Thor Christensen

AUSTIN – Lou Reed is an interviewer's nightmare, known for giving one-word answers and bolting if he doesn't like the questions. This is a guy who once stormed out on genial Fresh Air host Terry Gross.

ERICH SCHLEGEL/DMN

A conversation with keynote speaker Lou Reed settled down after a testy beginning.

And for a while Thursday, his keynote address at South by Southwest was headed straight for the "Train wreck" file.

Record producer Hal Willner – today's questioner – started on the wrong note, joking that he felt like Dr. Melfi psychoanalyzing Tony Soprano: "So, the last time we met we were talking about your mother."

Mr. Reed shot him a stare that could kill. "Pretty funny, huh? Good thing you're a producer."

Within minutes, the ice layer had grown two feet thick. The singer chided the crowd for not going to see his Berlin concert film, barked at a crew member ("Turn the lights down!") and went ballistic at a ringing phone.

"What is that? Jesus! What does 'Turn off your phone' mean in Texas?" he said, launching into an unprintable rant.

Too bad Van Morrison had already left town or SXSW could have paired them up as Rock's Grumpy Old Men.

But a funny thing happened after Mr. Reed, 66, expunged some of the bile from his system. He began to lighten up and talk frankly about life before, during and after the Velvet Underground.

As a young artist, he said, he envisioned himself as rock's William S. Burroughs, "writing about themes that no one else was near: crime, dope, violence."

Why was he qualified to write about those things?

"Are you joking?" he said. "I have a B.A. in dope. I have a Ph.D. in soul."

He also seems to have an M.A. in music-biz greed. He doled out firm advice to musicians about owning their own songs, and he railed against cheaply produced, low-quality MP3s.

"The technology is going backwards," he said. "In the future, only people with money can afford good sound. ... They'll be looked at as some sort of zoo animal."

Music-biz types in the room suddenly looked antsy, and with good reason: Most of them have already jumped on the MP3 wagon, no questions asked.

Leave it to Lou Reed to come to a feel-good festival and speak the inconvenient truth.EXPERIENCE SXSW

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