The Velvet Forum

Thanks a lot for that helpful input. I just received a copy of My Week Beats Your Year, and have to wonder why I didn't get this interesting and nicely-designed book when it came out. Tobler is actually represented twice, with a transcript from his BBC Rock On radio show interview of Reed from 1980 as well as the Zig Zag piece in question.

The info given there on the ZZ piece shows the interview date as Dec. '71 and the publication date as Sept. '73. (The info you provide on the mag's publication lapse in that interim explains the reason for the delay.) The article is a transcript of Reed's replies, as opposed to an authorial article interspersed with quotes.

The article I'm working on is an in-depth accounting of the first meeting of Lou Reed and John Cale, including events leading up to and succeeding from that moment. Because so few of the principal people are still above-ground much of the story will amount to comparing quotes they've offered over the years, drawing conclusions where available and offering speculative thoughts where the statements are conflicting or vague. The idea is to provide information for readers to visualize the events as best as possible. It's set to be published in Ugly Things #60.

Thanks for all the replies and help offered here!

--Phil

hi Phil

I have the audio of John Tobler's interview and part of it was indeed published in Zig Zag, Volume 3 No 10. It was part of an article called "Fallen Knights And Fallen Ladies" which also included a reprint of the article of the same name which appeared in the book "No One Waved Goodbye".

The audio itself has been in circulation since late 1972 or so - a copy of the tape was a primary source for Nigel Trevena's book in 1973. (When I spoke to Nigel about it recently he seemed amazed that the tape was so easily available now.) I don't know how the tape came into circulation, but it wasn't through Nigel.

If you message me and give me your email address I can send you scans of the Zig Zag article and a Dropbox link to the audio. It's about 41 mins long....

cheers
Gordon

Sheila Klein wrote: ↑12 Mar 2022 23:27 A key source for the quotes I'm trying to trace is an early interview with John Tobler. Sources alternately list that as being from Dec. '71 and Jan. '72. It was apparently conducted for Zig Zag magazine, but the "Rock 'N' Roll Animal Web Page" lists the ultimate article as "unpublished."

• Is it true that Tobler's interview was not (at the time) published in print?

• It appears to have been published in, at least, the book My Week Beats Your Year: Encounters With Lou Reed. I don't have that one, and wonder if anyone can send me simple cellpix of the pages of Tobler's interview, and any additional source info there about the interview.

• The audio for Tobler's interview appears to have made the rounds over time. Does anyone know when that began, and how it was sourced from him?

• Quotes from Tobler's interview were being repeated in print as early as 1977. It seems far-fetched to imagine that, if it wasn't published in print, a journalist took the trouble to transcribe it for re-use in his own article. Is it possible a transcript was also making the rounds among fans?

Thanks,
--Phil

Victor Bockris' wrote or co-wrote three books about the Velvet Underground and its founders -- Uptight (with Gerard Malanga), John Cale's autobio What's Welsh For Zen and the Lou Reed bio Transformer. I admire them all, but attribution was not one of Bockris' strong suits.

Consequently I am in search of an original source for a quote from John Cale that appears in Transformer. It's possible that it was acquired specifically for that book, but I have reasons to doubt that it was.

John Cale: I didn’t want to hear his songs. They seemed sorry for themselves. He’d written “Heroin” already, and “I’m Waiting For My Man,” but they wouldn’t let him record it, they didn’t want anything to do with it. I wasn’t really interested — most of the music being written then was folk, and he played his songs with an acoustic guitar — so I didn’t really pay attention because I couldn’t give a shit about folk music. I hated Joan Baez and Dylan. Every song was a fucking question! … He kept pushing them on me, and finally I saw they weren’t the kind of words you’d get Joan Baez singing. They were very different — he was writing about things other people weren’t. These lyrics were very literate, very well expressed. They were tough.

Much obliged for any guidance toward that source.

--Phil

Sheila Klein wrote: ↑03 May 2022 02:13 Victor Bockris' wrote or co-wrote three books about the Velvet Underground and its founders -- Uptight (with Gerard Malanga), John Cale's autobio What's Welsh For Zen and the Lou Reed bio Transformer. I admire them all, but attribution was not one of Bockris' strong suits.

Consequently I am in search of an original source for a quote from John Cale that appears in Transformer. It's possible that it was acquired specifically for that book, but I have reasons to doubt that it was.

