Summer of Lou 3: Skip to My Lou

On the left, Lou Reed, in the best of health. On the right, John Cale, overjoyed to be there.

For reasons that are only getting harder to explain, I spent the summer - one of my limited number of remaining ones - with Lou Reed. Not in hell, mind you, just reading about him and listening to his music.

First, I looked back on his work with the Velvet Underground, almost all of which I'd loved for decades. They had a great run (of quality/not fame) from 1967-70. Here's how Lou spent the two years after quitting VU, and before starting his solo career.

Then, I dug into his first five studio albums (1972-76), all pretty good, but none brilliant, so I ignored the rest of his 1970s output.

And that brought me - more or less - back to when I first encountered him.

1980: Lou Who?

Aside from the occasional song on the radio, I avoided Lou Reed for the entire 1970s. He hooked up with the glam/gay/dress-up crowd who were anathema to us Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead loving - and gay fearing - fans. So my first real - if half-assed - encounter with Lou Reed was in 1980. An intriguing start. 

You'd think I'd have followed up on it, but two things held me back. First, as Johnny Rotten said last time, there were too many Lou Reed records and none were safe bets. 

Second, there weren't enough Velvet Underground albums. Except for the post-Lou Reed abomination-in-principle Squeeze, they were out of print.

And what about Lou? After a decade of questionable decisions (lifestyle, substances, music), he, um, got married.

What?

The expressions of the onlookers are priceless.

Yes, the man who leaned into the gay side of his bi-sexuality for a decade was now - so he said -  straight, in every sense of the word.

Remarkably, he had been married before, to a saint or a martyr, since he spent all that time doing whatever the hell he wanted, and relied on her to clean up the mess. She did so, dutifully, until she couldn't take it anymore. She wrote a book about it and I hope she makes a million bucks.

He then spent a few years with the frankly stunning Rachel (whose pictures I included in the last post) who was a pioneer in the use of pronouns shall we say. They obviously loved each other, but Rachel picked up where first wife Bettye left off, but Lou continued to be Lou so things ended in 1978.

Lou continued to - in ascending order - make music, tour, drink, do drugs, and be a huge asshole. But even he began to realize things couldn't go on like this.

So he married Sylvia Morales, someone who would - and could - fulfill the same role his prior partners did, but who was also strong enough to get him to straighten himself out.

1982:

It would take a couple more years for Lou to finally make a solo record that made everyone sit up and take notice.

The Blue Mask (1982)

After years of letting himself get pigeon-holed into a glam-gay-drug addict icon that producer-of-Transformer-David Bowie could only dream of being, by, well, being said glam-gay drug addict, suddenly Lou announced he was hetero and just an average guy, albeit with a drinking problem. Probably full of shit but okay. As long as he believed it at the time. And no one believed his own bullshit more than Lou.

With folks shooting Lennon and voting for Reagan it's understandable that Lou - by now an aging rock "star" - may have taken the pulse of the times and decided this new, more conservation generation was not likely to put up with his hijinks.

But questionable assertions of wholesomeness aside, Lou now had an actual band. Guitarist Robert Quine - who could go from cool atmospherics to cluster bomb skronk in a matter of seconds - most obviously, but also bassist Fernando Saunders, who managed to make such transitions almost graceful. And, per Quine's encouragement, Lou himself on guitar - something he hadn't done in quite a while.

The songs were excellent - at turns heartfelt or horrifying - and well-suited to the production. My first take was an appreciation of the atmospherics, and maybe less so of the skronkery. A bit more melody might have helped but that's not what Lou had been selling for at least a decade. And I'd eventually learn to enjoy a bit of skronk now and then.

So, it took some time for me to get what he was about, but looking back I see it as a high point in his solo career.

A

"Our House"

Later that year, the four original Velvet Underground albums started to appear in the record shops again. I picked up their first, The Velvet Underground and Nico, and never looked back. I was immediately convinced the VU was THE great lost band of the '60s. 

So I stuck around for Lou's next record.

1983: 

Legendary Hearts (1983)

You'd think after the return to form The Blue Mask, Lou would be settling into this newfound consistency. But Lou didn't like sharing the spotlight/credit, so although he kept the same band he basically mixed poor Bob Quine out of it. The result is a more muted record. Fewer sonic highs and lows, but still a steady engine churning nonetheless.

The songs are of a more day-to-day nature. Love after romance, the ongoing drinking problem, insecurities, etc. There is also the beginning of an awareness of the outside world. Lucky for all of us he resists the urge to shoot from the hip or go for fake outrage. Geez, maybe he is a regular guy.

And while it suffers in comparison to Mask, soundwise, it's easier to hear the very good songs he wrote. The melodies are grudging, but Lou does his best to flesh them out, providing some actual vocals!

A-

"The Last Shot"

But that was enough Lou for now.

1984:

Having now given Lou two shots, a second VU album was long overdue. I picked their last one, Loaded, a tuneful, playful delight, and one of the highlights of my summer.

1985:

Their third record - the quiet, mysterious Velvet Underground - helped me through that very cold winter. An almost bewildering first listen, the songs are so good you keep coming back.

1986:

The loud, unremitting second VU album White Light/White Heat damn near scared me away. At least their first has some great melodies. This one, released in January of 1968, was filled with shrieking feedback and distortion, not to mention tales of murder and depravity. A foreshadowing of the joys of 1968.

1987:

The wonderful VU - a compilation of VU leftovers - was easily one of the best albums of that year.

So I was more or less caught up on the VU studio albums. And I was perfectly happy with my two Lou Reed solo albums. I could stop now, couldn't I?

1989:

But this was when Mrs. Jaybee got into the act. You see, Lou had sort of a hit.

