When
I talk about Jerry Lewis on the Funhouse TV show, I’ve often noted
that his comedy films (particularly the imaginative, charming ones he
made with director Frank Tashlin) will be able to be more fully
appreciated when Jerry has passed on. Even though he has been
mellowing in recent years — and many members of the public who
never liked him were saddened by him being booted from the telethon —
Jerry’s abrasive attitude in public has served as the biggest
obstacle to his comedy work being appreciated.
The
same is true of Lou Reed. Now that he has left this mortal coil, he
is no longer around to be rude to interviewers,
so what is left is his truest legacy: his music (and yes, those
pieces by Bangs I explored in the second part of this piece will live
on forever, but those are also about Lester’s worship of Lou’s
best music).
We
can now explore the 22 studio albums he put out — plus the legally
released live albums, which range from the best (Rock ‘n’
Roll Animal) to later experimental items with the “Metal
Machine Trio” (not counting the literally hundreds of live bootlegs
on the Net) to absolute crap (Take No Prisoners) —
without having to think of Lou's abrasive interludes.
Now onto the Reed
solo-career discography, without “lettered” grades, since we know
how much Lou hated Christgau’s rating system (wonder what he
thought of Entertainment Weekly's appropriation
thereof).
First,
I should suggest if you’re intrigued by any of this stuff, or just
want to hear any one of *dozens* of Reed bootlegs, check out the YT
accounts of a RABID Lou fan, who says he’s posting items given to
him by a super-fan named “Lyoko.” His two accounts are here
and here; his postings are comprised of 21 of the legally
released albums and literally countless full concerts from the
Seventies through the 2000s.
Since the Net contains
too many fucking Top 10 lists already, I will include one and only
one in this piece. My top tier of Lou albums would be these 10
(ordered chronologically):
1-4.)
The Velvet Underground albums (available together as the CD box set
Peel Slowly and See)
5.)
Transformer
6.)
Berlin
7.)
The Blue Mask (the harder, angst-ridden songs)
8.)
New
York
9.)
Songs
for Drella
10.)
Magic
and Loss
And,
to a lesser degree, his eponymous first solo LP from ’72, Sally
Can't Dance and the tongue-in-cheek LP that is Coney
Island Baby. Metal Machine Music is up
near the top tier simply because it is aggressive and insane, thus
worthy of a mind-fuck or two.
I’ll
close out this obit with a discussion of the last three items on that
list, but first I want to explore the “middle-period” Reed, which
contains a handful of great songs and some LPs that are just
heinously lame:
The
“Arista Years”:
Rock
and Roll Heart ('76): the title tune is all that you need
to hear from this directionless “interim” album.
Street
Hassle ('78): the title tune and “We're Gonna Have a Real
Good Time” (which Patti Smith covered wonderfully in concert) are
the sole standouts.
The
Bells: not one good tune on the fucking disk. “Disco
Mystic” is particularly abominable, time you won’t be getting
back.
Growing
Up in Public ('80): Lou confronts his alcoholism for the
first time on this album, with a startlingly unflattering photo on
the cover (he looked much worse for the wear at only 38 years of
age). He complains about his parents, preaches that we should “Teach
the Gifted Children,” and in one song rhymes “Escher” with
“Measure for Measure.” The sole virtue is his tongue-in-cheek ode
to booze, “Power of Positive Drinking.”
In
1982, Lou returned to RCA and put out his first truly powerful album
since Berlin, The Blue Mask. In
relistening to it to write this piece, I realized that the record is
half-masterpiece/half-Arista-level material. The worst item is
definitely “Heavenly Arms” (the aforementioned
Lou-bellowing-about-Sylvia song I referred to in the first paragraph
of the first part of this entry). It's goddamned dreadful.
On
the other hand, the album contains four songs that are back in the
traumatic groove that Lou pioneered with the Velvet Underground.
“Underneath the Bottle” and “The Gun” are disturbing numbers
that sketch a man on the edge; “The Blue Mask” and “Waves of
Fear” are on a level with the finest VU work.
