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" You know the expression &amp;quot;God protects fools and drunks&amp;quot;? I qualify for both.  There are things I cannot even think of taking credit for. Pure luck. Dumb luck. Literally. I didn&amp;#039;t get in the car. Or I moved two steps to the left. I could just as easily be in jail as be sitting here. I know that. A bad break -- over and out. Luck. Father of rap? No. Not for a second. If you do a monotone long enough, you suddenly have a name for it -- it&amp;#039;s suddenly &amp;quot;rap.&amp;quot; I never thought of it that way myself. There&amp;#039;s no such thing as health-food deli. Once I was at the Carnegie and I said, &amp;quot;Can I have a lean pastrami?&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;No. There is no such thing.&amp;quot; I could be doing three or four albums a year. It&amp;#039;s nothing to do one album; what do you do the rest of the time? I mean, it&amp;#039;s not like it stops. It&amp;#039;s always there, this racing around. Everything&amp;#039;s supposed to be grim, but there&amp;#039;s another thing floating through a lot of [my work]. All the way back to the Velvets -- some of that stuff&amp;#039;s really funny, I think. It&amp;#039;s not trendy, so I think it can withstand being heard years later. Many, many years. Which is part of the idea. I&amp;#039;m proud of it.  It&amp;#039;s depressing when you&amp;#039;re still around and your albums are out of print. I can&amp;#039;t do anything I want to. I mean, I can&amp;#039;t have my own TV show. I can&amp;#039;t have my own movie. But within my little world, nobody tells me what to put on the albums.  I always hear music in my head. People say, &amp;quot;Do you keep these riffs and ideas and everything? Because then when you make a record, you could just go to the file cabinet.&amp;quot; And I&amp;#039;ve always thought of doing something like that, but I don&amp;#039;t. I just don&amp;#039;t do it. I listen to these words flooding by, and once in a while, one just stays; it&amp;#039;s very strange. I&amp;#039;ve learned not to even wonder about it anymore. Not that I give up; it&amp;#039;s just, I don&amp;#039;t understand it. I realize I don&amp;#039;t understand it, and there you go.  You may be drawing a circle for the thousandth time, but maybe it&amp;#039;s a slightly better circle. It&amp;#039;s appalling to me when there&amp;#039;s a big miss, or the solution comes up two years after [an album] was out, and I say, &amp;quot;Ohhh, now you tell me.&amp;quot; With any kind of luck, you get another crack at the ball. There&amp;#039;s a lot of songs people don&amp;#039;t even notice that are my favorites, and they might come under the umbrella of &amp;quot;stupid.&amp;quot; Like &amp;quot;Senselessly Cruel&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Shooting Star&amp;quot; -- I love that orchestral guitar at the beginning. It&amp;#039;s one of the greatest things I ever did, and no one -- zero -- has ever noticed it. I don&amp;#039;t mind a repetitive chorus; I mind repetitive verse. I mean, it&amp;#039;s the same amount of space. Why would you have only three diamonds if you can have six? Once you get that idea out of your head, then, if anything, the trouble is to not have forty of &amp;#039;em. That&amp;#039;s where editing comes in, and rewrites. That&amp;#039;s the real secret of everything -- rewriting. I always rewrite.  The fact that I haven&amp;#039;t read every play by Shakespeare is depressing. You either make an effort or you don&amp;#039;t. What I really want more than anything else is to quit smoking. That&amp;#039;s what I want. I&amp;#039;ve quit a lot of things in my life, and this one&amp;#039;s the worst. Maybe &amp;#039;cause it&amp;#039;s the last. Have a good lawyer. Keep your hand on your wallet. The laws are unfair.  I&amp;#039;ve played basketball all my life. I love it. I don&amp;#039;t play as much as I used to &amp;#039;cause of my knees -- they don&amp;#039;t like jumping up and down -- but I love basketball. The Knicks -- I know certain people, and sometimes they let me have their tickets. And there I am: me, Spike, and Woody. But they don&amp;#039;t put the camera on me.  Latrell Sprewell&amp;#039;s got that burning thing. You have to think about choking the coach. Well, you know, you&amp;#039;re a grown man, guy&amp;#039;s standing there screaming at ya... Every guy makes mistakes. I&amp;#039;ll speak for myself: I could be in that position. It would take me one second, where I could be in a situation like that. You&amp;#039;re a musician: You play. That&amp;#039;s what you do. Originally published in the April 2000 issue. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a1638/lou-reed-learned-0400/>