Goodbye Lou

The first time I ever got close to Lou Reed was at the tender age of 17 or so, staying in an apartment on St Mark's Square in New York City. Across the street was a club called the Electric Circus with a semi permanent line waiting to get in, since it had just opened and was apparently hot. The headliners were The Velvet Underground.

I bought their first album with the zeppelin-sized banana, and decided that the key to the group was the mysterious Niko. She was mesmerizing, a cool  blonde with a bottomless voice, especially on "I'll Be Your Mirror".  Despite the fact that she could definitely sing, it became obvious that Lou Reed was the creative force behind the band. Songs like "Heroin" and "I'm Waiting For The Man" established Reed as a creative voice as well as unofficial documentarian of the Manhattan "scene" which, at the time, was dominated by Andy Warhol. Reed and Warhol bonded, Warhol creating the giant banana on the cover , inviting the listener/purchaser to peel off the outer banana only to reveal another banana underneath.


After the band fell apart, Reed went on to success in his solo career, probably capped by the album "Transformer" in 1972, which also featured his biggest "hit" - "Walk On The Wild Side". His sly, jaded vocal is underscored by a smooth sax solo as well as one of the most repeated choruses of the 20th Century:
"And the colored girls go: Dit,dit,dit,dit-ta-dit-dit..."

No question that Reed's long career created the groundwork for punk, but he also influenced the "grundge" bands of the Pacific Northwest - Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Reed's tired vocals are a close parallel to Kurt Cobain, that same kind of world weary resignation. It's ironic that ,while the emerging San Francisco scene in the late 1960s emphasized peace,love,acid and rock and roll, the New York experience was the other end of the spectrum- dirty and scruffy and extremely real.

When Reed died on October 27 from liver disease at the age of 71, luminaries from David Byrne and David Bowie  to Samuel L. Jackson to author Salmon Rushdie paid their respects. His hip contributions to the New York club scene stand on their own merits, Lou Reed capturing in his own unique way a slice of  Gotham culture.