Part 4 (1/2)
But the record's real bounty is its for versions of ”Coney Island Baby” and ”Street Hassle”-the definitive accounts of Reed's classic pariah angel in search of glut and redemption ”Street Hassle,” in particular, is the apotheosis of Lou's callous brand of rock & roll The original recording, a three-part vignette laced beguilingly with a cello phrase that turns into asince ”Heroin” The new, live version of ”Street Hassle” is an even nant psychology, littered with mercenary sex and heroin casualties, and narrated by a jaded junkie who undergoes a catharsis at the end
Lou Reed doesn't just write about squalid characters, he allows them to leer and breathe in their own voices, and he colors fah their own eyes In the process, Reed has created a body ofthe parameters of human loss and recovery as we're likely to find That qualifies him, in my opinion, as one of the few real heroes rock & roll has raised
That is, if you're willing to allow your heroes a certain latitude for griun preparing for a career as a hard-boiled outsider When he was in high school, hisdives into depression became so frequent that his parents committed him to electroshock therapy (an experience he later chronicled bitterly in a song called ”Kill Your Sons”) Another ti his student days at New York's Syracuse University, Reed reneged on his ROTC co an unloaded pistol at the head of his co officer
After Syracuse (where, in his more stable moments, Reed studied poetry with Delmore Schwartz, a popular poet of the 1940s), Lou took a job as a songwriter and singer at Pickwick Records on Long Island While there, he recorded mostly ersatz surf and Motown rock under a multitude of names, and arde leanings In 1965, Reed and Cale for Morrison, an old Syracuse pal of Lou's, on guitar and Maureen Tucker on dru Spikes and then the Velvet Underground, after the title of a porn paperback about sadomasochism
In the context of the late-sixties hippie/Saroup seenant ”I re descriptions of us as the ”fetid underbelly of urban existence' All I wanted to do rite songs that soot off on the Beatles and all that stuff, but why not have a little so on the side for the kids in the back row? At the worst, ere like antedated realists At the best, we just hit a little s”
In the case of the Velvet Underground's first album, nominally produced by Andy Warhol, that viewpoint was presented as a res like ”I' for the Man,” ”Run, Run, Run,” and ”Heroin” depict a leering, gritty vision of urban life that, until the Velvets, had rarely been alluded to-round, of course, would go on to have a profound-probably incalculable-impact on modern popularStones, the Velvets were one of the most influential white rock forces of the 1960s David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, the New York Dolls, Elliott Murphy, Roxy Music, Brian Eno, Patti Smith, the sex Pistols, Television, Joy Division, Jim Carroll, REM, and countless others would borrow froh none of theroup's inventive depths and astonishi+ng courage The band's first three albuht/White Heat (1968), and The Velvet Underground (1969) are works that stand strongly alongside Revolver, Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed, Blonde on Blonde, and John Wesley Harding as so music of the era
But back in the milieu of the often skin-deep positivism and florid experiround's unswerving hardbitten temper, dissolute romanticism, and abrasive improvisations were, as Reed noted, viewed as ”downer” eleroup itself was seen as a pack of sick party spoilers I re that period-who shared my love for rock & roll-wouldn't stay in the saround record hit the stereo (One friend even scratched up the song ”Heroin” because of what he terether, the Velvets' catalog would sell so the tiether
BY THE VELVETS' fourth albunition prompted Reed to quit the band He embarked on a solo career that became so spotty it seemed irreconcilable with the pro commercial success in 1972 with ”Walk on the Wild Side” (from Transforan to test his audience's endurance First he grilled thened Berlin narrative, then later with Metal Machine Music In between, there were the hits, Rock 'n' Roll Animal and Sally Can't Dance (the latter actually went Top 10), records he now denounces as trivial, commercial contrivances
Then, in 1976, after a brief, tely strained relationshi+ps with his er and producer-brothers Dennis and Steve Katz-Reed rebounded He disengaged himself from Dennis Katz, assembled a stoical, one-shot band, and recorded Coney Island Baby, his s since his days with the Velvets Following that, he left RCA Records for Arista and last year delivered Street Hassle-a jolting statement of self-affirmation-and now is about to release The Bells, which he thinks will surpass Take No Prisoners and which features a few songs co-written with Nils Lofgren It would seeifts of vision and expression are fully revivified and newly honed to a lethal edge
