Moe Tucker

This is Part 2 of our conversation with Moe. (Part one is in Crimewave #5.) We were eating oyster po' boys and drinking beers at a local bar in her hometown of Douglas, Georgia.

In the last issue of Crimewave, we documented the day that we spent in Douglas, Georgia. It’s a tiny little town over three hours off the main highway, in the midst of an increasingly tropical landscape, and the occasional gas station that marks the presence of a town. Douglas has a strange and silent timeless quality. There’s a small college, a bar, a gas station, an antique shop, and not much more.
This peaceful yet frighteningly isolated landscape is currently home to Velvet Underground drummer & solo recording artist Moe Tucker. We met at her house and drove up the road to a a restaurant named Scampi’s where, over beers and coffee, and po’ boys and pie, we discussed her recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the death of her childhood friend and VU bandmate Sterling Morrison, the early formation of the Velvet Underground and their recent European reunion tour. (See CWusa #5.)
In this second installment of our interview with Moe, she not only tells us about her leap back into the world of recording, but why she’s here in Douglas of all places, amid the country music and monster trucks. Hopefully this will give you some insight into the raw, honest, heart-felt, and often angry rock & roll which Moe has been producing in recent years.
At this point in our conversation the editors of Crimewave are full of catfish and beer and Moe is done with her blueberry cheescake. She is smoking and drinking coffee, leaning back against a clear plastic window. The country music is blaring as we begin to talk about her venture back into music, and her collaborations with Jad Fair and the Violent Femmes.

Mark: How did you get involved with Victor DeLorenzo from the Violent Femmes?
Moe: Well, I’ve know him since ‘82 or something. The kids and I were living in Tucson and the Femmes were playing there. They had just gotten going and I had just heard them and really liked their stuff, but I had never met them. I had just separated from my husband and I was in an apartment alone with my kids, who were all little, and Victor, or it may have been Brian (Richie), called me and said, “Oh, we’d like to have coffee with you,” or something. And I was thinking, “I don’t know these people. They might be murderers,” you know. I’m not going to invite them to my house with my little kids. So I said, “No.”
So, they came to town again and called and said they were playing in Phoenix and wanted to know if I’d come up and see them and maybe play a song. So, my oldest daughter and I went out to Phoenix and we met them and I played a song with them. Me and Victor both played his drum set. And we just became friends. They’re really nice guys. I’m the best friends with Victor. He played on my album and did that tour with me.
Mark: Will you stay with the same record company with your next release?
Moe: They didn’t send me a sympathy card (after Sterling’s death). They can go to hell.
Mark: Do you have any ideas as to where you’ll go? Will you do the same thing that Victor did, record an album on your own and then shop it around?
Moe: No, I think we’ll do what we’ve been planning to do and just do it ourselves. Do a tour in Europe and use that money to record over there, and then do it ourselves.
Mark: By then you’ll have your box set out (Polygram is planning to re-release all her material together as a box set) and you’ve already got the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing behind you. I’m sure that any distributor would love to cary your new record.
Moe: Yeah, you would think so. And certainly I could do better than the record company does. You know what they said after having both of my albums, which had never been released in America before? They told me that they had sold twenty-five hundred units. I said, “Twenty-five hundred! And you’re happy with that!?” And that was when they stopped and that was it. And I said, “Why did you sign me, did you just want to be able to say that you had a Velvet on your label?” That’s when I started selling them myself and it took me two weeks to convince them that it was alright for me to sell my records, that it was not a reflection on them. They were, “Oh, no, you can’t do that.” And I said, “What the hell’s the difference? You’re not doing it, so why can’t I do it?” And if I called, say, a hundred stores, eighty of them didn’t even know that there was a record out. They didn’t do their job. And some people that did have the record didn’t have the posters. Did they make the posters for a tax write off? Someone who walks into a record store doesn’t think of me. But if they saw that poster, they might buy the record. You might check the Stones or you might check Dylan, but you don’t check Moe Tucker.
Linette: Maybe they don’t want to support, or can’t grasp at all, the whole philosophy behind it, the fact that it’s less slick and polished.
