I Remember How the Darkness Doubled
A band, a medium, a way of seeing.
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 Goldstein’s infamous porn mag, Verlaine recalls the ensuing exchange:
When I saw him walk in with the tape recorder, I ask him what he’s gonna do with it. He said, “It doesn’t work.” I said, “Well, why are you carrying a tape recorder that doesn’t work?” He says, “Here, I’ll give you the cassette.” I said okay, then he said something like, “Well, I got a couple more on me.” So I said, “Well, why don’t you give me the machine?”
After a brief standoff, Reed hands over the recorder. Verlaine gives it ba…