.

to manage us, because the usual bullshit shallow thinking wasn’t going to work for an instant. You couldn’t say, ‘Do this.’ Andy, oddly enough, probably could have, but he never operated that way.”

      During their trip to New Jersey’s Rutgers University, a fight broke out in the cafeteria when the members of the group were not allowed to eat there, ensuring that the afternoon’s performance would sell out. But it wasn’t until they got to Ann Arbor, Michigan, that the whole thing finally came together and was a smash hit. “In March we left New York for Ann Arbor in a rented van to play at the University of Michigan,” wrote Warhol. “Nico drove, and that was an experience. I still don’t know if she had a license. She’d only been in this country a little while and she’d keep forgetting and drive on the British side of the road. A cop stopped us near a hamburger drive-in near Toledo when a waitress got upset and complained to him because we kept changing orders, and when he asked, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ Lou shoved me forward and told him, ‘Of all people—Drella!’

      “Ann Arbor was crazy. At least the Velvets were a smash. I’d sit on the steps in the lobby during intermissions and people from the local papers would interview me, ask about my movies, what we were trying to do. “If they can take it for ten minutes, then we play it for fifteen,” I’d explain. “That’s our policy. Always leave them wanting less.”

      ***

      Back in New York that April, the group reached the zenith of their career when Warhol rented a Polish community hall, the Dom, on St. Marks Place in the East Village, and put on his climactic multimedia show, now called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

      When the Velvet Underground performed for a month that April under Warhol’s direction in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Nico undoubtedly became the star of the show. Onstage in her white pantsuit, she was the center of attention. She was an inch taller than Cale, and despite the fact that Reed sang most of the songs, everything was geared so that she just had to stand there to command attention. Every drug-induced movement she made became significant. It was a talent she had developed in her years as a model and with which Lou Reed could not compete. The musicians who stood out were the flamboyant and handsome Welshman John Cale, with his great hawk nose and mop of shiny black hair cut in the style of Prince Valiant, as he bowed his electric viola, and the androgynous little drummer, who stood up behind a bizarre-looking kit composed chiefly of kettledrums, banging away with the relentless ferocity of an insane fourteen-year-old. In fact, Warhol was the dominant influence because his films set the striking backdrop and his conduction of the light show played over the band and the films, creating a whole new way to look at rock-and-roll shows. And people came to see a Warhol show.