The Observer | 01. 1 0. 17 | THE NEW REVIEW 11
Q&A Anthony DeCurtis
music could somehow have played a
signifi cant role in history surpassed
even the artist’s most grandiose
notions about himself. He was
understandably fl attered and accepted
the assignment. Havel was delighted
that Reed, one of his musical heroes,
would be interviewing him.
When publications make an
assignment like this, it’s essentially
an act of faith – faith that if you get
two people of such signifi cance in
one room, whatever they talk about,
whatever happens between them, will
be more interesting than if a seasoned
reporter had been sent to do the job.
A complication is that, because both
people involved in doing the story
are notable in their own right, it’s
not easy to provide direction or even
make suggestions about what topics
their conversation should take on –
You treat Reed as a writer of substance
whose medium happened to be rock
songs. Was that your starting point?
I had a lot of ideas about Lou.
I knew him reasonably well
[DeCurtis interviewed Reed
extensively and knew him socially ],
I had listened to his work very
assiduously over the years, so it’s
not like I walked in with a blank
slate. One of the things that became
very clear to me throughout the
course of writing the book is the
extent to which he saw himself as
a writer.More so than previous biographers,
you had access to Reed and you clearly
have the blessing of the people around
him. What materials did you have
access to – were there diaries?
I don’t think Lou had that much
stuff , I think the nature of his life
was such that a lot of things got
thrown away or disappeared. I
think the people around Lou felt
that I would be fair to him. It’s not
like this is an authorised book, but
Laurie [ Anderson , musician, and
Reed’s partner of 21 years], while
she didn’t do an interview for the
book, I think anybody that came
to her and said “ Can I talk to this
guy?”, she was perfectly happy to let
them. I think Lou liked me, which
was rare for journalists, and that
counted for something.
But it’s still tricky. He was a very
private guy; he would never have
wanted this book to be written. He
had a very complicated relationship
with his own history and his own,
often contradictory, desires. But he
deserved a biography like this; he
was a major artistic fi gure.A Reed biography could easily fi ll
up with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,
rather than his literary ambition. How
much were you writing in relation to
previous biographies (notably, Howard
Sounes’s book Notes from the Velvet
Underground ).
I felt from the beginning I wanted
as honest a reading of Lou as I
could produce. That idea of Lou
as a monster , which became the
theme of Howard’s book, that
aspect to him was there, there’s no
doubt, and that’s represented in
the book – but that’s not all there
is. Joyce Carol Oates has come up
with this idea of “pathography” ,
that people only look at major
[literary] fi gures when they come
up with unpleasant revelations.
Reed’s drug use, anger and sexual
adventurism just seem to me to be
established facts, not only about
Reed’s life but his work. Deepening
an understanding of Lou, that
was the goal. And understanding
how these high-minded ambitions
could coexist with some pretty
grisly stuff. Look, he treated
people pretty badly. But he was
also really nice to a lot of people.
He was a great artist. Adding all
that up, and establishing a kind
of comprehensible through-line
between the contradictions of his
life, became the goal.What was your favourite thing that
you learned?
Bill Bentley , a publicist, told mea story from when the book of
his lyrics, Between Thought and
Expression , came out. After a book
signing, Lou just began weeping.
I found that very aff ecting, it just
made so palpable what I had,
in a fairly abstract way, taken as
one of his great ambitions; how
much it meant to him to see his
work collected and to have people
tell him how much that work
meant to them. Part of the deal of
writing the book was to de mythify
Lou ; that story did that for me- the humanness, rather than
the cartoon.”
You spoke to a lot of the women in his
life, in particular, Bettye Kronstad ,
Reed’s fi rst wife, who left him after he
was abusive. She hadn’t spoken much
before this.
She has since published a memoir ,
but she was one of the fi rst people
I managed to get in touch with.
It was a powerful story and there
were elements to it that I never
would have thought about. [For
example] Lou always spoke about
his father as really this tyrannical
fi gure. Kafk a wrote Letter To His
Father, a compendium of every
conceivable grouse he ever felt
about this overbearing fi gure. And
that’s how Lou described his dad. It
was a complicated relationship. At
one point [Bettye] was talking about
Lou being cheap. I said “Would his
father have given him money?” And
she said, “Oh, of course he would
have, anything for Lou!” [Reed Sr]
wasn’t somebody who was going
to appreciate the outrageousness
of who Reed became but, as a
dad, he seemed to care. I think
he would have been happy with a
son who would have gladly taken
over his accounting business.
And then there is the issue of the
electro convulsive therapy that his
parents subjected him to [during his
fi rst year at university]. It sounds
like a terrible thing, but I think
his father felt : “ Look, this is what
the doctors recommended, I tried
my best.”A scene that jumps out of the book is
Arista executive Clive Davis in a suit,
tie and pocket handkerchief being
taken for a “walk on the wild side”
after hours in the Meatpacking District
of New York in the 70s.
Mick Rock the photographer
told me about this too – there
were a number of people who
Lou would invite along on his
rambles. There was an element of
shock, obviously, that was meant
to be there, but I think there was
a voyeuristic element; I think he
wanted to watch people respond
to his world. There was an element
of trust, that he would take you
along. With Lou, there was this
leather-clad invulnerability that I
think he tried to convey, [but] there
was a lot of insecurity underneath
that. I think in showing these
people, “this is the world I move
in”, there was a kind of, “what do
you think of me now?” – a kind
of bravado to that, and a kind
of vulnerability.Interview by Kitty EmpireReed, Havel spoke aff ectingly about
the history of the dissident movement
in Czechoslovakia, emphasi sing its
musical and cultural aspects – most
notably, the rise of Charter 77 , which
emerged, in part, in opposition to
the government’s persecution of
the Plastic People of the Universe.
