Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story (25 page)

CALE:
“I got a lot out of The Velvet Underground, but it took me a long time to regain my vitality. I was glad to be doing something new. It gave me a chance to breathe and exercise some new ideas. Producing Nico’s albums eased things up a bit. I enjoyed arranging and producing – I really didn’t believe I could do it until then.”

REED:
“It’s interesting that as three so-called entities we could do one thing and apart we could all go in different directions. Together we did something that none of us could do alone, and then when you separated us we did things that we would do on our own but with the added knowledge of what we did before. I’m infinitely broader in concept and awareness because of knowing John and Nico.

“Everybody was capable of doing something and at the time it was just combined. It had an intriguing result – at least it intrigued all of us and a couple of other people along the way.

“People said we were esoteric, and maybe we were. But we didn’t mean to be, it just worked out that way. Now that
a lot of things are removed … I know what I know but I also know what I want to do. Some of the esoteric things are totally gone because the people who are responsible for them are gone and couldn’t conceivably be replaced – so there would be no point in pursuing it.”

Cale had produced Nico’s
Marble Index
and The Stooges’ first album, and also gotten divorced from Betsey Johnson.

JOHNSON:
“I remember one morning I just started crying, ‘John, I can’t stand it anymore!’ I remember in that loft bed at night crying, hiding. Basically I was the day-time, he was the night-time. I was just kind of suffering up there in that loft bed every night with the music and the intensity of his time-schedule against mine was really rough and the whole situation was rough for us to have a relationship in. And then I could never really know what was really right or wrong or confused or clear or unclear and I didn’t ever want to know what was going on but I imagined more than what really was. So, I just felt that I was so scared to leave him because I was afraid that he wouldn’t be alright. It was easier for me to just work. At that time, too, I quit Paraphernalia. I was getting fed up with Paraphernalia about a year before. So, I was thinking of quitting something. He was thinking of quitting something. I remember in San Francisco we used to be on the phone a lot. He was just incredibly lonely and depressed and trying to get it together. It was between ’69 and ’70.”

BOCKRIS:
“So you and John separated in 1969. Did you get divorced or did you just separate?”

JOHNSON:
“It was awful. Then, in New York, it took two years to get separated which would then turn into divorce.”

BOCKRIS:
“You were supporting someone whom you felt was doing really valid work.”

JOHNSON:
“I used to hear a lot of the real work on tapes at home. I just loved that stuff. There just wasn’t all that much support for John in his experimental work.”

In 1969 Andy Warhol started
Interview
magazine, edited by
Gerard Malanga. His movie
Fuck
(also known as
Blue Movie)
was seized and declared obscene in New York and Richard Avedon photographed his gunshot scars for
Vogue
.

At the beginning of 1970, as a result of a complex series of negotiations on which Sesnick had been concentrating for some time, the band signed a recording contract with Atlantic, Ahmet Ertegun President.

FIELDS:
“I was working at Atlantic when The Velvets signed, but I was not responsible for signing them. Ahmet had liked them and a deal had been made. I don’t think a great deal was expected from it. It was Ahmet’s good taste and almost the kind of thing a President of a record label is entitled to do if he feels something should be recorded. I think that was his attitude. It certainly wasn’t a forthcoming blockbuster like a Rolling Stones album.”

BOCKRIS:
“Was Ertegun taking The Velvets on at Atlantic because he thought they were making good music? Or was he seeing it as a commercial property?”

SESNICK:
“I think both. He expressed to us that he felt he had just signed the most prestigious act in the world. And a coming commercial success. He likened it to the early Buffalo Springfield, with that kind of capacity and capability.”

BOCKRIS:
“When did you stop working temporarily with the group in 1970 as a result of being pregnant?”

TUCKER:
“March or April.”

BOCKRIS:
“Were you playing around in January, February, and March?”

TUCKER:
“Yeah, as I recall, we were running around pretty much, like I said, out on the coast there, and in Chicago, and down in Texas.”

BOCKRIS:
“When was the famous ‘Lost Album’ recorded?”