Moe: They can’t grasp that there are many, many, many people who like that stuff and would buy it if it were available. I hear from people, “I’ve heard your stuff and I love it but I can’t find it anywhere.” That’s the same stuff I heard with the Velvets thirty years ago. They’re afraid to press ten thousand because they’re afraid to put the money into it. Well, what did they sign me for if they don’t think that they’re going to sell ten thousand records? So they press up two thousand and send them out and think that they’ve done their job. We had the Velvet tour, we had the Hall of Fame thing and they didn’t do one thing. They didn’t run an ad or call the press. Maybe they can print up fancy posters that cost a dollar a piece; I can print up a flyer that costs five cents, but I’ll send it out. If I make a hundred dollars, I’m better off than I was with the record company. There are lots of people who like the more basic sounding stuff. Just because people are going in droves to see Led Zeppelin, doesn’t mean that they’re not out there.
Mark: It’s catching on though. I mean, Daniel Johnston just got signed to a major label. That surprised the hell out of me.
Moe: Me too. I was amazed at that... We used to say about the Velvets, “Why did they sign us, to keep us out of the way, or what?” When they sign you, all they do is tie you to them. So, I’ve finally learned my lesson. This is the third record company that I’ve dealt with. Screw them.
Linette: There’s goodness in being outside the mainstream...
Moe: I much prefer the way things have been for us than if we had sold a million records and that was the end of it and nobody gave shit anymore.
Linette: That kind of fame just ruins anything good anyhow.
Mark: Look at that guy from Milli Vinilli. He just got arrested for breaking into a parked car yesterday.
Moe: Yeah, I saw that. He hit the skids.
Mark: God forbid that had been you, Moe... I think that it makes it a lot more gratifying when you have to really work for something. People say about Kurt Cobain, “Why did he kill himself, he had everything?” Well, it’s no surprise to me that he killed himself. When you get everything handed to you all at once like that...
Moe: These record companies don’t help in that kind of a situation. Once you sell something, they treat you like... And, most people jump at it, lap it up and become shitheads... I also think that most people involved in music today, I’m sure that 99% of the people in bands today, are doing it because they see the dollar signs. There’s nothing to do with loving music, wanting to express yourself or whatever...
Mark: Why do you live here in Douglas, Georgia of all places?
Moe: My mother had moved here, and when I got divorced my scheme was that I’d come here and work for three months, save all of my money, live with her, push on. But I had never lived in a small town before and I didn’t know that you just don’t go out and get a job.
Mark: So it wasn’t that you fell in love with with small town life?
Moe: (laughing) No, No, I couldn’t get a job. It took me a year and a half to get a job. And believe me, I was looking. I was a wreck. I’d never been in that position before. Everything was against me. I was a yankee. I didn’t know everybody. If there was a job in the paper, they’d given it to Aunt Tilly before you could get there. There’s a lot of that here. And you know, after a while, I would be driving home from somewhere, furious because I didn’t have a job, my mother was supporting us and I felt terrible, and I realized, “Holy shit, can you imagine being black and living here?”
Mark: And from the north.
Moe: And a woman... I went everywhere from McDonald’s to the hospital to the library to the place that prints the little local newspaper to the hardware store. The hardware store ran an ad for a clerk, so I went in there and they asked me if I had experience in hardware. I said, “No, but I can learn.” They said, “Oh, but we’re really looking for someone with experience.” What he meant was, “We’re looking for a cousin.” And can you imagine working for McDonald’s? All they want is teenagers that they can shit on. I’d never been in a state of mind like that before. It was scary.
And then when they were building the Wal-Mart, I thought, “Ah, they’ve got to hire fifty people. I’ll definitely get one of these.” When they were building it, I’d drive up there every couple of days and see how they were doing and I’d be like, “Hurry up, hurry up!” When I went to the interview, the whole town was there. They told me later that five thousand people applied for those jobs. They called me back for a little interview to work in the store and this guy calls me into this little office and he sits down and he’s real serious, this is Mr. Wal-Mart you know, and he asks, “Why are you interested in retail?” For one second I thought, I knew what he wanted to hear, but I’d be damned if he was going to hear it from me. And I said, “Because I need a job.” Asshole. Anyway, I didn’t get that job needless to say. Then when they opened the Wal-Mart distribution center– Oh my god, this was a four month thing and I ended up having to go the the Labor Department (which, for some reason, was handling the initial application process for Wal-Mart) and having to literally scream at this woman. I swear, I almost went over the desk at her. I’m not the type to cause a scene, but this was astounding. They had jobs for data entry, which is what I’ve always done, and I’m really good at it. And I know that I’m smarter than anyone in this town when it comes to that, so I knew, “This one I’m going to get.”
