Stan Demeski and Will Hermes Go Deep on the Velvet Underground

Stan Demeski is a drummer, who’s played with The Feelies and the indie rock supergroup Luna; Will Hermes is a senior critic for Rolling Stone and an author, whose latest book, Lou Reed: The King of New York, was just released by FSG last year. The Feelies and Luna are two bands that were both not only heavily influenced by Lou and the Velvets, but even toured with them at different points. So, in light of the biography’s release, Stan and Will got on the phone to chat about it all. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

Stan Demeski: Your book is so good that I got two copies of it for Christmas.

Will Hermes: Nice! Well, I think you’re singularly qualified to do this job because you’ve played with not just one great Velvets-influenced band, but two.

Stan: Not only that — the Feelies did the New York tour and Luna did the Velvet Underground reunion tour. Or most of it, I should say, because we didn’t do the Paris show or the U2 shows… And then we did the Set the Twilight Reeling tour.

Will: Wow. That, I didn’t know. So we can definitely go deep on this. I love the Velvets covers album, and it got me thinking about covers albums in general. I mean, there are tribute albums, but Cat Power did that recreation of that Dylan show recently for a full album. There were a lot of Beatles covers albums—

Stan: Petra Haden’s Sell Out.

Will: Yes, Petra Haden’s Who Sell Out is just brilliant. It might be the top of my list. Even Pete Townsend was thrilled. I think he said it was better than a Grammy or something, hearing that record.

Stan: It’s pretty incredible.

Will: But the Feelies have covered the Velvets in the past, on record and live. What made you want to do the whole megillah?

Stan: I guess it was, for one thing, another thing to do, so we weren’t just playing the same songs over and over. Although at this point, we have a pretty large catalog of music when you look at it. I think we were approached by the French people who were doing the Velvet Underground exhibit in Manhattan, and that’s part of what prompted it. And it seemed like Todd Abramson, too, thought it was a good idea to book a show under those circumstances.

Will: I was thinking about Velvets covers through writing the book, because — a lot of things spurred me to write this book, but one of them was, when I really got into the Velvets in the mid-‘80s, there was an entire generation of bands that were influenced by them. Certainly the Feelies were front and foremost, and had a lot of experience with Lou as well that decade. But a lot of other bands too. So I was going through my memory and the archives to do a laundry list of all the bands that covered the Velvets — there were a lot.

Stan: There certainly are. Yo La Tengo comes to mind the most, but it seemed like everybody in the early to mid-‘80s had a pretty strong influence from the Velvets.

Will: Yeah. Tell me about your discovery of them. When did you first encounter their music, and Lou’s music?

Stan: Well, I started playing drums when I was 11, and back then FM was [just starting to] really come on strong. Or at least for me, because I was pretty young. I remember hearing “Rock & Roll” on WPLJ, and I remember also seeing an early Rolling Stone review of the Live at Max’s record. I didn’t have any of those records, but what really did it for me was when I went to visit a school friend — his older brother had a really good stereo, and to do a demonstration of the stereo, he put on Transformer. It was kind of mind blowing because it sounded great, and it was new rock music. By that time, rock music was kind of stagnant — and I mean, I was, like, 12 years old. I’m not going to say I was so advanced or anything like that, but I was kind of aware of this stuff. So that really intrigued me and got me interested. Shortly after that, I got Transformer, and that was the beginning of it. Berlin came out next, and I got that when it came out. To this day, I still think Berlin‘s really good, but it’s really hard to listen to. It’s really depressing.

Will: Yeah.

Stan: When we played with Lou, Dave [Weckerman] from the Feelies got his copy signed and said, “Sign it to my mother.” Lou did, and Dave basically said, “My mother hates it, though.” And he was like, “Your mother? My parents took it off the turntable and threw it out the window when I played it for them.” After that, we got Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, and that was perfect timing, in a way, because I was in my early teens by that point and it was heavy metal Lou. I don’t listen to it anymore, but I think it’s a really great record. It’s of its time. And it certainly gave his career what he needed at the time, that’s for sure.

Will: Yeah, to the best of my memory, that was when I discovered him. That album got a lot of play on WPLJ and WNEW.

Stan: And it had a good amount of rock advertising and rock press. I remember I went from Circus magazine to Creem magazine around then. Creem was a real big influence on me, especially from 13 or so through the rest of my teens, until Trouser Press came along.

Will: Yeah. It seemed like the target audience for Creem was definitely 13 year old dudes. [Laughs.]

Stan: [Laughs.] It was right up my alley. But I remember the Lou Reed Lester Bangs articles, and I really thought Lester Bangs was terrible. I mean, I wasn’t really familiar with trans people — you kind of knew about it back then, but even gay people, you weren’t so familiar with, judging from the time and the environment I grew up in. But I just remember [Lester Bangs] being really mean towards Rachel [Humphreys], and just thinking, Woah, that’s kind of awful. I think I still have a copy in my basement, actually. I was thinking about digging it out and reading it, but it was very unpleasant.

