Lou Reed was a motherfucker. But does that really matter? He was also single handedly responsible for inventing and inspiring an endless list of musical genres and sub genres and sub sub genres. Even the bad shit you hear today on the radio. The fake corporate rock we call ‘indie’, the pale imitators, the drech, all owes something to Lou Reed. He treated lovers, wives, friends, promoters, journalists, critics and audiences like absolute shit. And you know what? They all deserved it because Lou always told the truth. Except when he was lying.
I first discovered Lou
Reed at the perfect age for a teenage boy who’s on the verge of uncovering
everything true and good and frightening about ‘real’ rock’n’roll. I was
fifteen. My parents owned a newsagency. I worked there every Saturday. Across
the road was Gaslight Records and it was on one of my many curious meanderings
in there that I first encountered Lou Reed. ‘Rock and Roll Diary 1967-80’ was a
double album put out by Arista Records in 1980. A few feet away was an album
that I was constantly drawn to. The self titled ‘Banana album’ by the Velvet
Underground. I made the connection immediately and a life long obsession was
born. And I hadn’t even heard the music yet!
It didn’t matter. I
knew without a doubt that I was going to have a meaningful connection. With the
advice of the indie stoner who worked there whom I secretly dubbed ‘Drongo’, I
purchased ‘Rock and Roll Diary’. Later that day, I had a date with my parents
HMV stereo system and some headphones. I was a Lou Reed virgin. Mostly. I mean
like every other kid my age I had audio echoes of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ still
bouncing around my head from early childhood AM radio. But now I was to get the
extended career of the man. I was soon to learn this was no insignificant one-hit-wonder.
The double album was filled with Velvets tracks and Lou’s varied solo output.
Some tracks were too difficult for me for a maiden voyage – tracks I would soon
learn to love within a few years. But the album’s closing track was ‘Street
Hassle’, the 11 minute, three part ‘song movie’
about well… a street hassle. Things weren’t quite the same after hearing
this and I still can’t quite articulate its brilliance. One unique aspect of
Street Hassle is the bluntness of its title. It resembles a newspaper headline
rather than a song or album title and is a classic example of Lou’s direct and
blatant creative expression. To further the mystique of this track, Bruce
Springsteen delivers a deadpan southern drawl monologue in the third part –
uncredited. Strange but utterly beautiful. I could have written ‘sublime’ then
but I feel it’s an over-used term especially when writing about music.
Next. RRR FM. One of
two great community radio stations here in Melbourne unhindered by commercial interference.
‘I Can’t Stand It’ by the Velvets is blasted out of my bedside Sony portable
stereo. That day I buy the cassette ‘VU’, a lost unreleased album put out two
decades later by Verve Records on which that song is the opening track. Within
a few weeks I bought the famous ‘Banana album’ and the third VU record dubbed
‘The Folk Album’ – both discovered on Verve cassette in a discount bin at a
mainstream record shop.
And then it happened.
The love affair was elevated to the next level of intensity: ‘White Light White
Heat’. To this day and from this day forth I will never be able to articulate
in written or spoken word what happened to my brain and my guts and my soul
when I first heard this record. There really is nothing to compare this record
to and that’s how it will stay for however long people continue to appreciate modern
music. Sure you could start listing the countless imitators and do it that way
but what’s the point? This album stands alone and that’s where it will stay.
But I can’t say for
example, that ‘White Light White Heat’ saved my life! A descriptor which I am
able to attach to another of Lou Reed’s creations: the aforementioned Velvets
‘Folk Album’. It’s real title is ‘The Velvet Underground’ (self titled). I’m
not a music reviewer so I’m not going to bore you with an attempt to summarise
what this album sounds like. But picture this. A sixteen year old boy. Confused
and frustrated by his own incapacity to deal with the internal invasion of
emotions and hormone shifts. The unrequited love of a girl. A girl who
indirectly expresses interest in him but he is still paralysed by his own
inhibitions and fears and blows it by not reacting. A depressed state follows.
It is the boy’s first experience with depression but will not be the last. In
later years he will –
Alright hang on I guess
I should quit hiding behind the third person narrative. Yes? Yes.
In later years I would
re-define this debut depression as ‘an adolescent thing’ as it simply didn’t
compare to the severity and crippling nature of my subsequent depressions
through my twenties. But like all teenagers, I seeked refuge in music and the
album that leaped out and begged me to select it was the Velvets ‘Folk album’.
Technically it didn’t save my life. That’s me being over dramatic. I was
nowhere near literally offing myself, just wallowing. One sleepless night I
listened to this album on rotation for the entire night. No sleep. By the time
‘Beginning To See The Light’ came around for the umpteenth time, my droopy
eyelids slammed open and I felt the song surging through my body. The music
with it’s playful rollicking rhythm, and of course the lyric with its simple
direct positive mantra had done their work. That day I got dressed, ate
breakfast, got on the school bus and spent the entire day quietly and
internally celebrating the fact that I was no longer feeling bleak.
At this point I guess
I’m feeling a little guilty about calling a dead person a motherfucker. It’s
pretty harsh. But I don’t think you’ll find a shortage of people who had
dealings with Lou who would disagree. Then again I keep imagining Laurie
Anderson reading this (yeah right, well in theory at least) and it makes me
uncomfortable. She obviously wouldn’t classify Lou as an MF and she’s probably
still in a relatively fresh grieving phase and the last thing she’d need to
absorb is some nasty opening line to a so called tribute to her lover and life
partner who she recently watched die.
The thing is, Lou was
mostly a motherfucker to music journalists and critics. Since he died, I’ve
watched and listened to dozens of interviews with the prickly easily irritated
Lou. I feel like I’ve done good research and it sounds a little preposterous
but I actually feel like I understand who Lou was. If not as a person, then at
least as an artist. The reason Lou was so often hostile to interviewers is
because they wanted something from him which he’d already given. Because so
much of Lou’s early Velvets and solo work delved into the taboo worlds of
drugs, S&M, homosexuality etc, interviewers for the next several decades
wanted Lou to expand on these themes. But for Lou, he’d given all he could and
expressed all he needed to in the work itself. He felt no need to elaborate and
repeat himself. Music journalists would always try to work out how much of
Lou’s work was about him. He never gave them the same answer twice and relished
in the sport of fucking with their heads as he deemed their questions
completely sub-standard. “You don’t stand a chance, you’re digging your own
grave,” he says to a laconic Australian journalist who is trying way too hard
to match Lou’s wit.
In more recent years,
Lou occasionally managed to be interviewed by people he respected and the end result
would be more satisfying and often more revealing. In an in-depth conversation
with Anthony DeCurtis, Lou confirms my theory about not wanting to re-visit his
themes in interviews: “I don’t like analyzing what I write... because I put it
all in the songs… but I can’t explain them.”
In recent years my
close friend and rock and roll partner in crime brought Lou out live in concert
twice. I had the chance to meet him but I declined. Why? Because I didn’t want
to be just another shmuck fan boy. I wanted to meet Lou Reed only if and when
he’d be interested in meeting me! Well. Yeah great. He’s gone now. I guess I’ll
never get that chance. Regrets? None at all. Just sadness at the loss of the
greatest motherfucker there ever was.
RIP Lou...
No comments:
Post a Comment