Since working my way through "R" during my project of converting audio cassettes to mp3s, I've been trying to figure out how to write about Lou Reed, and now he's dead.
I was captivated by New York when I was in college, a work of social commentary which nailed the cultural vacuity and hypocrisy of the late 80s with scathing clarity and humor. Lou Reed, very simply, was rock and roll: a viciously skillful guitarist, an astonishingly insightful lyricist, and unapologetically self-destructive. Frankly, I'm surprised he made it to 71.
What makes it hard to write about Lou Reed is the stunning variety of his output, some of which is deliberately offensive and off-putting, some boringly sentimental, some listenable only by masochists, and some mind-bogglingly brilliant. I've read a lot of Lou Reed criticism, and I've concluded much of it misses the mark because it confuses his anger for cynicism. That's not the case at all. Lou Reed was absolutely sincere at all times. Even Metal Machine Music, which I am not ashamed to say I hate, was no joke; one doesn't return to a joke thirty years later and form a touring trio to revisit and rework its themes.
The type of anger of which Lou Reed was capable is very specific: it's the outrage of disappointment in a world which consistently refuses to live up to one's romantic expectations. Lou Reed loved extravagantly: his most well-known song, Walk on the Wild Side, finds the human beauty in the lives of tragically self-destructive people. My favorite album is Magic and Loss, in which he explores cancer, grief, and loss and responds the only way he can: with the impotent and eloquent rage of Warrior King. In that album, and in that song particularly, he expressed what it is to live in a world which should have been all that God created it to be but instead is horrifically fallen and broken because of our sin.
Lou Reed was Rock and Roll Heart just as much as he was Metal Machine Music. He never got the Gospel, but he helped me remember why I do.
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