I heard the sound of the Earth turning on mighty hinges, and of stars forming new constellations, but I wasn’t going to argue. Maybe now, I thought, they’ll bring out the Arista albums on CD.

My Rock and Roll Heart LP has been unplayable for almost a decade.

V

THE FIRST TIME I saw Lou Reed live I was almost sixteen. He was playing at the New Victoria, a converted London theater which closed down a few months later. He kept stopping to tune his guitar. The audience kept cheering and yelling and shouting, “Heroin!”

At one point he leaned in to the mike and told us all, “Shut the fuck up. I’m trying to get this fuckin’ tune right.”

At the end of the gig he told us we’d been such a crummy audience we didn’t deserve an encore, and he didn’t do one.

That, I decided, was a real rock and roll star.

VI

THREE WEEKS WERE spent talking to WEA, Lou’s record company. The interview’s on. The interview’s off. The interview’s maybe on. It’s going to be a phone interview. It’s not going to be a phone interview. I’m going to be flown to Stockholm. I’m going to fly to Munich.

First thing you learn is that you’ve always got to wait.

Somewhere in there, at Lou’s request, to prove my credentials, I handed over a pile of books and comics to Sally, the publicist at WEA. She seemed kind of impressed, so I decided not to mention that I could have been Martin Amis.

I’d seen the video of Reed’s “What’s Good” at three a.m. on MTV while channel-hopping (European MTV is the only channel in the world worse than American MTV). Visually it was stunning: it looked kind of like Matt Mahurin’s work, only it was in color. I asked Sally who made the video, but she didn’t know.

Days went by, and D-day was approaching fast, while we waited for word. I’m probably going to Munich. I’m almost definitely going to Munich.

I’ve never been to Munich. I’ve never met Lou Reed.

Friday, five thirty, I’m not going to Munich, and the interview’s off. Canceled. Kaput.

I went to bed for the weekend.

VII

I WAS FIFTEEN and playing Transformer in the art room at school. My friend Marc Gregory came over, with a request. His band covered “Perfect Day,” but he’d never heard the Lou Reed original. I put it on for him. He listened for about a minute, then he turned around, puzzled, looking uncomfortable.

“He’s singing flat.”

“He can’t be singing flat,” I told him. “It’s his song.”

Marc went off disgruntled, and I still believe I was right.

VIII

MONDAY MORNING: AFTER it was all over, the interview was suddenly on again. Maybe.

Monday evening, I was sitting in an office in central London with a sore throat, a telephone microphone and someone else’s Walkman, waiting for a possible phone call from a concert hall somewhere in Europe.

The owner of the Walkman, a music journalist, turned up to show me how to press the record button. “Lou’s meant to be a better phone interview than he is in person, anyway. I suppose he feels that he can always hang up on you,” he told me, to cheer me up.