Lou Reed

Lou Reed’s appearances in Andy Warhol’s diaries chart a relationship that moves from the shared history of the Velvet Underground to sporadic reunions, admiration, and an increasingly painful estrangement. Warhol watches Reed become more assured as a solo performer, shares glimpses of Reed’s home and private life, and eventually returns to the business of their first album, still unable to understand why their friendship has faded or why his work has brought him no payment.

Early Reunions and the Factory Years

In the weeks after the 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol, Reed was among the people who returned to The Factory to see how Warhol was doing. He came with other figures from Warhol’s earlier circle, including Viva, Ondine, Nico, and members of the Velvet Underground. Warhol usually answered visitors’ questions about his condition reassuringly, and the diary places Reed among the friends whose presence made the post-shooting reunions matter: Warhol’s expression suggested amazement that he was still alive to see them. Since his hospital doctors had briefly thought he was gone, Warhol regarded himself from June 1968 onward as someone who had come back from the dead.

The relationship also had a practical, social dimension. Years later, a photograph caption records Reed and Ronnie Cutrone at the front of Warhol’s offices. Such glimpses sit alongside more intimate diary scenes, without making the connection look continuous or uncomplicated: Reed remained part of Warhol’s artistic past and social world, but the two men did not necessarily share the same circle or habits as time went on.

Reed as Performer and Friend

In December 1976, Reed called Warhol after returning from a successful tour. He was worried about Rachel, his partner, who had been hurt, and wanted another doctor’s opinion after his own doctor had dismissed the problem. Warhol offered to contact Bianca Jagger’s doctor. Reed called back to say that he had instead arranged for Keith Richards’s doctor to come, and Warhol advised him to take Rachel to the hospital. The episode shows Reed turning to Warhol in a moment of concern, while also indicating that the relationship with Rachel was unsettled: around this period they had separate apartments and were described as separated, though not entirely.

Warhol’s most emphatic assessment of Reed’s artistry followed a performance at The Bottom Line in March 1978. The line outside stretched around the block, though the venue itself was not crowded once Warhol and his party got inside. Reed came on late, after another performer, and Warhol felt proud of him. He believed Reed had finally stopped copying other musicians and found a style of his own. Warhol contrasted this with Reed’s earlier solo work, which he thought had gone wrong when Reed imitated performers such as Mick Jagger after the distinctive sound he had shared with John Cale in the Velvet Underground. Even I Want to Be Black, a song Warhol had previously disliked, worked for him that night. He also noticed Reed dancing more effectively. The entry presents artistic independence not as an abstract achievement but as something Warhol recognized in the details of a particular performance.

A later visit to Reed’s home offered another kind of admiration. After seeing David Johansen perform, Warhol went with Catherine Guinness to Reed’s place on Christopher Street, upstairs from a bagel shop. People outside recognized Reed, who responded with a brusque insult. Inside, Warhol was struck by the six-room, rent-controlled home, which Reed had obtained through a girlfriend and rented for $485 a month. It was crowded with electronic equipment: televisions, telephones, tape machines, and Betamaxes. Warhol admired how neat the house was and how sweet and funny Reed seemed, and even said Reed’s life was everything he wanted his own to be. Reed played a recording of his concert, seeking the high-contrast Factory photographic look associated with Billy Name. The scene links Reed’s private ease and technological abundance to the creative world he and Warhol had once shared.

Gifts, Domestic Life, and Growing Distance

At Warhol’s birthday dinner, Reed arrived after a long wait during which most of the invited guests had not yet appeared. He brought a one-inch television, a gift Warhol considered great, and Warhol noted that Reed was sober and adorable. Reed was also among the few guests in a dark suit, wearing a bow tie, while most of the others were dressed in white. The gift and the attention to his clothes make the evening a small but vivid scene of affection: Reed arrived late, yet his presence and present stood out to Warhol.

Warhol’s later entries make clear that Reed had a domestic life beyond this friendship. In 1980, Warhol encountered him on a Village street with his wife. Reed said he no longer knew the people around Warhol and asked whether Ronnie Cutrone, Vincent Fremont, and Pat Hackett were still around. The exchange exposed a social gap: the names Warhol supplied belonged to a circle Reed no longer felt connected to. Warhol’s comment that Reed’s wife was unremarkable is his own dismissive judgment, not evidence of any conflict between her and Reed.

The distance became especially visible at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards. Diana Ross attended as Warhol’s date, though she sat in the front row while collecting Michael Jackson’s awards. Reed sat in Warhol’s row but did not look over. Warhol could not understand why Reed no longer spoke to him. The contrast with the earlier birthday gift and home visit is sharp: Reed was physically present in the same room, amid a crowded assembly of stars, yet the old familiarity did not return.

The Album and the Unresolved Break

By 1985, the estrangement had become entangled with money and the ownership of the Velvet Underground’s recorded work. Vincent Fremont told Warhol that Polygram had called and that Reed did not want to reunite with the other members of the band. Polygram was interested in buying the tapes for $15,000, a sum Warhol considered inadequate. He was still asking why he had never received a penny from the first Velvet Underground record, which he had produced, especially when the record continued to sell. His questions about payment sat beside a more personal one: when, and for what reason, had Reed stopped liking him?

Warhol speculated that Reed’s marriage might have changed his willingness to see the people he regarded as peculiar, but the diary offers no confirmation. He also remembered that Reed had acquired two dachshunds after seeing Warhol with his own dogs. That echo of imitation, once a source of amused closeness, now sharpened the mystery of their falling-out rather than explaining it.

In April 1985, Warhol learned that Vincent had found the Velvet Underground master tapes. He began thinking about how to earn money from the first album and considered making use of the masters or creating a video from old film clips, declaring in the diary that he would not worry about whether they had the rights and would let others try to sue him. The entry records an intention, not proof that he carried it out. Reed’s refusal to rejoin the group and the discovery of the tapes thus brought the old collaboration back as both an artistic legacy and a contested source of income. The diaries leave the friendship’s rupture unexplained; what they preserve instead is Warhol’s repeated effort to locate its cause, alongside his insistence that his contribution to the record should count for something.