This is no attempt at a definitive best-of by any stretch and it is NOT a damn
slideshow. Rather, these are songs that meant something personally to the two
of us, five each. By all means, if all you know of Lou Reed is “Walk on the
Wild Side” or “Sweet Jane,” feel free to start digging. There’s a lot of good
stuff to find.
Deb: “Venus in Furs”
Yeah, it's pretty much a direct cop of the erotic novel that was stolen lock, stock and barrel for 50 Shades of Grey, but in the context of pop music from that era, this is about as adventurous as it gets. Juxtaposing "taste the whip, now bleed for me" against the "transgressive" notion of Mick Jagger mewling "let's spend the night together" is like screening Last Tango In Paris after Beach Blanket Bingo.
Kara: “Heroin”
For all the taboo subject matter the Velvets covered over four albums or so worth of songs, they and Reed didn’t do it more compellingly than this track from the first album. It presents the user matter-of-factly. It doesn’t condemn his use, but it doesn’t glorify it by any stretch. Musically, the track begins with a slowly strumming, gets more and more frenzied with Cale’s manic viola sounding as if it might go supernova at any second , mimicking the initial rush of the drug as the user’s no longer in control. A dark masterpiece.
Deb: “Pale Blue Eyes”
Proof positive that Lou Reed and Smokey Robinson shared at least a shred or two of DNA. It's one of the purest expressions of unfulfilled desire these ears have ever heard -- right up there with "The Love I Saw In You Was Just a Mirage." The "linger on" aspect lends a permanence, a sense that this guy is not only in love with you, but entangled in a way that's going to destroy him, you, and pretty much everything else in sight. Sigh.
Kara: “Candy Says”
Yes, “Lola” and “Dude Looks Like a Lady” were hits written by other bands. But they were more about encounters of a sexual nature. Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”, while showing a better understanding (note the proper pronoun usage) of the trans folk in the song, it was still somewhat of a surface view.
But Reed clearly was capable of an empathetic view of trans folk. He later was in a relationship with Rachel, a trans woman who inspired the “Coney Island Baby” album and its terrific title track in particular.
But, his most empathetic and saddest song empathized with what it can feel like to be transsexual or transgender. Written about Candy Darling, one of the trans women in the Warhol scene, the lead song from the third VU album, addresses both the dysphoria (“I’ve come to hate my body and all it requires in this world”) and the desire to be free, not just to be one’s self, but arguably of the stresses of the decadent scene (“I’m gonna watch the bluebirds fly over my shoulder. I’m gonna watch ‘em pass by me, maybe when I’m older”).
The song’s melancholy weariness became more poignant in retrospect, as Darling passed away in 1974 from cancer before she reached the age of 30, the types of freedom yearned for in the song ultimately out of reach and taken away.
Deb: “Caroline Says II”
Reed dealt with pain as pleasure and pain as pain in the Velvets. This character study is one that posits pain as the inevitable byproduct of love. Caroline -- like Stephanie, who inhabited the song in an earlier version -- is so cold that "all her friends call her Alaska." But who can blame her, given the lover who looms just out of frame, forcing her into a steely state where another beating is something to be shrugged off. "You can hit me all that you want to," Reed sings, demonstrating a dark understanding that's as disquieting as it is moving. "I don't love you anymore."
Kara: “Kill Your Sons”
From one of Reed’s weakest albums comes one of his strongest performances. Its genesis is in the harrowing abuse he suffered as a teenager in 1956, where his parents had him treated for his bisexuality (this was 17 years before the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders). Electroshock therapy was used in an effort to “cure” him.
This 1974 song features Reed’s deadpan vocals done in one take, lending an almost indifferent air to the grim subject matter, whether it’s the shock-induced memory loss in the opening verse or the choking from getting shot up with thorazine in the third.
There’s a stinging guitar that’s buried in the mix early, then sounds as if it’s fighting to be heard above a greasy, murky mix of drums, bass and keyboard, going into a solo before a mysteriously abrupt fade.