MORRISON:
“Early 1970 at the Record Plant in New
York City. Gary Kellgren was again the engineer.”

BOCKRIS:
“Was it done to get out of the MGM contract?”

TUCKER:
“The idea was to record it to shut them up. I believe at the time Sesnick was already negotiating with Atlantic.”

BOCKRIS:
“I don’t understand what was going on because this new record wasn’t a piece of shit, so what was going on in terms of trying to get away from MGM?”

TUCKER:
“We didn’t say we’ll just go in and lay down anything and screw ’em, but with the sense that it probably wouldn’t be released by them. I think I figured it would just get picked up by the next record company, not realizing that MGM would own it. But when we switched labels, MGM wouldn’t give up the tapes. They were paying for the recording studio time. So, as far as I know we couldn’t put our hands on it, because I’m sure if we could have we would have released it right away on Atlantic. It was never released.”

MORRISON:
“I have some dubs of it. That’s the stuff Lou drew on when he went solo. Nearly everything on his first album was just a reworking of stuff he’d already done.”

TUCKER:
“We did ‘Stephanie Says’, ‘Lonesome Cowboys’ (written for Warhol’s movie of the same name), ‘Foggy Notion’, ‘I’m Sticking With You’, ‘My Best Friend’, ‘Sad Song’, ‘Andy’s Chest’, and ‘Ocean’. I’m really pissed that never came out. It’s a great album.”

BOCKRIS:
“Was the separation from MGM traumatic or positive?”

TUCKER:
“It wasn’t traumatic. We would have done anything to get away from them.”

BOCKRIS:
“But you had a four album commitment. So you were glad to get out without having to do a fourth album?”

TUCKER:
“Yeah, I guess that’s another point about recording the lost album without really releasing it on MGM. We weren’t that interested in giving them another one to just let die.”

In the middle of June, The Velvets began to play their legendary stint at Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue South in New York City, five days a week, Wednesday to Sunday, for ten weeks. It was the first time they played in Manhattan since their attempt to resuscitate The EPI at the Gymnasium in April 1967. Maureen Tucker was unable to be with them at the Max’s shows since she was pregnant which made it impossible for her to reach the drums while standing. Doug Yule’s brother, Billy, who was still in high school, sat in on drums. To indicate the kind of financial situation they were in, Billy Yule was offered $60 for the complete ten weeks, although he ended up making about $25 a week because they paid for his daily round trip fare from Long Island plus food. Max’s was a notorious restaurant where artists and rock’n’roll people hung out. Its backroom was legendary and many of the characters in Velvets songs were regulars. Owner Mickey Ruskin considered it Casting Central for Andy Warhol.

TERRY SOUTHERN:
“If you wanted to describe the back room of Max’s in a, God forbid, negative way, you’d use words like ‘desperation’ or ‘hysteria’ – that sort of thing. Going the positive route, of course, you’d talk about ‘sensitive’, ‘intense’ or just plain ‘hilarious’. It was like a carnivorous arena. There was always this buzz along the rialto: ‘Andy’s coming! Andy’s coming!’ All on this weird level of maybe he’ll make this ultimate film or painting of me!”

The Velvets were the first band to ever play there. It seemed to be a particularly appropriate homecoming. At the same time they went back into the studio to make a fourth album. Ahmet Ertegun believed they could break out of their underground if they’d stop writing songs about drugs which couldn’t receive airplay, and concentrate on simple rock’n’roll, at which, he recognised, they excelled.

On the surface everything looked all right. Tom Mancuso reviewing a Max’s performance described Lou Reed arriving at the club one evening: “Before the first set begins, around
eleven thirty, Lou Reed carries in his guitar, checks its tuning, takes off his nylon windbreaker, and then talks to people. He wears tennis shoes and the way he walks, even the way he talks, has an athletic composure, a reserved confidence. Lou Reed has ‘always wanted to play in a rock’n’roll band’. He does, and he describes what he does as ‘like meeting people’. If someone sings one of his songs, ‘it’s like humming your name’. Another way in which he describes what he enjoys about music compares it to sports: ‘It’s the playing that’s nice.’ Modest ambitions, pleasures, and metaphors are unexpected from a rock’n’roll star. ‘I’m not a star,’ he says.”

