I had been into Reed’s Bowie-produced Transformer album, but when my buddy Rob gave me 1969: The Velvet Underground Live my mind was blown. So simple, so layered, so nasty. I had to have everything they did. They represented a gritty New York psychosexual dark good time that I missed and yearned for though I probably couldn’t have cut it had I lived through it. That’s what your heroes do for you—lift you victoriously above the dirty work of life and conjure a different way of being.