LR NY (1989)

"Dirty Blvd" caught Mrs. Jaybee's attention, and she figured, here's a Lou Reed album the both of us might enjoy. 

It's probably his best-produced album. The guitar, drums, and bass sound is sharp and dense as hell, and a perfect match for Lou's vocal delivery. The words of outrage just roll off his tongue, and for once, who could argue with him?

"Romeo had Juliet"

A-

1992:

Then my dad died, on January 15 to be exact. 

Magic and Loss (1992)

Lou released this meditation on loss on January 14 and it fit like a glove. Lou opens up more and shows some real compassion. By now, I'm amazed at Lou's ability to create yet more simple but compelling rock songs. 

He sounds like he gives a shit. And he has, for some time by now.

A-

"Dreamin'"

1993 - 2012: Breaks and Reunions

After a few records, I get my fill of artists. Sometimes it's the voice (Dylan, Elvis Costello), or a feeling of diminishing returns (Neil Young). With Lou is was his narrow range. There's only so much spoken word electric guitar freak-outs I can absorb let alone enjoy. So it was time to take a break from Lou.

In 1993, the Velvet Underground got together for a reunion, but - Lou being Lou - it was short-lived.

Lucky for him - and the rest of the world - around this time he met and fell in love with Laurie Anderson. 

They stayed together for almost 20 years - eventually marrying in 2008 - and while it was no picnic this remarkable woman maintained her own independence while simultaneously bringing out the best in him.

Lou continued making records. All were ambitious, some were praised and some derided.  In other words, same old same old, albeit at a slower pace. But most critically, Lou stood by every one of them.

In early 1997, I did pick up Nico's quite lovely first album, mainly because her version of "These Days" appeared in The Royal Tennenbaums.

In 2001, I got tired of retiring to the basement to play my VU vinyl and got the 5-disc box set Peel Slowly and See, which is almost the complete studio recordings of the Velvet Underground. A great collection, but only for the already converted.

And that was it for a while.

2013:

Then Lou himself intervened by dying, which motivated me to finally get the complete 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, with Lou Reed.

Being annoyed with Reed after hearing many of the horror stories, I picked this time to give John Cale a shot. 

2015:

I followed up with Cale, picking up his great collaboration with Brian Eno

2016-2021:

I spent this time having thoughts like:

• How could Lou have been such an asshole?
• Did the rest of the VU hate him?
• Did he hate Andy Warhol?
• Did Warhol hate him?
• And how were those '70s solo albums - the ones upon which his reputation was built (and sadly not the VU albums)?

2022:

In spring, I got a collection of Reed's first five solo albums. If you don't mind getting caught in an endless loop, you can look here to see what I thought of them. 

Later that year we watched the very touching six-part documentary Andy Warhol Diaries, which led me back to this record:

Lou Reed and John Cale: Songs For Drella (1990)

Here's my initial take.

Now, with a little more context, I can see that Lou and John released this between New York and Magic and Loss. With this dynamic pairing, Cale coaxes Reed out of his guitar-bass-drums comfort zone, and together they produce a record almost as good as the last time they were together.

Now: 

Lou was, shall we say, hard to like. He exhibited all of the qualities I despised in humans. Egotism, selfishness, hypocrisy, mean-spiritedness, childishness, jealousy. I could go on.

For every moment of compassion ("Coney Island Baby"), there would be an album's worth of bile. Yet the 1989-92 run of New York, Songs for Drella, and Magic and Loss summoned the humanity Lou always had in him but was reluctant to express. 

Don't get me wrong. Even though he straightened himself out in the 80's and made better music, he was still an asshole at heart. It wasn't until he met Laurie Anderson that he softened up even a bit. 

So, we have yet another story of "redemption". And I'm just so tired of them. Why don't we have stories of forgiveness? You know, about all the people who put up with his shit and FORGAVE him? Yes, I know, they didn't make the music, but still...

I should explain: 

I'm the guy who watches a thriller and thinks What about the families of all the people who got killed? Where's their movie? (I realize this is nuts.) We don't go to the movies to watch children grow up without parents, etc. Plus, they're um, not real.

But Lou Reed was real. And just another prodigal son who finds the love of his life, and gets everything that actual nice people deserve. 

I prefer the non-prodigal son, myself. And the Marthas who get shit done, not the Marys, who sit around like groupies. 

Maybe it's my obviously Catholic upbringing - turning any potential turn towards the good into an occasion to remind the sinner of all that preceded it. In short, I'm no fun. But if there was any justice his talent would have gone to somebody kinder.

And yet...

In the several Lou Reed biographies I read, alongside the repeated negative descriptions of him, there was also a small but consistent number of dissenting views. Certain words and phrases kept popping up, like "funny as hell", "kind" (wait, what?), "devoted friend" and even "paid my medical bills"!  

But I think the two words that might allow all these wildly divergent views of him to exist in the same universe are paranoid and insecure. If you were an acquaintance who managed to get past the paranoia, you'd end up a friend, if only for a little while. But if you were an interviewer, musician, or (gulp) fan, god help you. And the insecurities that often come with a massive ego can make even the most intelligent of us strike out against perceived threats.

And that adds up to a third word: miserable, which turned up a lot. Many people said he was the most miserable person they ever met. And the trouble with miserable people is that they have to share it with you, so you end up miserable, too.

Now, throw in a beautiful mother (his bi-sexuality didn't keep him from noticing that) and a hated father (guess why?), he was even tougher on his family than on strangers. Someone should have explained to him that Freud didn't write instruction manuals.

This is not an apologia - rather, a lame theory of why Lou was such a prick. 

But the man had a vast amount of talent. His songwriting run from 1966-70 is up there with the all-time greats. 

So let's give the jerk his due.

So long, ya schmuck!

And THAT, dear teacher, is how I spent my summer vacation. And no, I still don't know why.