Forty years of playing Lou Reed’s “I’m Waiting for the Man"

Back in 1985, my frenemy Kurt Johnson taught me Lou Reed's song "I'm Waiting for the Man", from The Velvet Underground's 1967 debut album "The Velvet Underground & Nico". Kurt played it in D major with his band The Vegetables, so I played it that way, too. He got mad at me when my band Petting Zoo also started performing the song. Sometime later, I moved it up to E major instead and started playing it with a shuffle rhythm. Now I've been playing it the song for around forty years; I've always loved singing its vivid evocation of two things I've never done: buying heroin in Harlem, then shooting up. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 February 2025)