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Michael Ramirez

@weapons.etc

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The highest authority on all things Lou Reed

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Some more of the ABC’s “Get to Know” interview with Lou Reed from 1975 has surfaced on YouTube. Surely somewhere in an Australia the whole interview must be sitting and waiting for our eyes! Big thanks to peter2534 on YT for this by @weapons.etc

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a month ago

“There’s a lot of what you might call violent or vicious songs in my work but I feel compassion for the characters in them. Because I know what that’s like; I know what it’s like to be on the outside. I know what it’s like to have an unhappy childhood. Not everybody is born with money or an education or friends or nice parents. And I delineate these people because either I identify with them or I think that they deserve their moment in the sun.
There’s a line in “Street Hassle,” and it goes ‘Everybody’s a queen for a day.’ And I’m not saying that in a denigrating fashion.”
LR, Feb. 1992 Q Magazine

📷 Mick Rock, 1975; Rock Scene clippings ft pics by Richard Robinson and Jill Furmanovsky, 1977
Thinking of Rachel Humphreys, who passed away on the 30th of January, 1990 due to HIV/AIDS complications. In the decade after her relationship with Lou Reed, Rachel found a chosen family in the Ballroom scene at a house in upper Manhattan. In addition to being quite the trophy winner of her house she was also renowned for doing hair and makeup for other houses and families of transgender women in the scene. by @weapons.etc

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6 months ago

Here’s a treat to make your week better - an unusual interview on the occasion of Lou’s concert in Vienna, April 1977. Lou is playing Andy here but the journalist eventually breaks him and they seem to get along once she tells Lou she studied philosophy.

🎥 Michael Pilz, 1977 by @weapons.etc

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“At the Olympia, it was a truly extraordinary show. [Reed is referring to the show where he appeared in black leather, his blond hair almost shaved]. Especially for the French, who tend to intellectualize everything, to analyze it to death. Scorpio Rising! I provide them with material for analysis, and since it’s quite realistic, there seems to be no difference between reality and the image I present.
I simply put people I know, who are like that, in the spotlight... I wouldn’t invite them into my home... but I put them on stage. They’re interesting from a distance. I play different roles, through different songs. I move from one atmosphere to another, and people say, “Lou Reed? Which one?” That’s part of the performance, the construction... what I do isn’t exactly traditional rock and roll, one song after another.”
LR, October 1976 Rock & Folk

🖼️ @bjennymontero ❤️❤️❤️ by @weapons.etc

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“‘We had a horrible reputation. Everyone figured we were gay. They figured we must be, running around with Andy and his whips!’ In San Francisco, when Gerard Malanga walked into an all-night restaurant dressed in black leather and carrying his whip he was arrested and charged with possession of a dangerous weapon.
The show attracted enormous media attention because of Warhol’s name, but little of this was concentrated on the Velvets. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable was regarded as an art event like the other ‘60s ‘happenings’, which just happened to have some bizarre background music. As for the Velvets, ‘We never did anything to ingratiate ourselves with the media, through lack of interest more than arrogance. I was convinced that if it was going to happen it would happen anyway. We were all really contemptuous of hype.’”
Sterling Morrison w/ Mary Harron, 26 April 1981 N.M.E

📷 Lisa Law, 1966 by @weapons.etc

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“Making enemies is all tied up with Lou Reed, anyway. I first heard Reed when he was part of the Velvet Underground nearly ten years ago, when somebody played “Hero*n” in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house at Northwestern University; it took the assembled brothers about 20 seconds to yell, “What is that shit?” and shut it off.
In those days you could offend almost anybody between the Hudson River and the Sierra Nevadas just by playing a touch of Velvet Underground. If Reed’s songs didn’t sicken them - “Hero*n,” the only major pop number to praise mainlining smack, or “Venus In Furs,” with its loving invocation of boys kissing boots and writhing under the lash - his singing would. Smirking, arrogant, uncaring, he occupied the antarctic of rock.”
Tim Ferris, 27 March 1974 Rolling Stone

📷 @bob_gruen, Lou at the Academy of Music in December 1973 by @weapons.etc

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“If God showed up tomorrow and said, ‘Do you want to be president?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you want to be in politics?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you want to be a lawyer?’ ‘No.’ ‘What do you want?’ ‘I want to be a rhythm guitar player.’”

📷 Marcel Jas; Lou in Amsterdam 12 August 1978 by @weapons.etc

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“Mom and I were on vacation in Ibiza, in an old finca. I had salmonella and she took care of me like a real mother, cooking me rice and boiling fresh water. On July 13, she went down to town to go shopping and buy water. She pushed her bicycle 7km under the blazing July sun, with two ten-liter cans of drinking water, plus food and bread. I remember her arrival, I was sitting in the shade, very ill, she sank into the chair next to me, outside.
On July 14 she typed the lyrics to her last song. For four days, she took great care of me, until the 18th when, like a ceremonial, in front of the Egyptian eye of Horus, giant and made of small square pieces of glass, arranged in a mosaic, she made herself beautiful and spent an hour wrapping her head in a black scarf. She asked me to reinflate the front tire of her bicycle. I tried but, seeing me staggering, she then said to me: ‘Go and lie down, darling.’ She inflated it herself.
It was precisely one o’clock when she took the road for the last time. She wore her sunglasses, had a book by Mark Twain, Roughing It, in the pocket of her black coat, and enough money to buy a stick of hash and have a drink somewhere. My mother waved at me, saying, ‘See you later, darling.’ I saw her go down the rocky dirt path and disappear behind the pines.”
Ari Päffgen, NICO: From Saeta to Neutrino (1998)

