ATN: But who are still able to make vital and contemporary records. Neil Young's another one that comes to mind, for me anyway. But there's not a huge list.

Whaddaya mean "Rock is a young guy's thing?"
Me an' da boys disagree. You gotta problem?

Reed: No, but like the generation before us, I would have hoped you could look to them that they would be doing new things. Why not? Jazz guys do. The blues guys do. I mean, I went to see B.B. King at the Blue Note three weeks ago. He was at a club no less. People were killing to get in there. He was amazing. A true master. He'd attained the level of a true master. And it was astonishing to watch him going through an amp anyone can buy and do that. Just sit in awe. Seventy. And he sang some stuff I never heard before. And he sang stuff he's done two million times before and it sounded like he loved it. It was great. So, what do I have to fear? What I'm told is rock is a young guy's thing. That's what rock was made about. I say, OK. Call Lou Reed "music." Then am I allowed to play or do I have to be led out to pasture? I would have hoped the generation before, instead of running around doing oldies... But that's what they did. Oldies. So now you got this other generation and you got some people who are not and don't want to be nostalgia acts who have a serious agenda -- they want to play rock. Whatever version you like and that's what it comes down to. Now it may not be something necessarily appealing to a nine-year-old. But I was never aiming at a nine-year-old anyway without offending any nine-year-olds out there. My stuff can be checked out. I'm not just talking. I have records. You could check the records out. Is it true or isn't it true? Look at what I started with. I've been going all this time from the very first record being told: That's the best song you ever wrote. You're downhill from now on. Meeting "Heroin." Thanks. How would you know? Why? Do you write? How would you know?

Velvet Underground, "Sweet Jane" from Loaded
(45 second excerpt)

Stereo MPEG (1.21M)

Mono MPEG (607k)

Mono Sun-AU (404k)

ATN: You were saying, right from the beginning, people were telling you you'd written your best song. Back in 1965 they were telling you that.

Reed: Oh yeah. If they thought anything other than that the Velvet Underground was a horrible thing.

ATN: How do you feel about the fact that you had a tremendous influence from it seems, almost from day one to right now, now generation after generation of musicians that have come along -- I don't have to name that -- but Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo. We can go on and on, Jesus and Mary Chain... .

Reed: Usually I don't catch the influence to tell you the truth. People say that to me and I'm like...."if you say so." (laughs) I don't get it. I don't get it myself. And certainly, when the Velvet Underground was around, we sold almost no records. Literally. Minuscule. All of this happens way later. And then it kind of builds up until all of a sudden it's a staple. But it was not like that at the beginning. It wasn't like that after the beginning. It wasn't even like that in the middle as far as I could tell.

Me? An influence? Hey, I'm just playing my guitar...
Photo by Jay Blakesberg

ATN: But you know, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith... Really quick it seemed to me, your influence was seeping into other things. Fast.

Reed: Maybe it was just an idea that was commonly floating around in the ether. I don't know. I wasn't keeping track of that. That's not for me to say. It's not for me to say, oh, this that and the other thing. Other people can say that.

ATN: Do you like it that it happened? Because it has happened. It's not ...

Reed: If there's any truth to it, I find it very, very...it makes me feel very nice. And it's flattering if it's true. For me to know that it's true, I would probably have to have the artist himself say to me, hey...

ATN: Do you pay any attention to what else is going on? Do you listen to other stuff?

On to page 10 of 10
Previous page Geocities