On an often plodding, cynical and lazy record, this song avoids the laziness. A powerful, harrowing piece of angry personal reportage, it’s another prime example of Reed’s ability to turn darker subject matter into an amazing song.
Deb: “Dirt”
As eloquent and simple a statement of pure disdain as rock has ever produced. Dylan wove a web around his prey in "Positively Fourth Street," but Reed just backs his into a corner, poking the hapless foe in the chest with a sharp index finger, staring unblinkingly and mocking. Whoever this song was meant for, and it's honed to a sharp enough edge that it's clear someone is intended to be on the receiving end, probably had nightmares about it for years.
Kara: “Street Hassle”
Where Reed’s grittiness is used in service of an epic. The title track to his 1978 album, it’s three parts merged into a mini rock opera where sex, death, drugs and regret are all part of one mesmerizing piece, bobbling up at different moments.
The opening “Waltzing Matilda” (not related) piece opens with insistent cellos before Reed details (and I do mean details) a sexual encounter between two people, ending with the line “Neither one regretting a thing.”
The middle section “Street Hassle” opens with soulful, choral vocals before it details a conversation about a woman who’s overdosed, with the guitar part offering echoes of the earlier cellos and Reed calling back to part of the first piece with a “Sha la la man.” It’s harsh cinema verite stuff, especially as the character instructs the deceased’s partner, “But why don’t you grab your old lady by the feet and just lay her out on the darkened street? And by morning she’s just another hit-and-run.”
It’s like an earthier, grandeur-free version of city lives than those that populated the poetically epic “Jungleland” by Bruce Springsteen who, naturally, shows up in the third section – “Slipaway.”
This time, bass opens in the same groove as the cellos and guitars with more muted strings coming in.
Springsteen speaks the first third section, his voice put under the music in the mix to create a mumbling effect, with a sly reference to “tramps like us.”
Reed takes over to sing, revealing a person’s loneliness (“Love is gone away. And there’s no one here now. And there’s nothing left to say”), but the pronoun made it atypical for the time again, as the person being missed is “him.”
The cumulative effect is of turning around and seeing moments and dialogue from some part of the city like one epic long tracking shot in a movie. It’s an ambitious success.
Deb: “The Blue Mask”
Another of Reed's forays into self-immolation, this time rife with imagery plucked from across the philosophical and spiritual spectrums -- including a vivid conjuring of St. Sebastian as modern-day martyr. It's one of his most breathless, breakneck compositions, one that was clearly as exhausting and exhilarating for him to perform as for the listener to hang onto. Brilliant.
Kara: “Halloween Parade”
I’m not going to lie. Given the at times dark and tough subject matter elsewhere on this list, I was tempted to pick a song like “Egg Cream” with its undeniable hook and sheer joy as a reminder that not all of Reed’s catalogue is all dark subject matter.
But I had to go with this song, the second track on “New York” and its emotional centerpiece. Using the annual gay celebration in Greenwich Village as the backdrop, it’s an elegy for those lost to AIDS, a disease that claimed too many people who lived in the scenes and on the corners painted in Reed’s earlier work.
Reed draws the picture of all these people and characters he sees, from a “downtown fairy singing Proud Mary” to “five Cinderellas and some leather drags” to “Born Again Losers and Lavender Boozers”, but he also deftly weaves in those gone – “But there ain’t no Harry and no Virgin Mary, you won’t hear those voices again. And Johnny Rio and Rotten Rita, you’ll never see those faces again.”
He weaves in the most mournful lines with ones of determination. He doesn’t want to hear the bad news anymore, but asks for “no consolations please.” He confesses that he was afraid that the news was true that the person he’s singing the song to was gone (it was), but ends by saying, “See you next year at the Halloween Parade.”