Mark: That’s an album title for you right there, “I’m smarter than anyone in this town.”
Moe: (laughing) So, I went to the Labor Department with half of the county to apply for this job at the distribution center and I filled out his little card with my experience and everything. Then I went home to wait. I would go by the distribution center and every time there would be a few more cars. First there are five cars and then seven, and I’d be thinking, “I can’t miss this job.” And then there are twenty cars, and I’m getting really pissed because I know that this is the job for me. So, I go to the Labor Department and I demand to see this woman and I said, “I applied here two months ago for keypunch, data entry, and no one’s called me. What’s going on?” And she said, “Oh, they gave their last test for that particular job yesterday.” I was screaming at her, “How could you not call me? I have twenty years of experience. Nobody in this town can do it better than me!”(Moe responds in the secretary’s frightened voice) “Let me call me Duckworth.” I was shaking I was so mad. I could have killed her. So, I did an interview and then they called me for another one; three interviews, the time between which they don’t call you and say, “We’re considering you.” You just sit in your house saying, “Please.” They do this so that when you get the job you’ll be very happy with the four-fifty an hour. You’re thrilled to death. They keep you hanging and the whole damned town is like, “Who’s going to get the job at the Wal-Mart?” How anyone could stay here or how anyone could let their kids stay here to live that way, scrambling and scrounging for a crap job.
Mark: So, you got the job and you were doing data entry for the Wal-Mart distribution center?
Moe: Yeah, in the billing department. More than that; feeding information into the computer and telling it what to bill, billing the stores for what we sent from the distribution center. I was the claims person. If we got stuff off the truck and it was broken, I had to write it up so that they’d pay us, and in reverse, if they got stuff and it was broken, they’d contact me. I had fun in that job. I liked that job.
Mark: You did like that job? I thought that you hated it.
Moe: I hated the way that you’re treated. I liked the job because it was my own and nobody else did it.
Mark: So, we’re finding out the whole scoop here. You have a new car and you liked your job. From your songs you’d never guess.
Moe: (laughing) Yeah. I like to work. I don’t mind working when you can do your job and when you get paid properly. Have I told you the five dollar bonus story? This you have to print. This is stunning. The first year I was there, we’re all in the office, six or eight women, and our boss comes out and he says, “Oh, ladies the bonus checks are coming this week, the Christmas bonus checks.” So I ask how much and he says, “Oh, five dollars.” And I wasn’t looking at him and I just thought that he was joking. I turned around and everyone’s saying, “Ahh...” (a happy ahh), and I’m like, “Five dollars?!” And, he’s like, “Yeah.” I’m telling you, I was speechless. Keep in mind, this is the first year that Mr. Walton (the owner of Wal-Mart) was declared the richest man in America. He had eight billion dollars. The girls are just sitting there perfectly happy. I was always griping about things so they thought, “Oh, she’s bitching.” But this was an insult. So our supervisor, another Ms. Wal-Mart, hoping to climb through the ranks, she said, “Well, Maureen, it’s better than nothing.” And I said, “Verna, that’s exactly why it’s five dollars, because that’s your attitude.” Better than nothing! You know what that’s like, that’s like him saying, “Here, take these crumbs.” (She wipes crumbs from the catfish sandwich off the table and into her other hand). When he brought out the checks, I said, “I don’t want it.” He thought that I was kidding and he came over and said, “Here’s your check.” I said, “I don’t want it. I’m insulted. Keep it.” He said, “You’ve got to sign it to get it off the books.” “No, I’m not signing it. I don’t want it.”
Mark: You probably made him scared. Only a crazy person would turn down five dollars.
Moe: Why not just not even mention a bonus? I wasn’t expecting a bonus. And, that’s what you got day after day.
