Here's a long excerpt from an interview Lou Reed did about a year back with a reporter from Knoxville's major independent newspaper, Metropulse. I can't decide if he's an ass or just really out-there funny.
The “Lou Reed is an asshole” theme is so well-worn, it’s practically a genre of rock journalism, with the classic and best forms of it being traced back to Lester Bangs in the ’70s. Bangs went to battle with Reed on several occasions—and his now-classic essays were as good as anything Reed recorded during that decade. Any similar articles today are really just imitations of the Bangs interviews, with Reed offering a parody of himself—or playing the role everyone expects him to.
I hate to write the same tired story that’s been written so many times before, but, unfortunately, the guy really doesn’t give me all that much to work with in the 10 minutes or so I talk to him on the phone.
It’s not that he’s a jerk, exactly—I’ve interviewed more uncooperative musicians—but it’s clear from the start that this is the last thing he wants to be doing. Like most things, rock journalism is a formula. When you get only 10 minutes to talk to someone on the phone, what else could it be? You want a few snappy quotes to weave through an article that hopefully will have a unifying theme to it.
Reed has absolutely no interest in helping you complete the formula, which makes him both admirable and a pain in the ass. Maybe he just can’t stomach having his quotes spun in all different directions, so he keeps giving interviewers the same story: I’m an asshole. Your questions are stupid. You’re an idiot. I’m Lou Reed. Why am I talking to you? Are we done?
Here’s the thing about this whole asshole schtick—I don’t really believe it. He’s certainly a grump, but Lou Reed is clearly not without sensitivity and humanity. Hudson River Wind Meditations was written as music for his own daily Tai Chi routine. In March, he joined David Byrne, Moby, and other musicians in New York to give a concert benefiting the Iraq Veterans Against the War. He’s written incredibly sensitive music, imagining himself in the shoes of not just drug addicts and transsexuals, but a poor Latino kid who dreams of being a drug dealer. His collaboration with his former bandmate John Cale, Songs for Drella, about their mentor Andy Warhol, is one of the most touching things ever recorded—the damn thing has brought me to tears several times. Plus, he dates Laurie Anderson, and it’s hard to imagine her putting up with his shit all the time, so the guy must have a softer side.
But he doesn’t really show much interest in talking about any of it.
When I ask him whether he thinks the anti-war benefit had any effect, he shoots back, “I have no idea. Why don’t you ask people?” I rephrase my question slightly, saying I was curious whether he thought it did any good. “Everybody’s curious. Does it do something? Who knows. But it’s better than doing nothing.”
Then he gives me a little more: “President Vaclav Havel [writer and former Czech Republic president] once told me that music can’t change anything. People change things. But music can change people and people change things.”
He says the show was aimed at communicating to their New York friends. But nothing else I ask seems to get him talking. Other questions get short, bland responses.
I tell him that the music he wrote years ago still has a great effect on people, but that material was written during a much different time in his life. I ask him whether his feelings about that music have changed much—whether it’s weird to be playing something live that he wrote when he was in his 20s. “Some of it’s 30 years old,” he says. “What do you think?”
Does he hear his influence in contemporary bands? “Every once in a while, I hear something and it sounds familiar. But my ideas have all been pretty simple.”
What does he think of his influence? “I don’t know. You were the one who asked the question.”
Well, do you feel ripped off or flattered? “I feel flattered.”
Has his approach to songwriting changed over the years? “The way I do things is pretty much the same. I don’t understand the process. I tried to figure it out and I can’t do it. The most I try to do is stay out of the way,” he says.
Why did he start doing Tai Chi? “I wanted a form of exercise that was aesthetically interesting and engaged the mind and taught self-defense,” he says.
Hudson River Wind Meditations was recorded using some new computer programs. “I made it for myself. I had people come over and meditate,” he says. Their responses prompted him to release it.
As my 10 minutes with Reed winds down, he gets impatient. “Are we done?” he asks. It’s not really a question, since he’s not asking my permission to go. It’s more like he’s just letting me know I’ve got nothing to remotely interest him and I’m wasting his time.
