The end of August used to hit hard. Summer was nearly over, and the return to reality during the school years was always a challenge. Now, it feels like this year's calendar has been torn in two and it's impossible to say what will happen next. The New Abnormal that awaits remains a question mark, maybe good or maybe not, but it's impossible to know. It's also a time when I think of Sterling Morrison, and how life feels somehow empty without him. Morrison, the Velvet Underground's guitarist who was in that blazing rock band longer than any of the other members, passed away on August 30, 1995, and a big hole still sits where he used to be. And Morrison, born the day before on August 29, 1942, always makes me remember August.

I first met Sterling Morrison on a sweltering August afternoon in 1975 at the Cedar Door in Austin. I was taking a break from my job as music editor of the Austin Sun, right across the street from the bar, finding some relief in an air-conditioned room. Morrison was hiding out from his job as a teaching assistant at the University of Texas, where he was working on his PhD. He'd been at UT for two years, using his first name Holmes so as not to be distracted by any Velvet Underground acolytes. There weren't many then in Austin so he probably didn't need to worry. But Sterling could see shadows sometimes when there weren't any, and didn't want to take any chances. I barely recognized him that day. A big Fu Manchu moustache was a good disguise, but once I heard his New York accent and extreme disdain for a variety of rock bands he was talking about, I instantly snapped. "Are you Sterling Morrison?" I asked him. He gave me a questionable look and said, "Who wants to know?" And with that simple beginning began a twenty-year friendship--including a dozen years Morrison put me in the penalty box and we didn't speak--unlike any I've had before or since. It was a rollercoaster ride of rock & roll history that only comes around once or twice in life. If you're lucky.

Looking back now, it feels like Morrison was waiting for someone to bring him back into the public's view again. It wasn't long before we were spending hours at night talking about an unending variety of subjects. And when he agreed for me to interview him for the Austin Sun I knew he was ready. Morrison was the most interesting monologist I've ever known, and it didn't really matter if he knew what he was talking about or not. He was always mesmerizing without fail. I recall once Morrison admitted, "I don't know if I'm right or wrong about any of this. But that's not the point. That point is I have an opinion. Which means I'm alive. And I'm willing to change my mind about everything. That's what matters."

It wasn't long before I had convinced the guitarist to join our bar band The Bizarros, which is where things really went into hydrodrive. Sterling loved playing guitar, and would always be the first to arrive at our rehearsals or jobs. It felt like he'd been waiting to come out of mothballs. He's plug in his Gibson 335 guitar and I could hear him strumming alone the chords of "Heroin," "Candy Says," "Venus in Furs," "Sweet Jane" or any of the other VU stalwarts, with the most contented look on his face, like these songs were his children and he was so thrilled to be around them again. One day I asked him if The Bizarros could try and perform a few Velvet Underground songs, and he quickly said we could only do "Cool It Down," from the band's last album LOADED. When I asked him why just that one, in true Morrison fashion he said, "That's the only one you're capable of." Damn. It hurt, but looking back the man was right. So "Cool It Down" it was, and I still get excited thinking about hitting the flam rudiment that starts the song.

The next few years Sterling Morrison and I became sidekicks, the kind of friend you make only a few times in life. He was smart as a whip, funny in a full-tilt East Coast caustic way and never short with words. Unfortunately, it was too good to last, and when The Bizarros decided to replace him with a bluesier guitarist, it was a heartbreaker for me. But being the band's drummer, I was told to stay out of the guitar department and leave things alone. So I did, and still regret it.

Sterling Morrison, being the man of steel he was, didn't speak to me for the next dozen years. I left Austin for Los Angeles in 1980, and once he got his PhD. Sterling ended up working on tugboats on the Houston ship channel. Life is funny that way. And he didn't speak to me again, until through the total quirks of life we both ended up in Paris when the Velvet Underground reunited for a celebration of Andy Warhol's Factory years. I went as Lou Reed's publicist. The first day there, I saw Sterling across a hotel room and walked over to him and said hello.

He couldn't resist saying to me, "What happened to you Bentley? You ended up a record company flack? Pathetic." But that was Sterling. He had to throw a fastball at my head. "What the hell, Sterling," I shot back. "What in the world did I ever do to you to get the cold shoulder all these years." He was ready, replying, "You got me in the Bizarros and it was your job to keep me in." I tried explaining I had resisted replacing him in our band, but I was outvoted. He wouldn't hear of it. I had committed the mortal sin of letting Sterling down, and I had to pay.

