Friday March 29th 2024

LOU REED

loureedpic

LOU REED

 

I was going to do a video/documentary this week and it was on another New York musician, Richard Hell, but he’s still alive and Lou croaked so what the hell, Richard?

A few weeks ago I was tooling around in my car. I had a Lou Reed cassette on and I was stopped at a light with the windows down. “I Wanna Be Black” was blaring as a black couple sat in the car next to me. “I wanna be black, have natural rhythm, shoot 20 feet of jism, have a big prick, too, and fuck up the Jews. I wanna be black, be a panther, have a girlfriend named Samantha and a have a stable of foxy whores. Oooh- I wanna be black.” I lowered the volume.

Lou Reed, in my teenage years, was one bad ass motherfucker to my friend Jimmy and me. Every young person, every band had long hair at the time and here was this bisexual New Yorker with very short hair, a black leather jacket and a sneer that seemed to look in disgust at all us silly hippies. He was a breath of fresh air in the days ruled by Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan and The Eagles.

He followed his 1972 David Bowie produced album, which featured his only hit single, with a double album of feedback noise called Metal Machine Music and a concept album called Berlin. The later was about a couple in Berlin who are speed freaks, the girl becomes promiscuous, he beats her to get it up and rapes her, the authorities take their children away and then she commits suicide while he comments, “I never would’ve started if I’d known it’d end this way/ But the funny thing is I’m not at all sad that it ended this way.”

One of my favorite albums and yes- for years I would play this album every Christmas Eve- my Christmas album!

Some might wonder why Lou is being included on our site; he was a sixties artist, Bob Dylan and folk influenced in much of his style. You might not know that in the seventies he was called “The Godfather of Punk” and along with Iggy Pop they are the two who are most worthy of that title. And during the seventies when The Ramones and punk rock was starting in New York, bands like Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television and The Voidoids we’re borrowing from him.

Lou Reed was not punk in his music but in his lyrics, his realism, his attempt to make songs cover the same serious subject matter as books and movies- he was. His lyrics were tough, honest and city based.

His band in the sixties, The Velvet Underground, is one of the most influential bands probably of all time. They are my favorite band and made four studio albums ending in 1970. They were a New York band discovered by artist Andy Warhol, who after establishing himself as an artist also made films and had an idea called the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” He’d rent a space or club, have films projected upon the walls, flashing strobe lights, dancers and a band playing- which turned out to be The Velvet Underground.

They had a tough time playing California where the happy hippie horseshit sunshine lyrics were in favor.

“Hi, we write songs about love and cruising in cars, surfing and picking up girls.”

Velvet Underground- “Yeah, we write songs about heroin, S&M and sex changes.”

I work at a local art college and a few of the students I know like punk rock. I asked four of them if they knew who Lou Reed was. The first was unfamiliar but the other three were surprised I would even ask.

One, G.G. Ellen, said she was a big fan of The Velvets and I said how funny it was that in the obit I read that day the headline called him a “punk musician” though he’d made about nine albums before that term existed. “He’s more a proto-punk” she said and she’s right, I looked up what it meant (early sample). Another girl mentioned having a Velvet Underground t-shirt. I told her I have one with the banana, turns out that’s the one she has, too.

You gotta realize these students are 18, 19 years old and the Velvets last studio album was made forty-three years ago! But doesn’t the spirit of what they did live on and their influence continue to spread, long after the million dollar sellers in their time and those of today are long forgotten? And that’s because art of value is timeless and speaks to all who will listen through the decades.

Lou Reed is by far my favorite lyricists of all time. I have a book that’s a collection of all his lyrics and its title is taken from one of my favorite lyrics by him, “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.”

When we started this site I said to Andy, “What we’re gonna try to do is describe something indescribable. The band’s music with its power, volume and intensity won’t be matched and we will always fall short with our words- but we will try.”

To me that line represents the struggle of expression and communication. An artist feels something or thinks something and you try to express it but something always gets lost and you keep trying; ‘cause you feel someday you may succeed.

So I feel I utterly fail in this article about the importance and joy that Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground have meant to me. And I can’t speak for Lou but I can’t think of anyone else, who at his best, succeeded so perfectly.

I don’t want to clutter this with videos. Most of my favorite songs by him are slows ones like “Pale Blue Eyes”, “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “Who Am I.” You can always check them out on you tube.

But I’ll put a couple of Velvets songs after a thing I wrote on the day he died that follows.

 

I found out Lou Reed died today and I suppose it makes me sad but I don’t want any tears to fall for I feel that what he wrote was so unsentimental and real that cheap emotion should not enter this picture. He taught me realism in words, in literature, in lyrics. That imagination was fine but realism is better.

Too much of what life is are people imagining things that don’t exist, deceiving themselves, putting their faith in lies and being untrue against their real nature. And artists are sometimes the only ones who tell the truth. And when I look back at my early life- it’s true. The priests, the teachers, the parents were mostly selling us lies while a few artists, musicians and writers were telling us the truth.

I found out Lou Reed died today but I found the best lyricist fronting the best band long ago. And I’ve found no one to surpass this for me and I found out that music and words and art could exceed the terribleness of life and push it out of the way, at least for a few seconds, and in the end shine so true and pure and strong that the winner was there for anyone with open eyes to see.

I found out Lou Reed died today and it was just a rustling in the wind, just a passing of a wave; I saw the truth and beauty of his words shining so true and pure in passion that they lit up the sky of life above my head like fireworks and I found the spirit of his music, his words, his art will never, ever die.

 

LOU REED LOU REED LOU REED
I Heard Her Call My Name
Sister Ray
Pale Blue Eyes

 

(Slimedog)

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