Sitting in the bar, as a last flush of rain washes away the daylight outside, I figure both of us have had enough to drink for me to ask about where those lost years went As a way of broaching the subject, I quote a passage fro Stone's review of Street Hassle, in which Toeneration into ”a crude, death-trip clown” It sobers Reed right up He slances around the room ”That's not for me to comment on, is it? Obviously it's someone else's construction”
After a taut moment, he reconsiders ”Let me tell you a little story,” he says ”It comes from a collection of personal prose that my friend, the late poet Delmore Schwartz, wrote, called Vaudeville for a Princess In this one chapter he's talking about driving a car, and how as a youngster he had driven one as conte it was the year of the car's ot older and fortune, perhaps, didn't smile upon him as he wished it would, the car he would drive was not at all of the sa it, but it would be older-five, ten years older Eventually, we get around to a tiress because the car he was driving was only two years older than the year in which he was driving it As a slight tangent, he makes mention not to lory and ticker-tape parades in New York City Anyway, he's now at last out driving this car that's al But he observes that nobody is with him to take note of the event, because he didn't have a license and his erratic driving reflected the fact that ”life, as I had come to know it, had made me nervous' ”
Lou pauses and smiles curtly ”Life, as I had come to know it, had made me nervous I've probably had more of a chance to make an asshole out of myself than ets a chance to live out their nightmares for the vicarious pleasures of the public”
EARLIER IN OUR conversations, during the tour that spawned Take No Prisoners, Lou and I meet in the same bar Instead of his usual playfully testy demeanor, he seems sullen, al a seat at a corner table, ”where everything's going to go wrong”
At first Reed's ht before had clearly been fervently fought successes But then I recall that when he'd couitar out of tune and threw it angrily to the floor in theits body ”I could've cried then,” he says, ”but I don't really care now I use s and I justI can I know I'll be out of it soon and I won't be looking at things the same way For every dark mood, I also have a euphoric opposite I think they say that o dohich isn't to say that I'h, is probably Lou at his writing He's said in the past that he never writes fro remotely in common with the Lou Reed character” Indeed, much of his work, especially Berlin, seems the product of a detached observer, with no stake in the outcome of his characters' lives and no moral interest in their choices But Coney Island Baby and Street Hassle see in seventies music Isn't the real Lou Reed in there so a gold-plated lighter cupped in his hands When he speaks, it's in a soft, s in s that reuess the Lou Reed character is pretty close to the real Lou Reed, to the point, maybe, where there's really no heavy difference between the two, exceptthat's really et on record”
Lou signals the waitress over to order a double Johnnie Walker straight He see alive a bit to the idea of conversation, his eyes studyingpeople, but Dostoevski killed people, too In reality I s would, if only because I'd be jailed It goes back to when I began to write songs-I didn't see why the forh since then I've seen the resistance it can generate But that's only if you lose your iood at the glib re if you exareat It's like a person who can argue either side of a question with equal passion, but what do they really think? They et to know them”
Lou spots a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle on a nearby table and fetches it to show ht before He turns momentarily livid The reviewer, Lou is quick to point out, spentthe ticket price (950 at the door) and Reed's take (reportedly 7,500 a night) before co on his ”un of ”sick-rock”
I recall that the Velvet Underground received similar reviehen they played the West Coast ”When we left New York,” says Lou, ”ere shocked that ere such a big deal For anyone who goes to ? One reason, I guess, is that singing a rock & roll song is a very real thing; it's accessible on an immediate level, more so than a book or movie People assu it and they find that shocking, although they can pick up the newspaper and read things far
”Maybe one of the reasons my stuff doesn't have mass appeal is that it does approach people on a personal level It assureement, then at least an awareness on the listener's part But with somebody like this-”Lou slaps the revieith the back of his hand-” it's just deemed incoherent and offensive froreat phrase to be used by such a poor writer It's like saying Philip Marloas unsavory
”Anyway, there wasn't anything like us at the tiround There still isn't ”Heroin' is just as right on the nose now as it was ten years ago Shocking? I suppose, but I always thought it was kind of romantic”
Romantic?
