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Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson Went Out in New York City Every Single Night

American musician Lou Reed / Laurie Anderson attend/speak at a media conference to launch the Vivid LIVE program at Sydney Opera House on May 28, 2010 in Sydney, Australia. Vivid LIVE, part of the Vivid Sydney Festival, is curated by Reed and Laurie Anderson / Anderson and Lou Reed / Reed and Anderson / and will feature a number of concerts, small intimate evenings and various free events.

The new New York Times profile of the renowned NYC musician and multimedia artist Laurie Anderson is filled with delightful little details. Anderson does an impression of herself (“Talk. Like. Laurie. Anderson.”) and reminisces about methadone patients wandering into her old Canal Street loft. Her old friend and collaborator Philip Glass recalls paying $30 a month for rent in the 1970s.

The most poignant anecdote is about Anderson’s late husband Lou Reed. It wasn’t uncommon for New Yorkers to see Reed at this art opening or that concert around the city when he was alive, and it turns out that’s because he and Anderson liked to go out on the town every single night of the week. From the Times:

“Before I met Lou, I would work at night every night. I’d just go to work. But the second we got together, we went out every night. We saw things every night: plays, movies or just a social dinner, music, readings. Every night. At first it was hard for me. I was more interested in working. But then I began to really love it. And Lou was completely into that. Even with restaurants, he would want to try every new kind of thing: Can you believe that opened up, let’s go check that out. He had so many favorite chefs, and he was developing food for diabetics with different chefs and he would go and check them out. It was endless. It was the greatest fun. Plus he was much more generous than I was in terms of watching things. We would go to a play and I would think, Oh man, that thing was just a dog, and he would go, ‘Yeah, but didn’t you see the way that one actor did that thing?’ He was so generous about it.

“And if there was nothing new to see, on Friday nights we’d go see the armor collection at the Met. This city is full of the most amazing things, and we really used to do it.”

I can’t imagine a better NYC experience than bumping into Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson checking out the suits of armor at the Met on a Friday night. If it ever happened to you, consider yourself lucky.

h/t Brian Hiatt