The Velvet Forum

Lou Reed's quote about his songwriting assignment at Pickwick has been published numerous times over the years. I'm hoping to find its original source, which I believe to be from an interview in one of the British music weeklies, most likely sometime in the 1970s.

The story is certainly exaggerated and the quote has probably been mangled a bit in the various retellings, but in Victor Bockris's Transformer biography it reads,

There were four of us literally locked in a room writing songs. We just churned out songs, that's all. They would say, "Write ten California songs, ten Detroit songs," then we'd go down into the studio for an hour or two and cut three or four albums really quickly …

Some of that could it be Charles Shaar Murray, Melody Maker- 22 Jan 1972 ?

That might be it -- is it possible to photograph the next portion of it?

Scans are from Uncut's Ultimate Music Guide Lou Reed (2014) which reproduce MM interviews.

The "ten... ten... songs" part of the quote seems to be from the Music Factory promo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjcYA_5c4KY&t=97s

Tom Wilson: ... Where'd it all start?
Lou Reed: We just met down in the Village where I was doing songwriting for a... a company. They would put us in a room and say, "Write ten California songs, ten Detroit songs." And John walked in and we decided, uh, it'd be much better to go play and have fun. So we started playing and everybody had to meet everybody else. It was natural.

Also Melody Maker' 1972.Jan.22 interview is done by Richard Williams [and not Charles Shaar Murray], see scanned image at https://thebluemoment.com/2013/10/30/lo ... 42-2013-2/

Thanks for all the replies, they've been extremely helpful. The Music Factory quote was indeed most likely Reed's first such utterance (in public, at least) of the phrase in question, although it indicates that it's one he would use commonly as it's almost certainly (being so unknown for so long) not the root source of later reuses.

It's amazing to note how many pieces of disinformation Reed was able to get off in just this one brief portion of the Music Factory chat:

• That Pickwick was in Greenwich Village.

• That Sterling was riding the subway without shoes.

• That they hired Moe because they needed an amplifier, rather than needing a drummer.

What's your game, girl?!

mangue wrote: ↑10 Mar 2022 20:45 The "ten... ten... songs" part of the quote seems to be from the Music Factory promo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjcYA_5c4KY&t=97s

Tom Wilson: ... Where'd it all start?
Lou Reed: We just met down in the Village where I was doing songwriting for a... a company. They would put us in a room and say, "Write ten California songs, ten Detroit songs." And John walked in and we decided, uh, it'd be much better to go play and have fun. So we started playing and everybody had to meet everybody else. It was natural.

Thank you! I was SURE I'd heard it said by Lou himself, and didn't have the time to track down the origin. I'm glad I wasn't just imagining it.

Sheila Klein wrote: ↑11 Mar 2022 19:06 • That Sterling was riding the subway without shoes.

i was thinking about this story recently and tried unsuccessfully to find the source...

Lou enjoyed making stuff up!

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

First don't have a copy of the book "My Week Beats Your Year".
Anyway did some searching about Tobler's 1971/72 interview [originally planned for Zigzag]

Zigzag wasn't published between 1971.Dec [#24] and 1972.Aug or Oct [#25] - info from http://www.45worlds.com/magazine/issue/zigzag-25uk and beatchapter.com
In Zigzag #25 [1972.Aug or Oct] is a cartoon "I'm Waiting For The Man" by Nigel Trevena [republished in his 1973 book "Lou Reed and the Velvets"]
So if Tobler's 1971/72 interview is published at all, it most likely is in another publication; note that in his 1973 book Trevena thanks first of all "John Tobler at Zigzag" [!].

info from https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/ ... lishedDate
Tobler's pieces were first of all published in Zigzag, only after 1972.Oct some started to appear in Let It Rock [UK, 1972-1975]

For Tobler writing in Zigzag seems to have been a hobby next to his fulltime [?] job at the IT department of a bank. At Zigzag he also did advertising, meaning mostly contacting record labels, so he sure had very good contacts there. Therefore if his interview wasn't published, it could be that he
--gave/sold a copy of his tape to Reed's label and/or management, who then later might have send it around as a sort of promo material
--gave a copy to other music writers, with whom he was in good contact and may be exchanged more info/tapes/etc. with

The full [?] interview was available at bootblogger-lyoko.blogspot.com/2011/05/lou-reed-interview-with-john-h-tobler.html
A copy is since 2022.Feb.16 available at doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/676357233843568640/lou-reed-zigzag-magazine-conversation-with-john
Only on tracknr.01 "The Pickwick years and the Velvet Underground" [6:49] Reed speaks about his PW years:

Tobler: I'd be much more interested in you being a songwriter in a hit factory...
Reed: You mean when as I was working as a songwriter?
Tobler: Just at Pickwick right?
Reed [sounding surprised]: Yeah, right, right...
Tobler: Eh...
Reed: We just churned songs out. That's all... [explaining the operation of Pickwick*]

*making rip-off albums, but nothing about "locked in a room", "ten... ten... songs", nor "down into the studio"

PS: John Tobler has recently sold his own record label Road Goes on Forever (RGF), but the rgfrecords.co.uk website is still working and maybe he can still be contacted through it