The
strength of these songs comes no doubt from the fact that Lou was in
the midst of cleaning up after years of booze and drugs when he wrote
them; they also benefit from a stripped-down approach – just Lou
performing with Fernando Saunders (bass), Doane Perry (drums), and the
amazing Robert Quine on guitar. One thing is certain: they are
closest that rock has come to approximating the work of the brilliant
novelist Hubert Selby.
“Waves
of Fear” is delirium tremens in musical form: “Crazy with sweat,
spittle on my jaw/what's that funny noise, what's that on the
floor/Waves of fear, pulsing with death/I curse my tremors, I jump at
my own step/I cringe at my terror, I hate my own smell/I know where I
must be, I must be in hell.”
“Blue
Mask” is a masochistic anthem, a lyric that reeks of self-loathing
and pain worship: “Make the sacrifice/mutilate my face/If you need
someone to kill/I'm a man without a will/Wash the razor in the
rain/let me luxuriate in pain/Please don't set me free/death means a
lot to me.” (I'll take bets a young Mr. Reznor was listening.)
That
was basically it for Lou's Selby-like trip. On his next LP he went
full-throttle into the biker/tough-guy pose he kept up for most of
the Eighties. Legendary Hearts ('83) is a mostly
forgettable album, that includes one more fatalistic addiction ode
(“The Last Shot”), and Lou putting us on notice that he's happy and
doing well financially (“Rooftop Garden”).
New
Sensations ('84) spawned the song “I Love You, Suzanne”
that broke Lou on MTV (see part 3 of this blog entry). At this point he's still in
transition (Lou's transition lasted more than a decade and a half),
still trying to find the right vocal style for his lyrics.
The
most-indulgent, yet enjoyably nostalgic, song on the record is “Doin'
the Things That We Want to,” a “where-did-this-come-from?”
tribute to the works of Sam Shepherd and Martin Scorsese, in which he
considers both men colleagues (the song is lively and sounds like a
plea from Lou for collaboration with either or both of them).
In
1987, Lou tried to inject a “danceable” note to his music in the
album Mistrial. “Video Violence” and “The
Original Wrapper” show Reed trying to be audience-friendly and
retain his new MTV following. He also executed a sort of dry run for
the New York album with the topical lyrics of
“Video Violence.” The slower songs were still a drag, however.
****
It's
impossible to call the 1989 New York album by Reed
a “comeback,” since he had never gone away, but it most certainly
was a return to form, and the first completely excellent album from
start to finish since Berlin. Working at the
height of his powers here, Lou turned out a “newspaper” album,
the kind of thing that Phil Ochs did in '64 (All the News
That's Fit to Sing) and Lennon took a stab at in '72 with
Some in New York City.
What
Lou wound up delivering was the rock equivalent of Bonfire
of the Vanities, a time capsule that is filled with
beautifully sketched portraits of big city life and political issues
in the late Eighties, with the references unrepentantly dated and
localized to New York City.
Some
of the self-righteous anger (especially in “Good Morning Mr.
Waldheim”) doesn't make for the best rock “poetry” – in fact,
it's clunky as hell – but New York is the first
album where Reed perfectly matched his limited vocal range to the
melodies.
He
also crafted a “character” that suited him, a cranky chronicler
of a city (and civilization) in decline that is touted as being on
the “upswing” (Guiliani is one of the many real-life figures who
are namechecked and/or mocked on the album). The clear, pure sound of
one of Reed's idols, Dion, counterpointed with Lou's own sardonic,
nasal narration, make “Dirty Boulevard” unforgettable on both a
musical and “storytelling” level.
Reed
followed the New York album with Songs
for Drella ('90), a suite of songs he cowrote and performed
with John Cale in tribute to Andy Warhol. This is the album that
would've most likely made the best Lou Reed off-Broadway show, since
(aside from Lou's fervent “I Believe,” about his wishes that they
had killed Valerie Solanas for shooting his hero Andy) the songs are
primarily written from the perspective of a single character (Andy)
and the stripped-down sound created by Lou on guitar and Cale on
piano and violin is both economical and powerful as hell.
