Sitting in front of the computer on Sunday night, aimlessly clicking around on social media, notification came via Rolling Stone of the death of Lou Reed. Reaction was predominantly shock, and a refusal to accept the news, as it was then unconfirmed by other news agencies or sources close to Reed himself. This duly arrived within an hour or so, and my Twitter feed was converted into a streaming eulogy in tribute to a true original the like of which we are unlikely to see again.
Adrian or I borrowed a Velvets LP from the library, I can't remember which one, it might have been White Light White Heat. It was very much a gateway album to noisier territory than the prog and classic rock and NWOBHM stuff we were at that time obsessed with. From the Velvets you went into the Stooges, the MC5, Bowie, all the US pre-punk and CBGB acts, and then home to more contemporary stuff like JAMC, Smiths and Primal Scream. Adrian embraced all this earlier than me; I took a detour via the Doors and spent a year or so listening almost exclusively to old blues records before starting to buy up the Velvets and enjoying lyrics about scoring drugs, incomprehensible S&M type encounters, and strung out love songs like Pale Blue Eyes.
Ady reckons that after a while he had listened so exhaustively to the Velvet Underground that he had absorbed them into his bloodstream, his DNA, and there was no need to actually play the records again...Of course, what happens when an artist dies, everyone starts listening to the old stuff again - on Sunday night I played Sister Ray twice in a row, and thrilled at the relentless repetitious noise, at the same time recognising again how many bands took that template and ran with it for decades afterwards.
My favourite Lou Reed record is a toss up between the third Velvets album and the collaboration with John Cale in tribute to Andy Warhol, Songs For Drella. Listening to Transformer this evening, it sounds like a pop album rather than a decadent paean to subversive sex, heroin, and horsing around with David Bowie.
Sweet Jane is another favourite, I just love the way he sings 'suitcase in my heeeeand'.
His delivery (I hesitate to use the word 'singing') is great on this track, it lifts a simply chorded song into something really exciting and special:
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