Can you imagine Lou Reed dropping over to Athol Guy’s house for a BBQ? It really once happened.
The Seekers legend Athol Guy has confirmed for Noise11.com that he once had a visit from Lou Reed.
“I had a phone-call. I had a property up near Kyneton. My sister and her husband had been visiting. My sister was an astrologer and studied it as a science,” Athol told Noise11.com. “Someone in the industry rang one afternoon and said ‘we’ve got this young bloke called Lou Reed in town. He is just starting out. He knows you live here and he knows a bit about The Seekers. He has heard your sister is very good at palmistry and astrology and he is very much into that’. I told him she was with me for a day or two and he asked if he could come up”.
The year was 1974. Lou Reed was on his first Australian tour. Velvet Underground never happened in Australia in its day and Lou had only had a cult hit with his ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ in Australia two years earlier. Meantime, Athol with The Seekers had already had three Top 20 albums in the UK and two in the USA as well as a no 4 hit in America with ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’ and number two hit with ‘Georgy Girl’ as well as eight Top 20 hits in the UK by this stage. He was a big star. Lou was relatively unknown.
“About an hour out of Melbourne, up they came,” Athol said. “I didn’t tell my sister anything. I said ‘I’ve got a musician pal from overseas, would you do his story for him’. He was looking at my collection of Gold records. He went “wow, my music is a little bit different from yours but we share the same philosophical views’. He said, “I hope I get a wall of those some day”.
As it turned out Lou was having second thoughts about travelling and believed he was going to be killed in a plane crash during the tour. His Australian tour manager needed to get Lou’s confidence back fast or the Australian tour was about to become cactus. Athol’s sister was the tour’s lifeline.
“My sister did his chart and wrote him some notes and I’ve got to tell you, she was right on the money,” Athol said. “She said ‘this guy is very different, very quirky, but he is going to be huge’. She didn’t know of him. She had never been in the pop world. She gave him some confidence. It was a lovely moment”.
Of course, Lou Reed did go on to reach legendary status, but forever remained the quirky personality who Athol Guy first met.
Athol is in the midst of writing his autobiography. Lets hope the story gets some more meat on the bone.
The Seekers released the historic ‘The Seekers – The Legendary Television Specials’ DVD this week.
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