Sterling Morrison
On going where the story is, and never being surprised by who's there to tell it
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
From the mini-series, Meeting the Velvet Underground: Lou Reed, John Cale, Moe Tucker, and Sterling Morrison
Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground was touring and Sterling Morrison, also of the Velvets was in her band. I, a devoted fan and keeper of the first Web site about them, couldn’t believe it. Even better, they were playing in Madison with Jonathan Richman. Richman was a devotee and fanboy of the Velvets when he was a young lad and grew up to have his own quirky place in the rocknroll family tree with his band, The Modern Lovers. Madison was only a couple hours from campus so I begged Linda, a friend of my dad’s from college who lived near campus, for her car. I promised to return it with a full tank of gas. Jon Michaels, my roommate joined me for the road trip.
It was an amazing night in which I got to spend some serious time huddled with half of one of the most legendary bands ever.
Thankfully, I was on assignment and wrote it allllll down. This is maybe one of my favorite openings I’ve ever written.
They were such a joy to spend time with, and I’m grateful especially to have had the chance to meet Sterling. I was so close to doing so again when he passed away a couple of years later and I was there when Lou dedicated Sweet Jane to him at the opening of the Rocknroll Hall of Fame shortly after his death. Read all the way to the bottom for that story.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that sometimes you just have to get in the car and go where the story is. Beyond that, just because someone isn’t the lead singer, or the main song writer, or the CEO or the star doesn’t mean they don’t have an incredible story waiting to be told.
-==-
Here’s the piece, for Art + Performance.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem," says Sterling Morrison sagely. He was one of the guitarists for the late Velvet Underground, so he should know these things. We are discussing breakfast cereal. Really. And then the discussion moves on to Wuthering Heights. Sterling says that "Emily (Bronte) was just shooting from the hip." He has a Ph.D. in English, so he should know these things, too.
And Moe Tucker sitting there beside him tells me that she doesn't just sing about buying Spam, she actually likes the stuff.
Moe used to play side-turned drums with mallets, as she stood over them laying down the rhythm that gave the Velvet Underground their drive. She also used to be a keypunch operator, and one of Wal-Mart's more famous employees.
"And most hated," she is not shy to add.
"Why?"
"Because I didn't keep my mouth shut?"
"About what," asks the reporter, coaxing.
"The way they treat their employees and the way they pay them; all the bullshit 'I love Wal-Mart's shit.'."
Now though, she tours Europe (a continent where they really respect musicians with talent) and is starting to hit the U.S. more. Which is why I'm sitting here talking her. Allow me to set the scene a little. It'll just take a moment.
The mood of the evening was relaxed to say the least. Campy even. I sat in the dressing room for a while waiting for Moe to arrive for the show, watching Victor Delorenzo (the former Violent Femmes drummer, now playing with Moe) play Hangman with his daughters. He's good by the way. Got the word "peaches" in his first try. `H' first, then the `P.' Several bottles of Special Garten Brau, some Gatorade, and a can of Caffeine Free Diet Coke are chilling in the drink bin. Jonathan Richman is sitting at the table eating diner and chowing on these organic vitamin-looking things. They are green and look gross. But he eats them anyway.
Moe and Sterling show up around the time they are supposed to go on. The carry their own guitars. They say hello to Jonathan, whom they've known forever but haven't seen for a while.
Jonathan was 13 when they met him, or so the story goes. His first gig was opening for the Velvets at age 16. He just asked if he could play a few songs before they went on. And borrow their amps. And Sterling's guitar.
Now Moe and Sterling are opening for him. Times change. "He's better known, I think, than we are," says Moe, matter-of-factly.
Their show was great, for an opening band. A lot of Moe's solo stuff, which tends to focus a lot on blue-collar life, one song from the Velvet's days (Pale Blue Eyes) and a few covers. Moe and Sterling are pretty stoic on stage which really makes you wonder where their sound comes from. Because it is so intense. And so loud. And so crashing. And there they stand, rocking back and forth a little, staring into the distance.
Moe carries on Lou Reed's tradition of simplicity of lyric with guitar overlays. Yet her songs are filled with situations and not character description like Lou's work.
As a band they are quite together, much more so I think than on her albums. Victor comes down from the kit and plays bass for one song. He gets a disapproving look from Moe as he sits on the floor to do it, but explains like a child caught doing something, "I like it here."