In
the album, Reed and Cale alternate vocals, with Cale assuming the
quiet, public side of Warhol and Lou incarnating his professional and
conceptual side (plus the anger that he never seemed to have
expressed). The fact that the two were back together again, making
music for the first time since 1967, was amazing, and the resulting
show/album was nothing short of brilliant – Lou had to up his game
when Cale was around (the Welsh one being a schooled musician who
dwelt in the real avant-garde before the VU; Lou basically had to
create his own little “wing” of the underground).
The
back-and-forth between their instruments (as on the VU live reunion
album) makes the music crackle, and the best songs – the sarcastic
“Small Town” or the elegaic “Forever Changed” – are what
the VU might've sounded like if either of these gents could've stood
each other's company for a longer period of time.
And,
although Cale was very generous to Lou in the program notes for the
show (saying it was mostly Lou's show and he was only a
singer/performer), it was essential that there be another voice in
the project – Lou could not have carried off the song “The
Trouble with Classicists” the way that Cale did.
I
saw the live performance of the songs at the Brooklyn Academy of
Music and was struck by the use of slides on a big screen behind Reed
and Cale. The effect of augmenting the music with Warhol's paintings
from the era and photographs of the people and locations was
overwhelming. I remember being very disappointed upon purchasing the
1990 VHS version of the show (directed by the great Ed Lachman) to
see that the images of Warhol's paintings weren't in the shots.
The
VHS version can be seen in piecemeal fashion on YT, but still what
you see are the two men playing and singing, not the stuff that was
going on above them on the screen, as here in the song that best used
the Warhol images, called (fittingly enough), “Images”:
Lou’s
last great achievement was Magic and Loss, his '92
album about dealing with the death of a friend (Reed said in
interviews that it was inspired by the deaths of two friends of his,
one of whom was famed songwriter Doc Pomus). The album continues on
from Songs for Drella, with Lou exploring the
topic from several angles, from visiting the friend in the hospital
to disposing of their ashes and, most touching, dreaming about the
person after their death.
Too
often Lou surrendered to his pet emotions — anger and angst — in
his songwriting, but here he adopts an adult attitude throughout,
balancing the sadness of loss with the joy of having loved a friend
(and knowing how much they’d scoff at the somber nature of their
memorial service).
Magic
and Loss is not as eminently re-listenable a record as his
best rock albums because it so sad at points, but it does place Lou
in the category of the great singer/songwriters, who crafted a
musical identity for themselves while delivering sober truths in
song. It’s also, needless to say, an incredibly “middle-aged”
album, as it deals with one of the most common situations we
encounter after age 40. And one of middle age’s most common
emotions: regret.
There are
things we say we wish we knew and in fact we never do
but I'd wish
I'd known that you were going to die
Then I wouldn't feel so
stupid, such a fool that I didn't call
and I didn't get a chance
to say goodbye
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
No
there's no logic to this - who's picked to stay or go
if you think
too hard it only makes you mad
But your optimism made me think
you really had it beat
so I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
I
didn't get a chance to say goodbye
No - I didn't get a chance to
say goodbye
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
And if the beautifully
elegiac tunes don’t do it for you, there’s also an extremely
Selby-esque “short story” called “Harry’s Crucifixion” that
finds Lou back in “Blue Mask” mode, although in a quiet, calmer
fashion and with a Freudian “back story” this time….
******
The
single best way to end this long-assed tribute to Lou Reed is to
highlight the one song I’ve played more than ANY other Reed-related
item (in fact I used it as the theme to the Funhouse for a very short
while many years ago). It appears on the Velvet Underground rarities
album Another View (’86), and I’ve found it’s
one of those indisputably upbeat, hard-driving numbers that will
jumpstart me in even the lowest of moods.
The
VU with Cale in Dec. ’67 doing the instrumental version of “Guess
I’m Falling in Love.”
Goodbye,
Lou, you hard-rockin’ pain in the ass!
Each year at this time I discuss what America means to me
and point to this clip as pretty much summing up the country in the shortest
time imaginable. Our president came to great notice telling us that there are
no “red states” and “blue states,” there is “only the United States” (that has
never been true, as has been illustrated by a thousand different events,
actions, behaviors, and policies).
