Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story (29 page)

Nerves were understandably strained to an edge by the time The Velvet Underground stepped out onto the stage in Edinburgh at 8:45 p.m. on June 1. The five minute standing ovation they received before playing a single note appeared to do little to relax them. The first show was by all accounts uptight.

CAROLINE SULLIVAN:
“The surrealism of watching rock
history come to life is heightened by the sense of expectation. Can four upstanding, middle-aged citizens still whip up any menace? The world will be watching.”

ALLAN JONES:
“There’s a sense of a band playing with a gun to its head, hostages of their own legend.”

JOHN HARRIS:
“John Cale is dressed in a close-fitting black suit, awkwardly hammering at bass guitar and looking like Peter Cushing with a wedge haircut. Lou Reed’s face, as ever, shows the wounds of his trawl through low-living, and he has the dress sense of a middle-aged suburban professional. Both ooze an inanimate, po-faced academic cool; the kind that comes from knowing you’re a genuine elder. Sterling Morrison looks nothing other than ancient, and so long are the intervening years that Moe Tucker is now a mother of five – and you can see the maternal wisdom in her face.”

PAT KANE:
“The first thing you notice as The Velvet Underground stutter and stumble through their first few numbers – deliberately? incompetently, who’s to know? – is the inappropriate rude health of Lou Reed. He bulges out of his black T-shirt and blue denims like a cross between Bryan Adams and Nosferatu; the pebble glasses make him look more like a pop professor than real pop professors do. Rock’s junkie royal has turned in every detail of his choreography, into an aerobic MTV act.”

DAVID BELCHER:
“Cale was a masterpiece of thespian understatement, deploying the twitchy, upright manner of Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing in a Hammer Dracula movie. Cale also took the departed Nico’s vocals on ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ and ‘Femme Fatale’, investing both with a bluff grandeur.”

ALLAN JONES:
“At the end, they line up like chorus girls in the cast of
The Mousetrap
. Cale puts his arm around Lou. Lou jumps. You get the impression that the last time Lou touched him, his fists were probably clenched. There’s still a long history between these two. Lou smiles, and puts his arm around Maureen. Sterling taps her on the head.”

JOHN ROCKWELL:
“Those who attended both Edinburgh shows found the second, on Thursday, far superior to the first … Certainly the audience loved it, standing throughout the two-hour set and cheering wildly.

“Indeed, there was much to cheer. Mr. Reed still sings with the same ominous distinctiveness; Mr. Cale is still the same multi-faceted musical saboteur; Mr. Morrison still contributes a guitar sound of weight and solidity. The revelation on Thursday, though, was the diminutive Ms. Tucker’s drumming.”

BEN THOMPSON:
“Lou Reed seems to be the most invigorated by not having to be ‘formerly of The Velvet Underground’ any more – he’s even got rid of that nightmarish Michael Bolton perm in honour of the occasion. Which would you rather play? ‘Black Angel’s Death Song’ or ‘Magic & Loss’?”

DEAN WAREHAM:
“The Velvets’ June 2 show is very different. They play the same songs, but it is apparent that Lou is going to do a fair bit of improvising, playing with tempo and structure. Sterling Morrison is playing bass on some songs, rhythm guitar on most (and he’s a great player, all upstrokes), and a couple of great guitar solos on ‘Rock & Roll’ and ‘White Light/White Heat’. After the show we meet Sterling, Moe and Lou, who are all very friendly. Lou is especially funny in a very New York way, with a very dry sense of humour.”

From Edinburgh they travelled down to London where they were booked to play the Forum, capacity 1, 200, and Wembley, capacity 13,000. Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde and Peter Gabriel were among the celebrity audience at the Forum.

MARK SATLOF:
“After the stage went black, a roar of the crowd was quickly silenced by a husky ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ count and the immediate, furiously strummed musical greeting of ‘We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together’. ‘It just seems like yesterday,’ said Lou Reed.

“Reed especially transformed his songs with radical new phrasing. He repeated lines, or jumped into vocal lines a few beats later than expected, spitting the words out rapidly to catch a later groove. Moe Tucker validated Reed’s quote from a few years back that there are two kinds of drummers -‘Moe Tucker and everybody else.’

