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The Velvet Underground: Heroin, S&M, and the Attempted Assassination of Andy Warhol · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the Velvet Underground are insane. They sang candidly about heroine, speed,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: in s and m and those subjects would be controversial
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: even now, but at the time, in the nineteen sixties,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: they were completely taboo, unheard of in pop music. No
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: one's saying about drugs and sex like that, but no
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: one was the Velvet Underground. Their members included drug dealers
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and junkies in their perverted stage show, offended liberal hippies.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Their first manager, Andy Warhol, nearly died during an assassination
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: attempt that left him physically and mentally shattered for the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: rest of his life. Their songwriter Lou Reed, was hell
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: bent on transcending the art scene to achieve major commercial success,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: no matter who stood in his way. Despite of him.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Because of all of these things, the Velvet Underground made
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: great music, some of the most cutting edge music, music
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: that predicted punk rock, music that launched a thousand bands.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Unlike that clip I played for you at the top
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of the show that wasn't great music. That was a
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: preset loop for my melotron called Union Squared Dance MK one.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I played you that Loop because I can't afford the
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: rights to Missus Robinson by Simon and Garfunkel.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: And why would I play you that specific slice of
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Goo gook cheese? Could I afford it?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: June third, nineteen sixty eight, And that was the day
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: that The Velvet Underground's former manager, In Warhol, was declared
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: clinically dead, a moment that had ramifications on both the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: future of the band in the future of rock and roll.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: On this episode, speed and heroin sex fetishes, an assassination
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: attempt Goot Googa Cheese in The Velvet Underground. I'm Jake
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Brennan in this this disgraceland. Mariene Tucker didn't know what
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: the fuck she was looking at the flower in the hair,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: long flowing blouses, fringe and technicolor tie. Die this one girl.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: She didn't even have shoes on. And the girl stuck
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: out two fingers like bunny ears Peace and love, Peace,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And what the hell was wrong with these people? This
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: was nineteen sixty six. Look around California, Vietnam, Mississippi. Goddamn,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: there was no peace back home in New York. The
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: only piece you got was the few minutes it took
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: to give blood so that you could earn a couple
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: bucks to make it through the rest of the week.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: And love.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Love was not free and it was not easy.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: The La hippies were equally confused by Moe. Was this
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: a woman standing before them or is this a man?
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Why did she or he play the drums? Standing up,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: black clothes sunglasses inside the club at night? Mole people
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: moles on speed and smack instead of grass and LSD.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: And though they were on the West Coast and they
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: had permission to be happy here, inner Bliss was just
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: a California dream away. Mo knew it was useless to
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: try to explain herself to these morons. They didn't even
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: get Nico, the most beautiful thing about the Velvet Underground.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Nico was tall, exotic, magnetic, but she was a dead
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: pan kind of knockout. Her deep voice was strange, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: her lack of affectation was even stranger. She was a
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: block of ice, way too cool to melt in the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: hot California sun. Mo would take the repressed Midwest over
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: this fantasy any day, because that's what this was, a fantasy.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Jesus.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: They even had a band called love. Love was the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: biggest power of bullshit Mo had ever seen. It wasn't
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: just Mo, Lou Reed, the singer and the songwriter in
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: her band, The Velvet Underground.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: He knew bullshit when he saw it. Lou Reed was
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: fluent in bullshit. Lou Reed pedaled bullshit.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: As a former staff songwriter for Pickwick Records, he made
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: a living selling for gayzes to fucking rubes. The songs
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: were shit, and the bands that recorded the songs didn't exist.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: It was just a cash grab. It was plastic. But
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Lou's real songs, the songs.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: He didn't write for the Pickwick for Gazy Machine, those
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: were real, real as a spike in your vein, realer
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: than anything anyone had.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Ever heard before.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: A while the Beatles were busy singing coded drug songs
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: like got to Get You Into My Life, The Velvet
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Underground weren't coding a damn thing. I'm waiting for The
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Man in Heroin were metaphor free songs about junkies and aheads,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: guys like lou himself, copping a fix, shooting speed shooting, junk,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: popping seconds and thorsine. Anything that allowed you to see
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the white light and feel the white Heat. And it