And Moe looks like she could be your mom. Which she could. And there is your mom playing the bass for a song. And there is your mom with some shrieking feedback. And there is your mom in a rock band, singing for all she is worth. Not for the money, not for the fame, but because she wants kids to know that real rock music makes you dance.
After the show she and Sterling and the rest of them all talk to the audience. It's not degrading that they are selling their own stuff. It's what rock should really be about. It's what Moe and Sterling are about. "Playing clubs is great," says Sterling "People come up to you and say, 'Hey, you suck' and I say, 'Well, I did my best' They tell you what they think and you get to talk to them."
Which brings me back to the table where Moe, Sterling and I sit. It is a table covered with CD's and T-shirts. Moe and Sterling will sign anything you buy. And they'll talk to you for a while, if you like. We are in a lobby that overlooks the dance floor and the stage where Jonathan is now playing. He interacts well with his audience too, but in a much less personal way. He's still on the stage, you see. I watch him for a while from the distance, as he dances about and talks and sings. But he's not holding my interest. I'm talking to the Velvets.
Now the conversation at the table has turned back to literature. See, there was a University of Wisconsin student who was also helping to sell the shirts, and doing a good job if I may say so. His name was Chad, and Chad had a paper due that Monday so he was having Dr. Morrison help him with it. This is how Moe and Sterl interact with the audience. Off stage. Where they really can just hang out. "Modernism sets out to create things that you still have to call novels and defy every rule that you even thought applied..." lectures Sterling until he is interrupted by bassist John Sluggett (formerly of Half Japanese) asking if Sterl still wants him to play some 8-ball later. Sterl replies that he is going to spend a quiet evening at home and Sluggett asks, "Whose home?"
Moe meanwhile, was trying to deal with some dude who wandered up, talking like Bill and Ted and had a conversation that went like this:
Stoner: "Wait, you like had something to do with the Velvet Underground or something, didn't you"
Moe: "Yeah, I was their roadie,"
Stoner (with impressed disbelief): "No way, you were like a roadie for the band?"
Moe: "Yeah"
Sterling: "Yeah, she was the roadie we always wanted to fire, but never quite got around to it."
Moe: "Actually, I was the drummer"
Stoner (with impressed disbelief) "No way, for like how long."
Moe (a little confused on that one): "Umm, the life of the band I guess..."
Stoner: "So, you guys like did a lot of drugs and stuff."
Moe kind of shrugs that one off.
Stoner: "So, you like know Lou Reed then."
Moe: "Yeah" [of course she knows Lou, she was in a band with him...]
Stoner: "What's he like?"
Moe: "I love him, but he's a pain in the ass."
And there it is. All cards on the table. Speaking of Lou, one of the biggest questions in everyone's mind tonight, and I'm sure most other nights as well, is why the Velvets got back together in '93, and more importantly, why they fell apart again so fast.
So, of course, I asked.
a+p: What was the best part of being back with the Velvets?
Moe: "Being together."
a+p: The Worst?
Moe: "Not being together. The end. That was the worst."[The sweet innocence with which she said that astounded me -ed]
a+p: How did the Velvets wind up getting back together.
Moe: "We've been getting more friendly the past couple years."
a+p: So how did they fall apart again?
Moe: "Same old shit."
a+p: What kind of same old shit?
Moe: "Arguments. Ego problems. Fax fights."
a+p: Fax Fights?
Moe (smiling): "We had a week-long fax fight. About how we weren't going to do anything. Every time the fax machine would go off my kids would yell 'Fax fight!' and run to see what he had said this time."
The fax fight was over the issue of who would produce the MTV Unplugged episode with the Velvets. An hour of TV which would have been totally strange. Lou wanted to do it, but Moe and John Cale (the original bassist for VU) realized that that would lead to a lot of fights, and they didn't want that. So Lou told them that if he couldn't do that he wouldn't do anything, and that was the end of the Velvet's summer reunion.
a+p (to John Cale last spring):What's it like working with Lou? Is it rough?
Cale: Well, I, I. (laughter)... what's done is done.
And the Velvets are done. No more doubt about that.
The problem, according to Sterling, was that "Some people are a little more able to handle democracy than others. Lou is among the least able. I don't want to make him the heavy, but people evolve or grow or whatever you want to say in different ways. Lou has sort of become very rigid in his thinking. And he would say in his own defense that 'I'm not rigid. I simply know what's right and that's what I'm gonna do.'"
