Lou Reed crosses the Finish Line

Lou Reed was one of the greatest rock’n’roll stars of them all. In creative terms, he was truly one of the giants of modern music.

Everyone who has any interest in rock’n’roll knows just how crucial The Velvet Underground were. That was where Lou first came to real prominence, collaborating with John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, and with guest singer Nico, to produce a ramshackle record of astonishing power, magnetism and beauty in The Velvet Underground and Nico in 1967.
That record was way ahead of its time. John Cale, a Welshman, was an experimental musician, with a radical view of the noise you could make on a rock ‘n’ roll record. Lou Reed shared that sensibility both musically and lyrically. The guiding principle, they both knew, was to approach your work with bravery and ambition, not to be cowed by convention, but to be true in the deepest sense to your artistic vision. Both Cale and Reed were determined to mint something new and challenging. That’s precisely what The Velvet Underground did.
The lyrics on The Velvet Underground and Nico were like nothing else that had ever been attempted in popular music. The way Lou Reed saw it, there was no reason why you couldn’t explore in rock ‘n’ roll the kind of themes that writers like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Hugh Selby Jnr were dealing with in poetry and in fiction. And so he wrote about sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll before that phrase had even been coined. The songs on The Velvet Underground and Nico – or most of them – explored an outsider world of pimps, prostitutes, pushers, addicts and what would conventionally be dismissed as deviants and losers. But while it was in many ways outré, as a cumulative statement, the album embodied an old ideal: judge not and you shall not be judged; condemn not and you shall not be condemned; forgive and you shall be forgiven. 
It didn’t flinch from depicting sexual obsession, notably in ‘Venus In Furs’: based on the 1869 story of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, it is one of the raunchiest and most explicit songs in the rock canon. It dealt with drug addiction too in the magnificent surging, visceral ‘Heroin’, which starts slowly but builds in tempo to mimic the rush of the drug, and in the archly sardonic and defiantly louche ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’. 
In many respects The Velvets’ debut was a macho record. Like von Sacher-Masoch’s work, it has been accused of being misogynistic. But much more important was that it had a gripping cinema verité quality. It brought the listener down onto the streets of New York, and illuminated the characters there, mostly sympathetically. It delved into the subconscious with rivetting insight. And it gave immediacy and dignity to people who spend their days scuffling by, on the margins of society. In this, it was a visionary gesture of inclusiveness, which presaged many of the changes that would happen, in terms of our understanding of sex and sexuality in particular, over the following forty years.
The Velvet Underground and Nico was greeted with almost total indifference when it was released. It was quietly banned by numerous radio stations. But gradually, its legend and its sway grew. A commercial failure at first, it went on to become regarded as one of the finest – and most influential – albums of all time. Eventually, much later, it went platinum in the UK. Sales mounted. But not to the extent that the artistic courage invested in its making merited.
Since that early, enormously courageous flourish, Lou Reed continued to make vital ground-breaking music of extraordinary power and distinctiveness throughout his career. His second album as a solo performer, Transformer, released in 1972, gave further substance to rumours of his genius. ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ is one of the most resonant tracks in the history of rock. Its title and inspiration were taken from the Nelson Algren novel A Walk On The Wild Side and it brought vividly to life the exotic cast of characters – including transexuals, male prostitutes and freeform hustlers – who had hung around Andy Warhol’s New York studio, The Factory. It oozed sleaze of a kind that most people only ever dream about. And between the coloured girls saying ‘do de do de do de do de do doooo’ and the saxophone dripping carnal suggestiveness between verses, it boasted two of the greatest hooks of all time. 
Among its eleven tracks, Transformer also contained the irresistibly evocative ‘Perfect Day’ and the gorgeously paranoid and solipsistic (bum, bum, bum) ‘Satellite of Love’. While it wasn’t properly appreciated on its release, the album gradually asserted its strengths, showing eventually in a series of Greatest Albums of All Time polls, including in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Q Magazine and Hot Press.
You might think that it doesn’t get any better than Transformer. And perhaps you’d be right. But for his next trick, Lou delivered Berlin, a concept album about a doomed couple, immersed in a tragically dysfunctional relationship, which finds its denouement in the woman’s suicide. The record is unflinching in its depiction of emotional collapse. It is as determinedly uncommercial as it gets. But it is a record that ultimately stood the test of time, not least when Lou toured it in 2007 to widespread acclaim. It was a moment which confirmed Reed’s mastery as a composer and orchestrator, with a special feel for the nuances of live performance, as he coaxed moments of rare beauty from the 30 piece band and 12 person choir. 
Lou Reed’s attitude was always that the work comes first and he was uncompromising in the demands he made in pursuit of great art – of himself as well as those he worked with. He had a reputation for cantankerousness. Even an artist as confident in her own skin as Patti Smith has written about how intimidating he could be. But we can easily forgive him that. Because he went on to produce a series of outstanding records, from the stunning and under-rated Street Hassle, with its urgent use of cello, through the magnificent trilogy of New York, Magic and Loss and Set The Twilight Reeling.
I think of songs like the gorgeous ‘Halloween Parade’, ‘Beginning of a Great Adventure’ and ‘The Last Great American Whale’; of ‘Sword of Damocles’ and ‘Magic and Loss’; and of ‘NYC Man’, ‘Finish Line’ and ‘Set The Twilight Reeling’. What they have in common is that the voice is so unmistakably that of Lou Reed. It is in the intonation. It is in the edge of vulnerability and emotion. It is in the disdain for conventional notions about metre and line-length. It is in the refusal to dilute the language or to pander to the demands of the audience or the dictates of the market. It is in the direct, unblinking expression of real truths about humanity, no matter how uncomfortable they might be. And it is in the choice of subject matter, as Lou reflected the increasingly inescapable fragility of those around him, as he wrote about life, love, poetry, art and death.
That voice. Lou singing was like Lou talking directly to you. You could hear every word. It was personal, immediate, literate and wise. In songs like ‘Sex With Your Parents’, there were bursts of unapologetic anger at the politicians, policy makers and others who try in every way they can to trammel our lives and limit our experiences of the wonderful, tender possibilities of sexual engagement, openness and sharing – our experiences of the essence of life itself. But his work was also inclusive, generous, compassionate and ultimately life-affirming. He was one of the most distinctive voices in music. He was also one of the most enduring.
I can’t get the lyrics of ‘Finish Line’, Lou’s tribute to Sterling Morrison, out of my head.
“Two rented brothers,” Lou sang, “Their faces keep changing/ Just like these feelings I have for you/ And nothing’s forever not even five minutes/ When you’re headed for the finish line.”
For us mere mortals it is true that nothing is forever. Lou himself has indeed reached the finish line. But great art outlives us all and Lou Reed has given us some of the greatest art in modern music. We’ll still be listening in 100 years time...