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 Iconic musician Lou Reed shows a funny side during his keynote speech at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin yesterday. (Jason Halstead, Sun Media) |
AUSTIN, Tex. -- If the rock 'n' roll thing doesn't work out for Lou Reed, he could always try his hand at comedy.
Judging by his keynote speech yesterday morning at the South by Southwest Music Conference, he's got everything he needs: Good material, a delivery so dry and deadpan it makes Steven Wright seem like Emo Philips, and even a willing straight man in music producer Hal Willner.
The 66-year-old musical iconoclast and his frequent collaborator were ostensibly here to bang the drum for their new film, Lou Reed's Berlin, an artsy concert flick directed by Julian Schnabel. And he did have plenty to say about the film -- in which he performs the bleak 1973 Berlin album live for the first time -- along with stories about The Velvet Underground, his thoughts on music and some practical advice on publishing rights. But as their freewheeling banter and bickering discussion veered into everything from his favourite new bands ("Holy f--- -- or is it Holy s--t? I can't remember") to cow-tipping ("I gave him $5"), it became clear that the former Velvet Underground frontman is ready for the standup circuit -- or at least his own talk show.
Here are a few of his thoughts. Insert your own rim shots:
On reactions to the Berlin album: "(Critics called it the) worst album ever made. Most depressing album ever made ... Berlin was used in a lawsuit against me by management to show why I shouldn't handle my own affairs -- because I would make an album like that."
On his life before music: "I was a typist. My mother said, 'Take typing in high school so you have something to fall back on.' "
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On the early days of the Velvet Underground: "Nobody would give us 10 bucks for anything. You better be young when you start doing this (music) stuff. Because when it's not going good, it's one thing to sleep on floors, sleep in the subway, sleep in movie theatres, sleep in a lobby. But you get older, you can't do to much of that after awhile."
On an audience member's ringing cellphone: "What is that? What does 'Turn off your cellphone' mean in Texas? Is there a special way of saying it, like ... "Shove it in a cow?' What?"
On songwriting: "I've never understood how they get written. People always wanna know how you write a song. I don't know. I wanted to know too. And if I could have done it, I would have had Son of (Take a Walk on the) Wild Side and I'd own an island in the Caribbean."
On punk music: "All that young guy stuff. That's punk and nobody can beat that ... And it will (exist) forever. Because where else are they gonna put all that? It's there or jail."
On all the sex, drugs, violence and death in his lyrics: "People say, 'How would you know that?' You're joking, right? You're supposed to give qualifications for lyrics? I have a BA in dope. But a PhD in soul."
On the digital age and the lousy sound of MP3s: "You have the world open to you now. You can get almost any song in the world as an MP3. And then, I suppose, if you like it, you could go out and try to find a version of it that you could actually listen to ... It's like the technology is taking us backward. It's making it easier to make things worse."
On his legendary 1975 noise-rock opus Metal Machine Music: "It was what they initially called a career-ender. For the longest time, there was a joke about the Metal Machine Music clause. If you had a record contract, you had to promise not to do anything like Metal Machine Music."
On touring: "(A famous musician) said to me as we were getting ready to maybe go on tour, 'You know Lou, touring is like going to jail. You don't wanna get f--ed.' And on that note ... "