I Remember How the Darkness Doubled

Lou Reed in performance, 1976

Tell a Vision

So Lou Reed walks into a bar — CBGB’s — and he’s carrying a cassette recorder. It’s the summer of 1976, and the hip but as yet unsigned band Television is the night’s headliner. Tom Verlaine, the group’s chief guitarist, songwriter, and singer, spots Reed with the recorder and assumes he’s come to tape the band so he can copy its distinctive, wiry sound. He confronts the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal. In an interview published a few months later in Screw, Al Gold...