Will: Yeah. He was an important writer, but he was… Problematic, I guess, is the word. Well, let me ask you about touring with Lou, because you literally played with him on occasions — backing him up, like at the WLIR Studios, and then you toured with him. Talk about that a bit.

Stan: The first time we played with him, it was a party for the radio station in 1988. It was during the Only Life touring promotion, for our first A&M record, and they asked us to play this party. Somebody said, “We’ll only do it if Lou Reed comes up and plays with us.” And he did. So that was quite a shock. We played two of our own songs, then we played four Velvets songs. I actually have a recording of it — Ira Kaplan did our sound that night and recorded it on my boom box. [Lou] showed up, and he was with Sylvia [Morales] at that point. They were both very nice. I kind of acted as the liaison between the two groups of people — I went up, introduced myself, and jokingly I said, “Do you want to play ‘Cycle Annie’ tonight?” And he kind of got a kick out of that. Then I asked him if he had if he played on the All Night Workers single and he said, “I don’t remember.”

Will: Wow.

Stan: He just seemed to appreciate that we knew his body of work, so to speak. So he played the four songs with us that night. He seemed to really enjoy it. Then in ‘89, he had the New York record come out and we were asked to do the tour. It was probably one of the longest tours we ever did, although part of it was broken up. It was kind of a first leg in the Northeast, then there was six nights on Broadway at the St. James Theatre.

Will: Yeah, I remember seeing one of those shows. You guys were as good as Lou, if not better.

Stan: Well, thank you. But it was really wonderful because we’d drive in, play, and drive home. We were never big on touring. Then we did the major part of it, and on the last night — it was at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles — Lou came out and did “What Goes On.” I have a recording of that, too. 

Will: Wow. 

Stan: Then there was an after party, which was really weird, because Axl Rose came back to meet Lou. He goes up to Lou, and Lou goes, “Oh, Axl, nice to meet you. Nice jacket.” And Axl was like, “I really enjoyed seeing you on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.” And Lou goes, “I was never on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.” And he had been. [Laughs.] Brian Wilson was also at the party, which is another story. It was really weird seeing him and all these celebrities, which I was really not used to at all. Anyway, down the road, the Feelies kind of ended, and then I started playing with Luna. I guess it was 1992…

Will: Right. The Velvets reunion tour.

Stan: Yeah. We did the tour, and by that time, Sylvia and Lou were not together and it was really weird vibes on the tour. Sylvia was very, very businesslike. Everybody was nice, but the weirdest thing about it was that — beside that there seemed to be intra-band tension, mostly between Lou and John Cale — John Cale didn’t talk to us at all. Dean would go up to him and say,”Hi, I’m Dean,” and put his hand out to shake, and John Cale would just, like, raise his hand and wave and walk away. It was really kind of surprising. I certainly don’t hold it against John Cale because — you know, that’s just the person he is. Or, I’m not really sure. But the tour went pretty well. We were received OK.

On the last night of the tour, I had my unpeeled banana cover with me and I was determined to get everyone to sign it. Sterling and Maureen Tucker signed it, no problem. Lou signed it, no problem. I went up to John Cale and I said, “Mr. Cale, can you please sign my banana cover?” And he said, “No. Who are you?” And I was like, Oh, god, this isn’t good… I explained who I was, and then he did sign it and shook my hand and gave me a smile. But the whole thing was pretty weird.

Will: Maybe it was like a team division or something. Maybe you guys were on the tour because of the connection with Lou, and there was the rift. 

Stan: Yeah. And your book has some insights about how Lou was kind of asserting control over the whole situation — which, I mean, I figured. But it is kind of disappointing because… bands are better than single people in general to me, unless you’re like Duke Ellington or something. I don’t think he utilized the situation as well as he could have. But don’t tell Lou I said that.

Will: [Laughs.] Fair enough. No, it was a shame — the fact that they were lined up to do an MTV Unplugged. The offer was on the table, apparently, and they walked away basically because Lou torpedoed it, from everything I was able to ascertain.

Stan: That sure seems like that was the situation, unfortunately. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. But in general, Lou was always really nice to me. I only got yelled at once by Lou, and that was, I think, The Forum show on the Velvet Underground tour. On the New York tour, we used to watch the sound checks — we’d be walking through and sit down and watch them, and no one ever said anything. But me and Luna’s road manager were sitting watching the soundcheck at the Forum, and they stopped the song and Lou points at me and says, “I want to know who you are and what you’re doing here.” I was like, Ah, shit, man. I just got up and walked away, I didn’t even say anything. Then later on, Dean brought me back to talk to Lou — not that I was being grilled or anything like that, but Lou realized I was part of the opening band, and he had a surprised look on his face. That was the only time he yelled at me, so I don’t think that’s too bad.

Will: Yeah, it was a stressful time for him — for everybody in the band — it seems like. One of the sort of striking gold research moments that I had in the Lou Reed archives [in the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center] was finding all of these faxes between Sylvia and Lou on one side, and John Cale on the other, and also with Maureen and other members of the band. It really seemed like John was like, “Can we just make this work? You have three people who really want the Velvet Underground to continue, can we please make this work?” But it was just not going to work.