He speaks about his friendship with Lou and Lou's current relationship with Laurie Anderson and then turns back to the Velvets "It sort of pains me, there are a lot of things that we could be doing that we're not doing because of weirdness. Not just Lou's, we're all kind of weird. We always were, and stubborn, and verbal. So some very mean things can get said very glibly."
Guitarist Sonny Vincent wandered through at this point and the subject changed...and changed...and changed. He's too much. A proto-punker who tours with Moe and has his own band called The Dons. He describes the rest of The Dons as, "Two very friendly chaps from Amsterdam who when they're done playing they're soaking wet. They like to eat health food and they smoke hash all day. It's legal over there."
He hands me his CD and wanders off. And slowly the band begins to filter to the motel. Victor has already taken his daughters home. Sonny is going to the bars first. John will probably join him. Sterling and Moe are going to go give a press conference for the 'real' reporters. One of them sees my recorder and asks if I want to come.
I decline. I already have the story.
-==-
And a few bonus quote from Sterling and Moe that wound up on the cutting room floor:
Jonathan Richman on meeting me: "thanks for introducing yourself..."
Sterling on Punks: Punk bands were always such a joke. They are the littlest, skinniest guys I ever saw in my life. And they're copying this bad attitude. So maybe they deserve the attitude "punks" which is not serious bad, it's sort of wannabe bad.
Punk bands are twerps.
Sterling on Rock: The real rock 'n' roll experience is not lip-synching on MTV, it's playing clubs. It's not being this little ant in a stadium show that is projected on to some sort of monitor. You play these big shows, you never see the audience. Well you do see them, when you come gliding in on your bus, you see them trooping along like a defeated army, and to me, it always depressed me.
Sterling on being in a band: I don't see any essential difference between who's in the band and who isn't. Somebody spent more time in the bedroom practicing.
Sterling on the Velvets: The Velvet Underground never set out to be a commercial success. We had built-in reasons why it was impossible. The only thing you can say to our credit is that it didn't stop us. We kept on going anyway.
Sterling on Pale Blue Eyes: That was a song about love.
Sonny Vincent on Sterling Morrison: Sterling's a great guy, but I taught him a few licks and now he's really cool Sterling is really playing the hard core licks now. These licks are based on the musical diagrams that you find in any rock guitar book, but they're a little bit perverted, um, twisted. He really knows how to do some needlepoint and some great sewing. For people that think it's just all guitar playing and drinking milk, you're wrong. There's a lot of needlepoint involved.
Moe on why she plays guitar instead of drums now: Well the way I play is very simple. It was perfect for the Velvets but I need a better drummer than me for my stuff.
Moe on the her audience: When I first toured, I said to myself 'if the audiences turned out to be 40-year-old farts, that would be my last tour.' Luckily it has turned out to be young people.
Moe on the changing role of women in rock: That's a press illusion.I never had a problem and no one even mentioned it in the Velvet days. I just played drums. I think the press has made a lot of it because a lot of women in the past eight or ten years have started playing more than the piano.
-==-
Not all that many years later, Sterling died. In between the Velvets managed to reunite briefly, but they only played in Europe so I never got to see them all together. Here’s what I wrote about Sterling’s passing for a magazine in Australia, whose editor liked my Web site.
The concert was meant to be a celebration. The greatest Rock and Rollers showing off to the world why Rock is the only way to Roll. Yet during the show to end all shows, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert, there was a terribly sad moment which went mostly unnoticed. Before the applause had died down when Lou Reed was introduced, he walked up to the microphone and said "This is for Sterling Morrison." and, with Soul Asylum as his backing band, kicked into the best rendition of Sweet Jane I've heard in years.
I almost lost it as the thought hit me yet again that I would never get to see the Velvet Underground play together. That I wouldn't get that interview with Sterling that I had been trying to set up in the past couple weeks, not knowing that he was dying of Lymphoma.
It's strange. I don't know why it affected me so much. Why I sat stunned in front of my computer reading a piece of email from a fellow Velvets fan, telling me the news, unable to even type out a response. Why I debated taking down my entire Velvets web site in mourning but then decided that it would be best if people could go there and look at pictures, read the lyrics to the songs he played: "Despite all the amputations, you could just dance to a Rock and Roll station..."
