“Drella was subtitled ‘A Fiction’ so that if I decided to take poetic license with certain facts – like, did it really happen on 81st Street or was it actually 73rd Street – I wouldn’t have to be called into account for it. I don’t care about certain facts; if such-and-such happened before or after such-and-such, it makes no difference to me. I would say that Songs For Drella is very factual, but it’s fact communicated through fiction. Do you understand what I mean? There’s poetic license taken, and that being the case, I didn’t wanna be saddled with the burden of, like, this is a biography that is verbatim true. For instance, at one point John said to me, ‘You know, Andy [Warhol – Ed] did this record cover for me a few years ago [1972’s Academy In Peril – Ed] and it was in black-and-white. He told me that it would be worth more if I kept it that way. But I made him color it. I really wish I’d listened to him.’ I stuck that into one of the songs, and it gets a good laugh. And it’s true. But it isn’t true that it happened in a dream that I made up. So it’s fiction. You understand? The Andy Warhol Diaries are not a worthy epitaph by any stretch of the imagination. At least for me they’re not. I think Andy is much more than that, and if you only look at that, you won’t get the full benefit of just what a unique and amazing individual he really is. What you experience through the record is the relationship between us and Andy. It’s not just about Andy; it’s not just, oh, he did this, he did that. When you experience Drella, it’s about John and me, it’s about me and Andy, and it’s about John and Andy. It’s a relationship. We want to make you know Andy Warhol better, make you feel him the way John and I feel him, so that you can experience the presence of this person and get closer to him. Anyway, I don’t know all that many people who’ll read The Diaries from beginning to end. And I don’t see why you have to have one or the other; you can have both, you know.”Lou Reed (1086)

“It was John’s idea. He had said, ‘Why don’t we do a short story like ‘The Gift?” But then he went away to Europe. He goes off to Europe saying, ‘Hey Lou, go write a short story.’ But I thought, no, not a short story, let’s make it a dream. That way we can have Andy do anything we want. Time and dimension and reality won’t matter, because it’s a dream. We could have him go anywhere, do anything, and not worry about facts. So, I thought this dream idea was the way to go. Let me tell you, man, it was really hard to do. But once I got into Andy’s tone of voice, I was able to write for a long time that way. I got to where I was able to, you know, just zip-zip-zip away – just because I really liked that tone so much. It’s certainly not my tone of voice at all. I really don’t talk that way. I had to make myself get into that way of talking.”Lou Reed (1086)

“Besides, talent can be very attractive and seductive, which is what I was getting at in ‘Style It Takes’. That’s a seduction song.”Lou Reed (1086)

“And ‘Work’. That’s Andy [Warhol – Ed] talking; those are verbatim quotes. Now, if that doesn’t come under the heading of good advice, I don’t know what does.”Lou Reed (1086)

“I grew up close enough [to New York City – Ed] to come in but not actually be there. Of course, where I grew up [Freeport, Long Island – Ed] I think of as an all-time hellhole. When I wrote ‘Small Town’ on Drella, that’s what that was about. That was a good song – kind of my answer to Mellencamp’s song of the same name.”Lou Reed (1095)