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: wasn't just drug music, lous song, Venus in furs. It
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: was all about kinks and sexual taboos, about servants tasting
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: a whip and mistresses with boots to worship. It was
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Venus in Furs that were playing now on stage at
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: a Sunsets strip club called The Trip. Lou Reed and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: fellow band member Stirling Morrison's guitars conjured a drone, the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: drone of a sixty cycle, hum of a Westinghouse refrigerator,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the drone of Western civilization, the alpha rythm of the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: sleeping brain. John Kle's amplified viola squealed eerily. Motucker beat
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: out a primitive rhythm on a drum kit. As diminutive
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: as she was, it was hypnotic, and it was loud,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and the walls of the little club shook. But there
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: was more to the show than just the sound. The
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: exploding plastic inevitable Andy Warhol's roving brainchild of New York Freaks.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: It was a multi media assault on the senses. The
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: intent of the exploding plastic inevitable wasn't merely to hypnotize,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: to control the imagination of everyone in the room. This
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: was done not just with sound but with vision. Andy's
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: experimental films were projected directly onto the band, like Blowjob,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: a thirty five minute single take of a man's face
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: as he will you know It's on off camera, the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: strobe lights and the movie flickered while the Velvets kept playing.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: That drone like a B fifty two is coming through
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: the fucking roof, the kind of drone that John Cale
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: had learned about at the feet of La Monte Young.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: But the minimalist composer didn't just supply John Kele with
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: music lessons. He supplied the dope, the good dope, the
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: dope that John Cale dealt for La Monty Young on
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the side, and then the dope that got lou read
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: off hardcore. The band sounded like nodding off felt. Two dancers,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Gerard and Mary, appeared on stage holding oversized plastic needles
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: while the Velvet song played on an audio visual representation
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: of La Monte Young's teachings. They pressed the syringes into
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: their arms and went through the motion of shooting heroin, and.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: The music got louder.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Mary cracked a cruel bullwh and the sound of it
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: brought poor Gerard to his knees.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Mary motioned to him. Gerard began to crawl.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: John Cale's viola sounded like corrosive liquid running down a
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Ringmurro lou Reid's guitar began to feedback like a cornered animal,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and Gerard crawled on his hands and knees. That's a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: good little sub Mary cracked her bull up again. Gerard hustled, yes, yes,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: strike me, dear mistress.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: He made it to Mary's feet.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: He could smell the sweat on her body, He could
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: taste her in the back of his throat.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: He looked up. Mary looked down at him from on high.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Gerard opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and licked
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: her leather boots clean. When the show let out, the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: La audience scratched their heads. Lou Reid should have known better.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: You can't reprogram brains with sound and images, not unlike
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: lou Reid's own brain couldn't be reprogrammed when his parents
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: sent him to that place where he laid down on
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a wooden gurney and some quack and a white coat
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: stuck a rubber block between his teeth, and that shit
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: didn't work. You couldn't shock someone's brain into being up tight,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: just like you couldn't shock the gay.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Out of them.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Uptight as an anxious or tense. I meant it in
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the way Stevie Wonder meant it when he's saying that
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: everything was all right, clean out of sight and was
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: uptight interesting something instead of nothing. La was nothing. San
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Francisco was even worse. San Francisco's Bill Graham didn't just
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: misunderstand the Velvets.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: He hated them.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I hope you fucker's bomb, he said to Marien Tucker
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: as the group took the stage at the film More.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Graham was just jealous, Jealous that these people were cooler
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: than he was, Jealous that he'd never get to fuck Nico,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Jealous when he realized that he Bill Graham, the music
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: man of the Hate Ashbury, the guru of the Filmore,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that he was not the true originator of the trippy
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: rock and roll light show as he so often claimed
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: to be, and therefore was patently not uptight. It was
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Marshall mccluan, the famous twentieth century philosopher at Mass Media,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: who officially gave the Velvets credit over Bill Graham for
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: inventing the rock and roll light Show in his book
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the medium is the massage. Yes, I said massage. That's
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: a pawn on mcclun's most indelible phrase, the medium is
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the message. In nineteen sixty six, no rock band was
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: more aware of the potential of their own medium than
