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back to DEC. 15, 1965: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND PLAY BIZARRE

Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol and Michael Myerberg

Paul Morrissey:

"For the record, a famous Broadway producer called Michael Myerberg who'd just done 'Waiting for Godot', invited Andy and I over to Sardis one night to make a deal. He was going to open up the first discotheque with an enormous dance floor in an airplane hangar in Queens. And he said he would pay Andy to come out there every night, with as many people like Edie Sedgwick as he wanted, to bring in publicity.

I immediately said, 'I have a better suggestion. There's not real reason to just come out and sit there and get paid.' (It wasn't that much money anyway.) 'The only reason Andy will go is if he could be like Brian Epstein and present a group he managed.'

"Myerberg liked this idea and said if we did that he might even use Andy's name in the title of the discotheque. It turned out he was bullshitting us but he seemed sincere at the time and Andy said 'Why don't we call it Andy Warhol's Up.'

And I said 'Not only will Andy's presence be justified because his group is there, but behind the group we'll be projecting two or three images of film footage,' because we were making all these movies that we'd been showing at the Cinematheque that had no commercial value, and I thought this would be a good way to have them generate some money too. This was agreed and upon and I was set to go out and find a rock'n'roll group. I didn't know what group it was going to be." (UT5-6)

back to DEC. 15, 1965: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND PLAY BIZARRE

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