But in the beauty of those few days in Paris and all the crazy hoopla for the Velvet Underground, it was a incredible thing to see Sterling Morrison warm up and, in the end, become my friend again. It almost felt like a gorgeous gift I'd been given for never giving up on someday reuniting. When it happened, it felt like absolution.

Soon there were plans for a European Velvet Underground tour with U2, a live album and possibly even an MTV Unplugged taping, then possibly U.S. shows and maybe a new studio album. But like rock & roll often does, one day everything fell apart and the Velvet Underground was no more. Again. And Sterling went back to working his way into becoming a tugboat captain and I thought of all our irreplaceable Austin capers during the '70s. I also became used to saying to myself, "We'll always have Paris." Sometimes that's the best that can happen.

We spoke when he was back in Houston and told me he was writing a book about his years in the band, to be called "The Velvet Underground Diet." Because, Sterling said in his most Morrisonian way, "Diet books sell." But I don't think he ever wrote a page.

In 1995 I got the news that Sterling was sick, really sick, with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and had moved back to Poughkeepsie, New York to be with his family. I was also told that if we were going to speak again, to call soon. When I did the next day, he couldn't really talk. Immediately my heart felt like it had split in two, and my mind froze into a mass of ice. I told Sterling I loved him, and always had, right from that day at the Cedar Door in Austin twenty years ago when we first met. I had never had a friend like him, and knew I never would again. There are times in life when everything stops. Completely. I just held the phone and wished I was on another planet, one where things would be alright again and there would be no heartbreak or death. Ever. There was silence on the phone for what felt like a lifetime, and then I heard Sterling's voice, once a mountain of strength and total attitude, now barely able to say, "I love you too." And then the phone clicked off. Holmes Sterling Morrison died that day.

I think of my dear friend born on August 29, 1942 almost every day. I often wonder why I was given the endless gift of that friendship instead of someone else meeting him and being the incredibly lucky person to know him like I did. I often feel like it is some kind of divine intervention, even with the bumpy road in the middle, that things like that happen. There is no normal explanation. Surely it is faith and fate teaming up together in making such wondrous things come true. And when August 30 comes around, as it does every year, I say words of thanks that even though Sterling left us that day in 1995, in so many ways he didn't leave at all. I can hear him talking, right next to me, remembering the day Lou Reed had just written the chords to "Sweet Jane" and played them to Sterling to see what he thought of them, or how he and John Cale had taken the lyrics to Reed's "Heroin" and supercharged the song into the stratosphere. And any of the hundreds and hundreds of other memories that Morrison had and for some reason shared with me.

The first time I met Lou Reed in 1988, he knew I had been friends with Sterling and immediately took me aside to say, "Let's get this straight. Sterling remembers everything and I remember nothing. Got it?" "Fine," I said to Lou, and never forgot that was our agreement. And I'll always remember Sterling and Lou and everything else. Surely in the end that is the real gift we all get. To never forget.

UP FROM THE UNDERGROUND

AUSTIN SUN/October 19, 1975

BILL BENTLEY: I once read that before the Velvet Underground began, the first bands were called the Falling Spikes, then the Warlocks. What were those? STERLING MORRISON: Those were jokes. We would call ourselves one thing one night and another thing another. Whoever would show up played. Earlier, when Lou and I were at Syracuse, we would change our name at least once a week. We were playing for fraternities, and they wanted Top Ten music. We didn't know any; all we knew was Jimmy Reed songs and all that. Then the word began to get out, "Don't hire these turkeys." So we would change our name again. Before they knew it, it was too late. L.A. and the Eldorados, Pasha and the Prophets, Moses and His Brothers--it was outrageous.

BB: Where had you met Lou Reed? SM: At Syracuse University. A few of us were playing Lightnin' Hopkins records at four o'clock in the morning, and he lived upstairs and came down and knocked on our door and asked if he could listen. It was an accident.

BB: What happened after Syracuse? SM: I was there less than a year. Later, I saw Lou and Cale in the subway in New York. They said they were going to the East Side to listen to records and maybe play some. I went along, got high, and started making some noise. From there is how we ended up at Pickwick City?

BB: Pickwick City? SM: A record company on Long Island. We worked there and were songwriters on occasion. Pickwick did those supermarket albums where you never know who's playing. At one time, they called us the Beachnuts. Lou did one notable song called "Cycle Annie," about a girl who had a motorcycle and rode her boyfriend around on the back. Some psychologist heard the thing and wrote a little treatise on it saying the song showed sexual inversion and role reversal and all that sort of thing. When we finally quit there, that was it. Everyone was retiring: no more music. That's when we started writing "Heroin" and those songs. We decided if we weren't going to play anymore, we could begin to just amuse ourselves. Cale had already given up on serious music. He lasted two weeks at Tanglewood and quit.