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the Velvet Underground, and no band pedaled a more transgressive
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: message than the Velvet Underground. Speed, heroin, trash, novel, kink,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: solicitations and acts deemed leude and indecent by local and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: federal law, sins of bad taste, and sins against quote
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: unquote nature. The Velvet Underground was the medium, and the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: message was crime. You are a rat, You're a fucking rat.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Andy Warhol was pissed. His face was beat red. Lou
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Reid had seen Andy in all his moods before, shy, clayful, combative, horny,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: but he'd never seen him so angry. Lou played it cool,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: more like ice cold. It wasn't personal, It was just,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: you know, business. Andy could feel hurt and betrayed. All
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: he wanted didn't bother Loo at all. What did bother
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Lou was what had become of his band. He was
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the songwriter, He was the brooding provocateur John Kle could
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: argue with that all he wanted. John was there from
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the start, after all, not just copying nickelbags of junk
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: with Lou, but providing a creative foil that juxtaposed experimentalism
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: would Lou Street tough poetics. But Lou Reid wasn't in
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a rock band to be experimental. He wasn't here to
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: have some art film projected onto his body. Lou Reid
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: wasn't a fucking soundtrack. He was a rock and roll animal.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: He was made to make people shake to that fine,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: fine music. Lou Reid wanted to be a star, and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the way he saw it now in nineteen sixty seven,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Andy Warhol was the star. And don't get him wrong,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Lou was grateful for Andy's help, no doubt. Without the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: patronage of one of the most commercially successful disruptors of
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the modern art world, the Velvet Underground wouldn't have a
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: debut album out on Verve Records. Andy had the scene,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Andy had the buzz, and most importantly, Andy at the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: time anyway, had the dough. Andy's money paid for the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Velvet's instruments, their equipment. It paid for the rehearsal space
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and their tour. But that money also gave Andy Warhol
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the right to pull rank, like when he hired Krista
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Pifkin aka Nico as the group's co lead singer alongside Lou.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Any artist know the beauty is in the eye of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the beholder. But Andy Warhol wasn't just an artist. He
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: was a businessman. He knew that you needed more than
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: three irritated looking dudes and one androgynist drummer to sell records,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and a nex fashion model sold records. Lou, on the
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: other hand, saw Nico as a fem fatale, a double cross,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: there to marginalize his involvement, there to sing his songs.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Sunday Morning, the lead track from The Velvet Underground's nineteen
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: sixty seven debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, was
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: written by Lou four Nico, but when he found out
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it was also going to be the album's lead single,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Lou took it back. He sang, the damn thing. He
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't having some fifty foot tall blonde bombshell casting a
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: shadow on his side of the fucking street. It wasn't paranoia,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: it wasn't jealousy. Okay, maybe it was, but it was
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: something else too. It was self preservation. Just look at
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the New York Times review of the Velvet's live show,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the same one that baffled the hippies out West. The
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Times made sure they mentioned Nico, famous fashion model and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: now singer, as well as John Kale, who was dubbed
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the group's leader, but the article never mentioned Lou Reed,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: not once.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: And that gun under loose skin.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Now he had this album, this incredible album, and his
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: name was nowhere on it. Andy Warhol's name was on
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the cover Twice produced by Andy Warhol was printed on
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the back of the LP jacket in the font just
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: as large as the title of the record, which was
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: rich because you know, Andy knew fuck all about producing
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: a rock and roll album. And there it was again,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: on the front of the LP jacket, just below that
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: giant dick. Okay, it wasn't actually a dick. It was
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Andy's print of a yellow banana that he stole off
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: an ash tray from some promotional item printed a couple
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: decades before. That banana was actually a sticker they could
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: peel off slowly to see this bright pink banana flesh
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: beneath it. Okay, come on, now, that was a dick.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It's definitely a dick.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Lou didn't even mind that it was a dick. Lou
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: was fine with dick's. The problem was that Andy was
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: a dick, and it was Andy, Andy's name, and yes,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Andy's dick. And maybe Lou.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Would have looked past all that if the album had
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: just sold well. But no one was buying it. The
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Velvet Underground and Nico was roundly ignored when it was