🎥 : The Squat Theater’s Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free by @weapons.etc

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“We always wanted to be commercially successful, but on our own terms. We wanted to do the music we were doing and we hoped that tastes would change. Or that we could change tastes. That is what everybody felt in the ‘60s. That is what the whole psychedelic thing was about. AM vs. FM. We thought, the Grateful Dead thought, the Airplane, everybody thought we could obliterate AM radio and pop music. Change it forever. But it didn’t happen, it really didn’t happen. If anything, it’s gone the other way.”
Sterling Morrison, 19 October 1975 Austin Sun

📷 TBC; The Velvet Underground at The Electric Factory in Philadelphia, June 27-29 1970 courtesy @inevitablevu as printed in The Matrix Tapes liner notes by @weapons.etc

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“In September 1968, Lou presented Sterling and Mo with an ultimatum: either John went or the band broke up. After much agonising, Sterling and Mo agreed. John Cale played his last gig with the band in Boston on September 28. Fans have postmortemed the split ever since. The principal cause seems to be the breakdown of the intimate musical collaboration between Lou and John once the band were forced out of New York to find an audience on the road.
‘Yes,’ agrees John, ‘and the manager, Steve Sesnick, built up a barrier between Lou and the rest of the band. Lou and I were very close and running the band, and gradually Sesnick came along and said Lou’s the songwriter, he’s the star - and I decided I was going to find another career. I don’t think I’m blameless about what happened, but Lou never confronted me, saying, I don’t want you around any more.’ John’s voice drops. ‘It was all done by sleight of hand, which left Sterling and Mo in a very tortured position.’
Cale also says that conflicts arose over songwriting credits too. ‘Whenever a new song came around, it was like picking at sores. It was very badly handled and exacerbated constantly by Steve Sesnick. Even Lou sees that now.’ Sesnick seems to be The Velvet Underground’s Allen Klein. ‘More like Klaus Barbie,’ intones John Cale darkly.”
Matt Snow, Q Magazine July 1993

📷 The Modern Printer, 27 September 1968 at John Cale’s second-to-last appearance with the Velvet Underground; as printed in The Velvet Underground at the Boston Tea Party edited by @inevitablevu - an essential book for any VU fan. by @weapons.etc

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“Lou says that last summer his decision to split was influenced by Brian Jones’ death, and perhaps confirmed by the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Many rock musicians have been hurt, or paralyzed, by having their persons sucked up and consumed by the vortex of their personae.
People tend to listen to the Velvets as individuals; their music never addresses people collectively. ‘My songs are little letters. But, alas,’ Lou said ‘I never got to people playing the records, or even buying them. I’ll cheer up if people ever get around to listening to the Velvets.’”
Geoffrey Cannon 7 February 1971 Chicago-Sun Times

📷 @leeeblackchilders, August 1970 at Max’s by @weapons.etc

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“I was born in Brooklyn and I am a Coney Island Baby. It was 1975 and I was being sued by a manager and his producer brother. I had released an album called Metal Machine Music which had had an unusually high number of returns and was taken off the market in 3 weeks. I had no money and no guitars. The roadies had taken them when they hadn’t been paid. I was in debt to everyone, including the musicians union. RCA put me up in a hotel while the future fell, to be decided.
My friend Ken Glancy was the President of the company and he was a straight shooter and a noble man of honor. He asked me if I would promise not to do Son of Metal Machine Music. I said for sure. I was in nothing but trouble. The nightmare of betrayal haunted me.
Ken put me up in the Gramercy Park Hotel. The Rolling Thunder Revue was staying there ready to hit the road. But my Thunder had been muted. I wasn’t going anywhere but to the union, the lawyers and accountants to try to get me out of the classic mess I had let happen to me. I was amongst other things in contempt of court and had not had my taxes paid for the last 5 years.
Then Ken Glancy called and told me ok, pick a studio and go in and make a rock record.
And so I did.”
LR, liner notes to Coney Island Baby (2006 remaster, BMG)

📷 Hiroyuki Ito, 1978; Lou and Rachel walking their pups on the former West Side Elevated Highway, which was shut down in 1973 and then unofficially utilized as an elevated urban park for jogging and bicycling and, well, lots of hustling and dr*g dealing.
The current Verizon Building at 140 West Street is behind them, and the building at the far end of the picture on the right with the penthouse is 90 West Street. In between, of course, is the former World Trade Center. Here’s the best I could do using Google Maps to capture the shot today, which is only an approximation because the elevated highway was 30 or 40 feet above the current road. by @weapons.etc

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