The spiritual aspect of music, taught by Lou Reed

“Tai who saved my life,” said Lou Reed once: this meditative and “internal” martial art, made up of slow movements and connection between mind and body, has been at the center of the interest of the great musician since the 1980s. So much to write a song with an invitation to practice it (published then posthumously 2 years ago) and to bring with it on stage the master Ren, who performed the movements of the “form”, the coded sequence of the Chen style, which Reed followed.
In recent years before his death in 2013 Lou Reed had planned to write a book on Tai Chi – he could not conclude it. That project was taken in hand by his wife Laurie Anderson and finally published in 2023: we spoke to her with her two years ago
Now he is published in the Italian version by Jimenez: it is not a book only by Lou Reed, it contains his writings, interviews, conversations, but also many memories and anecdotes of friends, musicians and not: from Tony Visconti, a historic producer who became a friend of Reed thanks to the Tai Chi and at the suggestion of David Bowie, to Jonathan Richman: as a boy, and before forming the Modern Lovers, Sfegatato fan of the Velvet Underground and was taken under the protective wing of Reed.
From the book, courtesy of Jimenez, we publish Jonathan Richman’s writing, in which he remembers the Velvet undergrounds and how Lou Reed taught him not only to play, but also the spiritual aspect of music.

GS

Jonathan Richman tells Lou Reed and Velvet Underground

(Extract from “Lou Reed. My Tai Chi. The art of alignment”, Jimenez, courtesy of the publisher)

At sixteen I was an angry student. I was walking through Harvard Square, a few days before the Velvet Underground concert at the Boston Tea Party, and in that beautiful spring afternoon I see a guy with a guitar case. I ask him: “Excuse me. Are you Lou Reed?”. And he: “Yes”. Then I tell him that his music means a lot for me, and he: “Can I ask you what do you like in particular?”. E: “Well, first, use guitars as percussion instruments”. He says: “Do you really think so?”. I reply yes and he: “Do you mean that we use them as a battery?”. “Yes. In certain songs, yes.”
I guess he liked what I said, so I was theirs. So they invited me to the concert but did not give me a place between the public, they made me enter first with them. They were all kind to me. Sterling Morrison and John Cale were all there. From that moment on, this group … My gratitude cannot be expressed in words. I am moved when I try to talk about it. They allowed me to stay there with them to study them. After a while Lou allowed me to play his electric guitars during the tests and listen to the sounds. I asked him: “Why do you use Midrance Boost and Fuzz at the same time?”. And Lou said to me: “Well, if you do so you get this”. And he showed me! The Velvet Underground were known to be a little grumpy, even among them, and instead they were so kind to me.

In that same period I also met Andy Warhol. He knew how to be unfriendly if he wanted. He asked me about high school. And I said to him: “Well, I don’t feel very understand, and sometimes I am frightened”. And he did: “Uh-Huh”. He didn’t seem to him a strange thing. “After graduating, come to New York and you can work with me in the cinema.” For him, education and hard work were very important. Within a few months, they shot him. I went to see him and remembered me. Afterwards, it was no longer the same. He could no longer deal with things directly in his films, but I was there in New York, close to them, near that scene and Velvet Underground.

I will have seen the Velvet Underground between the sixties and the one hundred times. And my parents, that God bless them, let me go to the concerts of these stramboids. I had explained to him who they were, and they knew Andy Warhol, but trusted me. And they were right, because in reality I was what I said I was. Like a painter, I listened to their sound. And it was not only the texts, even if it was Lou Reed who gave me my voice as a singer. But their sound, drone music and their atmospheres. I was practicing to make barré agreements and things like that. Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed taught me to play. (…)

At that time, I opened their concert in a club near Boston called Woodrose Ballroom. After that, apparently for no reason, Lou made me out. I had to have offended it in some way. Sterling Morrison said: “Oh, you know, it’s done so”. I remember that he no longer talked to me for years. And I made a reason, I thought: Well. If they are alone, the sky wants me to be alone and go on my way. From time to time, Lou and I had talked about mystical things, he had indicated to me some books and stuff like that. I thought: maybe it’s cutting me out for two reasons. One, because I am hateful, and the other because maybe he wants to do me a favor. I never knew the answer.

Lou was interested in meditation at that point. In fact, it went to the monthly meditations that Alice Bailey’s group kept in the United Nations. Lou spoke to me about Alice Bailey’s Lucis Trust books. People who attend mystical bookstores will surely know texts like Treaty of white magic And Treaty of cosmic fire. He spoke to me about things like that. And they also find themselves in some of his songs. For example, Over the hill we go, and you’re look for loveor Insects are evil thoughts come from that material. From the idea that, sometimes, certain thoughts have a physical manifestation, in the animal kingdom, positive or negative. Lou was interested in things like this and said to me: “When you move to New York, go to the meditations on the Moon to the United Nations. Sometimes I go there.”

The next time I talked to him was in 1992. In the period in which he played as a soloist, some of my musician friends knew him, and he had given everyone precise instructions. If they said: “Oh, we are friends of Jonathan”, he immediately replied: “Don’t give him my phone number”. In 1992, I made a show in New York at the Lone Star Roadhouse and Penn Jillette invited Lou. After the concert, Penn and Teller invited us to a bar in Midtown. Lou sat next to me and said: “You know, Jonathan, after seeing you play tonight, I’m proud of you.” And he seemed to me to be sixteen again. But I had now thirty -eight or forty. And he said, “I know what it means for you.”

You must know that, in addition to music, my other job is to build bread ovens. However, I have to stay outdoors, to do things, and it was like this for life. I am a stonemason. I also studied a little martial arts and San Francisco I found a tai chi school in the cheng man-ch’ing tradition. The thing I prefer of Tai who is philosophy. It amuses me, because it is so non-Macho and shows how non-Macho works on the machine. If you practice pushing with your hands with a heavier person than you, until your arms remain soft and do not oppose, it will fall by itself. (…)

This is the Lou Reed that I have known, incidentally: introspective, eager to share intuitions, curious, open to new ideas, musically and spiritually. People emphasize the appearance of drugs in his music. Well, what I learned from him had nothing to do with all this. What I learned was the spiritual aspect of the band’s music as a whole.
One of the first things they taught us is that any state can reach with chemicals, you can reach it with silence. I like to move slowly, which, among other things, helps my meditation. A wheelbarrow from oxen, as someone said.
I’m not a big fan of the computer era.