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: released in March of nineteen sixty seven. The record label
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: didn't promote it. No disc jockey was risking their job
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: to play songs about junkies and speed freaks and sm
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: M on the air, not even their own hometown. In
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: The Velvet Underground, a band that was a mirror to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the thriving, seedy underbelly of New York was effectively banned
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: by that same city. Louie didn't want excuses. Though he
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: wanted success, he wanted fame, and more than just those
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol kept going on about.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Andy could whine and moan all he wanted, but Lou
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: was tougher, and lou was more than tough in his mind,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: he was a fucking king, a king fueled by metamphetamine,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: wired on speed. Lou thought faster, talked faster, and acted faster.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And if Andy wanted to calm a fucking rat, then fine,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Luke could stand being a fucking rat. There was all
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: this other bullshit he couldn't stand anymore. The elevator made
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: its way up to the sixth floor of the Decker building.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: When it arrived, the bell rang out.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And the doors of the elevator slid overen. Andy Warhol,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: dressed all in black with a shock of silver hair
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: perched on top, stepped into the hallway and began to
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: walk towards his office.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: A woman was waiting for him. He knew her. She
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: looked impatient.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Andy assumed she was there to talk about her script,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the script she wanted Andy to produce. But she wasn't
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: holding a script today. Instead, her fingers were clenched tight.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Around the handle of a thirty two Burretta.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: After his professional relationship with the Velvet Underground came to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: an end, Andy Warhol relocated his studio the Factory to
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Union Square, the kind of neighborhood in the late sixties
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: that you'd find in a Lou Reed song. But Andy
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: no longer had Lou Reed or his songs, and New
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: York no longer had the Velvet Underground. Andy's old band
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: was busy creating a new family two hundred miles away
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: in Boston. No bullhips, no light show, no film projections,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: just rock and roll. Andy couldn't help but take it personally.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: The snub, the relocation, but the Velvet's exile to another
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: city was a self imposed middle finger aimed at all
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of New York in general. Andy liked to think the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: band extended an olive branch to him when they had
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: him create the cover art for their second album, But
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the music had changed since the first record, White Light
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: White Heat was jittery, aggressive and the sound of amphetamines
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: in haste fuzzy and distorted, and it had one hundred
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: percent less Nico. Getting Andy out of the picture was
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: only the first step in Loo's plan. With Andy on
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Lou set his sights on the German model. Nico was
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: a concept, a marketing ploy. She wasn't part of the band,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: not really. Lou did his fast talking, pill fueled king
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: rat thing and got John Klee to agree with him.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: So when the time came to fire, Nico, and that
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: time came real fucking fast. John had loose back plus
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: white light, white heat was a brand new sound. It
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: was fast, It had nails and teeth. It was doggy, dog,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: bitch on bitch, It was surviving. People who were gathered
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: near Andy Warhol's office scattered when the first shot went off.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: The barrel of the barretta was smoking in the woman's hands.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: She pulled the trigger again. Andy watched in horror as
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: someone was hit. Andy went to take shelter behind a desk,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: but in his panic he bumped into it and lost
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: his balance. His head hit the corner of the desk
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: on his way down, and his vision went blurry.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: And then she was on him.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: The butt of her bretta pressed hard and his right side.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: He heard the pistol fire again, then a burning sensation
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: just under his armpit. Blood began to pool on the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: floor beneath him. The gunshot was so close, so loud,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: his ears were ringing a drone one long note. It
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: rang out into infinity, smothering his head like the strings
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: of a bow across a viola, or feedback from an
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: amplifier turned all the way up to ten, or an
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: elevator bell cast down a hallway to hell, a soundtrack
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: to his pain. He saw an array of colors made
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: of tears. He spat up blood. It hurt to breathe.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Jesus fuck. He'd been shot in the fucking lung. He
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: knew it.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: He could see his business manager, Fred Hughes, out of
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the corner of his eye, on his knees, hands raised,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: bagging Valerie.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: I'm innocent.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: She walked over and aimed the gun at Fred's head.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot you, Fred whimpered. He knew the dear
