Interviews
White Light White Heat
Interview by Bill Flanagan. Published in Musician no. 126 - April 1989
Lou Reed and John Cale remember Andy Warhol
CALE: The relationship between him and Paul Morrissey was bordering on the spurious in terms of them managing us. I mean, Andy was a catalyst. He was so magical in his ability to transform mundane things into really important events. This work thing Lou just spoke about - Andy may have been the first there and the last to leave, but he never stopped there. Once he got out of the Factory he was going straight to a restaurant or to another person's. Whenever you approached him with a problem there would be this facile ability to come up with a really exciting solution.
REED: The solution might be worse than the problem.
CALE: For instance, he was complaining that because we'd been on the road too long, the band was turning into a road band and we had little time to sit down and really work on arrangements. He said, "Well, why don't you go onstage and rehearse?" That's something I wish we'd done now. Well, we did end up doing "Sister Ray Part 7" onstage and then going into "Sister Ray."
MUSICIAN: When a band goes in to make their first album they want a producer they can lean on. Andy produced your first album, but I imagine he looked at the knobs and controls with more confusion than you did.
CALE: I remember that first album with so much hilarity. That the thing actually got done... For $1500! I mean, my God.
REED: We were in the studio where Dionne Warwick did "Don't Make Me Over" and stuff like that. Andy was the producer and Andy was in fact sitting behind the board gazing with rapt fascination...
CALE:... at all the blinking lights.