As the guy who made Lulu with Metallica, Lou Reed was maybe not the right person to offer anyone career advice. But it’s still pretty funny to learn what he told MGMT. MGMT, whose new album Little Dark Age just came out, recently appeared on Tom Scharpling’s The Best Show. And as Pitchfork points out, during a conversation about the band’s messy 2010 sophomore album Congratulations, MGMT frontman Andrew VanWyngarden told the story about how they tried to recruit Lou Reed to contribute to the album, and how Reed turned them down. Here’s what VanWyngarden said:

We had a breakfast meeting with Lou Reed because we wanted him to do spoken-word over “Lady Dada’s Nightmare.” And he pretty much said it didn’t need it. And then he also talked about how we didn’t need managers. And our managers were there…

But at least we got to meet him. And then we saw him at the [Westminster] Dog Show… We kind of, like, dressed up like dandies. We were just being really silly. Fred had on a top hat, and I had on a velvet jacket and a scarf and gloves. I had a notepad. I was taking notes on the dogs.

You can hear the episode of The Best Show here; the stuff about Reed starts around the 53:40 mark.