But no, it wasn't all right, nor would it ever be. The dancing helped, though, as I threw myself to the Sweet Jane beat.
And there was supposed to be another Velvet Underground reunion of sorts. Right here, in the pages of this very magazine, I was going to interview each of the original Velvets in honor of the forthcoming box set, Peel Slowly and See, and Lou's solo album that he just finished recording. The interviews fell through last minute, as they do sometimes but that didn't bother me.
Until I learned why.
Sterling Morrison, guitarist for one of the greatest rock bands ever, had died.
Sterling could give you an opinion on anything. And not some off the cuff remark but a well thought out, studied idea of the world according to Sterl. Of the members of the Velvet Underground, he was perhaps the most forthcoming, and the most interesting to talk to. And I mean talk, not interview.
Perhaps that has to do with his background, growing up in New York, being part of Warhol's factory scene, playing in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable with the Velvets. Then going on to work on a tug boat (where he was the only one without a criminal record) and finally Dr. Morrison taught at the University of Texas including a course about J. R. R. Tolkein. He was as comfortable talking about literature as licks.
Sonny Vincent, proto-punker and fellow bandmate of Sterl and Moe Tucker said, "Sterling is really playing the hard core licks now. These licks are based on the musical diagrams that you find in any rock guitar book, but they're a little bit perverted, um, twisted. He really knows how to do some needlepoint and some great sewing. For people that think it's just all guitar playing and drinking milk, you're wrong. There's a lot of needlepoint involved," but then again, that's Sonny talking...
I met them about a year ago when Sterling was playing with Moe on her tour (they opened for Jonathan Richman). After the show, she and Sterl sat at a table in the back and signed the shirts and CDs they were selling. For Sterling, whom Lou called a "guitar hero," this type of scene was the reason he kept it playing.
"Playing clubs is great," Sterling said, "People come up to you and say 'Hey, you suck' and I say 'Well, I did my best' They tell you what they think and you get to talk to them...
"The real rock 'n' roll experience is not lip-synching on MTV, it's playing clubs. It's not being this little ant in a stadium show that is projected on to some sort of monitor. You play these big shows, you never see the audience. Well you do see them, when you come gliding in on your bus, you see them trooping along like a defeated army, and to me, it always depressed me."
From the onset the Velvet Underground wasn't about commercial gain. They were about art and making music by their own rules. And with Andy Warhol behind them few questioned their actions. Well, except for the audiences who often walked out of a concert confused as to what they had just seen. "The Velvet Underground never set out to be a commercial success," said Sterling. "We had built-in reasons why it was impossible. The only thing you can say to our credit is that it didn't stop us. We kept on going anyway."
I would disagree. There are many more things that can be said to the Velvet's credit. But you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't know that, now would you? Because Sterling was the forgotten Velvet (as opposed to Doug Yule who is the ignored Velvet). His contributions as one of the only founding member who saw the Velvets through to the end, were always overshadowed by Lou and Cale's, and even Moe's. His guitar work was instrumental in creating the Velvet's sound. And his even keel in the face of Lou being impossible, firing Cale, remixing albums, etc., helped keep the band from falling apart even faster than they did.
These conflicts would again surface when the Velvets got back together in '93. "Some people are a little more able to handle democracy than others," said Sterling, clearly among the former category. "Lou is among the least able. I don't want to make him the heavy, but people evolve or grow or whatever you want to say in different ways. Lou has sort of become very rigid in his thinking. And he would say in his own defense that 'I'm not rigid. I simply know what's right and that's what I'm gonna do.'
"It sort of pains me, there are a lot of things that we could be doing that we're not doing because of weirdness. Not just Lou's, we're all kind of weird. We always were, and stubborn, and verbal. So some very mean things can get said very glibly."
It pains me too, Sterling. It pains me that you all will never get the chance to give it another go. It pains me how ironic it is that the straightest-seeming Velvet was the first to go. It pains me how few noticed.
I did, though.
It's generally appropriate to have a moment of silence in memory of the dead. But not here. Grab a copy of Sister Ray, or Rock and Roll, or Jesus even and let 'em rip. Crank up the volume to 11, where it belongs, and remember Sterling the way he was. As a rocker through and through.