In late August '85 I get my Reader's Chart printed in the Melody Maker. A top ten list of my all-time favourite tracks and a fresh photo of me from the Photo-Me booth in Waverley Station, alluring enough for the MM to announce "here's a good-looking boy to thrill our lady readers". And guess, what's number one? Sweet Jane by the Velvet Underground.

Years pass and fall off the scale like Warhol superstars and I don't thrill any lady readers that I know of but I do buy The Bells (finally securing All Through The Night for myself), Street Hassle (a mind-blowing meld of New York studio and German tour recordings that starts with Gimme Some Good Times, kicking off with a hilarious take on the Sweet Jane intro) and Rock & Roll Heart.
This Dylan fan and songwriter I've met called Moore McIlhatton tapes me Coney Island Baby and Songs For Drella. He’s one of a bunch of us who get plastered and finally see Lou live at the Playhouse performing Magic & Loss (a touching performance filled for me with "It's really him up there!" moments of recognition and, thrillingly, Sweet Jane and Rock & Roll as encores), then a year later we return to see the whole VU reunion thing at the Playhouse. I think I’m the only one who goes both nights. The night before tickets went on sale from the Playhouse box office, Stevie came through to Edinburgh to stay at my mum's and we joined the queue up Leith Walk to buy tickets early the following day, a sunny Sunday morning.

Somehow, despite the enormity of the occasion, I stay sober.
The first night, Moore correctly predicts what the opening song will be but he’s delayed at the bar so misses the start of We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together. Apart from Lou murdering Venus In Furs and famously using a headless guitar, I think it’s great and it throws up the tone, that engine room underground, that vault-deep drone and the strum of the loft. The highlight is Cale playing bass and reciting The Gift. I turn to Stevie a few rows back I and we exchange, "Oh, my God, this is really happening" grins. Second night, some guys in the audience bawl out at the stage "This is Nico's town!"

As I watch the reunited Velvet Underground on stage for their first proper concert for 25 years where? Out of all the gin joints, it’s the Edinburgh Playhouse, a mile from the house I grew up in, I try to blot out Lou’s contrarian mullet and guitar without a headstock and imagine this line-up together in the studio, the last tail-finned cars outside, Bakelite controls inside while thousands of miles away from the sound’s inception and a mile away from where we are now as that sound spasmodically reignites I drank from a beaker of juice in Mrs Hayworth’s nursery class.
lyrics
Now I’ve seen the city try to be slick
I’ve seen all its workings exposed.
I've copped to the laying of the very first brick
To the sign that says This Store Is Now Closed
And The Factory’s closed

I’ve seen Mary Queen Of Scots take the Playhouse stage
Once Magic & Loss has rattled the cage
Somebody remembering Robert from the Scars
Shouts It’s Nico’s town at the Velvet New York stars

Grow up and your fantasies sever
The world’s not made of shades or leather
Or even readers’ wives Not even other people’s lives.
I don’t know how you did it, maybe T’ai Chi
You kept your grip on reality

And Andy said You don’t have to tell the truth
You told the truth, just changed the facts
I can still feel that truth pulsating
Between parked cars on dirty tracks
You went down but you made it back
Grow up and your fantasies sever
The world’s not made of shades or shiny boots of leather
Worn by readers’ wives
Not even other people’s lives.
Don’t know how you did it, sex and drugs were free
But you eventually you kept your grip on reality
You were hip to reality
Washing the eye of the land that has been down by the sea
Maybe it’s those new sensations
Spreading your legs over the saddle
Of your GPZ