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: mistress was about to strike Valerie. Don't shoot, and she
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: pushed the gun closer to Fred.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: I have to, she said.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Andy closed his eyes and waited to hear the gun
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: fire one more time. Before it did, the elevator bell
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: rang out. Andy opened his eyes. He struggled through double
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: vision to look, but there was nothing to see. The
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: elevator was empty. The room went dark, and Andy Warhol
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: dreamt for a thousand years, We'll be right back after this.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: We're We're where.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Lou Reid was in Los Angeles when he heard that
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Andy Warhol was dead. Technically, Andy had been pronounced clinically dead,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: but that was before the doctor's at Columbus Hospital went
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: to work. They cut his chest open, and they massaged
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: his heart with their hands, and they brought Andy.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Back to life.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: The bullet from Valerie Salanis's beretta had ripped through Andy's stomach,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: his liver, his screen, his esophagus, in both his lungs.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: He should have died instead. He had a new lease
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: on life, but it was a lease that came to
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: a caveat.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: He developed an incisional hernia during the five hour procedure,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: which men he'd have to wear a corset for the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: rest of his life to keep his internal organs in place.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Lou knew he should call, and that would be the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: right thing to do, express his shock for what had happened,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: his guilt for not being there, his gratitud that all
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: things considered, Andy was okay.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: But Lou didn't call, not right away.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: He was busy thinking about that girl, the one at
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the Boston tea party. Not the tea party, tea party.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Not that old ship docked off Boston Harbor that runs
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: towards at the top of the hour with kids making
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: minimum wage, dressed up like ye old sons of liberty.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about the legendary music venue called the Boston
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Tea Party, now defunct, that was once located on Berkeley
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Street in the South End and later relocated to Lansdowne
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Street next to Fenway Park.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: That Boston Tea Party, it.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Was where The Velvet Underground played regular gigs for a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: diehard faction of local Boston fans who embraced the band
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: as their own. It was that place that Lou was
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: thinking of now, specifically the girl who walked right up
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: to him and said, you make me so crazy, I
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: want to kill you. She had that look in her eyes.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: He'd seen it before. He wondered if Andy saw that
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: same look in Valerie's eyes when she pulled the trigger.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: The Tea Party girl meant well, meant it as a compliment, really,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: but it was unsettling all the same. At first, Lou
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: thought he'd just misheard her. It was loud inside the venue,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: even if The Velvet's definition of a good turnout for
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a show is like forty people. Hippi's held court in
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: one corner, bikers in another, drug dealers, skulp pass r teachers,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: local thug sized up, a couple of Harvard students that
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: goofy kid Jonathan Richmond was around here somewhere, probably bugging
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Sterling Morrison again to show him how to play those
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: chords on his guitar. Lou asked the girl to repeat herself.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: I said, you're making me so crazy, I want to
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: kill you. Yeah, that's what he thought.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Fucking weirdo. They're all freaks and weirdos. Some are lovable,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the others just fucking crazy. The girls walk up to
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Paul McCartney and say.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: They wanted to kill him.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: What was going to stop someone like Valerie Sillanis from
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: walking right up to Loo, pulling a piece from her
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: pocket and blowing his fucking brains out. Andy should have
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: had locks on the doors security man instead of yes man.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: He shouldn't let so many random people get that close
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to him. Candy Darling, Duck and Sally Edie Said Edwick International,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Velvet Ingrid, Superstar, Sweet Jane, Ultraviolet, Teenage, Mary, Margarita Passion.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: The cast of characters who were in and out of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the Factory were dreamers and artists and outcasts, but some
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: were also deviants and junkies and opportunists and criminals. And
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: then there were people like Valerie Salanis, people who were
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: obviously disturbed. You could laugh at Valerie's scum manifesto. That's
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: scum aka the Society for Cutting Up Men, the one
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: she sold copies of in Greenwich Village for a buck
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: two bucks. If you had to swing in dick, you
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: could call it satire, a big joke. But Valerie was
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: dead fucking serious. She was dead serious when she wrote
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: that women should quote overthrow the government, eliminate the money system,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex unquote.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Lou knew that being.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: A man wasn't what got Andy shott. Andy let Valerie
