The death of a rock icon is something that affects people in trivial and profound ways…unless it’s experienced on Facebook. In the “status update” avalanche where sad news abuts people talking about sports, food, their day, and ubiquitous selfies, the world becomes flat and emotions are experienced in flashes. The unique quality of an artist gets pushed to down the news feed crawl until it become just more noise in our constant search for something interesting.
#LouReedIsDead.
Sad.
I can’t believe it.
This is devastating news.
OMFG!
Why!
Many of these sentiments last about 15 minutes on one’s feed, and then it’s gone. That’s why I never posted anything about Reed on my Facebook wall. To me, it was meaningless. Now, I’m not the person to write a tribute to Lou Reed. I didn’t know him. He was probably an asshole. And if I did meet him, I’d probably want to punch him in the face. Still, the person and the artist are, at times, a separate thing. The person who was Lou Reed is a mystery to me. The artist that was Lou Reed is something that I connected with that goes far beyond a pithy sentence on Facebook.
Back in the ’80s and ’90s, I was mired in postmodern philosophy where names like Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, Baudrillard, and Rorty were all the rage. I waded through the thickets of their work trying (hopelessly at times) to figure out what they were saying. It wasn’t until I started teaching that it all started to click. If you want an easy-to-understand definition of postmodernism (other than one of my favorites, “It gives bullshit a bad name”), it’s this: The smashing together of styles into a shared space without regard for thematic uniformity. Think of a classic image of the New York City skyline. Or if you can’t here’s a good example:
See how the buildings complement one another? There’s a uniformity that connotes a kind of modern style that you can point to as an example of an era. But if you suddenly insert something out of time or “futuristic,” you get a postmodern pastiche that’s a bit disturbing:
Lou Reed was that postmodern pastiche in the uniformity of rock. Yes, he adhered to certain musical conventions in rock music, but he was much more about disrupting, transgressing, and just plain messing with the audience through his music and lyrics. He wasn’t particularly good at singing, and, quite frankly some of his songs sucked, but what he lacked in mainstream qualities that the music-buying audience would find pleasing, he excelled in turning them off by just being that bit of postmodernism in a music industry that pushes artists toward uniformity. And that’s what I liked about him. I wasn’t a super fan who bought everything he released and can recite lyrics or rattle off minutiae about this or that album. In fact, I got introduced to his music through a very suburban mainstream medium: MTV. The song? “I Love You Suzanne.” Totally a throwback to “another time,” but I liked his quirky quality. I certainly knew Lou’s music from “Walk on the Wild Side,” but that seemed like “old people’s music” to me at the time. It wasn’t until the album New York came out that I started to develop a taste for his music. I was in college, and looking for music that was alternative so I could somehow cleanse my suburban musical tastes that just seemed so uncool at SF State. It wasn’t that I was pretending to like his music, I really connected with it and found an artist that I could glom onto because the songs he wrote had a grittiness that I found appealing. I went through a “Lou Reed phase” were I purchased everything that he released. And from the late ’80s to 2000, Reed was fairly prolific. Indeed, it was his tribute to Andy Warhol with John Cale (Songs for Drella) that I thought was touching and a demonstration of wonderful songwriting — mostly because there was so much biography and history woven into the lyrics. Songs for Drella sealed the deal between me and Lou, and for the next ten years, I bought whatever he released. So, in my record collection, it was these albums that graced my CD shelf
New York (1989)
Songs for Drella (with John Cale) (1990)
Magic and Loss (1992)
Set the Twilight Reeling (1996)
Ecstasy (2000)
I wasn’t particularly interested in the Velvet Underground’s music (though, Julie did have the 1967 album, The Velvet Underground & Nico in her collection), I was more interested in Lou as a contemporary artist, not a “classic.” I felt that his music at the time fit in with that kind of postmodernism I was reading and, by extension, a kind of secondary socialization of my identity. I wanted Lou’s “dressed in all black” coolness for myself, but I was far too square for that. I supposed I admired his transgressive quality, but didn’t want to experience or live it. I thought as an artist who did what he wanted was something I could aspire to as a writer, or even someone who would eventually find himself in the very conservative realm of academia (All that “liberal professor” BS you’re fed by Fox News is just that. Despite what you may think, the people in academics are extremely resistant to change). Whatever those flights of fancy I had, those artistic aspirations, those desires to live a life that was fundamentally different than what I was raised in, eventually evaporated. By 2000, Lou’s latest musical offering seemed silly and uninspiring. What I saw (or maybe projected) onto his music from the time I was connecting with it was simply gone. Postmodern philosophy was stupid to me. The idea of transgressing conventional norms was for people under 25, and whatever soundtrack that reflected that kind of Gen X insouciance I had cultivated in the ’80s and ’90s was decentered and marginalized. I had become conventional, practical, responsible, and pretty boring.