BB: Why had Cale come to the U.S.? SM: He'd won a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship. John was voted the Best Young Composer in Europe in 1965. Aaron Copland was his sponsor. So they brought him over, and after two weeks at Tanglewood, he had a big falling out with (Tanglewood Music Director Erich) Leinsdorf and said, "Ah, screw you." Then he worked with John Cage and La Monte Young. He stumbled into Pickwick one day to play a session, and Lou said, "Hey, what's the story? Let's do something."

BB: When the Velvet Underground began, was there a feeling of alienation from the music world? SM: No, not really. We started out from a condition of retirement, so we just wanted to do the songs that pleased us.

BB: What was your reaction to the early criticism that the band members weren't accomplished musicians? SM: We thought it was funny. All we had to do was push Cale forward, and he had the best credentials of anybody I ever heard of. "These people have no talent. They aren't musicians. They must be some people Warhol found in the street and propped up onstage." What a joke.

BB: Where had you met Warhol? SM: Andy heard us once, probably by accident, at the Cafe Bizarre. I remember Gerard Malanga had come there with a whip; he was probably on his way to the Factory for a movie. Anyway, he was on the dance floor, swinging this huge whip around. I was thinking, "Who is this lunatic?" It turned out to be Gerard. Then, after seeing us, Andy wined and dined us. He had booked two weeks at the Cinematheque and wanted to have dancing and films, and he also wanted a band. He knew we had all these strange songs and a strange name and asked us to be the band. We said, "What do we have to do?" Andy said, "Just play music." Those nights at the Cinematheque I consider the first performances for a real audience, for people who ultimately were the ones we wanted to reach.

BB: What was Warhol's contribution to the band? SM: He was mainly there with encouragement and reinforcement when we first got the hostile press attacks. We had already retired to begin with, so it would have been easy to go out and get a bad review and go back to what we were doing before: not playing in public. We didn't have that much self-confidence. But Andy said, "Don't worry about it. It's all right. Just keep doing what you are doing. People have their own angles. It doesn't matter what you're doing, they are going to make it into what they want it to be." That really did help. He convinced us to keep doing what we were doing, and also that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

BB: Did he like the music? SM: Yes, but I don't think he pays that much attention to music. There are things about lyrics that he likes, and things about performances that he likes. He loves excitement, but I don't think he analyzes music. There were other people around who were more than willing to do that--the whole Factory crew. I'd say that of everybody at the Factory, Andy had the least true appreciation of music. He just liked what he liked and didn't pay attention to the rest. His appreciation was of certain things happening onstage, and the excitement in general.

BB: What were the first performances like? What went on? SM: Everything. The dancers could do what they liked, the film people could do whatever they liked, and we could do whatever we liked. The first night we played "Heroin" there, two people fainted. That is one of my rock memories. This girl leaped up and started clapping hysterically and, boom, she's out. I wasn't sure if it was drugs or emotion. The audiences then were wild--climbing-the-rafters wild. There was a complete spillover from audience to stage. A lot of people came out of the audience to go on to superstardom.

BB: Why was "Heroin" written? SM: We wanted to write an honest drug song. There was only one drug song we had ever heard, and that was "Cocaine Blues." The lines were, "Cocaine's for horses but not for men/They say it'll kill you, but they don't say when." Big joke: ha, ha, ha, right? What bullshit. Lou wrote the lyric to "Heroin." He was home, captured by his parents, and that's what he was doing. Then John and I totally changed the song.

BB: How important were drugs to the Velvet Underground? SM: They were just there, we didn't make a secret about them, that's all. It is part of the everyday experience of millions. Some of my best friends took drugs, as the saying goes. Seems like all of them did.

BB: What came next? SM: Let's see...After we moved to the Factory, we rented the Dom, which was an old Polish dance hall. This was before there was an "East Village." Then, it was just where old people and poor people lived. The Dom can be credited with making St. Mark's Place the sleaze hole that it is today. It was the first "hip" invasion. We wanted to have our own place so nobody could tell us what to do. It was a huge success. Then, while we were in California, playing and recording, the notorious criminal Albert Grossman had our landlord tear up the lease and give the hall to him. He renamed it the Balloon Farm; later it became the Electric Circus.

BB: When you came back from California and the Dom wasn't yours, what did you do? SM: We went back to the Factory and didn't do anything. Andy said, "Oh, gee, wouldn't it be nice if you were playing somewhere?" We had no agent, and Andy was our manager, but he had no idea at all about how to go about it. We didn't have a record company, either, though we had done some recording in California, using the money we had made at the Dom.

