Ed Lachman Takes Us Inside Lou Reed and John Cale’s Songs for Drella

Last week, live from the Metrograph, renowned cinematographer and director Ed Lachman sat down with writer Sasha Frere-Jones to celebrate a screening of Songs for Drella + Scenes of the Life of Andy Warhol. The double feature paired Jonas Mekas’ rapid-fire diary film of Andy Warhol’s life with the restoration of Lachman’s 1990 concert film documenting the reunion of Velvet Underground legends Lou Reed and John Cale, who got together at the Brooklyn Academy of Music less than three years after Andy Warhol’s death to perform a song cycle in his memory.

The concert, originally recorded for British television and rediscovered in a pandemic-era clean-out of Lachman’s room, marked Reed and Cale’s first live performance together in 17 years. Accordingly, Lachman’s directorial vision heightens Reed and Cale’s complex relationships with both one another and Warhol, whose presence looms characteristically large. “Some people said he was a Svengali, but I feel he was more a passive observer and lived through other people,” Lachman said. Below, is an abridged version of the director’s conversation with Frere-Jones after the screening, in which Lachman reveals how he shot Annie Lennox for the groundbreaking AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Blue and reminisces on some of his fondest adventures with the great Jean-Luc Godard.

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ED LACHMAN: I’m going to jump ahead. I met Lou [Reed] about 50 years ago. I did a video for Berlin. I’ve always looked for it, but never found it. It was 1973, and he came up to me and kicked the tripod. I was in shock and panicked, and he said, “Do it like Andy.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. So I kiddingly mentioned to him when we met, “Did you ever remember doing a video for Berlin and you kicked the camera from under me?” And he goes, “I don’t remember much from back then.” Then I found it. It’s very short. We can look at what a ’73 video looked like with Lou Reed. 

FRERE-JONES: There it is, a film for the ear. When did you meet Lou first?

LACHMAN: Oh, well, that’s when I met Lou Reed.

FRERE-JONES: When he said he wanted you to do it like Andy, what do you think he meant?

LACHMAN: I think just improvise, so it wouldn’t be so controlled. I had done a video for Red Hot + Blue. It was an AIDS benefit album. I was assigned to Annie Lennox, and Derek Jarman was going to direct it. I went to England and he was very sick. He was actually dying of AIDS, and he said to me, “You should do it, but I’ll give you my home movies.” They were home movies that his family had made about him and his sister. Annie Lennox always had that white pancake face and I was always trying to think about what I could do with that. I thought, “Oh, her face is like a screen, like our movie screens.” So I projected the images of his home movies and the Cole Porter song, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,”and it was the perfect song for the images for her face. There were a number of artists, U2 was in it and Nina Simone. Anyway, the British press wrote about it, so I got noticed by Channel 4, which is a British television network. They had the idea of recording this concert. They had done it before at St. Anne’s, and we did this at BAM. They had me meet Lou and John. The first meeting with Lou and John, he said to me, “People are paying to come to see our performance, and I don’t want any cameras between me and the audience.” Then I went home and I thought, “Well, how do you make a film without cameras?” I came back the next day and I said, “All right, can I shoot one or two rehearsals and it will just be with me. There were two nights of performances, I’ll have other camera crew, but they’ll be off the stage. You won’t see them.” I didn’t realize what this gave me was the ability to set track up. I could change the lighting. I could change the gels on some of the lighting, and I could now have an intimacy with them that I never would have had in a performance. By shooting this, I realized I wanted to do it very minimally, in the style of that period. I was part of that period; I even remember going to Warhol studio back then. I’m old enough that I was around the Velvet Underground. I realized the music was not only a eulogy, but it was also a confessional. It was also about their relationship because they never talked again. They didn’t talk for 17 years, up to when they did this in 1990. So this was this rare opportunity I had with them, but it was like a diary. I wanted to have these long extended takes where it was about the performance, and recording this relationship between them and also to Andy. I felt it had this observational quality, something like the relationship was with Andy. Some people said he was a Svengali, but I feel he was more a passive observer and lived through other people. Certainly, Lou had a contentious relationship with Andy during their period, because he was never big on having Nico in the group. Their relationship finally broke down. 

