When I got together with Matt I was so glad he was able to do it. I said, “Y’know, I’ve tried to put these really quick visual images that you can get really fast, and if we could just illustrate some of them that’d be great.” That’s what he did.

It’s like the storyboard for the song.

Literally. When he first sent it to me it was a storyboard . . .

It’s the first video to feel like a Lou Reed song. I mean, there was that robot-ripping-its-face-off video . . .

“No Money Down.” Yeah. I thought that was really funny, that one. But yeah, as far as capturing what a song’s about, this is the first one. This one actually does get it.

It adds something to the song.

That’s what we thought. I mean the thing is that Matt understood it without me having to say anything, which was really great. Usually videos are pretty painful to do. But this one was actually fun. It was nice to see it realized.

Also I didn’t really have to, like, really play Lou Reed in the video—and that gets pretty tedious.

Fifteen minutes before I’m onstage, just so you know.

Five minutes more, then?

No, I mean, you can go for the whole fifteen if you want.

Thanks. In the article on Václav Havel, you talk about the Lou Reed persona as something separate from you. Is that how you perceive it?

Well, it’s something I use to keep a distance. Put it that way. But I would say it got out of control, and I’ve been deconstructing it. Which is really kinda funny, Neil, because I can go from this leather-jacketed street guy from New York, and then I show up and the next thing I hear is “What are you talking about? This guy looks like an English professor.” It’s actually hilarious.

Do they want to see you still shooting up onstage? Or in makeup? Or in shades and leather?

It depends what time they tagged into me. Some people are forever in the Velvet Underground thing, or the Transformer thing, or the Rock N Roll Animal thing—someplace around there. They’d like it to still be that. But I was only passing through.

It’s “You’re still doing things I gave up years ago”?

[Laughs.] That’s right. It is, isn’t it?

Were you surprised by the commercial success of Magic and Loss?

Astonished would cover it. It’s very strange. In a sense it’s my dream album, because everything finally came together to where the album is finally fully realized. I got it to do what I wanted it to do, but commercial thoughts never entered into it, so I’m just stunned.

In the book, the notes at the end of the songs have a certain laconic teasing quality . . .

If by “teasing” you mean I tell you a little bit and you would have liked to know a little bit more, then yeah. I thought it was just enough to let you know what was really happening and tie things together so you saw that there was a narrative. As though it was a novel except told in lyrics, and the little annotations were things that tied it together and gave you a little push onto the next one and also told you something that’d make you sit up for a minute. But I didn’t want to go on too long with that. That’d be another book.