BB: You felt like you needed to record? SM: Well, groups are supposed to have records.

BB: Was it odd to be recording songs like "Heroin" and "Venus in Furs" and "I'm Waiting for the Man?" SM: We knew that was the reason no record company would sign us up front. This was the "two minute, thirty second era." The first album was truly revolutionary and I knew it at the time. Beyond lyrics, beyond instrumentation, beyond anything--just the fact that the songs did not last two minutes, thirty seconds. "Heroin" lasts over seven minutes, because that is how long it takes to play. That was the first rock album to break out of that format.

BB: How did you end up with MGM? SM: At first we took our tapes around to everyone. Jac Holzman of Elektra told us we had to clean up the sound, but we wanted the feedback and the drones, so that was no good. Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic said no "Heroin" and no "Venus in Furs." We had to have those songs, so that didn't work. Finally, MGM, who have no conception of rock music and probably never even listened to our albums--or if they did, it was with very little comprehension--said we could do anything we wanted. After signing, MGM shafted us, too. The first album was complete as a package and ready to go in early '66 but wasn't released until late in the year. It was sabotaged so Zappa and the Mothers' first album FREAK OUT could be issued before ours. Zappa was two albums for the price of one, and ours was one album for the price of two, because of the banana. Then there was a lawsuit right after it was released that took it out of circulation.

BB: What was the lawsuit about? SM: Eric Emerson sued MGM. The original jacket had an upside-down photo of Eric in the light show with his arms spread, encircling the band. One day, Eric gets busted with ten thousand tabs of acid, needs money, and walks up to MGM and says, "You're using my picture illegally, so I'm going to sue you." The company was so fucking stupid, they took the record off the market. In a million years, Eric couldn't have won that lawsuit, but MGM just freaked. Later, another jacket was printed with Eric's image clouded out.

BB: Was Warhol's banana painting on the cover a hindrance to being heard primarily as a rock band? SM: We had a little trouble getting accepted anyway. Having Andy do the cover was just natural. He went to the Sam Goody Record Store on Broadway to look at record jackets and decided white was the best color. There were pictures but not promo blurbs or credits or anything on the outside. Plus, the quotes on the inside from the critics were mostly negative. Originally, they were all negative, but MGM included some positive quotes. We gathered the worst things that had been said about us and stuck them in. We thought that any schmuck who is more motivated by reading reviews than by listening to the music, well, here it is, all sitting here, telling him how bad it is. Someone goes out and buys this thing, God knows motivated by what, and then opens it up and reads how bad it is. We had a good time with that.

BB: How accurate was the drug image? SM: Accurate.

BB: Do you think it hurt the band? SM: No, it just happened. You can't control those things--even though we didn't do anything to help it out in those days either, being sinister and all. A lot of associations come from a lot of different places, not all of them accurate.

BB: Did the associations have any repercussions in your acceptance? SM: Sure. The thing I'm most pissed about is that we were banned in New York for three years, '66 to '69 inclusive. Right up front, we were excluded from any FM radio play. AM was already out of the question: no music and no advertising in our home city, the media capital of Earth, the native sons are banned. You compare that to San Francisco, where the mayor is kissing the ass of Big Brother & the Holding Company, and they've become a part of the city life and a tourist attraction and all.

BB: What was the ban about? SM: Our lyrics were "objectionable." Since the radio refused to play us, we retaliated by refusing all jobs in New York. From '67 to '70, we didn't play in New York, except for private parties, and once at Lincoln Center. And even Pacifica Radio, the supposed non-commercial station, joined in the ban. In the beginning, they were the only FM airplay we got. They always told us, "You and the Fugs are the real people--real community bands." Then once they were having a benefit at Tompkins Square Park to raise a bail fund. We were very much known for playing benefits. We always did. Pacifica approached us to play and we thought, "Sure, why not? It's just around the corner from where we live." Then we asked them,"By the way, who's the benefit for?" They said, "The people who get busted for grass and acid." We thought that was kind of curious. We asked them, "What about the people busted for junk and speed?" They said, "Oh, no, those are bad drugs." How idiotic. Bad drugs--all of a sudden there are "bad drugs." We told them either they bail everybody out or we don't play. Word got back to the head of the Pacifica station, who then said we were horrible people, blah, blah, blah, not supporting community efforts and so on. We told them that our notion of community is evidently more complete than his. The result was that the ban was complete: a total blackout in New York City. Our altruism got in the way of our airplay. Any success in New York was through television and newspapers. It had nothing to do with the legitimate outlet, which is radio. The music simply was not heard. I think of some self-righteous creep who was saying yes to grass and acid but no to junk and speed--that really infuriated us. Who knows? It may be that all drugs are bad. But if some people get bailed out, let's bail everybody out.

