-reed-a-new-york-state-of-mind-20141027.
4. “I rattled off a list of the usual names” and following: Jim DeRogatis, “Fred Maher on Lou Reed,” WBEZ Chicago, November 20, 2013.
5. “It sounds like it was produced by an eighth grader, but I like it”: Bill Forman, “James McMurtry on Lou Reed, Gun Control, and Why Leonard Cohen Must Die,” Colorado Springs Independent, February 13, 2013.
6. “Faulkner had the South, Joyce had Dublin. I’ve got New York—and its environs”: Fricke, “Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview.”
7. “We had tried to put the songs in order, to tell the story moodwise and emotionally”: “The 100 Best Albums of the Eighties,” Rolling Stone, November 16, 1989.
8. “For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed kind of songs”: Fricke, “Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview.”
9. “In New York, the Lou Reed image doesn’t exist, as far as I’m concerned” and following: Cott, “Lou Reed: A New York State of Mind.”
10. “We’re in this terrible morass of people absolutely not giving a shit about anybody but themselves” and following: David Fricke, “Lou Reed: Back on the Streets,” Rolling Stone, March 9, 1989.
11. “What is this, some sort of Velvet Underground reunion?”: DeRogatis, “Fred Maher on Lou Reed.”
12. “I saw the speech Jesse made about ‘common ground,’ and it was amazing, emotionally moving”: Roy Trakin, “Lou Reed: New York State of Mind,” Hits, February 6, 1989.
13. “He could take a conservative stance on the pro-Israel side”: Author interview, Sylvia Morales.
14. “I was watching Marty Scorsese on Nightline”: Fricke, “Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview.”
15. “sounds like the best thing Lou Reed’s ever done”: Bill Flanagan, “The Velvet Interview: White Light/White Heat,” Musician, April 1989.
16. “In whatever future there is, whenever anyone wants to hear the sound of the eighties collapsing into the nineties in the city of dreams”: Anthony DeCurtis, “Lou Reed’s New York State of Mind,” Rolling Stone, February 23, 1989.
17. “I’m not going to let that be my future”: Fricke, “Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview.”
Chapter 18. I Hate Lou Reed
1. “No doctor looked in on him”: Ronald Sullivan, “Care Faulted in the Death of Warhol,” the New York Times, December 5, 1991.
2. “Mr. Warhol’s keenest talents were for attracting publicity”: Douglas C. McGill, “Andy Warhol, Pop Artist, Dies,” the New York Times, February 23, 1987.
3. “Lou was always very wary of Andy, always a bit guarded”: Author interview, Sylvia Morales.
4. “He may be the American artist—period”: Author interview, Lou Reed.
5. “This day was, in many ways, Andy’s masterpiece”: Christophe von Hohenberg, “The Day the Factory Died: Andy Warhol’s Memorial Service in Pictures,” The Telegraph, July 11, 2011.
6. “a simple, humble, modest person, a child of God who in his own life cherished others” and following: Grace Glueck, “Warhol Is Remembered by Two Thousand at St. Patrick’s,” the New York Times, April 2, 1987.
7. “I noticed Lou was just standing alone, so I walked over to him”: Author interview, Eric Andersen.
8. “He said, ‘Look, you got to do something for Andy’”: Victor Bockris and John Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography of John Cale (Bloomsbury, 1999).
9. “three steps forward, two steps back” and following: Scott Isler, “The Velvet Overview: Bloodied but Unbowed,” Musician, April 1989.
10. “First of all, we wanted to see if anyone anywhere had done a rock album that teaches you something about the life of whomever”: Author interview, Lou Reed.
11. “a hundred percent collaboration. John and I just rented out a small rehearsal studio for three weeks and locked ourselves in”: Bill Flanagan, “The Velvet Interview: White Light/White Heat,” Musician, April 1989.
12. “I don’t think Lou could have had a clue how I felt about Andy” and following: Bockris and Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen.
13. “I watched Andy. I watched Andy, watching everybody. You’ve got to understand. I was never part of it. I was not a great friend of Andy’s”: David Fricke, “Lou Reed,” Rolling Stone, November 5–December 10, 1987.
14. “proud of him. For once, finally he’s himself, he’s not copying any
body”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, edited by Pat Hackett (Warner Books, 1989), p. 299.
15. “And oh, Lou’s life is everything I want my life to be”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, p. 386.
16. “a great present, a one-inch TV, and he was so adorable, so sober”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, p. 398.
17. “They had a big reception and everything”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, p. 883.
