I just thought the other stuff couldn't even come up to our ankles[…]the level that we were on compared to everybody else, I mean they were just painfully stupid—
and pretentious, and then when they did try to get, in quotes,
arty, it was worse than stupid rock and roll. What I mean by "stupid", I mean like The Doors. …
No, no, I never liked The Beatles, I thought they were garbage. If you say like "who did ya like", I liked nobody.
[
Lou Reed. 1987-03-20. Interviewer: Joe Smith.]
LOU: We had vast objections to the whole San Francisco scene. It's just tedious, a lie, and untalented. They can't play and they certainly can't write. The Airplane, the Dead, all of them...
DOUG: They lose track of where the music comes from - they start thinking it instead of playing it. Especially the Dead. Now I saw the Dead when they just started, and they were a bunch of scuzzy kids just having a ball playing rock & roll - they were a lot of fun. But then they started thinking about what they were doing too much.
LOU: I can get off understanding the kick it was to play Lovelight.... But they're amateur...they can't play. Jerry's not a good guitar player. It's a joke, and the Airplane is even worse, if that's possible.
DOUG: Jerry, he'll play the same solo for a half hour, but if he'd done it for just two minutes....he plays the same notes over and over again.
LOU: You listen to the Beatles, or you listen to 'Gimme Shelter' by the Stones, and Keith isn't playing many notes, but the notes he's playing are so thought out, so perfect...
Q: But don't you think a lot of people get off on something like the Dead because it's so loose?
LOU: It's what people are settling for....they're getting third-hand blues. It's a fad.... People like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, all those people are the most untalented bores that have ever lived. Just look at them - can you take Grace Slick seriously? It's a joke. And the whole thing is, the kids are being hyped this on FM radio. Well, now finally it's dead, the whole San Francisco thing is dead.
[1970 interview with Lou Reed and Doug Yule. Copied from
deadessays blog, "The Velvets and the Dead", 2010-09-07.]