It was not the news I was expecting to wake up to Sunday morning: Lou Reed dies at 71.
I felt at one remove from the whole situation—I couldn’t help it, I was at one remove—even though Reed affected, in essence, a sort of omnipresence in my cultural/musical tastes.
When, in middle school, I received my first iPod, I had very few CDs of my own to actually put on it—a The Who compilation, lots of Christmas music. My recourse was to go down to the basement and dig around in my parents’ collection, which constituted a huge plastic bin in the basement. I was given no instructions. It was open season.
And so I found The Velvet Underground. Specifically: Loaded, The Velvet Underground, VU and a compilation. I ended up buying The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light/White Heat myself, to round out the collection.
I fell in love with “Sweet Jane,” “Beginning to See The Light” and “I’m Waiting For The Man.” I would listen to them, and their respective albums, over and over when I was doing homework or waiting for my parents to pick me up.
By high school, I had a well-established liking of The Velvet Underground, and Lou Reed’s solo work, but my curiosity toward new/unknown music was nigh unbearable. So, with Lou Reed as my compass, I encompassed anyone who so much as breathed his name: David Bowie, Iggy Pop, The Strokes, Brian Eno, Patti Smith…
Even where the association seemed tenuous or nascent, I still delved. Punk rock, alternative, glam, art rock.
This eulogy is something born out of reflection. If prompted honestly, before Reed’s death, I would have acknowledged that my love of Lou Reed was naught but a bourn alongside other streams. Now, though, after his death, I know that bourn bears with it water from one of the largest headwaters in my recollection, water which itself flows in those other streams. Reed’s music fed so much around it that I’m surprised it has lasted.
What was his music? With The Velvet Underground, it was a kind of drone and chug, a whining gallop into tenebrous situations, moods—effectively contrasted with a bleak, tender, minor-key richesse of feeling. Hard drugs, urban decay and clinical insanity mingled with garlands of love and echoes of bon vivant sensibilities.
Reed’s solo music, on the other hand, pushed far beyond the stringencies of his work with The Velvet Underground. 1972’s Transformer was so loose, wan and autumnal—full of camp and sinuosities like “Goodnight Ladies,” “Vicious” and “Perfect Day.” He could be sweet, like on Coney Island Baby. He could be bombastic, like on Berlin. He could rock, like on New York or New Sensations. He could ponder, as he did on The Raven, his tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. He could be unintelligible, like he was on Metal Machine Music. He could break your heart.
More often than not, though, Lou Reed was a mix of all that. His music was chiaroscuro—light and shadow, defined by their interplay. None of his albums were “just” happy or “just” sad or “just” bombastic. 1982’s The Blue Mask, for instance, thundered and howled just as much as it cooed and sibilated. Transformer’s tracklist rubbed shoulders with songs as divergent as “New York Conversation,” “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Satellite of Love,” however adjunctively each was to the other.
Yet, Lou Reed’s importance lies just as much in his attitude as in his music. He was cool. He was wry and sardonic. He had a face for shades. He resisted any ornamentation he did not recognize as organic, i.e. stemming from himself.
Lou Reed was both a life source and a lineage. His music, his posture, his attitude wormed their way into countless artists. Both his solo work and his work with The Velvet Underground signified a dehiscence of traits and sounds that found their way to all sorts of terra, incognita or otherwise.
Every sprout bore his signature. To them, Lou Reed was uncle, grandfather, godfather, scribe, scoundrel and tormentor. To his fans, proxy or otherwise, he was the same.
If this eulogy can be condensed to brevity (as I think it can) then it would be condensed to a sentiment my friend Colin Groundwater shared on Facebook, when he heard the news: “Linger on.” Not “burn out.” Not “fade away.” Just, “linger on.”
Linger on, Lou.
Want to pour one out with Sean via email? Contact him at sreichard@wisc.edu.