18. “She’s nothing special”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, p. 899.
19. “so glum, so peculiar”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, pp. 1240–1.
20. “never even looked over. I don’t understand Lou, why he doesn’t talk to me now”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, pp. 1408–9.
21. “I just don’t understand why I have never gotten a penny from that first Velvet Underground record”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, p. 1512.
22. “I hate Lou Reed more and more, I really do”: The Andy Warhol Diaries, p. 1502.
23. “When John was doing the reading… I kept telling him that when we get to that line, ‘I hate Lou,’ you gotta say it like a kid”: Mark Kemp, “John Cale/Lou Reed: Fifteen Minutes with You,” Option, July 1990.
24. “Perhaps the two incidents that haunted Reed the most”: Flanagan, “The Velvet Interview: White Light/White Heat.”
25. “John’s idea. He had said, ‘Why don’t we do a short story like “The Gift”?’”: Kemp, “John Cale/Lou Reed: Fifteen Minutes with You.”
26. “It’s emotionally honest, which is something I’ve tried to be on all my records”: Jim Sullivan, “Lou Reed: On the Wild Side,” rocksbackpages.com, October 2013, https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/lou-reed-on-the-wild-side.
27. “Lou comes to terms with himself in songs”: Isler, “The Velvet Overview: Bloodied but Unbowed.”
28. “so that if I decided to take poetic license with certain facts”: Kemp, “John Cale/Lou Reed: Fifteen Minutes with You.”
29. “You’d have to be in Andy’s shoes before casting the first stone”: Kemp, “John Cale/Lou Reed: Fifteen Minutes with You.”
30. “I was really excited by the amount of power just two people could do without needing drums”: Flanagan, “The Velvet Interview: White Light/White Heat.”
31. “In this particular show, we’re throwing an amazing amount of information at you” and following: Flanagan, “The Velvet Interview: White Light/White Heat.”
32. “Tell us something we don’t know” and following: Kemp, “John Cale/Lou Reed: Fifteen Minutes with You.”
33. “was a very powerful part of the thing” and following: Flanagan, “The Velvet Interview: White Light/White Heat.”
34. “Songs for Drella is a collaboration”: John Cale, liner notes, Songs for Drella (Sire Records, 1990).
35. “You can just say that John Cale was the easygoing one and Lou was the prick”: Kemp, “John Cale/Lou Reed: Fifteen Minutes with You.”
36. “a shining, tense merger of visions”: Paul Evans, review of Songs for Drella, Rolling Stone, May 17, 1990.
Chapter 19. Magic and Loss
1. “By this I mean to say… the music, underground music” and following: Lou Reed, “To Do the Right Thing: Lou Reed Interviews Václav Havel,” Musician, October 1990.
2. “I don’t like it when the interview’s so cleaned up that the interviewer and subject sound like the same person” and following: Simon Reynolds, “Lou Reed: Mourning Glory,” Pulse, February 1992.
3. “It was definitely terrible… I could see why Rolling Stone rejected it”: Author interview, Rob Bowman.
4. “It was hard to get clear answers to the most basic requests” and following: Reed, “To Do the Right Thing.”
5. “I do consider myself even lucky to be here”: Mark Cooper, “Lou Reed,” Q, February 1992.
6. “Between two Aprils I lost two friends”: Lou Reed, liner notes, Magic and Loss (Sire, 1992).
7. “I couldn’t even believe your father knew who I was” and following: Author interview, Sharyn Felder.
8. “like a novel… at the head of each chapter a little phrase explaining what it is”: Simon Reynolds, “Lou Reed: Alchemical Engineering,” The Wire, February 1992.
9. “is the culmination of everything I’ve tried to achieve, all the mistakes I’ve made” and following: Cooper, “Lou Reed.”
10. “I don’t think of my records as disposable”: Cooper, “Lou Reed.”
11. “I’m not interested in ‘Lou Reed’ the character now” and following: Cooper, “Lou Reed.”
12. “pose of cultivated cool, of someone who has not only seen it all but experienced it”: Stephen Holden, “According to Lou Reed, Life Is a Fatal Journey,” the New York Times, January 19, 1992.
Chapter 20. Between Thought and Expression
1. “He immediately gave me his phone number” and following: Author interview, Rob Bowman.
2. “If the box was going to be representative” and following: David Fricke, “Lou Reed: Beyond the Underground,” Rolling Stone, April 2, 1992.
3. “It isn’t a rock star’s compilation”: Max Bell, “Lou Reed: Read ’em and Weep,” Vox, September 1992.