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: get too close. He accepted a copy of her script.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: He admitted that he didn't like the script and thus
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to produce it, and then in this is
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: probably the kicker here, he lost the fucking thing. That
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: was just Andy being Andy in the eyes of Valerie Selanis. However,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Andy was silencing her voice, or worse, Andy was stealing
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: her voice. Later that evening, on June third, nineteen sixty eight,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: while Andy Warhol was fighting for his life in the hospital,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Valerie approached a cop in Times Square and gave herself up.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: She said that she shot Andy Warhol because he had
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: too much control over her life. Days went by and
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Lou still didn't call, But that didn't mean he wasn't
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: thinking about Andy, or that he wasn't thinking about what
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Valerie Selenis had said about control. Control was the thing.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Control was all you had. Andy lost it and Valerie
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: wasn't looking for it. That got Lou thinking about John Cale,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: an integral part of the Velvet Underground before they adopted
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that name, since way back when they were the Primitives,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and then the Warlocks and then the Falling Spikes. Where
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: once Lou saw a partner, Lou now saw arrival, someone
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: jockeying for position, someone jockeying for control. John Kele was
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: no different than Nico. John Kele was in the way.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: John Cale was a hurdle, and Lou Reid didn't fucking
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: jump over other people. Lou was beginning to see the light,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: not that Sterling, Morrison or Mo Tucker could tell. It
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: was impossible to tell if Lou was happy or sad,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: pissed off or excited. Sterling and Moe sat across the
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: table from Lou and watched uncomfortably as he tried to smile,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: but he couldn't. Like he literally could not make his
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: face form a smile. He tried, and his cheeks and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: lips contorted into some painful monstrosity of confused emotion, the
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: junkie smile, the smile of a man whose muscula chair
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: has been altered by meta amphetamine. Lou didn't need to smile,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: He just needed to talk to remind Sterling and Moe
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: that The Velvet Underground had two albums out, two albums
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: on a major label, on Ella Fitzgerald's label, for God's sake,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and nobody was buying them. Nobody was playing them. No
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: one outside of a couple of weirdos that the tea
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: party knew who the fuck the Velvet Underground was. The
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: band needed to make a change. If they were going
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: to survive, and not just survive, but thrive, they had
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: to make it, and to make it, they needed a hit.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: No more noise, no more experimentation, just songs. Lou had
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the songs. Lou just needed good players who could execute
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: those songs the way Lou intended. John Cale was not
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: one of those players. John Cale had his own ideas,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: and Lou didn't need those ideas. Lou needed songs and
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Lou needed control. Sterling and Moe were shocked. John Cale
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: out of the band that would be a crime, But
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: any and all objections Sterling and Moe raised where quickly
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: was drawn because if John stayed, Lou was leaving, and Lou,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: being the primary songwriter, meant the band but ceased to
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: exist if he was gone, which further men, Sterling and
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Moe would be out of a job, and they had
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: no other choice but to agree with their leader. And
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: did what leaders in control do. He delegated. He told
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Sterling Morrison to go find John Cale and tell him
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: he was out of the band. Debbie Harry was stoned.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: She fumbled the plate in her hands on her way
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: over to table five. She watched the cheeseburger go airborne.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Fuck. Debbie thought, not again.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: This wasn't the first time Debbie Harry dropped a burger
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: in a customer's lap.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: It was a miracle.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: She hadn't been fired yet, not like there was a
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: line of girls dying to take her place waitressing in Maxis,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Kansas City, which despite its name, was a nightclub and
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: restaurant not in Kansas City, but on Park Avenue South
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan. She knew she wasn't destined to sling Burghers
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: the rest of her life. She wanted to be off
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Max's dining room floor and up on Max's stage, just
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: like this band she was watching.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: She knew she'd get there one way or another. Debbie
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Harry wasn't the only one. There's a quote attributed to
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Brian Eno, but who knows really that goes The first
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Velvet Underground album only sold ten thousand copies, but everyone
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: who bought it formed a band. The erroneous sales figure aside,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: that quote gets to the heart of the Velvet Underground's appeal.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: They were rough around the edges, they were out of tune,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: they weren't pretty, They didn't sell a ton of records.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Few people actually knew about them.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: But you know about them and you love them for
