Lou Reed died ten years ago this week. Anyone who is familiar with his life and work know that he, to quote Whitman, “contained multitudes.” Equally capable of cynicism and sentimentality, Lou was…complex. I tried to capture some thoughts about Lou’s life and passing on my blog a decade ago. I’d like to share the remembrance here on the tenth anniversary of his death, along with a playlist of some of Lou’s music, both solo and with the Velvet Underground. .
When I first heard Lou Reed's "Doing the Things That We Want To" in college, I was intrigued. Let's face it, you don't hear many songs focused on the works of Sam Shepard and Martin Scorsese. Not that they aren't worthy subjects, it's just not Top 40 material.
But what did Lou Reed care about the pop charts? He'd been there with the effortless street-stroll sound of "Walk on the Wild Side"(topping out at #16 in 1973) and, after that, he never had what the industry considered a "hit single" again. Such was the way for a guy who sang in a droll monotone and believed any song that had more than two chords was "pushing it." And three chords? Now, he joked, you're veering toward jazz.
But I doubt Lou cared much about mainstream hits. He wasn't in the game to win it, he was in the game to change it, to sonically and poetically perfect it, according to his definitions of those terms. He played to evolve, and we were welcome to come along if we could keep up. If not, so be it. This was, after all, the guy who led the Velvet Underground, a band that was considered a commercial failure yet one of the seminal influences of alternative music for decades to come. Amongst those who have called the VU a major influence are David Bowie, REM, U2, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Sex Pistols, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Pretenders, The Pixies, and Nirvana.
Brian Eno was quoted as saying that maybe only 30,000 people bought the first Velvet Underground album, but every one of them subsequently started a band.
Lou Reed was about as pure an artist as one could imagine. His only real goal was to get the sound he wanted on vinyl. He didn't behave as though he cared whether it sold, never mind whether or not you liked it. I'm sure there was a part of him that might've pined for the kind of mainstream success his friends David Bowie or Bruce Springsteen experienced, but he never let that show. And the subject matter of his songs was so vividly blunt, so poetically specific, they almost defied being played on the radio, even 70's AM-Rock radio.
Songs like "Waves of Fear", "The Last Shot", "The Day John Kennedy Died", "Dirty Blvd.", "I Wanna be Black", and "Busload of Faith" contain the kind of emotions we just don't get a lot of in popular music: pathos, rage, fear, sarcasm, and bitter resignation.
Lou was always an album artist, not a singles guy. His 1988 song cycle New York was, according to Lou's liner notes, written to be listened to chronologically in one sitting. The album tells the story of a once vibrant city in decline, based on headlines from the era, from Giuliani to Reagan, Jesse Jackson to Eleanor Bumpers. But the lyrics are actually a metaphor for the entire United States. These are furious political songs that combine humor and righteous anger and spare no one.
Two years later, he recorded Magic & Loss, an hour-long elegy to two friends (including songwriter Doc Pomus) who died from cancer the previous year. It's an album I always have nearby for the inevitable, as it pulls no punches confronting the despair and the surprising comfort that seems to blend as we lose someone and begin to cobble together what will become our memories of them.
So, an album on the decay of America, followed by an elegy centered, quite intimately, on death. Who does this kind of thing? Most likely the same guy who releases Metal Music Machine, an album of guitar feedback that has never had a verdict rendered as to whether it was a joke, a contractual obligation, or just a fat middle finger to his music label, critics, or fans who wanted "Wild Side 2." The same guy who releases a live album entitled Take No Prisoners that is as filled with rambling stream-of-consciousness comedy as it is music, as much Lenny Bruce as it is Lou. The same brooding poet who released The Raven, a double album based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe.
Even Lou's chance to have one final, potentially massive third act was stifled when he and Metallica recorded an album together. Rather than making something accessible to the mainstream metal audience, they released a cacophonous record based on two plays by a German playwright. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the headbanger and thrasher set. Lou's retort? He said the album was intended for "literate people."
No matter what you thought of Lou Reed (former junkie, part-time jerk, part-time sweetheart, punk pioneer, Warhol wannabe, avant-garde poet, icon of cool, bisexual, every journalist's nightmare, closet romantic girded in black leather, vicious visionary), there's one thing I think most can agree upon: as an artist, he was fearless. By being both relentlessly tough and mercifully vulnerable, he took the kind of risks that many of us secretly find envious.
Like Sam Shepard and Martin Scorsese, the subjects of "Doing The Things We Want To," Lou Reed created his work based on what he wanted to say, on his terms, and insisted that his audience come to him, not the other way around.
That was Lou. Doing the things that he wanted to.