velvet-underground

Moe Tucker's tribute to former bandmate Lou Reed

VU

We already got to read John Cale’s tribute to his former Velvet Underground bandmate Lou Reed, who passed away in October, and now VU drummer Moe Tucker has written a lengthy obituary on The Observer. An excerpt reads:

I had no idea how ill he was. I knew he’d had the liver transplant and he probably wouldn’t be his old self, but I really wasn’t prepared for the news. It was hard. It is hard.

We were on an adventure back then and it took the world a while to catch up with what we were doing. It was word of mouth because you could not get the records outside of New York. I think that was a good thing, too, because we didn’t spend all the royalty cheques when we were young and foolish. (Laughs).

We had a lot of fun, and a lot of fun upsetting people. We used to joke that we knew how good the gig was by the number of people who left the room. I think now that they were perfect times in a way. We split when we should have, and we left behind just a handful of great albums. It wasn’t a career. We didn’t keep going on and on like a lot of groups, but we influenced a lot of people.

Now Andy’s gone, Sterling’s gone, Nico’s gone and Lou’s gone. It feels strange. I miss them all, but I really miss Lou.

You can read the rest here.