It’s a brilliant piece of work, expressing clear sadness and pain without being maudlin and expressing a determined spirit of those still here without veering into false rah-rah sentiment. In a way, it’s as perfect an example of Reed’s strengths as a songwriter as anything he ever cut.
Deb: “Venus in Furs”
Yeah, it's pretty much a direct cop of the erotic novel that was stolen lock, stock and barrel for 50 Shades of Grey, but in the context of pop music from that era, this is about as adventurous as it gets. Juxtaposing "taste the whip, now bleed for me" against the "transgressive" notion of Mick Jagger mewling "let's spend the night together" is like screening Last Tango In Paris after Beach Blanket Bingo.
Kara: “Heroin”
For all the taboo subject matter the Velvets covered over four albums or so worth of songs, they and Reed didn’t do it more compellingly than this track from the first album. It presents the user matter-of-factly. It doesn’t condemn his use, but it doesn’t glorify it by any stretch. Musically, the track begins with a slowly strumming, gets more and more frenzied with Cale’s manic viola sounding as if it might go supernova at any second , mimicking the initial rush of the drug as the user’s no longer in control. A dark masterpiece.
Deb: “Pale Blue Eyes”
Proof positive that Lou Reed and Smokey Robinson shared at least a shred or two of DNA. It's one of the purest expressions of unfulfilled desire these ears have ever heard -- right up there with "The Love I Saw In You Was Just a Mirage." The "linger on" aspect lends a permanence, a sense that this guy is not only in love with you, but entangled in a way that's going to destroy him, you, and pretty much everything else in sight. Sigh.
Kara: “Candy Says”
Yes, “Lola” and “Dude Looks Like a Lady” were hits written by other bands. But they were more about encounters of a sexual nature. Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”, while showing a better understanding (note the proper pronoun usage) of the trans folk in the song, it was still somewhat of a surface view.
But Reed clearly was capable of an empathetic view of trans folk. He later was in a relationship with Rachel, a trans woman who inspired the “Coney Island Baby” album and its terrific title track in particular.
But, his most empathetic and saddest song empathized with what it can feel like to be transsexual or transgender. Written about Candy Darling, one of the trans women in the Warhol scene, the lead song from the third VU album, addresses both the dysphoria (“I’ve come to hate my body and all it requires in this world”) and the desire to be free, not just to be one’s self, but arguably of the stresses of the decadent scene (“I’m gonna watch the bluebirds fly over my shoulder. I’m gonna watch ‘em pass by me, maybe when I’m older”).
The song’s melancholy weariness became more poignant in retrospect, as Darling passed away in 1974 from cancer before she reached the age of 30, the types of freedom yearned for in the song ultimately out of reach and taken away.
Deb: “Caroline Says II”
Reed dealt with pain as pleasure and pain as pain in the Velvets. This character study is one that posits pain as the inevitable byproduct of love. Caroline -- like Stephanie, who inhabited the song in an earlier version -- is so cold that "all her friends call her Alaska." But who can blame her, given the lover who looms just out of frame, forcing her into a steely state where another beating is something to be shrugged off. "You can hit me all that you want to," Reed sings, demonstrating a dark understanding that's as disquieting as it is moving. "I don't love you anymore."
Kara: “Kill Your Sons”
From one of Reed’s weakest albums comes one of his strongest performances. Its genesis is in the harrowing abuse he suffered as a teenager in 1956, where his parents had him treated for his bisexuality (this was 17 years before the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders). Electroshock therapy was used in an effort to “cure” him.
This 1974 song features Reed’s deadpan vocals done in one take, lending an almost indifferent air to the grim subject matter, whether it’s the shock-induced memory loss in the opening verse or the choking from getting shot up with thorazine in the third.
There’s a stinging guitar that’s buried in the mix early, then sounds as if it’s fighting to be heard above a greasy, murky mix of drums, bass and keyboard, going into a solo before a mysteriously abrupt fade.
