Lou Reed: Caught Between The Twisted Stars

Lou Reed was SO New York when I was a sophomore at Columbia that posters advertised Transformer, his seminal solo album, in the subway.  Mick Rock took the cover photo, manipulated here even more than it was there.

I bought the album mostly for "Walk on the Wild Side" and the opportunity to study the back cover, surely the most explicit presentation of the gender bending pioneered by Mick Jagger and David Bowie.  For a kid still confused about his sexuality, it was radical!  To paraphrase Mae West: "Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"

Here's an iconic period photo (also by Mick Rock) of Lou with his glam pals, David Bowie and Iggy Pop wearing a T-Rex tee. Call me a fan boy for 'em all--my idolatry is wide, not deep.  It's hard to believe Iggy is the last one standing.  Bowie produced Transformer--you  just know he was responsible for best pop music chorus ever--and played sax on "Walk."  

Lou's reserved masculinity appealed to me almost as much as Iggy's wild child.  It's hard to look at this shot, again by Mick Rock (glam's official photographer), and not think "Everything old is new again."

Unlike most discriminating rock 'n roll fans of my time, I did not pretend to revere the Velvet Underground despite its deep connection with Andy Warhol.  The muddiness of the first recording, the one with Andy's banana art, alienated me.  I'm not even sure I realized Lou had written most of the songs on Rock 'n Roll Animal, still my all-time favorite live album, while a member of the Underground.

"Caught Between The Twisted Stars," an exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center stimulated all this reverie about Lou.  The library acquired his archives in 2017.  That would have been inconceivable to me when I worked there, pretty much at the height of Lou's fame.  If you live long enough, astonishment goes with the territory.  Another case in point: Susan Boyle, Lou's least likely cover artist, turning "Perfect Day," (my second favorite song from Transformer) into a choral hit nearly 40 years after he composed it.  Unbelievably, his song survived the schmalz treatment perhaps because it always was a bit treacly.

Here's an excerpt from the film Andy directed about the Velvet Underground that features Lou, Nico and Nico's son.  

Lou and bandmate John Cale paid tribute to Andy with "Songs for Drella," several years after his death.  The two musicians hadn't worked together since Cale left the Velvet Underground in 1969.

Although Lou never recorded another song as popular as "Walk on the Wild Side" (released exactly half-a-century ago on November 24) he kept churning out one (mostly) transgressive classic after another:  "Kicks," "Coney Island Baby," "Rock 'n Roll Heart," "Temporary Thing," "Street Hassle" and "I Wanna Be Black" which you probably aren't supposed to like any more. Of course there were some bombs, too, including Berlin, an autobiographical rock opera about a couple's drug addiction, and the unlistenable Metal Machine Music.  Like many fans, I eventually came around to the former although not before I gave my copy away.   Damnit!

Live performances at the Bottom Line, where I took the photo below in 1977, and the Academy of Music suggested that his gender bending was more au courant than characteristic.  He rocked with New York attitude.  Lester Bangs, the rock critic immortalized in Almost Famous, wrote:  He fixes you with that rusty bug-eye, he creaks and croaks and lies in your face, and you're  helpless.

Photo by Jeffrey Hon

Dion, another legendary New York City performer, drew this caricature of Lou.

I kept up with Lou's solo career until 1983.  Now that he was married and in recovery, sex, drugs and rock 'n roll were behind him.  So was I, after The Blue Mask, his most critically acclaimed recording.  The music had lost its punch.  I gave up entirely with the release of Legendary Hearts, which I bought mostly because it featured this motorcycle helmet on the cover.

 

My copy is probably still as pristine as the library's because I played it only once or twice.

Lou jotted down his lyrics in small notebooks.

I looked for my favorite singalong, from "Rock 'n Roll Heart," to no avail.

I don't like opera and I don't like ballet

And New Wave French movies, they just drive me away

I guess I'm just dumb, 'cause I know that I ain't smart

But deep down inside, I got a rock 'n' roll heart

Yeah-yeah-yeah, deep down inside I got a rock 'n' roll heart

This photo of Lou with Václav Havel adds more live-long-enough astonishment.  How many rock 'n roll bands have had political revolutions named after them?  Havel told Reed "I am [Czech] president because of you."  In 1989 Havel led the Velvet Revolution.  It peacefully toppled the Soviet government which had banned rock 'n roll, including the Velvet Underground, during its occupation.  

Lou's marriage to Laurie Anderson in 2009 enhanced the "downtown" credibility of both artists.  A year later they served as the grand marshals of Coney Island Mermaid Parade along with Lola Belle, their pooch.