FRERE-JONES: John Cale at one point is singing from Andy’s diaries, I believe. He mentions the stuff about Lou, and he also talks about how sad Andy is that people aren’t coming to see him at the end of his life, and they didn’t come to see him when he got shot. Then in the very final song, Lou is talking about his resentment towards the diaries you’ve just heard John singing. The way that Cale looks at Lou in this movie is incredible because Lou barely looks at him. I was thinking as it began that I had never thought that the reason some of the movies are so wobbly is because he’s zoomed all the way out. But then your concert film begins, and most of your film is very close in on them. You’re really looking at them and they’re looking at each other. I interviewed Lou twice and he was difficult. Not in a bad way, but he’s the only person to stand up and walk away from me at the end of his time, which I’ve always kind of admired.  What was it like when you finally made a deal with them and it was time to do your thing?

LACHMAN: I had a very positive relationship with Lou. After I accepted his position, I was surprised when he said, “Yeah, all right, you can shoot the rehearsals,” and he never questioned what I did after that. I did see him after, and he was always very cordial with me. I could see things were breaking down between the two of them, but it was never a problem for me.

FRERE-JONES: When you say “breaking down between the two of them,” what do you mean?

LACHMAN: Well, obviously Lou was very controlling. I could see there was less and less communication between them about what they were doing. I didn’t really know when I decided to shoot it that it would reveal that relationship. My background is in documentary, so I’m always interested in the observational camera, but I never thought one would read into that.

FRERE-JONES: It was 1990 that you shot this, right?

LACHMAN: Yeah.

FRERE-JONES: Forgive me, I should maybe know this, but when you’re switching from color to black and white, is that something you had to do in the camera and switch the film? It wasn’t like you pushed a button?

LACHMAN: I did it with one song, the first song “Open House.” I had that idea because it was shot in 16 millimeter, not digitally. Cinematographers know, it was a very low projection against their light on the stage, even though I tried to limit the light on them so you would read the background. But I could improve that in the digital, so I did that. This film was lost for 35 years. Warner Brothers made a terrible laserdisc, and I wasn’t involved in the color correctors. It was finally done at Channel 4 and nobody knew where the elements were. And then a lab, DoArt, that closed in New York about three years before the pandemic, were trying to place the negatives wherever they could. I said, “Anything with my name on it, just send it to me. I’ll keep it in my loft.” I had boxes and boxes of everything. Todd [Haynes] was doing The Velvet Underground film… the footage that I just saw today I know Todd didn’t see, or else it would’ve been in the film. We were told there was only one concert that we had footage of the Velvet Underground, but not of the first time they were together. When Todd was doing The Velvet Underground, he was compiling images around what he didn’t have of their performance, to show the time period and tell their story. I told Todd about this film, but he had already made a decision and said, “I only really want to deal with people that knew the Velvet Underground personally. It shouldn’t be anything after that time period, between those years.” But one of the producers said she would help me, Carolyn Hepburn. We spent a year on it at Channel, but it was never found. Then during the pandemic in my loft, I started looking through boxes, because what else are you going to do?

FRERE-JONES: You got time.

LACHMAN: Lo and behold, the A and B rolls are a hundred feet from where I sleep. I’d been looking all over the world for it. Now the problem was, I had the picture but not the sound. We went back to Warner Brothers, and somebody found the original mix of this film that Lou and Al Maysles did. Lou and John approved, so now I had the best sound. This is a very simple stereo mix. The sound here [at the Metrograph] is incredible. And now I could potentially take the original negative and go into a post house and reauthorize the film. I was really lucky. And then I got permission to show it, and that’s what this is. 

FRERE-JONES: It’s incredibly shot. You’ve done a bunch of movies with Todd Haynes, but you mentioned the Velvets movie. Lou had passed, but you shot John Cale again in the interview sequence. What was it like?

LACHMAN: Well, Jonas Mekas too, just before he died…

FRERE-JONES: When he was 98, right?

LACHMAN: Yeah. He was still active. He was still shooting, and it was wild.

FRERE-JONES: What was it like connecting with John again?

LACHMAN: Well, he was comfortable. It was nice that I did it because he was comfortable with somebody they knew. It wasn’t just prying into his life. Because he obviously moved on, he doesn’t want to always be recognized for the Velvet Underground. He wants to be his own person. 

FRERE-JONES: I mean, we can discuss this, but I think he kind of runs away with this movie. But watching again, and just watching him look at Lou, I felt like the entire history of the band was in his eyes. The combination of love and hurt and admiration. There is something about Lou, he’s always holding everything in. But then he says these things that are so raw and painful. 