John Cale: I didn’t want to hear his songs. They seemed sorry for themselves. He’d written “Heroin” already, and “I’m Waiting For My Man,” but they wouldn’t let him record it, they didn’t want anything to do with it. I wasn’t really interested — most of the music being written then was folk, and he played his songs with an acoustic guitar — so I didn’t really pay attention because I couldn’t give a shit about folk music. I hated Joan Baez and Dylan. Every song was a fucking question! … He kept pushing them on me, and finally I saw they weren’t the kind of words you’d get Joan Baez singing. They were very different — he was writing about things other people weren’t. These lyrics were very literate, very well expressed. They were tough.

Much obliged for any guidance toward that source.

--Phil

I thought I remembered the quote (more extensive) from 'Please Kill Me', but I don't have the book here. Luckily, this
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/cgi/vie ... roj_s2012 academic paper gives the credit (see page 69 of the academic paper). 'Please Kill Me', was published 3 years earlier than WWFZ.

Edit: Actually that looks paraphrased as well, so the mystery might still slightly remain.

Sheila Klein wrote: ↑03 May 2022 02:13 ...I am in search of an original source for a quote from John Cale that appears in Transformer. It's possible that it was acquired specifically for that book, but I have reasons to doubt that it was.

John Cale: I didn’t want to hear his songs. They seemed sorry for themselves. He’d written “Heroin” already, and “I’m Waiting For My Man,” but they wouldn’t let him record it, they didn’t want anything to do with it. I wasn’t really interested — most of the music being written then was folk, and he played his songs with an acoustic guitar — so I didn’t really pay attention because I couldn’t give a shit about folk music. I hated Joan Baez and Dylan. Every song was a fucking question! … He kept pushing them on me, and finally I saw they weren’t the kind of words you’d get Joan Baez singing. They were very different — he was writing about things other people weren’t. These lyrics were very literate, very well expressed. They were tough.

Much obliged for any guidance toward that source.
--Phil

Did some quick searches and this is what I found [so far]:

quote part 1
"It was at this party," remembers Cale, "I had long hair and Lou said I looked commercial. He was trying to get a band together. I didn't want to hear his songs - they seemed sorry for themselves. Eventually he showed me the lyrics, which had some really perceptive things in them." -- LR & the VU [1973, book by Nigel Trevena -- note: Trevena specifically thanks John Tobler at ZigZag!]
=> my hunch is that early 1970s John Tobler interviewed John Cale [like he did with Lou Reed], which then got published in ZigZag [before Trevena's book!]

quote part 3
[pp.4] John Cale: "1965 Lou Reed had already written "Heroin" and "Waiting for the Man." I first met Lou at a party and he played his songs with an acoustic guitar, so I really didn't pay any attention because I couldn't give a shit about folk music. I hated Joan Baez and Dylan - every song was a fucking question! But Lou kept shoving these lyrics in front of me. I read them, and they weren't what Joan Baez and all those other people were singing." -- Please Kill Me [1996, book by André Malraux, Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain -- John Cale interviews by Mary Harron (a.o.pp.4)]
=> acc. rocksbackpages.com: pieces by Mary Harron were published in Punk [1976-77], Sounds [1977-78], Melody Maker [1979-80], Vilage Voice [??], Guardian/Observer [1980-86], Smash Hits [1980-81], NME [1981] and New Statesman [??] - haven't found details of original interviews with John Cale [yet]

For other parts of quote no sources found yet:
part 2: "... He'd written "Heroin" already, and "I'm Waiting For My Man," but they wouldn't let him record it, they didn't want anything to do with it..."
part 4: "... He kept pushing them on me, and finally I saw they weren't the kind of words you'd get Joan Baez singing. They were very different - he was writing about things other people weren't. These lyrics were very literate, very well expressed. They were tough..."

Sheila Klein wrote: ↑03 May 2022 02:13 Victor Bockris' wrote or co-wrote three books about the Velvet Underground and its founders -- Uptight (with Gerard Malanga), John Cale's autobio What's Welsh For Zen and the Lou Reed bio Transformer. I admire them all, but attribution was not one of Bockris' strong suits.

--Phil

For research into Bockris's sources, this might be worth checking out [by somebody living near or visiting Ann Arbor]

Victor Bockris Papers (1960-2002, bulk Bulk, 1977-2002)
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/s/sclead/umich-scl-bockris

Contains folders about a.o.John Cale [for WWFZ, 1999], Lou Reed [for Transformer, 1995] and Velvet Underground [for Uptight, 1983]
--Repository: University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Research Center) [in Ann Arbor]
--Access and Use: The collection is open for research.