“By this I mean to say,” Havel said,
“the music, underground music, in
particular one record by a band called
Velvet Underground, played a rather
signifi cant role in the development
of our country, and I don’t think that
many people in the United States have
noticed this.” Reed’s response? “Joan
Baez says hello.”
When Havel described at length
his visit to the United States in 1968
and his participation in the historic
student uprising that year at Columbia
University, Reed responded, “Did yougo to CBGB’s?” – which, of course, did
not exist in 1968. Havel’s remarks on
all these matters were nuanced and
insightful, but Reed reduced them to a
truism: “You obviously feel and prove
that music can change the world?”
Havel’s response was characteristically
thoughtful: “Not in itself, it’s not
suffi cient in itself. But it can contribute
to that signifi cantly in being a part of
the awakening of the human spirit.”
Reed, as it happens, intentionally
set out not to do the type of interview
a journalist would do. “I don’t like it
when the interview’s so cleaned up
that the interviewer and subject sound
like the same person,” he said. “I like
to keep the real rhythm of the way the
person talks.” What journalists know
and Reed didn’t understand is that
spoken words and words on a page are
two diff erent things. Some cleaning up
is always necessary. Reed also spoke
about how nervous he had been to
interview Havel, which makes some of
its awkwardness more understandable.
It’s not surprising that his seeming
offh andedness and brusque attitude
masked insecurities. “With Hubert
Selby ,” Reed said, referring to an
interview he’d done with one of his
literary idols, “I came in with typed
questions, because I was sure I’d be
nerve-racked and I didn’t want to
forget anything. Same with Havel ... it’s
just really hard work. I’d much rather
go out for a drink with them.”
What Reed turned in to the
magazine was not what Rolling Stone
was looking for. The assignment had
not been made by a music editor, but
by Robert Vare, who handled much of
the magazine’s political coverage. He
was taken aback and asked me to have
a look at the piece. I, too, was surprised
by how one-dimensional it was. My
suggestion was to see if Reed, whom I
had not yet met at that time, might be
willing to write something longer – or
perhaps something shorter – in which
the best material from the interview
could play a part. Given that working
with him up to that point had not
exactly been a joyride, the feeling at the
magazine was that he was unlikely to
want to do that. Finally, it was decided
to simply give the piece back to Reed
and let him do what he wanted with it
somewhere else. (The publication that
had commissioned Reed to interview
Hubert Selby also turned down the
resulting interview.)
Reed was livid. In a smart move, he
showed the piece to Rob Bowman , a
critic and professor of musicology who
was producing and writing liner notes
for Between Thought and Expression,
a three-CD anthology of Reed’s solo
work with RCA and Arista.
Wisely concealing his own
estimation of the piece – “It was
defi nitely terrible,” Bowman said later;
“I could see why Rolling Stone rejected
it”— he suggested that Reed contact
Bill Flanagan at Musician. Flanagan
had interviewed Reed a number of
times and was one of his staunchest
supporters. Musician was a smaller
magazine than Rolling Stone, and while
it was highly regarded in the music
industry, it did not have anything
like Rolling Stone’s reputation for
political reporting to live up to. Having
a Lou Reed interview with Václav
Havel would be a coup for Musician,
regardless of its quality.
Flying a bit under the media radar
ultimately freed Musician to turn the
piece into something idiosyncratic and
quite readable. Perhaps chastened by
Rolling Stone’s rejection, Reed did write
a longer piece of which the interview
was just a part. A few moments remain
cringeworthy, but at many other points,
Reed seems genuinely stirred by Havel
and wonder struck by the role his songs
had played in such a monumental
historical moment.This is an edited extract from Lou Reed:
A Life by Anthony DeCurtis (John
Murray £25). To order a copy for £21.
go to guardianbookshop.com or call
0330 333 6846 On tour with his wife,
artist and musician
Laurie Anderson, in
Girona, Spain, 2009.
EPA
Václav Havel, right,
then president of the
Czech Republic, at a
New York jazz club
with Lou Reed, 1999.
Timothy Fadek/AP
With fi rst wife
Bettye Kronstad,
January 1973.
Anton Perich
‘Stay away if you
have no moral
compass’: Lou Reed
performing live in
the early 70s.
Getty Imagesespecially true in this case, given Reed’s
prickliness, insecurities, and desire for
control.
So off he went to interview Havel in
Prague.
Reed fl ew to Prague after
participating in Nelson Mandela:
An International Tribute for a Free
South Africa , a concert at Wembley
Stadium in London on 16 April, 1990,
to celebrate Mandela’s release from
the South African prison in which he
had been held for 27 years because of
his eff orts to bring down that country’s
apartheid regime. Despite the fact that
he was about to interview a political
and cultural fi gure of enormous
signifi cance, Reed treated all the
preliminary steps as if he were going
to do a concert date in a region with
which he wasn’t familiar. He did not
relax his desire for control a whit. Hedisplayed no comprehension that he
was dealing with a newly liberated
country, some of whose citizens,
however shockingly, might not even
have been aware of who Lou Reed
was. All requests that diverged from
his ordinary travel routine – would he
consider performing at a small club? –
were fl atly denied.
The original transcript Reed
turned in to Rolling Stone refl ected a
similar myopia. While Havel would
occasionally attempt to explore
some larger issues, particularly how
the counterculture in the United
States had made a strong impact
on him, Reed continually nudged
the conversation toward his own
preoccupations – which is to say
himself and his world. Pressed for time
and eager to get to the substantive
issues he wanted to discuss with