”Yes, because it's not really like that at all,” he replies ”There's not that much strain in that world I've had kids come up to ' Well, you can't concern yourself with being a parent for the world People deserve the right to be what they're going to be, both in the positive and pejorative sense I just wish they'd see that you can't evolve through so that disturbs people about Reed's ht be called a s his nose in disdain ”It's si around in the caldron of it all with no viewpoint There is a viewpoint, although it's s are Take it or leave it The thing that allows a lot oftheuy who's singing in the second part of 'Street Hassle,' who's saying, 'Hey that's soht to be a little irls' Now, he uy who's singing the last part about losing love He's already lost the one for hi the situation, that's all And ould know better than the guy who lost sos are all about: They're one-to-ones I just let people eavesdrop on theone away/Took the rings right offleft to say/But oh how I miss hiht off s into the pocket of his jacket for his cigarettes He lights one and givesthrough that song,” he says ”I don't ender is all-iay people don't lisp They're not any ht world They just are That's iht there, just like anybody else It's notother than what it is But if you take ”
I'm not sure what to say for thehis stare I recall so he said the day before about Delmore Schwartz: ”It , a poet, and be straight”
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, Lou is in Los Angeles for a series of shows at the Roxy On the afternoon of his last show, I visit hi on the floor before the TV, watching a videotape of the previous night's perfor at hi his own life” Lou Reed on the screen turns and looks over his shoulder and smiles at Lou Reed on the floor Lou Reed on the floor so pulse announces ”Street Hassle” I've seen Lou do this song eight ti remarkable happened to his character-and to the audience Although several of the people at those shoere hearing it for the first time, they nearly always sat in stunned silence It was as if Lou were guiding theh a private and treacherous world, the world of Lou Reed's ethos To reatest psychodramas in rock & roll
Lou on the TV screen slicks his hair back now and begins declaiuest has been too reckless with his dope, bringing his girlfriend to Lou's apart her up so carelessly that she overdoses on the spot ”I know this ain't no way to treat a guest,” says Lou on the screen, ”but why don't you grab your old lady by the feet and lay her out in the darkened street/And by to she's just another hit-and-run/You know, soot no choice and they can never find a voice to talk with that they can call their own/So the first thing they see that allows theht to be, they follow it/You knohat it's called? Bad luck”
”You know,” says Lou on the floor, turning to ets to that awful last line I never know just how it's going to co they see that allows theht to be, they follow it/You knohat it's called?' And here comes that line and it should punch like a bullet: Bad luck The point of view of the guy saying that is so awful But it's so true I only realize so about I just try to stay out of the way”
Lou is up on his feet now and decides he wants to ride into Hollywood to find an obscure patch cord for one of his tape decks Outside, it's a daeles ”This is the kind of day where, if you were in the Village in New York,” says Lou, ”you ay bar and see if you canonto Santa Monica Boulevard, Lou injects the tape resting in my cassette player ”We're the poison in your human machine,” roars Johnny Rotten ”We're the future-You-rrr future” Lou has a queasy look on his face ”Shakespeare had a phrase for that,” he says ” 'Sound and fury signifying nothing' I'e I'd like to hear punks eren't at the ether a coherent sentence I et aith 'Anarchy in the UK' and that bullshi+t, but it hasn't an eighth the heart or intelligence of so like Garland Jeffreys' 'Wild in the Streets' ”
We arrive at the stereo store, and Lou spends the next hour h accessory bins until he finds the cord he needs Back in the car we talk a bit about the early Velvets albuain why it was so hard for hiroup, to maintain his creative momentum He frames his reply carefully ”It was just an awful period I had very little control over the records; they were really geared for the money When I made Coney Island Baby, Ken Glancy, the president of RCA at the time, backed me to the hilt because he knew me There were rumors that I couldn't stand tours because I was all fucked up on dope andI put out Metal Machine Music precisely to stop all of it No matter what people may think of that record, it wasn't ill-advised at all It did what it was supposed to do But it was supposed to do a lot more I mean, I really believed in it also That could be ill-advised, I suppose, but I just think it's one of the most remarkable pieces of music ever done by anybody, anywhere In time, it will prove itself”
What made Coney Island Baby such a statement of renewal?
