Lou and Sterling [Morrison] met through my brother. They were all at Syracuse together, and that’s when the two of them started to play together. I got involved in their group almost by accident because the original drummer left just before a gig in New York in 1965 and they needed a new drummer real fast. Sterling said, “Oh, Tucker’s sister plays drums.” I lived way out on Long Island and they came out there from the city to see if I could keep a beat. That’s how it happened.

I was working as a data puncher for IBM and playing drums at night in a band that a brother of one of my girlfriends had formed. I was a pop fan, the Beatles and the Stones and all that 60s stuff, and suddenly I was playing this really avant-garde stuff in a group called the Velvet Underground. I had no grounding in the experimental stuff that John [Cale] loved, so it was quite a leap.

The first gig I played was the first gig as the Velvet Underground. ]Summit high school New Jersey, 11 December 1965] We played three songs [There She Goes Again, Venus in Furs and Heroin]. A lot of people were bewildered. A lot of people left. I think Lou kind of liked that……

Lou had a reputation, for sure. He was tough and he could be grumpy and bitchy, but I’ve come to realise that his bitchiness came out when there was incompetence about. Didn’t matter if it was a waiter or a record producer, he’d rip someone apart if things weren’t up to scratch. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. That’s just the way he was, but he was also incredibly encouraging and generous. He was a good friend through everything. We had this brother-sister type relationship in the group, and it lasted long after the group split. We would always exchange Christmas cards, Valentine cards. It was one of those friendships where it didn’t matter if you didn’t see each other a lot. We’d meet up after two years or five years and it would be like we’d seen each other last week. As you get older, you come to realise that that kind of friendship is rare, so I miss him a hell of a lot. It’s just dawning on me that he’s not out there any more.

Mo Tucker – trommeslager i Velvet Underground – husker Lou Reed i The Guardian.