If you play more than two chords, you're showing off. Woody Guthrie One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz. Lou Reed I don't play fancy guitar. I play at the right time. Jack Elliott [After attempting several times to play Bob Dylan's I'll Keep It With Mine] Nico: That's very... Lou: That's the best I can do, I can't... Nico: That was very good. Lou: That's gonna kill me. That's really hard. Jack Elliott could really do that. He knows how to do it. Lou Reed and Nico, "The Bedroom Tape" I had just spent a very long night in a Penthouse Apartment overlooking Central Park with some very strange people trying to learn some weird guitar chords because, I was enraptured by this beautiful...French lady or German lady or...something that played with the Velvet Underground. Her name was "Nee-ko." So I got a gig playing with the Velvet Underground. I didn't really want to play the Velvet Underground, I just wanted to be around "Nee-ko." Well, they were teaching me these chords all night long. It was a labor of love, in a way. Jack Elliott It was all very informal. We [the Velvet Underground] stopped working for a while. We used to do that periodically — just refused to do anything. Nico needed money so she went out on her own. She was working downstairs at the Dom (Stanley's) and we said sure, do anything you want, and so she was doing that. We'd take turns backing her up. I'd do it for one week, then John Cale, Lou, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Jackson Browne — everyone was showing up as Nico's accompanist. An interview with Sterling Morrison. Fusion, March 6, 2020.