IT’S A SHAME ABOUT LOU
Oct. 28th, 2013 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogYou all know by now that Lou Reed is gone.
And I’d like to be cool and say that I’ve been into Reed ever since at least the Berlin album, if not his Velvet Underground days.
But of course that wouldn’t be true.
Oh sure, “Walk On The Wild Side” was my first Lou Reed experience, followed closely by his glam-rock solo version of “Sweet Jane” from Rock’n’Roll Animal (both via a rock station in a tiny college town in West Tennessee in late 1983).
But I didn’t know that “Sweet Jane” was a VU song first. Hell, Jim, I didn’t even know who VU were until much later, after I joined the Army and got into punk, and found out that VU were progenitors of punk (although Lou himself recoiled at the suggestion that punk was anything like what he did).
Moreover, my first Lou Reed album was actually New Sensations, thanks to MTV playing this video.
I don’t think there’s any shame in that. New Sensations is a perfectly good album, even if most people prefer Cranky Bitter Lou to Upbeat Perky Lou. And certainly Lou never went on record saying, “Y’know, I shouldn’t have done that one.” He tended to be pretty unapologetic for doing the kind of music he felt like doing at the time, from Metal Machine Music to setting Edgar Allen Poe poems to music. Which is admirable.
Tangent:
One of my favorite Reed anecdotes (and possibly apocryphal, like that matters) is the one where Reed was performing a solo show with no back-up band – just him and his guitar. An audience member heckled him, demanding that he play rock’n’roll. Lou’s response: “I am playing rock’n’roll. This is MY rock’n’roll. You don’t like it, get a refund, motherfucker.”
Anyway.
Eventually my education caught up, and I’ve been a fan pretty much all this time, though of course not to the point of actually owning a copy of MMM.
All the stuff you’ve heard about him being a rock pioneer are basically true, but what I’d add is that he’s also one of the few pioneers of the 60s/70s whose best work isn’t limited to the times when they were the most influential.
Sure, everyone talks about Transformer, and justifiably so. But 1989’s New York is probably one of the best Reed albums ever, which he followed up with the excellent Songs For Drella and the underrated Magic And Loss. 2000’s Ecstasy had some great moments too. Even his collaboration with Metallica was typical Reed – something you’d never expect him to do, and which sounded dodgy on paper, but was actually quite good (even if Lulu is admittedly one of those albums yr likely to listen to only once).
Also, Lou Reed once tried to strangle Stuttering John. Respect.
FUN FACT: By the strangest coincidence, I just happen to be in the middle of reading Nelson Algren’s A Walk On The Wild Side, the novel that inspired Lou to write the song of the same name (although Lou used people he knew from The Factory rather than characters from the book).
FULL DISCLOSURE: It’s probably not cool to say this, but that glam version of “Sweet Jane”? I consider it to be the definitive version of the song.
I mean, listen.
Magic and loss,
This is dF
And I’d like to be cool and say that I’ve been into Reed ever since at least the Berlin album, if not his Velvet Underground days.
But of course that wouldn’t be true.
Oh sure, “Walk On The Wild Side” was my first Lou Reed experience, followed closely by his glam-rock solo version of “Sweet Jane” from Rock’n’Roll Animal (both via a rock station in a tiny college town in West Tennessee in late 1983).
But I didn’t know that “Sweet Jane” was a VU song first. Hell, Jim, I didn’t even know who VU were until much later, after I joined the Army and got into punk, and found out that VU were progenitors of punk (although Lou himself recoiled at the suggestion that punk was anything like what he did).
Moreover, my first Lou Reed album was actually New Sensations, thanks to MTV playing this video.
I don’t think there’s any shame in that. New Sensations is a perfectly good album, even if most people prefer Cranky Bitter Lou to Upbeat Perky Lou. And certainly Lou never went on record saying, “Y’know, I shouldn’t have done that one.” He tended to be pretty unapologetic for doing the kind of music he felt like doing at the time, from Metal Machine Music to setting Edgar Allen Poe poems to music. Which is admirable.
Tangent:
One of my favorite Reed anecdotes (and possibly apocryphal, like that matters) is the one where Reed was performing a solo show with no back-up band – just him and his guitar. An audience member heckled him, demanding that he play rock’n’roll. Lou’s response: “I am playing rock’n’roll. This is MY rock’n’roll. You don’t like it, get a refund, motherfucker.”
Anyway.
Eventually my education caught up, and I’ve been a fan pretty much all this time, though of course not to the point of actually owning a copy of MMM.
All the stuff you’ve heard about him being a rock pioneer are basically true, but what I’d add is that he’s also one of the few pioneers of the 60s/70s whose best work isn’t limited to the times when they were the most influential.
Sure, everyone talks about Transformer, and justifiably so. But 1989’s New York is probably one of the best Reed albums ever, which he followed up with the excellent Songs For Drella and the underrated Magic And Loss. 2000’s Ecstasy had some great moments too. Even his collaboration with Metallica was typical Reed – something you’d never expect him to do, and which sounded dodgy on paper, but was actually quite good (even if Lulu is admittedly one of those albums yr likely to listen to only once).
Also, Lou Reed once tried to strangle Stuttering John. Respect.
FUN FACT: By the strangest coincidence, I just happen to be in the middle of reading Nelson Algren’s A Walk On The Wild Side, the novel that inspired Lou to write the song of the same name (although Lou used people he knew from The Factory rather than characters from the book).
FULL DISCLOSURE: It’s probably not cool to say this, but that glam version of “Sweet Jane”? I consider it to be the definitive version of the song.
I mean, listen.
Magic and loss,
This is dF