BB: Why did Cale leave the band? SM: John was getting very flamboyant. His girlfriend (designer Betsey Johnson) was dressing him, and he was really shaping up as a performer, playing very energetically. Then Lou just got uptight. There was some kind of collision. Lou found me one night and said, "Here's what's happening. The band is dissolved. I'm going to put together another band called the Velvet Underground and you can be in it if you want to be, and Maureen, and we'll find somebody else." I shouldn't have gone for that, but I might have been slightly corrupted at that point. Mainly I wanted to keep playing the songs that I'd worked so hard on.

BB: What kind of person was your drummer Maureen? SM: Clever, enigmatic, feminine--which at that point meant that she was pushed around. She sort of rolled with the punches and let all the major arguing be done by Lou, John and me.

BB: When Lou left in 1970, was there a major breakdown? SM: To this day, I can't give you any explanation why Lou left. and he can't either. I thought that he had gone insane--gone insane in a very dull way. I have my own evidence. He suddenly went home to Freeport and decided to become reconciled with his parents. The only conversations they ever had were their threats to have him committed and his counter-threats and what not. Lou usually went home when he had hepatitis or was about to die. When he left in '70, when we were finishing our job at Max's, it was like his parents had come and claimed him and took him away. Lou was unstable in such a tedious way. It wasn't that he was running around crazy in the streets; at times, he was incommunicative and remote and content to stay with his parents.

BB: When you quit in '71, what were your reasons? SS: I have all sorts of reasons, but one is that there were no good places left to play. That was the one that was upsetting; it was upsetting all through 1970. All the big old ballrooms were closing. You were left with only two kinds of performances. Either you did small clubs, where you couldn't get any decent sound out of your amplifiers, because the place was too small and you'd blow the roof off, or else you had to do stand up/sit down concerts. The band stands up and the audience sits and watches. I never liked doing those, and we had done enough of them, so I really knew, That was when rock & roll was propelled into theatre. By that time, we had divorced ourselves from the theatrical, and had disbanded the Exploding Inevitable. When everybody else had light shows there was no point in our still doing it. All we were going to do was play music. When you get on a stage or a huge concert hall where everybody is sitting down, they're not going to do anything but sit on their ass, so you have to do everything. The scope of it, the height and width and depth of the stage, demands that something fill it up: props, dancing or whatever. Some zaniness. That is why the size of bands is burgeoning. Something had to fill up that space. This is the reason the Rolling Stones are doing what they're doing. If anybody could stand on just the music, you would think they could, but they can't. They have to build these sets and the phalluses and the whole thing. We had the choice of going back into something that we felt we had already gone beyond: the theatrics. It was nice to be there at the very beginning; we did do it when it was new and creative and exciting, but to go back and do it because you have to, that was different.

BB: Was there a time when the Velvets decided they weren't going to push for commercial success? SM: We always wanted to be commercially successful, but on our own terms. We wanted to do the music we were doing, and we hoped that tastes would change--or that we could change tastes. That is what everybody felt in the Sixties. That is what the whole psychedelic thing was about: AM vs: FM. We thought, the Grateful Dead thought, the Airplane, everybody thought we could obliterate AM radio. Change it forever. But it didn't happen, it really didn't happen. If anything, it's gone the other way.

BB: In the beginning, was there a single factor that the band shared? SM: We always took the music seriously. The idea that you could do something on your own terms, I found that fact peculiar. That was strange. I couldn't really anticipate being able to do that.

BB: Was it fun? SM: Great fun. What could be more fun than that: being able to do exactly what you want to do.

BB; What were the highlights for you? SM: All the early things that happened impressed me mightily. Highlights to me always turn out to be live performances, places I played. I never felt like the records did what they ought to do; they were never the way I dreamed they should be. I guess the first album is the one I'm most proud of. A few cuts here and there on the others. And LOADED, the last album. Dougie (Yule) and I pretty much had the say on that. One producer went crazy during the recording of LOADED, Adrian Barber. Freedom drove him mad. But live performances are what I loved.

BB: How did you end up at the University of Texas? SM: I wanted to get my Ph.D. The Velvet Underground for me was like a crusade to get the music played and appreciated. We sort of accomplished that. And even though it was still fun, near the end, it wasn't the same.

BB; What did your friends say when you quit the band? SM: Well, Warhol said it was the right thing to do, that it would be good for me. But most of them said, "Sterling, you know, he went to Texas." And that's it--like I was swallowed up by the armadillos.

By Bill Bentley