YOU may have noticed that a good chunk of Lou Reed interviews over the years have started with the 'I'm waiting for the man' line.
I waited for the man myself recently. And waited. And waited. And waited . . .
Having been offered a rare audience with the rock legend, I'd flown to his native NYC for what was guaranteed to be the most challenging of interviews – quite literally
.
Anybody familiar with the tactics Reed regularly adopts to unsettle journos will know it's never an easy task getting anything much at all from the former Velvet Underground man.
Rock's most aggressive interviewee, the stoney-faced star is famed for his steely stares, sudden interruptions, walk-outs and blank refusals to answer this or that question.
But while Reed's curmudgeonly reputation precedes him, he has said in the past that he may as well be Lou Reed because nobody else does it better – which is as good as admitting it's a bit of an act.
Before heading to Manhattan, Reed's press man had spent 20 minutes briefing me as to what I could and couldn't ask him.
"You can't ask him to explain lyrics, because he won't do it." he said. "Don't question him about the Velvet Underground – he doesn't talk about that. And don't even try to talk about (former mentor] Andy Warhol. Nor does he ever allude in interviews to his private life."
Fine, I said, tell me what we can talk about. Turns out, not much. All that he would discuss was his Berlin tour, which comes to the Playhouse next week, and a Berlin concert movie directed by his friend, the artist and film director Julian Schnabel.
Any other line of questioning and, interview over.
Chance would be a fine thing. Four rescheduled dates later, and it became clear that Reed had decided he couldn't be bothered doing the interview after all. Did it matter to him that a journalist had flown across the Atlantic to talk to him? Not a jot, seemingly.
Being a Velvets completist, I won't say that I wasn't gutted. Reed is a bit of a hero of mine.
That said, maybe I didn't miss much. At 66, Reed is said to have mellowed after his marriage to long-time love Laurie Anderson. But anyone who thought the cantankerous one had chilled out would have been swiftly disabused of that notion had they read a recent interview with New York magazine.
At the time, Reed had a forthcoming slot DJing on Sirius satellite radio. During the course of the conver-sation, the interviewer mentioned that Sirius' forthcoming merger with XM would likely boost earnings, and asked whether Reed had any intention of investing himself.
The rest of the chat went something like this:
Reed: "What are you, a ******* ********? I'm here telling you the truth about music and you want to know if I have stock in the ******* radio? You ******* piece of ****."
New York Magazine: "Moving on. You've got a film out, you've got your radio show, you've got a new book of photography coming up – is there a new album in the works?"
Reed: "No. Nothing I feel like talking about. Goodbye."
