© STEPHANIE DIANI.
It’s terrible that we lost him too soon, but I can’t help thinking that he’s fortunate to have you as the keeper of his legacy. I’m curious how you think about that.
Frankly, at first, I felt it as a huge, overwhelming responsibility that I was not at all prepared for. Because we never, for one second, talked about his death, his not being there. We just didn’t talk about it. Not that he was in denial, but we just didn’t talk about it. I was like, wait, I’m responsible now? Oh, my God. And it was, for a while, very heavy. But it’s so much fun thinking of him and his work, and getting a chance to read it and reread it and think about it in different ways. It’s a wild way to be with your partner. You learn certain things about them. And I didn’t do that when I met him, I didn’t do any research. I just met him as a person.
Is it true that at that time you didn’t know who he was?
I had heard his name, but I thought he was British, for example. That’s a stupid thing. I’m not proud of that. You’d think everybody in New York knows everybody in New York in their field, but music is huge in New York. It’s composed of 100 different scenes that don’t necessarily intersect.
I’ve actually been thinking about the power of these legacy releases. Around the time you and Lou met, I was in high school and a friend of mine got hold of that CD box set of the Velvet Underground with all the albums and outtakes. I bought a copy, and it was almost life-changing. It really became foundational music for me.
It’s funny how generations forget things. When I went to the Barbie movie—I liked the movie. It’s not a great movie, but what was great about it was the girls there. Feminism was news to them. I was like, “That’s why I should keep these ideas percolating, because there are kids who’ve grown up in such a different world that they don’t even know any of that.”
And of course, they have to make it their own anyway, and they have to figure out all of that for themselves. But it’s also nice to know that, before you, there were some people who thought that through. And it was mind-blowing to me that those were new concepts. And these are 13-, 14-year-old kids. And I thought, I feel such great solidarity with these girls. It was wonderful. Yeah, I think introducing music from 50 years ago to kids who are trying to figure out, like you were, what is music? And here’s something that comes floating in a box. And they go, “Whoa, where did that come from?” It’s amazing.
I do think there’s value in reminding people of the great things that humans have done, great movies they’ve made, great books they’ve written, beautiful sculptures. Lou and I used to go to The Metropolitan Museum and look at the weapons collection.
Really?
In New York, we live in a city of incredible treasures. And it’s all things that we can go and have a look at and go, “Who made that for what?” You forget that culture isn’t just what’s coming down the pipeline into your laptop. I’ve been rereading Ginsberg lately, and just having my mind opened up to some of the great things that he…I knew Allen, and so did Lou, and we both liked him, but he had this way of bumping heads that we both hated. He would see you and he’d knock your head.
Physically bump your head?
Yes. It was a Tibetan greeting. And he would, like, boom. I was like, “Oh, stop doing that.” But for some reason we just…maybe it was because we were friends or we were too close to see what a genius he was, what incredible works of art he made. And then when you see it from another perspective, “Howl” is like the national anthem. What an incredibly rich history we have as Americans, as people who’ve made really just insanely great things. And so being part of the engine that keeps things coming out, I’m really, really happy to help do that a bit.
Is there anything you can share about what else you’re planning to release?
There are a bunch of things that we found in the archives that we’re going to put out. The Lou Reed archive is at the New York Public Library, and anybody can go in and hear anything they want. They can hear the first Velvet Underground rehearsal. It’s all free. You can just go in and geek out. And that, to me, was very important. It’s not a white-glove thing. And people really use it.
On March 2, which is his birthday, we’re going to do an event there. Lou started most of his concerts with drones. He and his guitar tech would have a whole array of amplifiers, and then he’d lean the guitars against them and the feedback would just be crushing. It was Metal Machine Music to the max. So we’ve done that in many places—in churches, cathedrals, caves, venues, festivals, music festivals. And this year we’re going to do one at the New York Public Library
At the risk of departing entirely from Vanity Fair–friendly topics, can we talk a little bit about drones? In 2022, you released a collection of Lou’s demos called Words & Music, May 1965, where we hear him singing “Heroin” in a folky style reminiscent of Bob Dylan. Fast-forward two years and we get the album version with John Cale sawing away on an electric viola. My assumption was that John Cale had brought the drone to Lou from the world of classical music, but is that right? Is this something that you ever discussed?
We did. We did a lot. Because to tell you the truth, drones were everywhere then. Mostly, it was La Monte Young, but everybody was doing drones. It wasn’t anything new. Charlemagne Palestine was starting to do things around then. Terry Riley. Drones were in. They were how you did music. And I don’t think anybody would say, “I invented the drone.” It would be crazy. Lou was at La Monte’s things, and so was John. They were getting that from there, and they were getting that eventually from ragas. La Monte had spent a lot of time in India. That’s really where it came from. It came from meditation. It came from India. It came from ragas. Endless, very loud brainwaves. And so it’s gone full circle, in many ways.
Do you think he was frustrated by the critical reception to Metal Machine Music at the time? Or did he think it was funny that he’d freaked everyone out?
On the surface, I think he loved to be the bad boy, but he was hurt that people didn’t get it or like it. He wanted people to like what he did. It meant a lot to him to make it, and he wanted it to mean something to people who listened to it. He cared about that a lot. I think he pretended he didn’t, but he did.
Will Hermes recently published a biography of Lou. How did you feel about that?
Well, I don’t really talk to any of the journalists who write these things, and I don’t read them. Although I did read a couple of things in here, because supposedly he was quoting me. And it did sound like he had talked to me. I never talked to him. I am in the school of Oscar Wilde, who said, “Biographers are the body snatchers of literature.” He also said, in a much harsher way, “Some people have a lot of disciples, but only Judas writes the biography.”
I have read biographies of people, and Catherine the Great was a great biography. I can’t read them about Lou because they’re all so wrong. Unless you really were with somebody, even the greatest active imagination will not get you there. That’s all I have to say about it. I know people write biographies, but I myself don’t read them. I don’t especially like being quoted in them.
[Will Hermes responds: “Laurie declined to be interviewed for this book for reasons I totally appreciate—a lot of people were writing books about Reed after his death. I did interview Anderson for my first book, Love Goes to Building on Fire, and for a New York Times feature a while back, and I quote her from those interviews. She and her team were helpful and encouraging during the years I worked on this book, and I make a point of stating clearly in the book that it’s not an ‘authorized biography.’”]
Do you feel that you have an obligation to tell the story the right way, in a sense?
No, this is not a contest. And there is no real right way to tell somebody’s life story. And I appreciate the impulse of wanting to tell someone’s story. I really do. I can’t say I admire it, but I appreciate the idea. Why wouldn’t I want to tell this person’s life story? It could be interesting to people. All of that’s true, and all of that means that I also don’t want to read it.
What about Todd Haynes’s Velvet Underground documentary? Did you see that?
Yeah, I thought it was okay. I wish there was a—yeah, no, it was fine.
Before I let you go, can you tell me what you’re up to? Because you obviously have your own incredible career and artistic practice.
Well, I’m working on finishing an orchestra piece about Amelia Earhart. And I’m working on a new big work for next fall about the end of the world. And let’s see, what else? A couple of books and some exhibitions. All kinds of things. I’m making a movie.
What’s the movie?
The movie is kind of a bunch of stories strung together.
Well, listen, I really appreciate you talking to me about this. I love the record, and I’m going to make it the first thing I put on the turntable with my toddler.
Good luck with that!
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