Lou Reed Force Fed Me a Hot Dog

Red wine, junk food stands and gay bars were the order of the day after another awkward interview with Lou.

October 28, 2013, 2:28pm

Lou Reed hated music journalists – particularly English ones. In 2000, I was an English music journalist sent to New York to interview him. The occasion was the release of Ecstacy, another steady late-Lou Reed record that contained maybe two or three songs that you’d actually want to listen to more than once. For all that, ever the optimist, I was excited. How much of an arsehole could he actually be?

The first suggestion came on my first night there. Reed was doing an intimate show at the Knitting Factory. That consisted of him playing the entirety of Ecstacy from start to finish with a permanent scowl and minimal chit chat. Given that Ecstacy was over an hour long and featured an 18 minute song about a possum, that was no walk in the park. I could have stomached it, but when the encore turned out to consist solely of the most desultory version of Sweet Jane I’ve ever heard, the night was officially a write-off.

I was due to interview Reed the next day. When the time arrived though, Reed announced he was busy and we’d do it the day after. This routine kept up for four days, his PR getting increasingly frantic about the amount of money it was costing to keep me fed and watered in midtown Manhattan. Personally, I was enjoying myself – albeit it with a light, underlying sense of dread about what would happen on the day he finally made some room in his schedule.

The day that moment arrived, I was directed to head to Nobu at 1pm. I got there to find Reed lunching with ten friends, they’d already ordered food and were deep in conversation. There was one space clear, some way down the table from Reed. I headed towards it announcing myself with a cheery hello. Everyone ignored me.

After a couple of minutes, Reed turned to me and said with a smirk, “Let’s start this thing. That way everyone can hear your insightful questions.” Despite feeling heavily outgunned, I mustered the gumption to reply, “Fuck off Lou. We’re not going to do it here.” Reed looked momentarily taken aback and then went back to ignoring me. I sat there for another 20 minutes, in silence, sipping a glass of tap water. Eventually, Reed gestured to me and pointed to a table in the corner.

The interview itself was standard–irritable, largely centred on how Reed got the “unique” guitar sound on his new record and at one stage outright hostile when I suggested that it was a little unfair that Dylan always got the academic props for his lyrics but Reed never did. However, something happened over the course of this 45 minutes that I never really understood afterwards. It concluded with Reed patting me on the arm, smiling and saying, “The thing about you is you’re charming and you know you are.”

We went back over to the original table. By now, all his friends had vanished. Reed asked me whether I’d ever tasted a $600 bottle of wine. I said I hadn’t and he ordered one up – a red. He proceeded to pour me a thimbleful of it and asked me to let him know what I thought of it. It was great. He was happy about that and proceeded to drink the rest of the bottle himself while I just sat there and watched him. I wasn’t offered anymore.

Clearly lifted by the wine, Reed then informed me he wanted to take me somewhere, specifically to his favourite hot dog stand. He got up and marched me to a car waiting outside and we drove to somewhere in the Lower East Side. When we got out, Reed ordered me an enormous hotdog with all the trimmings, thrust it into my hand and demanded that I eat it. I tucked in. He looked on amused as my face gradually became smothered in mustardy onions. When two thirds of the way through, I suggested I’d had enough, he looked incredulous and insisted I finished. When I finally did I got a hearty slap on the back. “There you go!” he roared. “How great was that? What shall we do now? Let’s go back to my apartment.”

Mildly freaked out by Reed’s sudden conviviality, I just shrugged a silent assent. Back in the car, he started telling me about his dogs – all poodles – and about how fantastic it would be if we could take them for a walk. It certainly sounded like it might be fun. Not to mention a bit weird, but by then I was willing to go with the flow. When we arrived at the apartment, I was told to wait in the car while Reed went up. He was gone for a long time, maybe 30 minutes. When he finally did return, he told me he’d nixed the poodle idea. Instead, his driver was going to take me to a special place he liked to go downtown. I should head there and he’d join me later.

The special place turned out to be a club. As I walked in, I immediately noticed it was high on men, low on women. It was a gay club. Someone approached me and said, “You’re Lou’s little friend, aren’t you? Come this way.” I was ushered to a corner of the club and given champagne. I sat there and waited. An hour passed, I assumed this was Reed’s idea of a joke. Just as I was going to leave though, he appeared through the door, seemingly on good terms with most of the people there. He caught a glimpse of me and walked over. “Don’t you love this place?” I nodded. “Great. Well, I’ve got to go now, so see you around.” He disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived.

So that ended my day with Lou Reed. He kind of was an arsehole, but in an entertaining way. I got up and left just feeling happy I’d spent a day with the singer of The Velvet Underground. On the way out, I looked in a mirror and saw I still had a blob of mustard smeared across the end of my nose. Somewhere I imagined Lou Reed laughing to himself, stroking one of his many poodles.