Mark: How long were you there for?
Moe: Three years.
(Moe’s daughter Kerry comes in with some friends to eat and Moe introduces us.)
Kerry: (to Moe) Are you finished?
Moe: Finished eating, never finished bullshitting.
(Moe asks Kerry to join us, but she sits with her friends at the table right behind us instead.)
Mark: (looking at Kerry’s friends) Does anyone here know who you are?
Moe: (smiling somewhat sheepishly) Now they do.
Mark: Now they do, but has anyone ever just recognized you? Any truck drivers ever playing VU when they rolled up to make a delivery at Wal-Mart?
Moe: My daughter once, when we first came here, was in ninth grade and it turned out that her chemistry teacher was this Velvet freak. She was walking past her house and “Heroin” was coming out of it, in the middle of Douglas.
Mark: And her grades were good in that class I suppose?
Moe: Yeah. (she smiles)
Mark: It’s good when it pays off being the daughter of a Velvet... So, have you ever played locally here, at a PTA fund raiser or anything?
Moe: No. We thought of trying to play in one of these places when we practiced to tour, just play one night to crank up.
Mark: So, you practice at your house?
Moe: In the living room. The band comes here.
Mark: That must be an exciting time in the town.
Moe: They get a lot of looks...
Mark: So, you had your first kid in ‘70 and left the Underground?
Moe: Yeah, I got too fat to play.
Linette: How do you think the industry is for women now compared to then?
Moe: I think it’s a myth.
Linette: What, that it was ever bad for women?
Moe: Yeah. A lot of people ask me that. I think that it’s drummed up by the media to have something to write about.
Linette: There weren’t many bands back then with women in them.
Moe: No, but that’s because no one was doing it, that’s all. No one said, “You can’t.”
Linette: Now it seems like it’s easier for bands that are women, and more women get the idea to do it.
Moe: That’s the thing. That’s what’s changed; not the acceptance, but people getting the idea. I’ve always been curious as to why more women didn’t play because they’re the ones who buy the music; maybe not now, but when I was younger the main record buying was done by teenage girls.
Mark: What’s your relationship with Jad Fair now? Have you recorded with him recently?
Moe: We haven’t worked together in a long time. We still keep in touch. He’s all over the place. He’s always touring. He’s another good example of a really talented, interesting act that’s getting nowhere. There isn’t a record person in the world who would look at Jad's group and say, “They’ve got something.” I don’t know how the audience here reacts, but in Europe they go crazy, they love him over there. And the girls! The girls love him. They look at him like he’s James Dean or something!
Linette: There’s a song by the Cannanes on a K Records compilation called “Jad Fair Drives Women Wild.”
Moe: It’s true! He does! There’s something about him, they love him! I can’t see that kind of liking him; he’s a great talent, but... I’d known him for about three or four years the first time I saw him play. It was with his brother, David. Have you ever seen that combo? I was shocked. David is wonderful on stage. They’re so different. They’re having fun, and they’re good. Their music is very, very interesting. He has sent me many practice tapes from the basement of his parents’ house. We were postal friends for 2 or 3 years then he came to Arizona to visit his grandmother, so I went over there and we met. Once I moved here, we found a little, junky studio in Florida. Then, when I was working at Wal-Mart, they (Half Japanese) were going to do a tour and they said, “Why don’t you come and do a few songs.” So, we played up the coast. I did that on my vacation time. We did that a couple times, five shows or something each time. But I had no thoughts of getting back into it, I had all these kids to take care of. Then, a year after we started doing that, he went to Europe and his agent called me and asked if I’d like to tour. I said, “I have a family to support and I can’t come back from a tour with $500, because I won’t have a job when I get back. So, what do you think I’d make?” It turns out that my share would have been $150 more than a year at Wal-Mart. I still had to think about it, I knew I couldn’t get the time off. My mother encouraged me, again.
(Moe told us a great story about Jad Fair buying bags of little plastic baby dolls in Europe, painting thick black glasses on them with a marker and then selling these “Jad dolls” at shows for money. Apparently the kids, especially the girls, bought them as fast as he could pull them out.)
Mark: How was the Velvet tour in Europe?
Moe: Oh it was fun, we had a good time.