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: all those reasons I just listed. It's easy to create
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: an intensely intimate relationship with the band like the Velvet
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Underground because they belonged to you. In August nineteen seventy,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the Velvet Underground once again belonged to New York City.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Three years had passed since they last played at manhatt
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and the Hatchets were buried, or at the very least,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the Hatchets were hidden, like Andy's crowd was hiding in
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: plain sight in the back room of Maxis, Kansas City.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Debbie Harry wasn't part of any crowd, but she watched
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the back room with a waitress's eli. She watched night
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: after night of routine violations of local law and good taste.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: A couple fucking on the floor, a woman with a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: wine bottle in her hand standing on a table screaming.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: It showed time right before she spread her legs and
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: shoved the wine bottle up deep inside of her. All
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: this decadence churning, and there's Andy Warhol sitting still like
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: a man preparing himself to move on from mourning, holding
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: cord on the whole scene, while that fucking girdle held
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: his insides together, surrounded again by people strength in numbers.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: It was a brave face, but everyone knew he was
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: forever changed. He would never be the same again. Ditto
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: for the velvet underground. Moe Tucker saw the writing on
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: the wall. Actually, she saw the other guy behind her
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: drum kit and knew that Jake was up, that Lou
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: had gutten what he wanted. Moe watched her band, along
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: with the rest of the audience and felt glum. She
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: was a new mother in maternity leave meant this watching
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: from the wings, watching a Billy Yule hammered away at
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the kit with a style that was far more flashy
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: than she ever played. Billy's brother, Doug was the new
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: John Kle and the Yule Brothers did what Lou wanted.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: They harmonized and made songs like I'm Waiting for the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Man sore, like garage rock gems. They brought the kind
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: of chops that Lou and John and Moe had always avoided.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: They were uptight in their own way, not in a
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: factory kind of way, but in a meat and potatoes
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: kind of way. No viola's, no bells and whistles, no frills,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: just rock and roll. That was the whole idea behind
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the title of The Velvet Underground's fourth studio album, Loaded.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: The record was loaded with hits, honest to god FM
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Radio friendly go down in the annals of history rock
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: and roll hits. It was exactly what lou Reid wanted,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: in exactly what Lou Reid's scheme to make happen, and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: it worked. It is the most successful record in the
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: band's career. Two songs from that album, in particular Sweet
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Jane and Rock and Roll, remained stables of classic rock
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: radio to this day. This being the Velvet Underground. However,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the title had a dual meeting Loaded as in high
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: as fuck, a state of mind, and a message that
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the band knew all too well. The thing was Loaded
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't even a Velvet Underground record. It had Lou, and
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: it had Stirling, but with her new baby mosat this
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: one out. Despite the fact that her name is on
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the album jacket, it took four session drummers to replace her.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Lou Reed's war of attrition. This process of elimination had
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: reached its inevitable climax, first Andy, then Nico, then John,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: then Mo and finally himself.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Lou walked away from one of those.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Shows at Max's in the summer of nineteen seventy and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: never went back. When Loaded was finally released in November
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy, just a few months after the band's
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: now legendary residency at Maxis, Kansas City, Velvet Underground.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: As it began was over.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Lou Reid was back living with his parents, working as
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: a typist in his father's accounting firm for forty bucks
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: a week. His band had been all about degradation, anything
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: to put a spike in the status quo. But the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: great new weed working in a fucking accounting office, Now
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: that's a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelamdpod dot com.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: you for supporting the show.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: We really appreciate it.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: And if not, you can become a member right now
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: by going to disgracelampod dot com.
• 33:05
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• 33:07
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• 33:10
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• 33:14
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• 33:19
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• 33:24
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• 33:26
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• 33:28
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• 33:32
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• 33:38
  Speaker 2: He then