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By PAUL ZOLLO
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don't know how to write songs," Lou Reed says. We're in a hotel dining room in Denver, where he is trying to cajole a decent meal out of a very flustered waiter, less than two hours before he is to perform with his band at the old Paramount Theater around the corner. "I really don't know how I write songs. But I do know how not to write songs. I know how to screw it up. So I spend my time removing the things that get in the way of it. the impediments that block it. The negative things, the attitudinal things. And since I know how to screw it up, I know how not to. Just don't do those things that get in the way of it, and then it can start. "
And when it does start, what happens is not that Lou starts inventing the kind of astounding songs he's been writing since the sixties. What happens is that he starts listening. And what he hears is something he calls his "permanent radio," which transmits a non-stop broadcast of verbiage both serious and hilarious, specific and broad, narrative and impressionistic, full of comedy and tragedy, kindness and indifference, magic and realism, love and hate, sex and violence, set in present, past and future America and the world. It's a station that only Lou receives, but there's no guarantee on any given night that he'll be able to tune into it. ("I don't sleep," he says more than once.) When the reception is clear, what he hears, however, is not music but words. "Yes, words," he says. "And my job is just to write it down."
And what happens, I ask, if you don't write them down?
"They're gone," he says.
For good?
"Yeah, pretty much."
The real problem, as he explains in the following conversation, is not how to write the songs, but what to do with all the ones he receives. Many times during our talk, he said softly, as if confiding a long-kept secret, "Writing an album is nothing for me. Nothing."
Nothing though they might seem to Lou as he creates them, they are certainly far from insubstantial to the legion of Lou-lovers around the world, an extensive network of fans from Boston to Borneo and beyond that shouts "Loooouuuuu" with the same devotion that Springsteen's fans shout "Brooooooce." (Both, in fact, sound like boos to the uninitiated.) These are the ones who have hung on every one of his words, both spoken and sung, since his early days with the Velvet Underground, and through successive solo masterpieces such as Berlin (1972), Street Hassle (1978), The Blue Mask (1982), New York {1989), Magic and Loss (1990), Songs For Drella (written with John Cale) 1991, and most recently, Ecstasy (2000.)
Unlike other songwriters who struggle to write an album's worth of material every few years, Lou Reed - even at the ripe old age of 58 - struggles with the frustration of not having an outlet for the full blossom of his creativity, and so channels it into other arenas: an gallery show of his photography, for example, or a musical ("Time Rocker") written with Robert Wilson.
At an age when many of his peers are trying to summon up the energy to do another oldies tour singing their old hits, Lou is on fire, spitting out the words to to the jazzy, metallic, "Ecstasy" or the breathtaking tirade of imagery in "Rock Minuet," maybe the most graphically violent song ever written in waltz-time.
In the curse of the alley
The thrill of the street
On the bitter cold docks
Where the outlaws all meet
In euphoria drug
In euphoria heat
You could dance to the rock minuet
From "Rock Minuet"
by Lou Reed.
The son of an accountant, he was born on March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn's Beth El Hospital, and grew up in a Freeport, a suburb of Long Island. From an early age on, her had a passion both for the expansive poetry and prose of his teacher and mentor, Delmore Schwartz, and for the sound of pure, electric rock and roll. From his teenage years on, his one goal was to merge the two forces, and infuse the unlimited expression inherent in poetry and fiction with the electricity of rock and roll.
And unlike Dylan and Neil Young, both of whom fell in love with the simplicity of folk music, Lou was steadfast from the start in his love for the electric guitar. At Syracuse University he fell in with fellow guitarist Sterling Morrison, and the two found they both shared a love for exploring the electric edges of the instrument, experimenting with the use of feedback, and playing off the droning dissonances they could coax out of thin air together.
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Like John Lennon, Lou had been in bands since he was a kid, and was wise to the notion of only getting the best people possible. So it was a few years before he found another member for his band, classically-trained John Cale, a tremendously gifted musician who was fluent on many instuments, including piano, viola, and bass. Lou's choice for drummer was Moe Tucker, who managed to keep the rhythm going down on earth, even when the others went into orbit. They named theymselves after a notorious paperback then making the rounds that detailed the dirty details of suburban sex, The Velvet Underground.
The VU, as they are commonly known, were never embraced by critics during their short span from '65 to '70, but they were warmly welcomed into the fold of the New York art community, attracting the attention of Andy Warhol, who decided he would produce their first album, despite his lack of any actual musical knowhow.
He also decided the beautiful model Nico, although she couldn't sing very well, should serve as occasional vocalist for the band. Warhol was already an international icon at this time, and his declaration of the VU as the house band of his own Factory gave them easy access to landing a record deal.
From the start, the VU made music together and Lou wrote and sang the words. While other bands sang songs of peace and love, his reflected the dark side of the sixties , the violence, sex, drugs - topics that have hardly ever been conveyed in songs, and surely never with the kind of defiant authenticity Lou brings to everything he touches. You know Lou has not only been there, he's survived. When he sings about about heroin in his famous song of the same name, he does so with an unapologetic lucidity which is entirely unique to him, and which and which the song makes perfect sense. "That's what it's all about," he says vehemently. "You have got to believe the singer."