Mark: The bad stuff didn’t start until you got back to America?
Moe: Well, Lou was being a pain in the ass, but we were overlooking it. A pain in the ass in that he doesn’t know how to be in a band anymore, he’s been the boss for so long, the absolute boss, that he just doesn’t know how to be a band member. We really wanted to tour. We wanted him to have a good time, and we wanted to have a good time, so we overlooked a lot of shit and had a very good time just being together. We did a lot of laying around the bar and just bullshitting. The four of us got into a taxi and went to Pompeii. We really all like each other. John and Lou like each other. They just clash. We got home and then Lou made his declaration at the end of all that.
Mark: I’ve heard about the fax fights between you.
Moe: John would call me and say, “I just got this fax from Lou”, and he’d read it to me. Then he’d call back, “Here's my answer.” “Well, maybe you shouldn’t say that John.” “I should say what I mean!” “Yeah, but you could say it a little nicer...”
Mark: Do you still play with John and Lou, or have you since your last solo album?
Moe: John and I are recording an album in fact. I stayed up there (in Cleveland) after the Hall of Fame thing for a week and we practiced and recorded three songs. I’ll go back in March. Lou played on my record.
Mark: Did he have fun doing that?
Moe: Oh yeah, he did. I didn’t ask him. I never ask anybody, because I can’t pay anybody. So, everybody from Sonic Youth to Lou volunteered. It’s really sweet of everybody to bother. When he heard I was recording (I Spent A Week There The Other Day), he said, “I’ll come down if you want me to.” He was recording around the corner and stopped by when they finished. He said, “What do you want me to play?” and I said, “I just want you to make noise.” So, that’s what he did, on the song “Fired Up.” And he had fun doing that. He doesn’t do that anymore on his own you know. Then on “I’m Not,” he plays noise on that too. When John came in to do his part, he only had an hour in between appointments. He came in with his viola, and I said, “I want you to play on “And Then He Kissed Me” and I want you to play really sappy.” I was sitting on a chair and he was on a stool and I said, “Someone should take a picture of this, John, me giving you musical direction.” Lou has been extremely encouraging. Right from the start, very helpful. And, I’m very happy because all three of them really did like my stuff. And they always come to see me when I play anywhere in New York.
Mark: Do you miss New York?
Moe: I would love to move to New York, but I couldn’t afford to live in New York, not in a descent place.
Mark: Is there anything good about living here at all.
Moe: This sounds stupid, but I really can’t think of anything. There’s no culture, no jobs, the schools are awful.
Mark: Do you get more writing done with the peace and quiet?
Moe: Yeah, but everything else so much outweighs the peace and quiet. So that’s not even a consideration. In fact, I like a little noise every now and then. I like to hear a truck go by. I’m sure that it could really get on your nerves, living there, working a regular job, getting out there on the subway at eight o’clock in the morning. I’d like to live there, but not as a daily worker. I’m sure that really gets on your nerves. But, I would love for my kids to be there.
Mark: Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I don’t think that I’d like to raise kids there. Yours are old enough to take care of themselves, but I’d be afraid to have young kids there.
Moe: It’s worse here. At least in the city you know to be on your guard, where to go and when not to go there. I feel perfectly safe in the city. I’m never afraid there. Of course I don’t walk around Harlem and I don’t walk around the East Village in the middle of the night. You use your head. But there’s always people on the street. You’re not out alone. It’s a big misconception about New York that your going to get mugged if you step out of your door. I’ve never come anywhere near that and there’s only one person that I know who has ever come near it and he was such an obvious target. He was mugged five times. We’d laugh at him. Here’s a quick little story. It’s ’65 or so and he’s a student, poor as a church mouse, living on East 2nd street, in the Spanish section, in this walk-up. He had a term paper due and he knew that he would be working all night. He had enough money, which at that time was about thirty cents, to buy one more pack of cigarettes. And that’s all he had, thirty cents and three cigarettes. So, about eleven o’clock he heads out to this little grocery store across the street to get the cigarettes. Well, he doesn’t get across the street before he’s stopped by this Spanish guy who takes his thirty cents and his three cigarettes. This guy was mugged five times that I know of. One time we were sitting in the apartment of Sterling and a couple of guys, just laying around and we hear this, “Boom! Boom! Boom!” coming up the stairs. The door slams open and it’s him. These three black guys had just started chasing him. It was just the way he walks. He projects, “Here I am.” He was chased up the stairs. And he didn’t have two cents and he didn’t look like he had two cents. Nobody else was ever mugged. If you’re walking around, you’ve got to look like you know what you’re doing. He’s also the only person that I’ve ever known in my life who has slipped on a banana peel. It was witnessed by one of our friends. He stepped out of a bus and slipped on a banana peel. I thought that was cartoon stuff.