“The next night, at the sold-out Wembley Arena, The Velvets turned in a far more intense performance. They worked together as a band, comfortable with each other, with the audience and with their songs. Seemingly energized by the sell-out crowd, they shrugged off their earlier nervousness and toyed with the songs even more. Cale and Reed, who had traded glares and scowls the previous evening, competed instead with duelling viola and guitar, and faced off on songs like ‘Some Kinda Love’.”

Ironically, in Amsterdam – which had become one of Reed’s solo strongholds and in which the Dutch music critics had as recently as 1988 voted
The Velvet Underground and Nico
as the greatest record of all time – there were more doubts about the group’s ability to meet their myth than anywhere else.

BERT VAN DER KAMP:
“People are excited about The Velvet Underground re-forming and coming to Holland, but there is also a lot of negativity. They don’t want their illusions shattered so they don’t want to go. Also, because they play a large venue and they play a small venue they’re charging a great deal.”

DEAN WAREHAM:
“On June 8 we played Amsterdam’s Paradiso with a capacity of 1, 200. I watched the Velvet’s show from the balcony right on the side of the stage. Lou was wearing a white cotton headband, and keeps pouring ice over his head. We briefly attend the after-show party. Lou exits via boat.

“On June 9 they played Rotterdam, then travelled to Hamburg for two shows. From there it was on to Prague where their show was attended by Lou’s friend, the writer
and politician, Vaclav Havel, who invited the band to a private reception following the concert. By now, however, it had emerged, as critics were increasingly wont to point out, that ‘what you hear is not always The Velvet Underground of legendary repute. For about a third of the 90-minute concert we are here in the less demanding presence of the Lou Reed Band.’”

The tour climaxed in Paris with a three-night stand, June 15-17, at the famed Olympia Theatre where The Beatles, Stones and Dylan had caused riots in the Sixties and where The Velvets surely would have done it too if Warhol had taken them there as part of his 1967 European tour.

IRA KAPLAN:
“‘Sweet Jane’ is followed by a highly tongue-in-cheek little ditty, maybe called ‘We’re The Velvet Underground’, in which Reed sort of introduces the band and claims the reunion is Morrison and Tucker’s idea, that he and Cale think it’s ‘pretentious shit’. As the audience roared and roared, The Velvet Underground gathered centre stage and bowed in unison. Show biz! Cale made that hokey clap-for-the-audience gesture, Reed raised his arms in triumph like an athlete; Tucker waved shyly, seemingly to individuals in the crowd; and Morrison looked both ecstatic and like he’d like to disappear. For the encore Cale sang ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ from the piano, upstaged (for me) by Tucker’s one-handed eight snare whacks to the measure. Next was ‘Heroin’. The members of the VU bowed some more and departed, returning again for a lovely ‘Pale Blue Eyes’, marked by Cale’s viola. Finally came a new song, ‘Cayote’. ‘Could you please repeat that name?’ asked one audience member. ‘Of course,’ replied Reed. ‘We’re The Velvet Underground, we can do anything!’”

All three nights were recorded for a live album and one was also filmed for an accompanying video. Reed told the American rock writer Lisa Robinson that this was the best show ever. It really was just one of those magical nights.

After Paris, they were scheduled to play the tour’s last two nights in Berlin.

DEAN WAREHAM:
“Tonight, June 20, is the last show, at a club called Die Halle, capacity 2, 500. The VU are really good tonight. ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ sends shivers, and Lou plays a great eight minute guitar solo to begin ‘Some Kinda Love’.”

The Velvet’s passage through Europe was outwardly smooth but inwardly bumpy. Although the shows sold out and the press was for the most part over the top positive, there were many older fans who were disappointed by what they saw as a cheap attempt to cash in on their accrued fame (ticket prices were high, astronomically so when they played clubs like the Forum in London and the Paradiso in Amsterdam). In their defence one associate pointed out that few critics had any sense of the immense cost of touring Europe in the 1990s. Apart from a technical entourage of guitar roadies, the expense of putting on the shows and the massive hotel and transportation fees combined with the tax laws of six different countries did not leave anything like as much money for each musician as some critics imagined.

