ATN: Is there a typical Lou Reed writing thing? Or does it happen a lot of different ways? And let's look at this particular album and talk about that.

Reed: It pretty much happens the same way all the time. I don't write stuff in advance. Anything you hear is written for this album. And it's been written within the time period of the album. It's not from before. Generally speaking, I hear music and songs in my head all the time. Like there's a permanent radio. Solely for my own amusement. And when I decide to do an album, I start taking down things that I'm listening to. That's it. And I do it because there's an album to make and it's fun to play and all that. Otherwise, I don't bother. It's just going on and on and on. Sometimes it gets intense enough that I have to put it down. It just won't leave me alone. It's kind of an interesting thing. But on the other hand, if I don't put it down pretty quickly, it'll go away and I'll never see it again.

[Reed, Lou: TV image for What's Good]


Reed, Lou, "What's Good"
40 sec, 2.43M QuickTime




ATN: Was that the case with any of the songs on this album where you just had to put it down?

Reed: They're all like that. I was in writing mode. All the lyrics except one were done that way.

ATN: You said in the past about writing that sometimes it was putting it down and kind of removing words to get it as concise a statement as you could make.

Reed: Yeah, but I self edit in my head.

ATN: So there's been an evolution. So now it comes more from your head to the page.

Reed: There's a more effective editor operating because I have more experience. Experience leads to improvement in my particular case. It's practice. It's like you practice guitar, you practice writing. After a while, certain things get a little easier. You're faster, better at it. I edit in my head better. And then I do a little bit of re-writing but it's real small. And it's all on computer because I can't even imagine anymore not doing it with computer. It saves me so much time. It's frightening to think the way I used to have to go through doing it.

[Older Now-wa]




Lou the editor.



ATN: It used to be notebooks and stuff?

Reed: Yeah. Matchbook covers. Pieces of paper. Arrows with rewrites pointing to another piece of paper and it's written upside down. Now there's version one, version two, three, four, ad infinitum. But of course I would do that. I'm not even talking about cut and paste, by the way. I don't even have to go that far with it. These are little bitty changes. It's nothing heavy like that. I wrote the whole album on a Mac. All my latest albums, I've written them all on the Mac. It saves me so much time. I can write in a week what would take me a month.

ATN: Why is that?

Reed: I can read the writing. I can read my writing. I can do nine different versions and see them all. I think a lot of the secret of things is to rewrite. The rewriting. A computer is made for rewriting. The speed and the accuracy that you can rewrite, that's a real telling thing. For me anyway. I'm one of these people, if I write something and go back an hour later, I can't read it. So this is made for me. My mother made me take typing in high school 'cause she never thought I'd have a job. That's the only reason I know how to pick and peck my way through the computer.

Reed, Lou, "NYC Man" from The Twilight Reeling
(45 second excerpt)

[PLAY] Stereo MPEG (970k)
[PLAY] Mono MPEG (485k)
[PLAY] Mono Sun-AU (323k)
[PLAY] RealAudio 28.8k


ATN: This album...one of the things it's about, it seems to me, is sort of rebirth and transformation. I could quote you some phrases. There's lines in here about "new self is born / the other self dead," "talk about a new me" and " talk about accepting the new found man." Are you feeling kind of revitalized or reborn these days?

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