Mark: Did he ever get a banana cream pie tossed in his face?
Moe: No, but he threw up on a girl’s shoes in the subway, someone who he was trying to impress.
Mark: That’ll do it.
Moe: He almost fell out the window of Sterling’s apartment once. We’d go there and drink beer and listen to records all weekend. There was an alley out there and once in a while just for fun, we’d throw a box of bottles out the window. But anyway, we had the window open and we had the box of empties by the window so that we could throw them out. So, he tripped over the box and went out the window and one of the guys grabbed his pants... Then once, he was going to go to Europe for this big intellectual adventure. He’d saved up for a long time and his parents were going to take him to the airport. So, he put his money, his passport and his ticket on the top of the car and then they get in and go. So, they get to the airport; No money, No ticket, No passport. So his trip to Europe was a trip to the airport.
Linette: Is he OK now?
Moe: Yeah, he’s OK. He works for Nynex in New York. He used to work at a deli or a butcher store in the city, and once in a while he would bring home hamburger meat in a suitcase to Martha and Sterling. I guess that he stole it, but maybe they didn’t want to use it. Sterling and Martha were poor as hell, so they’d eat this. So he was mugged once and his hamburger was taken. When they grabbed this suitcase they were probably thinking, “Great, this is heavy, there must be lots of stuff in here.” They get home and it’s hamburger meat. (laughing)
Mark: I wouldn’t eat it. I would think that it was human or something like that. A couple of weeks ago we read in the paper about a professor of biology who was mugged while transporting a case containing a bisected, preserved human head. I just kept thinking about he poor guy who opened that up.
Moe: No more mugging for him.
Mark: It’s probably the son of the man who stole the suitcase full of meat...
Linette: So how long have you lived here?
Moe: God. Eleven years. It was supposed to be three months. But actually if I wasn’t here, I couldn’t have done any of this, because my mother was here. My kids were real little when I started doing this. My youngest was five. I’d go away for five or six weeks and she’d take care of them. I absolutely could not have done it. Even if I could have found someone to pay, I couldn’t afford to pay someone to do that. She’s been really... helpful isn't the word, if she wasn’t willing happily to help me, I couldn’t have done this at all. It’s fortunate I was here actually.
Mark: It’s funny how things work out. Would you have ever guessed thirty years ago that you’d be here doing what your doing?
Moe: No. No. I don’t like the South. It’s too hot, too hicky...
Mark: I’m surprised that you’ve been able to survive in this climate. It is kind of backwards.
Moe: Well, I stick to myself really. Once in a while I think, “I sure would like to have a grown-up to have a beer with.” Shit. But, I console myself with the fact that I’ve been able to feed my kids, buy them shoes, on my own, and that’s what’s important.
Mark: Have you made any friends here? Is there anyone that you do go out and have beers with?
Moe: Nah, they don’t do that here. This is not a bar society. Church is their entertainment, their socializing. They have not gotten to the idea of socializing outside of the home or the church. It’s weird, and I miss that.
Mark: What do people think when they come visit you here? Do they think that you’re in the middle of hell? Do they say, “We’ve got to rescue Moe?”
Moe: (laughing) One of Martha’s friends in New York, a woman who had spent a year in Atlanta as a nurse, Martha said to her that I was living in Georgia and the woman said (in a very serious voice), “Can’t something be done?”
Mark: “We’ll tunnel down from Ohio...” Are any of your kids going to stay here? Do you think that any of them are in danger of marrying into this?
Moe: No, that’s been drummed into them since the day we got here.

***

Back to Crimewave Articles