It’s very rare for me to feel emotional when a famous person dies. I am not much of a idoliser. But when Lou Reed died on Monday, I couldn’t help but feel a ping of real pain. Reed, the front man of the Velvet Underground who then pursued a successful solo career was a legend of rock and roll from the 60s and 70s, a legend whose influence continues unabated today, even as he died at the age of 71.
My relationship with Reed, when reflecting on it, is actually quite shallow. I don’t own any Velvet Underground albums and I’m pretty sure I haven’t listened to any of them in full (unless my parents played them when I didn’t realise it as a child). I initially came into contact with him through his solo album – Transformer – probably his most famous piece, which included his most famous single ‘Walk on the Wild Side’.
I came across Transformer as it was produced by my all time favourite artist – David Bowie. In my ongoing quest to listen and appreciate everything Bowie I bought Transformer to get a sense of his production skills. And in doing so I gained a true appreciation of Reed as an artist. Transformer is a picture of sexual exploits, an exploration in homosexuality, and one that does so in a brooding, thinking, deep manner – an exploration of the topic that asks the listener to explore it themselves rather than screaming it in your face. And that is the true brilliance of it (despite some calling it ‘artsyfarsty homo stuff’)
Yet, despite my love for Transformer, I still think of my relationship with Reed as being quite shallow. Transformer is just one album out of a huge collection, a snap shot in time that cannot create a true picture. Yet, for some reason I still feel a connection with Reed as an artist – a connection to a legend. I suspect I am not the only one who is like this. It seems as though the relationship with Reed, whether through The Velvet Underground or his solo work, doesn’t come necessarily for many through him individually, but rather through his influence and what he represented. Reed was bigger than the individual. He was (amongst many others) a representation of a time and a space and one that will live through history.
First, obviously his influence came through his music. As Brian Eno famously said, the first Velvet Underground album only sold 30,000 copies, but every one of the people who bought one of those albums started their own band. Reed was a musicians’ musician, and in many ways there’s nothing that could be more influential.
But it wasn’t just music. Reed represented a time and a place – a space in history. Guy Rundle explains it best:
“When Dylan, Cohen or Carole King die, the grief will be general and real, because they will have at some point connected to our hearts, and death will be not merely the end of music but of a relationship.
But by definition there was no relationship with Lou Reed. His words and music were the world turned away from us, lesser and diminished, drawled from the corner of a mouth. Riding in a studz bearcat, those were different times. That’s why there cant help but feel something ersatz about this mass outpouring. Mourning not the man, but the world that could make such life possible, something so raw and real and strange and true. We work our way now, through the dying heroes of late modernity, because we know something is dying with them, an illusion about what the world might offer, in terms of radical breach, other.”
When I think about Reed – his life, his time, his sexuality, his exploits, I, like I think many sometimes see a world that is passing that I wish I could have been part of. I see pure rock that skipped the commercial vibe – rock that was about the music first and the money second. I see music, parties, drugs and sex, that is for some painted through a lense of purity (the music) and excitement (the parties, drugs and sex) – a time when music, art and culture was at its best. I see a time of the legends – the Beatles, Rolling Stones, David Bowie etc. – the legends who shaped an explosion in art and culture that we have never seen since. I see a time that many of us seem to long for and a time that is dying out.
I’m not sure whether this is real, or a fake longing for a time past. Part of me suspects that this time never really existed in the way we see it – that it wasn’t as exciting, or pure as we wish it to be. I suspect that the lives of people such as Bowie and Reed weren’t as great in many ways as we hold them up to be – the lives of drugs, sex, and alcohol were probably not as exciting as we paint them to be. In fact I suspect they were quite terrifying. I suspect as well that for many those sorts of lives – this sort of culture continues on. That’s not just about a culture of drugs, sex, rock and alcohol (although that does continue), but also one of creative expression that will live on for decades to come. Just as Reed was writing music and living a life that will influence society for decades to come, I suspect we are all doing the same today – in one way or another.
We seem to have developed a story about the past of rock and roll that we cannot and will never live up to. This was, we tell ourselves, the golden era of art and music , and it is now gone. No one will be able to live up to it, no one will ever be the same, our culture will never be as great. I don’t know why we tell this story – I suspect it may come from some for of dissatisfaction of the world in which we live today – a dissatisfaction that I truly feel. But I suspect the stories we are telling ourselves are myths – myths of the times that existed, and myths of the times that we live in today.
That doesn’t deny the real influence and value of Reed as a musician, or as a rock icon. Reed deserves his adulation – his music and life were truly influential. Albums like Transformer deserve ongoing critical acclaim – his art was exceptional.
But as we mourn him, we can also ask the question, as we look back on the time we are starting to lose, the time we are starting to mourn, was it all a myth? Have we truly lost something – or did it never really exist in the first place? Does it continue to exist today and we are just ignoring or shunning it or even more likely telling ourselves it has disappeared when it is right in front of our faces?
We tell ourselves stories of past. Stories of legends such as Reed and the times in which he existed. Stories of places, times and experiences we wish we could have been in. Reed was a legend in many senses of the word – a legend in music, a legend in time, and a legendary story.
Vale.