BOCKRIS:
“Was it your idea to set up the residency at Max’s Kansas City?”

SESNICK:
“It was my idea years before we did it.”

BOCKRIS:
“Did you try to persuade them to play New York?”

SESNICK:
“It wasn’t a question of persuading them, it was just the way it was gonna be. Lou pretty much let me do whatever I felt.”

BOCKRIS:
“Was it a coincidence they recorded ‘Loaded’ at the same time they played at Max’s?”

SESNICK:
“No. No. There were many, many reasons for it. They weren’t managed by pot luck. Quite a bit of thinking went into it.”

BOCKRIS:
“I got the impression that everything was planned in great depth. Did things change a lot during that period?”

SESNICK:
“That period I really don’t want to talk about.”

BOCKRIS:
“So when they were playing at Max’s from the middle of June till the end of August, where were you?”

TUCKER:
“At my parents’ house out on Long Island. I stayed at Sterl’s apartment for a little while. I went in to see them play a few times, and talked to them on the phone.”

BOCKRIS:
“And your perception was you were taking a short break and you’d be back in there playing?”

TUCKER:
“Yeah.”

BOCKRIS:
“Did you have any sense that Lou was about to quit the group?”

TUCKER:
“No, I didn’t.”

BOCKRIS:
“How were your relations with him at this point?”

TUCKER:
“Fine.”

BOCKRIS:
“You didn’t play on any of the ‘Loaded’ sessions?”

TUCKER:
“No. I came down there to try and I couldn’t reach the drums I was so fat. I was really disappointed at that too, because I really wanted to play on ‘Ocean’ and I just couldn’t.”

According to Morrison, Lou was extremely paranoid, due to averaging six hours sleep a week, and wanted Steve Sesnick to protect him from numerous people from his past he didn’t want to see.

BOCKRIS:
“What about the whole drug situation?”

TUCKER:
“Oh that was gone by then.”

BOCKRIS:
“So it would be incorrect to say, as some people have, that Lou’s quitting the group was based on his being bummed out on drugs?”

TUCKER:
“No, no, he was long done with that shit.”

REED:
“I hated playing at Max’s. Because I couldn’t do the songs I wanted to do and I was under a lot of pressure to do things I didn’t want to and it finally reached a crescendo. I never in my life thought I would not do what I believed in and there I was, not doing what I believed in, that’s all, and it made me sick. It dawned on me that I’m doing what somebody else is telling me to do, supposedly for my own good because they’re supposed to be so smart. But only one person can write it and that person should know what it’s about. I’m not a machine that gets up there and parrots off these songs. And standing around the bar – you don’t have to get high to get into me. I have made it a point not to be oblique. And I was giving out interviews at the time saying yes, I wanted the
group to be a dance band, I wanted to do that, but there was a large part of me that wanted to do something else. I was talking as if I were programmed. That part of me that wanted to do something else wasn’t allowed to express itself, in fact was being cancelled out. And it turned out that that was the part that made up ninety per cent of Lou.

“There was that comment by that guy that I became unplugged from objective reality. Well, that’s not what happened. I plugged into objective reality, and got very sick at what I saw, what I was doing to myself. I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to be a mass pop national hit group with followers. I knew we could do the high energy rock and everybody can dance. That’s okay. But the last night I was there, when Brigid Polk made her tape, that was the only night I really enjoyed myself. I did all the songs I wanted – a lot of them were ballads. High energy does not necessarily mean fast; high energy has to do with heart.”

MORRISON:
“I had hardly spoken to Lou in months. Maybe I never forgave him for wanting Cale out of the band. I was so mad at him, for real or imaginary offences and I just didn’t want to talk. You know that poem
A Poison Tree
by Blake?