Preface to the Velvet Underground Tribute Show: The Time I Met John Cale, Lou Reed Watched Scornfully

Before I begin another story full of lies, I want to say again: The KOOP Membership Drive is happening now. Please give generously. Please give painfully. Please give thoughtlessly. Just please give.

What can I say about the Velvet Underground that hasn't already been written about by self-important critics & fans for over thirty years now? Really, nothing. They're great. They're influential. They looked amazing in black. They took more drugs & had more sleazy lifestyles than your average congressional intern. But more than anything else, what affects me most about them are two things I really appreciate about unbelievably great music:

1) It's timeless. You can play a Velvet Underground song to someone from age ten to age ten-squared, & it sounds as if it were made yesterday.

2) It has an emotional center. This may seem weird description of a song's character, but so much music may be emotive, or may have sparks of the things that makes rock & roll great (sex & death, desire & pain) but it might just be an outburst rather than a sustained emotional experience. Think of "Pale Blue Eyes." It's certainly lovely, with a catchy melody, but deep down the song is about longing, gratitude & guilt. How many songs that you love feel & seem so three-dimensional?

Also, though there are some gaping holes in "Loaded," the four albums always seem more than the sum of their parts, & until John Cale left, you couldn't really tell where Lou Reed left off & John Cale began, & among the majority of their oeuvre, you can never get rid of the beating joy of Moe Tucker or the sturdy backbone of Sterling Morrison. (& later, of course, you find it wearying to scratch the bugbite itch of Doug Yule.)

But now: the lies.

So I met John Cale in a bar in Barbados (he was working out with barbells, & I had been barred from my favorite honky tonk on the island, the Bar None) &, since I was a fresh-faced nineteen-year-old who knew all the words to "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend," we got very friendly & started discussing the merits of Welshmen & homosexuality. I myself was starstruck, & also John Cale had banged my knee with a barbell, so you could say I was Calestruck as well.

John Cale - & maybe no one knows this - is a master hypnotist who can put you under faster than you can recite the story behind "The Gift." After seventeen "Island Specials" - basically just rum drunk from a hollowed-out grapefruit - he began to tell me what he called "the secret" - the secret, I supposed, to success, to rock genius, to being tall with a cool Welsh accent. I must admit I wasn't much of a drinker back then, so either I was hypnotized or I was trying desperately to keep the world from spinning me like a top, because, while I listened intently & deeply wanted to know "the secret," I was easily distracted by a disapproving grunt from the back of the bar.

Omigod! It was Lou Reed! He was dressed all in black, with big black sunglasses covering his chiseled, Muppet-off-the-junk face. John Cale looked a little surprised, then turned back to me. "He's always around," he told me cheerfully, "he doesn't want anyone else to know 'the secret.'"

Lou Reed came at John Cale slowly, a chain of some kind produced quickly from a pocket in his black leather jacket. John Cale simply stood up, revealing a sturdy, well-worn snooker cue. It looked as if things would be bad. Through my fuzzy head I could hear words & phrases muttered by both, angry, bloodthirsty: "Traitor!" "Producer!" "Junkie!" "Robot!" "Andy always liked me better!" "Nico always hated you!"

I confess, I tried to stand & say, "Gentlemen, please. You are giants in the world of music. Your influence continues, ripples you started in the late sixties overturn entire genres to this day. Please don't fight! Please, for the love of all that is good & pure, put down your weapons & put away your differences. The world needs you!"

As I say, I tried to stand, but instead I fell, & my speech came out like a gurgle (along with two of my teeth) as I landed face-first on the wooden floor.

I didn't get a chance to see what happened next, as I woke up the next day, back in my lonesome bedroom in Austin. How I got home I don't know, but I was relieved to learn that neither Lou Reed nor John Cale lost their lives that night. Instead, within a year, the two had begun working together, recording "Songs For Drella" &, for a short time, reuniting the Velvets to tour. & I'd like to think maybe I had a hand in it.