The VU went on to record four albums: The Velvet Underground and Nico, White Light/White Heat, The Velvet Underground and Loaded. All of them were roundly panned upon release, as were their live concerts. "When the Velvet Underground was around," Lou says, "We sold almost no records. Literally."
In 1972 came his first solo album, Lou Reed, which included some classics written for VU, including "Lisa Says." Transformer came next, produced by Lou-devotees David Bowie and Mick Ronson. Containing "Walk On The Wild Side," which is said to be based on remembrances of his time within the Warhol galaxy, and to this day it remains Lou's most famous song.
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Like Neil Young and Dylan, Lou has managed to step up to the plate almost every year with a new album of original material, and like both of those artists, every few years or so he hits one way out of the park and makes a masterpiece. While there might be some dispute among his fans over which albums deserve this designation, few will argue with the inclusion of Berlin (1973), Sally Can't Dance (1974), Street Hassle (1978) and The Blue Mask (1982).
Then in 1989 came the amazing New York, a tour-de-force of songwriting that succeeded in conveying the divisive results of Reagan era, which split our nation into disparate parts as different as darkness from light.
…there's an opera at Lincoln Center
Movie stars arrive by limousine
The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
But the lights are out on the mean streets
A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
He's selling plastic roses for a buck…
From "Dirty Blvd."
By Lou Reed
With New York and the albums that followed it, such as Magic and Loss and Songs for Drella, both of which delve into death in their own ways, Reed reversed the conventional rock pattern of writing one's greatest songs at the start of one's career. Good when he started, he's consistently gotten even better over the years, more in command of the language of rock and roll than ever. One of the shifts he's made is that he writes songs on computer now, a tool ideally suited to the rapid-fire transcription necesssary to preserve the onslaught of words he receives. Before the dawn of the PC, he would just write them down anywhere and hope to collect enough when the song was done. "Yeah, " he said. "Matchbook covers. Pieces of paper. Arrows with rewrites pointing to another piece of paper and it's written upside down. Now there's version one, version two, three, four, ad infinitum."
Lou is in great shape, both physically and creatively. At the age of 58, he's as lithe as ever, playing muscular, full-tilt rock for three hours every night on this current tour. And when Lou plays, he rocks.
He's a man of many contradictions. Or maybe they only seem like contradictions, because he has so often been portrayed inaccurately in the press. Said to be sullen and surly, he's actually warm and gracious. Thought to be darkly serious, he's in fact quite humorous, with a heartfelt respect for great comics such as Groucho, whose volume of letters he was in the midst of reading, as well as Chaplin, who he called "a phenomenally talented guy." Even Jackie Gleason received Lou's praise, both for his comedy and his composition of the "Honeymooner" theme.
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Though he's surely aware of his immeasurable influence on a vast array of songwriters, from Bowie to Strummer to Cobain, he's a modest, unassuming man, much more interested in explaining the intricate schematics of his guitar rig than any rehashing of past glories and/or controversies. When discussing his friend Andy Warhol, for example, rather than celebrate his own role in Warhol's exclusive cadre, he mentions more than once that Andy felt he was lazy, and not productive enough.
There's a funeral tomorrow at St. Patrick's
The bells will ring for you
What must you have been thinking
When you knew the time had come for you
I wish I hadn't thrown away my time
On so much human and so much less divine
The end of the last temptation
The end of a dime store mystery"
From "Dime Store Mystery"
By Lou Reed
He's intimately and passionately involved with every aspect of his music, always striving to capture in a cold recording studio the heat of a live performances. And he goes out of his way when performing live to ensure that the sound in a cavernous concert hall or arena has the same clarity and warmth of a studio. Michael Soldano, whose custom-made amps have endeared him to Lou and other famous guitarists, said, "Lou Reed has the best ears in the business. He can hear subtleties in tone that most people never hear. He is beyond a perfectionist in terms of sound. He goes to a great extent, and spares no expense, to get the greatest possible sound he can get. "
The one thing he doesn't like to make time for is interviews. Not so because he has colossal disdain for journalists, although he does. "All this stuff about me not liking journalists," he said somewhat apologetically after polishing off a couple of lamb-chops, "is not really accurate. It's just that I don't like talking about myself. Why would I? I mean, that's really work. I don't listen to my own stuff. Why should I? I already know my stuff. I would much rather listen to someone else."
BLUERAILROAD: You once said, about your own songwriting, that you hear songs all the time, like a "permanent radio." Is that accurate - are songs coming to you all the time?
LOU REED: Most of the time, yeah. On a good day. I hear stuff, yeah. It's fun.
Fun to hear them, or fun to make them into songs?
Fun just listening. To whatever it is.
Do you hear words and music?
Mostly just words. Sometimes I just hear words just for fun. You know, just kidding around. I only write it down if I'm officially making a record.
Have there been times when you tried to tune into it and couldn't?
Yeah. Lots of times. Oh yeah. It used to scare me to death. Not that you can do anything about it. Particularly if I don't know where I want to go. I'm so happy when I hear the regular thing again. It makes me so happy. When I hear that stuff going on in my head, unbidden, I just love that. And when it happens that there is nothing, I walk away. I say, okay, not this week.
Do you have any thoughts about where that comes from, or what makes that happen?
Who knows? I don't have a clue. I just don't want to get in the way of it. And some of it is also being in shape, in fact. It does make it better. For me.
(continued ...)
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