LACHMAN: Well, I’ve read that Lou had incredible respect for John when they first met through the record producers. But Lou more and more wanted to be recognized for rock and roll, more commercialized. And he felt he wasn’t going to get there, because John was more into the art world and into music in a more classical sense. Even though Lou respected that, he felt John was holding him back.

FRERE-JONES: And he didn’t want to chop up pianos with axes like John did. But I mean, for his entire career, he was always putting that John Cale element back into his records. There’s a continuing fight about who came up with the droning, who heard the fridge humming. La Monte Young, John Cale? Tony Conrad? 

LACHMAN: Tony. 

FRERE-JONES: They’re still fighting about that. I was born in 1967, so that fight is as old as I am. You’ve worked with Todd Haynes a bunch of times. Is there a consistent way that you guys work together or does it change from movie to movie?

LACHMAN: No, I think each film has its own mythology and approach.

FRERE-JONES: Which was the first you guys worked on together?

LACHMAN: Far from Heaven.

FRERE-JONES: What was the path that brought you and Todd together for that?

LACHMAN: I just interviewed with him, and we hit it off. I brought a bag of books to show him references to ideas. It’s funny, they always say a cinematographer and a director are in a marriage. I like to say it’s not so much a marriage, it’s a dance partner. You hear the same music, but are you in step with each other? You don’t always agree. But does something come out of what you disagree with, better than what either of you originally conceived? 

FRERE-JONES: You dance very well together. 

LACHMAN: Maybe people have questions?

FRERE-JONES: You read my mind. In the front.

AUDIENCE: I read Richard Brody’s book about Jean-Luc Godard, and if I’m not mistaken, I heard Jean-Luc Godard recruited you to do a movie and he tried to have you imbibe him a vision of what the movie might be? Did you ever pal around with Jean-Luc Godard to potentially do a movie?

LACHMAN: I have a couple interesting stories of Jean-Luc Godard. I’ll tell you one. Out of his pocket would come a first class Swiss Air ticket. He said, “I’m going to be in Berlin next week for the Berlin Film Festival. Can you meet me there?” I said, “Oh, all right.” I would go to Berlin and he would always pick me up at the airport. We’d go to a hotel, and he’d put me in a different hotel wherever he was staying. And he would say, “We’ll meet in the morning for breakfast.” We met in the morning and then out of his pocket would come another first class ticket to Paris. We really wouldn’t talk. He would say, “I really don’t have any ideas yet, and I’m still thinking about what to do.” I followed him around Europe for about six weeks. We ended up at Zoetrope. He did these visual scenarios for ideas for films. He would say, “Oh, I’m going to work with Diane Keaton and Hanna Schygulla, a number of people.” And he said to me, “I’m not going to hire one cinematographer. I don’t hire one actor, so there’ll be three cinematographers.” I didn’t care. And then we filmed all these people, and he came back and said, “Oh, you’re all too expensive.” But by that time, he had already gotten money because he told the producers he had all these people. He was very funny. 

Actually, this is another great story. I was with Tom Luddy and Godard, and we were flying from LA to San Francisco and I saw Godard over at the insurance desk. You used to be able to buy insurance with these machines for like $10-you’d get a million dollar policy. He comes back with this thing, and he gives it to Tom Luddy and says, “I’ll do this for Francis. What will he do for me?” And he wrote the beneficiary, “Francis Ford Coppola for a million dollars if the plane crashed.” Another really crazy thing he would do, we were at Zoetrope and he would say, “I have a meeting tomorrow for a lunch meeting and then I’ll be back next morning.” I go, “Oh, all right,” because I used to go to his office and just sit there. I found out he had gone to Paris for a lunch meeting and then got on a plane and came back to L.A. He would do that all the time. He would be on planes for days, just to go for one meeting and then leave. 

Another thing he did, he said to me, “How much do you get paid?” I go, “Wow.” He goes, “No, no, everybody has to be paid. Electricians have to be paid, plumbers have to be paid.” I said, “All right,” I don’t know what it was at the time, maybe a thousand dollars a day back then. Everybody told me he never pays anybody, right? I came to his office the next day, he opened the drawer and he pushed like $5,000 across the table. Now you’re in this awkward position, do you take the money off the table? So it sat there till I left. I worked for him for about two months and he never paid me any more and I didn’t ask for it.

FRERE-JONES: That’s pretty good.

LACHMAN: Yeah.