Among rock critics, there’s an apocryphal adage that The Velvet Underground’s first album only sold a few thousand copies, but everyone who bought one formed a band. I don’t know much about that, but I can say for sure that few artists have had a more formative impact on my life. Lou Reed, who fronted The Velvet Underground in the 1960s before having a long and successful solo career, died on Sunday.
Naturally, my first reaction upon hearing the news of Reed’s death was to immediately pull out my copy of 1969’s The Velvet Underground. Hearing Reed’s newly disembodied voice croon “Linger on your pale blue eyes” with such pathos and youth, I had a small revelation. I could sit here and list every formative experience I had listening to Reed’s music, or conversely, I could list the amount of contemporary popular music which owes Lou a great debt. But that seems a task better suited for a far better critic than I and the assorted “think pieces” and “retrospectives” that have followed his death more than fill that void.
Despite his varied and eccentric musical output, Reed’s lyrics rarely strayed from an examination of the marginalized. The New York streets were a vital character in his songs and as his gaze would shift over the Manhattanite junkies, punks and prostitutes, Reed retained a dual sense of descriptive detachment and immense compassion that was, in short, poetic. Throughout his career, Reed taught me that rock and roll could be intelligent. Rock and roll didn’t have to be all machismo and leather jackets (though that sure didn’t hurt). And perhaps most importantly, rock and roll could change your life.
Due to my age, I was (and am) a latecomer to Reed’s music. And throughout this media circus surrounding his death, I can’t shake the feeling that I arrived late to the party. Unlike so many of the pieces published in the last few days, I don’t have any insightful anecdotes about seeing Reed live in the 1980s or any memories of picking up Berlin at Tower Records on its release date. But I do recall the feeling that I got while I laid on my bed in 8th grade and listened to “Heroin” on repeat, thinking constantly that music doesn’t get any better than this.
In the liner notes of Metal Machine Music, Reed mused: “I’d harbored hope that the intelligence that once inhabited novels or films would ingest rock. I was, perhaps, wrong.” But, over a long career in music, Reed made good on that early hope, and gave millions of young rock nerds like myself a body of work that continues to evade evaluation and inspire amazement. He will be sorely missed.
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