Stan: Yeah, it’s an opportunity missed, that’s for sure. Then Luna did the Set the Twilight Reeling tour, and that was another long tour. By that point, he was with Laurie Anderson. I don’t know if they were married yet, but I got to meet her, and she was very, very nice. He seemed a lot happier by that point.

Will: Could you talk about Moe Tucker’s drumming a bit? I imagine she’s an influence of yours. Even though she didn’t play on all the Velvets albums, she played on most of them.

Stan: Basically, I graduated from eighth grade in 1974. Around that time, I got the first Velvets record. I just remember thinking, Well, this isn’t recorded very well and I can’t tell what the heck she’s playing. I mean, you could hear the snare on two and four and stuff, and of course she goes way off on “Heroin.” Not playing so much — no drum brakes, no drum fills — Charlie and Ringo did that. I pretty much learned how to play the drums playing along to Rolling Stones, Beatles, Creedence, The Doors. A lot of those guys weren’t playing a lot of drum fills, or any fancy stuff, but she came along and took that to the extreme. In general, it’s all just a straight rhythm. So I learned a lot from that. Especially like at that time, 1974, people were still doing massive drum solos and over playing like crazy. She just really pointed out — I mean, not consciously, I’m sure — what not to play.

Will: Right. When I spoke to her, she told me about her formative musical experiences, which was basically hearing the Rolling Stones on the radio and having her mom take her to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium, because her mom won tickets through some department store contest.

Stan: I didn’t know she saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium. 

Will: Yeah. But the ‘70s was certainly the era of prog rock and jazz fusion, Carl Palmer…

Stan: Yeah, and I admire all that stuff. I love King Crimson. The playing is quite appropriate and so amazing. But part of it is playing for the song, and that’s what she did.

Will: Yeah. I think Lou and her got on very well just as people, but I think she was always serving the song. There was never any… I mean, he locked horns with John a lot, and locked horns with Sterling, too, on occasion, it seemed.

Stan: Yeah, so it seemed. I remember when we were on tour with them and walking down the street in Amsterdam, and me and Dean ran into Lou and Maureen walking along. You could just tell that they had a really good relationship.

Will: Yeah, she said it was like a brother-sister kind of thing. So how did you choose the songs [for the covers record]? I mean, there are 18 songs on that album. 

Stan: Yeah. I’ll say.

Will: [Laughs.] 

Stan: I have very little to do with that sort of thing, to be honest with you. It’s Bill [Million] and Glenn [Mercer]’s band — it always has been, I just got to join them at one point. I’m actually drummer number four. During my time, we used to do a Velvets medley. We didn’t do all those songs, though. We did “Run, Run, Run” on the record. We didn’t do “European Son,” [but] we used to do that. We recorded “What Goes On” for Only Life, that was part of the Velvets medley. We used to do “Head Held High” early during my years. Then the rest of it — I’m kind of surprised we did so much stuff off of Loaded, but basically a lot of it is what Glenn feels comfortable singing. So that’s part of the way these songs are chosen.

Will: And the stuff on Loaded, of course, did not have Maureen Tucker playing drums. That was Billy Yule.

Stan: [Laughs.] I try not to overplay too much on them.

Will: But you could use cymbals more, right?

Stan: Yes, there are more cymbals, that’s for sure. These days, Bill and Glenn want me to play cymbals more anyway, so it’s a lot of hi-hat rather than riding on the toms. Time has passed and it’s a progression, I suppose.

Will: Yeah. So what else should we touch on here? 

Stan: Something I liked about the book — you went into the Delmore Schwartz stuff, and that I really didn’t know so much. And talking about Rachel, I thought, was really nice. 

Will: Yeah, she passed in the ‘90s, but I connected with her niece and her sister, who were really generous with their time. I went over to Rachel’s sister’s house during the writing of the book and sat down with them and got family stories and saw old photographs. It was really touching. I really wanted to try and tell her story, because she was important. She was mentioned on the record, she was his muse and partner. I think his partners throughout the years were really important to his art making in a lot of ways. And that’s going back to his girlfriend from Syracuse, Shelley Albin, and up through Bettye Kronstad and Sylvia and Laurie. All of them were really important figures. I tried to write a book that was less of a great-man-theory-of-an-artist and more of how band members and romantic partners and a music community, in a sense, help make a person’s artistic accomplishments possible in a lot of ways, and inform them.

Stan: I certainly think Rachel was a big part of his life, and I’m really glad that you gave her her due in your book.

Will: Yeah. You do a biography and there’s certain stories that you can get, and certain stories that you can’t quite nail down and remain mysteries. Certainly any person’s life, you can’t boil it down to a book. But I hope I made a worthy addition to the very large shelf of books on Lou and the Velvets. [Laughs.] There are a lot of good ones. 

(Photo Credit: left, Doug Seymour; right, Forrest Scholl)