The real problem was the increasing separation between Lou Reed and the other members and the “iron butterfly” -Sylvia – who stood between them, barely troubling to approach them civilly, let alone allow them into Lou’s private and heavily protected world. The separation between Reed and the band, which harked back to the days in which Steve Sesnick had come between Reed and Cale in 1968, was emphasized by various representatives of Sire Records, who would be releasing the live album recorded in Paris. They never once spoke to any members of the band during the entire tour, except Reed. By the time The Velvet Underground reached Italy to play five opening dates for U2, Lou’s uptightness and the constant tension on stage was something that shocked even Cale – who was further upset in Rome when Lou facetiously gave the crowd a Fascist
salute. It was clear to John that Lou was not representing the band, and that he had come to see them simply as his umpteenth back-up band.

There had been a lot of criticism of The Velvet Underground’s (read Lou Reed’s) decision to open for U2. “The Velvets opening for U2?” queried Jeff Curtis in a letter to
Rolling Stone.
“Wouldn’t that be like Jimi Hendrix opening up for The Monkees?”

JOHN CALE:
“I look on it as a real gesture of gentility on their part. I see them as supporting us in a way. I’ve always understood them to be big fans of ours and I can’t think of anybody better than U2 to play with.”

STERLING MORRISON:
“We talked about it a bit, and if we were going to precede a band we decided it had to be one whose major strength is their material, which would be U2 – who pretty much live or die by their material and performance. There’s not a great emphasis on theatricals.”

LOU REED:
“U2 are supporting us, actually. It’s just that the playing order’s reversed. It was their idea, not mine. We’re here to have fun. That’s been the driving force for me, the bottom line is I just want to get off. Turn it up to 11.”

From Italy they returned to the UK in July to play a short set at The Glastonbury Festival where reviewers, having got over their initial wonder at a reincarnation comparable to a Beatles reunion, caught up with them.

PAUL MOODY:
“As they survey the biggest open-air bedroom in Europe with dull dollar bills in their eyes, it all becomes too obscene to be believed.”

S.P.:
“Before he’s struck a note, Lou Reed’s scrapping with a roadie. ‘Leave it,’ he instructs with headmasterly impatience, ‘leave it, LEAVE IT!’ The audience, as one, makes a mocking ‘oooOOOoooh!’ The Velvet Underground should never have done this, of course. It’s an atrocious idea.”

KEITH CAMERON:
“The Glastonbury Festival appearance was often simply embarrassing, not least when Lou Reed began punching the air and leading the crowd in a ludicrous
call and response routine during ‘Rock & Roll’.”

Part of the critics’ cynicism was due to the fact that throughout the tour ‘Venus In Furs’ had been running on British TV as the soundtrack for an ad for Dunlop Tyres.

At the end of July the band returned to the States and immediately separated to recover. At first it looked as if the hard work was going to pay off big. Not only was the live album and video scheduled for an autumn release, but an American tour, an MTV
Unplugged
show and album, and possibly a new Velvet Underground album were all being discussed. Sylvia Reed even went so far as to start setting up US dates.

However, as August plodded into September Lou, who suddenly found himself at a loose end, went into a post-tour nose-dive, and launched a fax war with Cale that would shortly bring the whole operation once again to a thundering halt. Reed laid out in some detail why he never wanted to perform on stage with Cale again under any circumstances. Cale, as hurt and dismayed as he had been over the disappointed-with-John comments Lou had passed after completing
Songs For Drella
, had learned by now that the way to respond to Reed’s attack was by deflecting it with quiet understanding. This did little to soothe Reed’s seething paranoia, however, and he immediately embarked upon another line of attack. He refused to sign any contracts or proceed with any further VU business until it had been agreed upon in writing that he would have total control over the production of the MTV
Unplugged
album as well as any other future VU product. Cale, who pointed out that the band had always worked as a team, was justifiably horrified, and replied in a flat negative.

The battle continued through September into October, but by the time the
Live
album and video were released, Lisa Robinson had already announced in her
New York Post
column – carrying detailed explanations from Reed and Cale as well as some concluding remarks from Maureen which
harked back to the Reed-Cale split of 1968 – that The Velvet Underground reunion, if it had actually ever happened, was now undoubtedly over. Sire Records executives were extremely disappointed and the live album,
The Velvet Underground Live 1993
, which could have, along with the band’s entire back catalogue, benefited greatly from a US tour, made little commercial impression. It was a sad fall in more ways than one for the band, its audience and its history. Rather than growing up and bringing rock into its maturity, which Reed had been claiming was his goal since the early Eighties, Lou had reacted like the fifteen-year-old he was at times so proud to remain. It was his ball, and if they wouldn’t play by his rules there would be no game.