With Lou Reed’s passing and so many people discussing his impact on the contemporary culture of the 60s I can’t help but to remember the first time I ever heard the Velvet Underground. It was in Dhahran when I was 19.
This very wonderful but basically quiet girl, I’ll call Sharon, who I had known my whole life finally had convinced her parents to allow a small party for only her college-age friends – as if that was more respectable than the usual horde of returning students. The day before the party she asked me if I would be the bar tender. This was obviously the worst decision possible but I was touched that she thought I was worthy of such a responsibility and of course I was at her service.
So the next night I arrived early in a clean shirt, perfectly happy to be a proper bar tender, and she showed me her parents’ bar set-up and put out the ingredients, the shot glass and the glasses. Well this wasn’t my first cocktail party but my problem with the previous ones was that after waiting in line, you’d get your one shot and it wasn’t long before you’d have to wait in line again. My insight was that I’d give each drinker a double shot and then I wouldn’t have to see him or her for twice as long. It was a great idea.
There were about 30 college-age kids and things were boiling along when some guy came rushing through the front door with the Velvet Underground album, the one with the banana on the cover. “This is so cool.” he says. And it was. The Stones LP comes off the record player and the Velvet vinyl starts playing for about the first time in Arabia. The party was already cooking but when the cacophonous Velvets started up, dead pan Nico singing and then Lou Reed began his hypnotic droning that somehow became so urgent, everybody started dancing wilder and chanting lyrics that they had never heard before. By the time that Waiting for the Man started playing the whole room was a writhing bacchanalia of frenzied dancers that quickly crashed when the record finished. A new album went on the record player but people seemed listless, worn out, they started to leave and barely three hours later, inexplicably, this party was just about over.
An old friend of mine who I’d known since second grade, came up for a drink. I poured her the usual double-shots I’d been serving all night long, when she said, “Do you know that is a double-shot glass?” Yikes! I had been pouring quadruple shots. Can’t say if that had something to do with the enthusiasm for the Velvet Underground but it was directly responsible for the short half-life of the party. I closed the bar and fled.
The next day Sharon called to thank me for my help. She couldn’t stop talking about the Velvets. To her the party was a fabulous success and thanks to Lou Reed I guess it was.