When Lou teamed up with Metallica to record Lulu, I was shaking my head at what he was trying to do. In retrospect, he was being true to himself. He was the proverbial turd in the punchbowl on that record. Metal fans can be a conservative bunch as well, and Lou’s transgressive singing and lyrics really pissed off Metallica’s audience. I was reading the Wiki on that album, and there’s a quote from Reed about Lulu that went a little something like this: “I don’t have any fans left. After Metal Machine Music, they all fled. Who cares? I’m essentially in this for the fun of it.” Well, that’s not true that he didn’t have any fans left, but his playful quality of taking conventions and standing them on their heads was something that reminded me why I was a fan of Reed’s music when I was PoMo/Gen X/Slacker.
We all die.
What we leave behind is what matters.
It’s work.
J
November 2, 2013 at 11:27 amWhat a lovely and honest tribute. There’s so much seeking your own identity in your 20s, by the music that you choose. The clothes that you wear so often reflect your taste in music. Then you hit 30, get practical and as you say, boring. Oh well.
I found myself sadder than I expected to be at Lou Reed’s passing. Not as sad as I would be if someone I knew in real life were to die, but still. I generally don’t care when celebrities die. But as you said, he lived his life on his own terms. I liked some of his music a lot, not at all other music. But god he was cool, right? He didn’t give a crap what anyone else thought. I remember in my more pretentious youth saying, if I could have any job in the world, I’d like to write lyrics for Lou Reed. As if I ever wrote a lyric in my life, which somehow might be a prerequisite for the job, right? I was a poser. But wow, he was cool. I’m sad that he died, but glad that he did so on his terms.
Ted
November 2, 2013 at 1:12 pmHe was a cool guy, but sometimes cool guys are jerks. 🙂 But what you said about music in your 20s helping to shape your identity is right. I think by your 30s, it’s tough to “keep up” because you’re doing just that…keeping up. I think instead of being in the know about current music, one should just enjoy the music they like, but still be adventurous about stuff you know nothing about. Meaning, don’t automatically shut yourself off from new artists just because you feel you’re too old for this stuff.
Rob Smith
November 6, 2013 at 11:26 amAs is the case with many/most/all people, there are times to put up defenses, and there are times to let them down. Reed was the kind of artist who lived for art, lived within his own art, certainly, and had very low tolerance for others who didn’t do the same, or couldn’t, or – worse – couldn’t but pretended they did. But nobody – not even Lou Reed – could be THAT prickly 24/7. Recently, I heard a 15-year-old interview Vin Scelsa conducted with him, and he came across as gregarious and generous with his time and comments – dare I say even a little charming, in a Lou Reed-kinda way. As personal reflections at first trickled, then gushed, in, you got the sense – from people like Patti Smith, Lars Ulrich, Tony Visconti, and others, people who knew him – that he was that kind of generous individual with those closest to him, those who GOT him. There was indeed a man behind that mask, after all.
My introduction to his music was similar to yours – I dug into Mistrial when I was 15 or 16, based on reviews I’d read. I listened to it again last week, and I still dig it, even though it is, as Alfred Soto so accurately put it, “defiantly ephemeral.” Like you, I have most of his late output (though, to be honest, I’m not a fan of Songs for Drella; I think Magic and Loss is the better eulogy-type record), and recently had even stumbled upon his drone album, Hudson River Wind Meditations, and use it for meditation.
But it was in college that I dug deep into his work. I think that for people who came around a generation or a generation and a half after his VU and early solo work, college is the ONLY place to do such digging. In fact, I used to say that colleges and universities should leave a care package in the dorm room of every incoming freshman art, lit, and comm media major, and that care package should contain the first four VU albums (though, these days, I suppose it would be a thumb drive or some such thing). Because they’re gonna find ‘em eventually.
Then again, that would deny them the journey to that music, which is often just as rewarding as that final reward.
Nice job, Ted.
Ted
November 6, 2013 at 6:45 pmIf you’re an artist, there’s a certain libertarian streak that makes you kind of despise people at times. After all, one’s work can be a kind of “Song of Myself” thing for those who are serious about their art as art, and not as a means to stardom. Ironically, Reed was so deeply connected to Andy Warhol — who was addicted to fame as he was to his work. I suppose Reed took the “work” element of his mentor and pushed fame to the margins as much as he could.
Re: digging for music. Getting lost in a record just by laying in your room and kind of getting sucked up by the music seems like something of a bygone era. I used to love to just put my headphones on, or turn the stereo up and just let the music and lyrics just kind of wash over me. Nowadays? I rarely listen to music unless I’m “doing something else.” Makes me wonder if anyone in their late teens or early 20s can just listen to a song without distractions or thinking they have to run to social media to tell people what they are listening to. I know, I sound like an old man. 🙂