On an often plodding, cynical and lazy record, this song avoids the laziness. A powerful, harrowing piece of angry personal reportage, it’s another prime example of Reed’s ability to turn darker subject matter into an amazing song.
Deb: “Dirt”
As eloquent and simple a statement of pure disdain as rock has ever produced. Dylan wove a web around his prey in "Positively Fourth Street," but Reed just backs his into a corner, poking the hapless foe in the chest with a sharp index finger, staring unblinkingly and mocking. Whoever this song was meant for, and it's honed to a sharp enough edge that it's clear someone is intended to be on the receiving end, probably had nightmares about it for years.
Kara: “Street Hassle”
Where Reed’s grittiness is used in service of an epic. The title track to his 1978 album, it’s three parts merged into a mini rock opera where sex, death, drugs and regret are all part of one mesmerizing piece, bobbling up at different moments.
The opening “Waltzing Matilda” (not related) piece opens with insistent cellos before Reed details (and I do mean details) a sexual encounter between two people, ending with the line “Neither one regretting a thing.”
The middle section “Street Hassle” opens with soulful, choral vocals before it details a conversation about a woman who’s overdosed, with the guitar part offering echoes of the earlier cellos and Reed calling back to part of the first piece with a “Sha la la man.” It’s harsh cinema verite stuff, especially as the character instructs the deceased’s partner, “But why don’t you grab your old lady by the feet and just lay her out on the darkened street? And by morning she’s just another hit-and-run.”
It’s like an earthier, grandeur-free version of city lives than those that populated the poetically epic “Jungleland” by Bruce Springsteen who, naturally, shows up in the third section – “Slipaway.”
This time, bass opens in the same groove as the cellos and guitars with more muted strings coming in.
Springsteen speaks the first third section, his voice put under the music in the mix to create a mumbling effect, with a sly reference to “tramps like us.”
Reed takes over to sing, revealing a person’s loneliness (“Love is gone away. And there’s no one here now. And there’s nothing left to say”), but the pronoun made it atypical for the time again, as the person being missed is “him.”
The cumulative effect is of turning around and seeing moments and dialogue from some part of the city like one epic long tracking shot in a movie. It’s an ambitious success.
Deb: “The Blue Mask”
Another of Reed's forays into self-immolation, this time rife with imagery plucked from across the philosophical and spiritual spectrums -- including a vivid conjuring of St. Sebastian as modern-day martyr. It's one of his most breathless, breakneck compositions, one that was clearly as exhausting and exhilarating for him to perform as for the listener to hang onto. Brilliant.
Kara: “Halloween Parade”
I’m not going to lie. Given the at times dark and tough subject matter elsewhere on this list, I was tempted to pick a song like “Egg Cream” with its undeniable hook and sheer joy as a reminder that not all of Reed’s catalogue is all dark subject matter.
But I had to go with this song, the second track on “New York” and its emotional centerpiece. Using the annual gay celebration in Greenwich Village as the backdrop, it’s an elegy for those lost to AIDS, a disease that claimed too many people who lived in the scenes and on the corners painted in Reed’s earlier work.
Reed draws the picture of all these people and characters he sees, from a “downtown fairy singing Proud Mary” to “five Cinderellas and some leather drags” to “Born Again Losers and Lavender Boozers”, but he also deftly weaves in those gone – “But there ain’t no Harry and no Virgin Mary, you won’t hear those voices again. And Johnny Rio and Rotten Rita, you’ll never see those faces again.”
He weaves in the most mournful lines with ones of determination. He doesn’t want to hear the bad news anymore, but asks for “no consolations please.” He confesses that he was afraid that the news was true that the person he’s singing the song to was gone (it was), but ends by saying, “See you next year at the Halloween Parade.”
It’s a brilliant piece of work, expressing clear sadness and pain without being maudlin and expressing a determined spirit of those still here without veering into false rah-rah sentiment. In a way, it’s as perfect an example of Reed’s strengths as a songwriter as anything he ever cut.
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