Are you ever going to write it?

I’m interested in writing a book. But not about me.

[Dings and twangs in background. People seem about ready to go onstage.]

If there’s one difference between the early work and the current stuff, it’s in the persona of the singer. Previously Lou Reed was off on the sidelines: “I just don’t care at all,” “Makes no difference to me.” More recently there’s been a willingness to be involved and affected . . .

Yeah. I took a stance about a couple of things.

Why?

I thought I’d earned the right; that I knew enough about Life at this point, and had gone through enough where I thought stating an opinion about a thing or two would not be soapboxy or preachy but was just hard-won experience trying to communicate to other people.

In a lot of the stuff that I wrote about there’s no overt moral position, but what’s being described speaks for itself and I don’t think it needed me to say anything about it—I don’t take a superior view or any kind of elitist view toward any of these things: it’s life, and that’s what we’re talking about.

But over the last couple of years there has been a change, in the sense that I think I am capable of taking positions that I’m not going to change my mind about.

I think I can justify my opinions. They’re hard-won and heartfelt.

You’re still in rock and roll after more than thirty years. Do you ever see yourself stopping?

I just love doing it. This is like a new art form. You know, the CD, where you’ve got up to seventy-four minutes. It’s odd to me that the last three albums all timed out at fifty-eight, fifty-nine minutes, without aiming for it.

To have, instead of fourteen or fifteen disparate songs, to have this something about one thing you can really sink your teeth into, is interesting: it might be interesting to do a two-CD set, the length of a Broadway play, I suppose.

I think on Magic and Loss—eventually you have to take a swing at the major themes and certainly loss and death is one of them.

They say that sex and death are all we’ve got to write about . . .

Those are the basic themes. There’s a reason they’re there, but I think every generation has to have them reinterpreted for them.

Also, while I don’t understand the process in great specifics, I do understand what talent is, and what a strange thing that is, and I’ve been trying really hard to set up situations in which it can flourish. And that’s the obligation I feel. To try to be true to the talent and make it possible for it to function.

“In dreams begin responsibilities”?

Oh sure. Absolutely. I have a dream too. And it turns out that a lot of the responsibilities involve not letting it become corrupted or compromised. Which all comes down to things you have to do in your personal life. That’s why I was fascinated by talking to President Havel . . . [Over the phone I can hear buzzers going off. It sounds like Lou ought to be onstage around now. Fifteen minutes are well up.]