4. “Over the last few years I have done occasional ‘poetry’ readings, always using my lyrics as the basis”: Lou Reed, introduction to Between Thought and Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed (Hyperion, 1991).
5. “drugs and liquor did not do me any good” and following: Mark Cooper, “Lou Reed,” Q, February 1992.
6. “Lou built a real toughness around himself”: Author interview, Bill Bentley.
Chapter 21. Me Burger with I Sauce
1. “The fact is, New York had great tracks and a strong first single in ‘Dirty Blvd.’” and following: Author interview, Steven Baker.
2. “George Clinton used to have this expression”: Author interview, Jeff Gold.
3. “was probably not that well versed in the mechanics of Warner Bros. Records at that point” and following: Author interview, Steven Baker.
4. “Whenever you would hear something from Sylvia” and following: Author interview, Jeff Gold.
5. “science of magic”: Simon Reynolds, “Lou Reed: Alchemical Engineering,” The Wire, February 1992.
6. “He never screamed at me”: Author interview, Steven Baker.
7. “We’re confronting the myth head-on”: David Fricke, “Waiting for the Band,” Rolling Stone, June 24, 1993.
8. “Should we stay in hiding just because a myth is loose in the land?”: John Rockwell, “Older but Still Hip, the Velvet Underground Rocks Again,” the New York Times, June 5, 1993.
9. “unique godhead status will begin to diminish almost from the moment they start their first number”: David Sinclair, the Times of London, quoted in Rockwell, “Older but Still Hip, the Velvet Underground Rocks Again.”
10. “did not produce a feeling of déjà vu, more an impression that, after twenty-five years, the rest of the world has only just caught up with them”: David Sinclair, the Times of London, quoted in Rockwell, “Older but Still Hip, the Velvet Underground Rocks Again.”
11. “We’ve got to go to the first show in Edinburgh, because there might not be a second one” and following: Author interview, Jeff Gold.
12. “You don’t want me to do it? Okay” and following: Bill Flanagan, “Lou Reed,” Musician, January 1994.
13. “I was in the middle of that whole situation” and following: Author interview, Steven Baker.
14. “draped in white towels, looking like an outpatient or an old-age pensioner”: Victor Bockris and John Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography of John Cale (Bloomsbury, 1999).
Chapter 22. Fourteenth Chance
1. “Yes! Absolutely!” and following: Laurie Anderson, “For Twenty-One Years We Tangled Our Minds and Hearts Together,” Rolling Stone, November 21, 2013.
2. “Lou grabbed my hand and started stroking it”: Author interview, Suzanne Vega.
3. “We had been getting very close”: Author interview, Erin Clermont.
4. “‘the Ma and Pa Kettle’ of the New York underground”: Author interview, Bob Neuwirth.
5. “a house that was separate from our own places”: Anderson, “For Twenty-One Years We Tangled Our Minds and Hearts Together.”
6. “There’s no explanation for relationships”: Author interview, Jeff Gold.
7. “I was just so amazed that Lou and Laurie found each other”: Author interview, Steven Baker.
8. “I wanted to make a record that would take you on a trip of passion” and following: Dan DeLuca, “Reed Talks Hoops, Happiness, and, Yes, Music,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 1996.
9. “I was talking to Lou somewhat regularly on the phone at the time” and following: Author interview, Jeff Gold.
10. “I should have been dead a thousand times”: Barney Hoskyns, “A Dark Prince at Twilight: Lou Reed,” Mojo, March 1996.
11. “extreme gauntness of his once-muscular physique”: Lou Reed, “The Lives They Lived: Sterling Morrison,” the New York Times Magazine, December 31, 1995.
12. “I’d like to thank all the people who worked so hard to get us in” and following: Velvet Underground Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, January 17, 1996, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXI3bFTgtSc.
Chapter 23. Sadly Listening
1. “with straightforward rock songs backing brief, abstract scenes, Time Rocker bumps into unexpected competition: music video”: Jon Pareles, “Echoes of H. G. Wells, Rhythms of Lou Reed,” the New York Times, November 14, 1997.
2. “Every night, when the recording sessions were over and everybody would leave the studio” and following: Max Dax, “From the Vaults: An Interview with Lou Reed,” electricbeats.net, October 28, 2013 (originally published in German in Die Woche, 2000), http://www.electronicbeats.net/from-the-vaults-an-interview-with-lou-reed/.
3. “To this day, I have never worked harder on a record,”: Author interview, Hal Willner.
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