Interviews
White Light White Heat
Interview by Bill Flanagan. Published in Musician no. 126 - April 1989
Lou Reed and John Cale remember Andy Warhol
REED: At all the blinking lights. He just made it possible for us to be ourselves and go right ahead with it because he was Andy Warhol. In a sense he really did produce it, because he was this umbrella that absorbed all the attacks when we weren't large enough to be attacked. We weren't worth really attacking at the time. So they'd attack us, but just use us as a springboard to attack him. As a consequence of him being the producer; we'd just walk in and set up and do what we always did and no one would stop it because Andy was the producer. Of course he didn't know anything about record production – but he didn't have to. He just sat there and said, "Oooh, that's fantastic," and the engineer would say, "Oh yeah! Right! It is fantastic, isn't it?"
CALE: I was just thinking about one of the charming things that happened immediately after meeting Andy. Where else would we get an invite like this: He had us perform at a psychiatrists' convention! To be stared down by these people in tuxedos who were all suggesting we needed a long rest and some severe medical attention.
REED: That was when the Herald Tribune still existed, and we made page one of section two: "Warhol and Rock Group Plays Psychiatric Convention: Hard to Tell Doctors from Patients. " I mean, our lives were filled with things like this, courtesy of Andy. Then at one point he pulled us aside and said, "You've got to decide what you want to do." And after he pointed it out, we fired him. When he got angry the worst thing he could think of to call me was a rat.