Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
off, because they were leather, and at sixty dollars were known to be “the last pants you'll ever
need!” And so they were.
Jimmy had zero body fat, just like Mick, though Jimmy stayed skinny by shooting speed,
likely far more than Mick ever did, if Mick ever did. Just like Mick, Jimmy let his Elizabethan
blouse hang open to show his ribs and concave stomach. He'd hunker down, sink his head
into his shoulders, raise a knee and bring it across the other knee as if to counterbalance the
emotion within. Pointing a rubbery finger at the future and with the other hand grasping a
broomstick by the neck, his microphone, he matched the stereo in perfect synch, proclaiming
himself to be a flea-bit painted monkey, proclaiming that all his friends were junkies. It was a
lyric. It also rang true.
And so on through the groove, syllable for syllable, twitch for twitch, short-circuited
but young enough to override the system on the polite disclaimer, confusing messianic with
satanic, or maybe pointing out the similarity between the two. Oh, it was food for thought,
but only for a beat before the next serving, the finale, where Jimmy squealed in a plaintiff pitch
between falsetto and a rodent's death throes that he was, indeed, a
mon-keeeeeeeey . . .
The accompanying percussion and guitar here fairly worked Jimmy like puppet strings in
spastic hands, with agony and ecstasy appropriate to the pitch and sentiment of the moment.
Then he slumped with exhaustion in quick repose between tracks. Next came a ballad, a
personal favorite, the one where Mick Jagger obviously had Jimmy Levin in mind for the sad
ballad of getting what you need.
It wasn't all Stones, though
Let It Bleed
seemed to connect Jimmy Levin best to how it was.
The Stones didn't exactly replace the Velvet Underground—they couldn't. The Stones simply
went to a new phase, as yet unanticipated. Besides that, Jimmy needed a change from his Vel-
vet Underground accompaniment, in which he and Heavy Greg Buckstein would heat their
junk spoons, tie of, find a vein, get the register by drawing a little of the red stuff back up in-
to the syringe, and then hold it right there while somebody—or maybe one of them—would
reach over to set the other needle right in the very first groove on the record. Jimmy and
Heavy Greg would have about three seconds of hiss, and into that unholy interval they would
breathe deep, gather their wits, such as they were, and leap from their perch at the edge of
the cliff, into the abyss. Pressing plungers they sent the drug coursing brain-ward. Ideally, Lou
Reed came in on cue just as the drug reached the top floor, the Men's Department: hats, capes,
boots and numbness . . . Lou Reed also seemed ambivalent in his reach for the summit.
Metaphors of the abyss and the summit were not mixed, and anyone who thought they
were would only reflect the constraint of a conventional world in which gravity works down-
ward, when in fact gravity and everything that is everything can work whatever way a true
player wants it to work.
And so on to the money lines, leading up to Jimmy's bliss. Jimmy heard the cue and had
the timing down—never mind—he'd come in and fade out, keeping the beat and waiting, an-
