Lou Reed

Life has been busy lately and my blog has had to take a back seat to real world events, still when I opened up Facebook (any good writers source for fast and accurate news) and saw that Lou Reed, singer and creative force behind The Velvet Underground’s best work, champion of freaks and weirdoes everywhere, died this morning, I knew I had to write something.

            Immediately I tried to nail down a title. “The king is dead” came to mind first, because apparently I’m a terrible writer who loves overwrought clichés. Quickly realized, not only is that headline completely lame, but wasn’t even close to accurate.

Lou wasn’t a king. Brilliant as he was, the poor bastard seemed to get overshadowed a lot, be it with the Velvet’s as Andy Warhol’s sideshow, or later, during his glam days, as David Bowie’s right hand... Person? Alien? Androgynous life form? 

                                              The 70s were weird, man.

That being said, Reed seemed to relish the shadows. Probably, I think, because as his songs so often demonstrated, in the shadows, in the gutter, you can do whatever the fuck you want.

He could write songs that rival Leonard Cohen or Neil Young in their dark beauty, but so often he went in the opposite direction simply out of spite it seemed.

I tried to listen to Reed’s 1975 feedback opus Metal Machine Music this morning with my speakers on full blast. I only made it 17 minutes and 12 seconds into the hour and a half long album, but I defy anybody reading this to listen to 5 minutes of that thing without developing a major headache.

In the coming days and weeks, journalists, bloggers, musicians and artists all over the world will weigh in on Lou’s impact in the fields of music, art and culture. I’m sure others will be able to articulate the man’s value far better then I ever will, so this is all I’m going to say: Lou never did anything predictable and he never did anything the easy way.

That stubborn, self-destructive ethic earned him the moniker “The Godfather of Punk,” and while you couldn’t ask for a cooler title, I don’t think Lou Reed ever properly fit into that box either. No trite analogy or half-assed classification could ever define the man or hint at the impact his art left on the world.

No, Lou Reed is simply Lou Reed, no title necessary.