”Because it was my record I didn't have much time and I didn't have much money, but it was mine There was just me and Rachel [Reed's male companion of the last several years and the raison d'etre of Street Hassle] living at the fucking Gramercy Park Hotel on fifteen dollars a day, while the lawyers were trying to figure out what to do with ot a call from Clive Davis [president of Arista Records] and he said, ”Hey, how ya doing? Haven't seen you for a while' He kneas doing He said, ”Why don't we have lunch?' I felt like saying, ”You mean you want to be seen with me in public?' If Clive could be seen with rabbed Rachel and said, ”Do you knoho just called?' I knew then that I'd won
”It's just that turning that corner was really hard When Ken Glancy backed ave me a call, step two; and Street Hassle and Take No Prisoners are like step three And I think they're all ho ”I' I haven't backed off an inch, and don't you forget it”
We arrive back at Lou's hotel and he invites me in to hear the difference the patch cord makes in his tape deck Inside, twoto take him to the afternoon's sound check, but Lou wants to play with hison the floor with his miniature speakers sprawled around hi that can be said about me is that I'm so damn sane Maybe these aren'ton these records-they're other people's When I start writing about ”
Maybe so, but I can't help recalling his earlier colib re plenty of his devils all along, and I think he knows it On an earlier occasion, I'd told him his work sorapher known principally for her studies of desolate and deforestion ”Her subject rotesque To show the inherent deformity in nor beauty in defor he knows exactly what devils he's after, and that he won't pass theels
If Lou Reed has accoh
AFTER THE HARROWING scenarios of his 1978to counteract his profligate ie-or perhaps sis The first glimpses came in his 1979 albu ”Fa to his hardened parents across a chasotin a pain-filled quaver, ”And no no no, there's no grandson planned here for youAnd I don't think I'll come home much anymore” With The Bells, Lou Reed fulfilled-ri like ”Families” sounded as if it used up the whole of Reed's e It didn't seem possible that either his art or his life could ever be the saain In fact, they couldn't
Reed moved deeper into the theme of familial fatalism-the fear, hate, and defeat that parents too often bequeath upon their children as theiryear's albu Up in Public was also an albue to love, and along with it, the will to forgive everybody who-and everything that-ever cut short your chances in the first place On Growing Up, Reed's ed the difficult chasraphy In part, the new coain-a decision that flabbergasted ed, intractable gay-but they were also seared recollections of the prime forces that almost fated him In ”My Old Man,” he railed at the memory of a Karae: ”And when he beat my mother/It made me so mad I could choke/And can you believe what he said to me/He said, 'Lou, act like a man' ” And Reed did act like a man He shattered the album's claustrophobic web of hatred and self-defeat-perhaps thehe'd ever constructed, because it was also theto run the same risk at which his parents failed: the risk of the heart ”When you ask for so in that album's most tender h to care for it” It was hardly a detached lyric: On Valentine's Day, 1980, Reed married Sylvia Morales, and for a time, both his life and music seemed deepened by the union
Indeed, several of the records that Reed endary Hearts, and New Sensations-were tough-willed state act of defiance, and as such, they also worked as a reexamination of his earlierless than an urgent and vital good fight: ”Lovers stand warned/Of the world's iendary Hearts” and ”Home of the Brave,” Reed fully expressed the difficulty of trying to integrate the frustrations and limitations of his distant past and the reality of his fiery tee that real love requires constant recole of uphill faith ”The thing about love,” he toldour 1979 and 1980 conversations, ”is that it isn't logical You don't necessarily love what's logical or good for you Believe me, I know At the same time, that's the beauty of love-when you're passionately caring for the welfare of sohed ”Maybe e're talking about is the touch of an angel's wing And the possibility of transcendence”
In tie to Morales ended, and as I write these words in 1997, it is reported that he has recently been quite happy with artist and singer Laurie Anderson (talk about aof the , vital, and is for Drella (an elegy to Andy Warhol, co-written with foric and Loss, and Set the Twilight Reeling He also briefly re-for-oddly enough-for the only truly unaffecting roup ever produced
After allpopularwith Bob Dylan-Lou Reed re with Dylan, he is probably the only artist who has grown and weathered so well, and whose lapses are even soain, in wonder If I had to pick my favorite lines he has ever written, they would be these: ”It was good e did yesterday/And I'd do it once again/The fact that you are married/Only proves you're my best friend/But it's truly, truly a sin” (from 1969's ”Pale Blue Eyes”) Also, these: ”With a dayti to look for a bell to ring” (froht”) It seems to me that in his best music-even in his darkest,a bell, loud and clear, pealing a clarion call of hope that the glory of love, despite (or because of) our daytih yet
brothers: the allhost Some unkind spirit, the ruacy of death and bad news, and had attached itself to the All its quarry, until it had dragged the band down into the dust of its own drearoup had attracted the spirit on one of those late nights eneration before, when various band ather in the Rose Hill Cemetery, not far froia The story is, they drank wine and whiskey there, smoked dope, took psychedelics, played and wrote dark, obsessive blues songs, and laid their Southern girlfriends across sleek tohts, andonly a few feet above other bodies, long prone and long cold Maybe on one of those occasions, in some unGodly moment in which sex and hallucinations and blues allinvocation, an insatiable specter was raised, and decided to stay close to the troubled and vulnerable souls that had su even older andas old as the hellions and hellhounds that were said to haunt Southern rural crossroads on host Sohost-or at least, witnessed how palpable it was for those who had to live with the effects of its haunts There are stories about late night reveries in the early 1970s, when the band'searlyBy this tiroup in Aest audience ever assembled in the nation's history But perhaps that success was never enough to stave off fears that there was yet more that this band was destined to lose