When Lou died, Laurie writes in the exhibition hand-out, he left everything to me.  It was overwhelming and it took me a while to imagine what to do with it.  The process took years but the collection of Lou's public life has finally entered the New York Public Library.

I'm so happy!  First, because Lou is a legendary New Yorker and his work belongs to this city.  And second because the library is free and public.  This is not a white gloves collection.  Anyone can come in and look and listen to his life's work.

Hear ye, hear ye!  It's comforting to think that the future generations always will have access to "New York Telephone Conversation," a throwaway song from Transformer that captures one of the fundamental pleasures of mid 20th-century life:

I was sleeping, gently napping, when I heard the phone

Who is on the other end talking, am I even home?

Did you see what she did to him, did you hear what they said?

Just a New York conversation rattling in my head

Ooh my, and what shall we wear, ooh my, and who really cares?

Just a New York conversation, gossip all of the time

"Did you hear who did what to whom?", happens all the time

Who has touched and who has dabbled, here in the city of shows

Openings, closings, bad rap party, everybody knows

Ooh, how sad and why do we call, ooh I'm glad to hear from you all

I am calling, yes I'm calling just to speak to you

For I know this night will kill me, if I can't be with you

If I can't be with you

In my imagination, Andy was usually on the other end, and their conversations inspired "Walk on the Wild Side." Here in the city of shows.

Randy's Birthday Posse

Randy invited us to New London for "Halloween In Exurbia."  He's standing in front of his new house--almost completely furnished online--with Andrew on Saturday morning.

Don't we look a little Yankee Gothic in the back yard?  Did the neighbors--who include a Fire Batallion Commander--think we were priests?  Or attending a super spreader event?

We toured Seaside State Park, a former sanitarium for tubercular children in neighboring Waterford.  Cass Gilbert designed it in the Tudor Revival style.  He's more famous for the Woolworth Building and the US Supreme Court.

The Long Island Sound sparkled.  We could see for miles and miles.

I do loves me a weather vane.

Ophelia left behind a message inside a covered bridge.

Next stop:  Harkness Memorial State Park for a repeat visit.  

The cutting garden had been cut, but the park retained its essential charm.  Someone had left behind a stuffed animal in September, too.  Maybe it's a thing. 

Oh look!  A sprite.

We walked on the rocky beach among thousands of shells, about to be ground into sand.

After some hearty pea soup and garlic bread back at Randy's, we toured downtown New London.  The hipsters have colonized Bank Street with Hygienic Art.

Are You Experienced?

A monument near the train station commemorates the city's war dead.  It's been around for plenty of 'em.  Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale taught in New London before he became a spy for the Continental Army.  The Brits hung him at age 21.  And you thought Teach for America was demanding!

A lot of whales died in New London's heyday.

Time almost seems to have stopped inside the train station.

State Street is the main drag, with commerce old and new.

The First Church of Christ.

An historic movie theater with a wittily ambiguous marquee:  "Coming Soon:  Close Encounters of the November 3 Kind."

The pandemic has restricted business to white jacketed mannequins.

A solidly constructed library with incredible stone work.

A kitty (?) peered out from a memorial plaque across the street.

Looking back towards the harbor.

The Thames's mostly industrial riverfront hasn't been developed, perhaps because the train tracks hug it.

We meandered back to the parking lot where we left the cars.

Curtis, Randy's first four-footed visitor, was happy to see us.

I paged through Randy's collection of After Dark magazines.  Iggy Pop wasn't who I expected to find, that's for sure!

We celebrated Randy's birthday a night early with an appropriately decorated confection from You Take the Cake.

Randy enjoyed the sightseeing as much as we did on Sunday.  He hadn't been to Stonington since the last 70s, when he lived with his first boyfriend in New London.  Really, really great residential architecture--I'm pretty sure that "charming" is a zoning requirement.  Andrew thought Stepford Wives likely populated the neighborhood.

For whom do Stepford Wives cast their vote?

The Battle of Stonington took place in the War of 1812.

Randy posed with his birthday posse on the other side of that cannon, probably last fired more than two centuries ago.  Sounds like me.

I'd almost forgotten it had been Halloween the night before.  On a Blue Moon, no less

Another weather vane on a rather tall house.  Note the fancy recycling bags.

Door knockers are a thing, too.

The simplicity of this chapel is almost Puritan.

Another architecturally distinctive library!

And a lighthouse museum.

But the spear fisherman made my day.  Those are tautog he's hoisting.   They put up quite a struggle when you catch them with a pole.

Ugly, but tasty with dense, white meat.

Look closely at the left, in between the angle formed by the jetty and sand, and you'll see him in the water.  He and his buddy shot their spears in water around ten feet deep.