The Song Inspired By The Time David Bowie Mistakenly Thought He Met Lou Reed

In 1971, David Bowie released his fourth album, Hunky Dory, which introduced the world to his now classic songs like “Changes” and “Oh! You Pretty Things.” Bowie, who was born on this date 77 years ago, also included several songs on Hunky Dory that were written in honor of specific people.

Two subjects honored by Bowie are obvious from the titles of the songs about them, “Andy Warhol” and “A Song For Bob Dylan.” Another song, “Kooks,” was marked “for small” on the original LP tracklist in a reference to Bowie’s son Duncan, whose birth inspired the song. “Life On Mars?” was tagged on the tracklist as “Inspired by Frankie,” as Bowie’s gesture of stylistic gratitude to Frank Sinatra.

Another notation on the Hunky Dory tracklist was printed next to the song “Queen Bitch.” Bowie supplemented the title of that track with the message “Some V.U., White Light returned with thanks.”

The “V.U.” and “White Light” identified by Bowie were The Velvet Underground and the title track to their 1968 album White Light/White Heat. Bowie frequently performed “White Light/White Heat” and recorded a cover version of the song in 1973 that was later released in 1983.

“Queen Bitch,” was written by Bowie as an homage to The Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed. According to Bowie’s official website, the song was partially inspired by a mistaken encounter Bowie had with the band after seeing them perform a concert at the defunct Electric Circus nightclub in New York City. Here’s how Bowie recalled the memorable, if not mistaken, meeting:

“I’d come back from New York, having caught one of the last performances of The Velvet Underground, a band I had admired tremendously since around ‘66/’67. One of that tiny bastion of Velvet Underground fans in London at the time, before they were generally known. And I’d gotten into the Electric Circus to see the gig. I watched the entire show, and there were not that many people in the audience because their star had begun to dim in New York. The whole band were there with Lou Reed singing the songs and I thought it was just tremendous.

“I was singing along with the band, stuck right there at the apron of the stage. ‘Waiting For The Man,’ ‘White Light/White Heat,’ ‘Heroin’ … All that kind of stuff. And then after the show, I went backstage and I knocked on the door, and I said, ‘Is Lou Reed in? I’d love to talk to him, I’m from England, cos I’m in music too, and he’s a bit of a hero to me.’ This guy said, ‘Wait here.’ And Lou comes out and we sat talking on the bench for about quarter of an hour about writing songs, and what it’s like to be Lou Reed, and all that … And afterwards I was floating on a cloud, and went back to my hotel room.

“I said to this guy that I knew in New York: ‘I’ve just seen The Velvet Underground and I got to talk with Lou Reed for 15 minutes,’ and he said, ‘Yeah? Lou Reed left the band last year, I think you’ve been done.’ I said, ‘It looked like Lou Reed’ and he said, ‘That’s Doug Yule, he’s the guy that took over from Lou Reed.’ I thought what an impostor, wow, that’s incredible. It doesn’t matter really, cos I still talked to Lou Reed as far as I was concerned. Coming back to England, one of the memories I brought back with me, was all that.”

“So I wrote ‘Queen Bitch’ as a sort of homage to Lou Reed.”

Doug Yule, the mistaken Reed doppelgänger, recalled the encounter with Bowie in an article that appeared in the September 2001 edition of Record Collector:

Is it true that David Bowie came to one of the shows on your 1971 UK tour, and started talking to you under the assumption you were Lou Reed?

“That was actually in New York, at the Electric Circus, upstairs at the Dom. I remember the incident well. England was one of the prime sources of rock’n’roll back then, of course, and we were all Anglophiles to some degree. So I remember this English kid coming backstage, and I was holding forth as if I was somebody, feeling very self-important as the leader of this band. He came in, and obviously assumed I was Lou Reed, and so I had to explain that Lou wasn’t there. It was only a few years ago that I heard the story back from someone else, and realised that the English kid was David Bowie. In 1971, I’d never heard of him!”

Bowie and Reed did, in fact, finally meet, sharing several encounters over the years. They teamed up to perform “Queen Bitch” at Bowie’s 50th birthday concert in 1997 at Madison Square Garden.

Reed died in 2013 at age 71. Bowie died in 2016, two days after his 69th birthday.

Watch David Bowie and Lou Reed performing “Queen Bitch” and The Velvet Underground favorite “I’m Waiting For The Man” at MSG below:

As part of Bowie’s 50th birthday concert he was interviewed and asked about his history with Reed and The Velvet Underground. View that insightful clip here: