Lou's Wild Side

Lou’s Wild Side David Yaffe Lou Reed: A Life cannot make love to Jews anymore.” that Reed belonged there—indeed, his album four stars in Rolling Stone and by Anthony DeCurtis. (Nico upheld this policy with Leon- induction had been long overdue. But Reed told him, unsurprisingly, that he Little, Brown, 519 pp., $32.00 ard Cohen, who never forgave Lou whether or not he deserves our praise should have given it five—and accounts for his tryst.) The relationship did not as a friend, lover, and collaborator is from intimates who, without the threat “Just a perfect day/You made me forget end well. another matter, and a central concern of a living Lou Reed, tell stories that myself/I thought I was someone else/ And so it goes: David Bowie produces of DeCurtis’s book. “I do Lou Reed are less than sweet. A young artist and Someone good.” These lines—sung Reed’s only mainstream hit, “Walk on better than anybody,” Reed once said, fan named Duncan Hannah received indifferently over swelling, glam rock the Wild Side,” which many Classic about people who imitated his musical this pickup line from his hero: “Well, strings—are from “Perfect Day,” an Rock radio listeners don’t realize is style. But how well did he do Lou Reed, look, why don’t you come back to my achingly gorgeous and brutally hon- about drag queens, and is then iced out the man? hotel with me? . And you can shit in est song by Lou Reed, who died of by him for decades. Reed makes one my mouth.” When that didn’t work, liver disease four years ago at the age of rock’s great self- lacerating master- Reed offered, “I’ll put a plate over my of seventy- one. Some people thought pieces, Berlin (before even going to the DeCurtis is a veteran music critic for face, then you can shit on the plate. the song was about addiction—how a place), and then resents producer Bob Rolling Stone as well as a prolific inter- How’d you like that?” junkie escaping from reality also feeds Ezrin for having his name on it. On and viewer. Over the years he has published, Lou Reed liked to say that his child- on the escape of romance. But the song on and on. After a while, every time a in the magazine’s full transcript for- hood was so terrible that he blocked out could also be about how pleasurable, new person comes into his life, you’re mat, conversations with Paul McCart- everything up to around age thirty- one. yet impossible, it is to escape His memory of PS 192 was from your true self, and about free of nostalgia. “I couldn’t how easy it is to deceive your- have been unhappier than in self when you’ve disappointed the eight years I spent growing your own expectations. up in Brooklyn,” he recalled. The songs of Lou Reed There was no radio and no are a manual of sorts for escape. “The playground was how to keep living after you concrete and they had lunch have let yourself and every- monitors.... People were piss- one else down, or after the ing in the streets. A kid had world has done that for you. to go to the john, you raised Reed doesn’t judge anyone Steve Schapiro/Corbis/Getty Images your hand, got out of line, and for shooting heroin or defy- pissed through the wire. It was ing societal norms, or for like being in a concentration making sweet, gentle love to camp, I suppose.” someone right before they The only thing worse was OD. His songs are not senti- adolescence in Freeport, mental about death, and they Long Island, and the only never, ever try to make you thing worse than that was like the person who is singing submitting to electroshock them. He was more lacking in treatments for the crime of guile than most in rock and exploring his sexual fluidity roll and he was notoriously as a teenager. He never for- cantankerous. When he had a gave his parents, and he made liver transplant a few months them pay in song after song, before his death, The Onion including “Kill Your Sons”: ran a satirical piece: Lou Reed and Nico at Scepter Studios during the recording of the Velvet Underground’s All your two- bit psychia- “It’s really hard to get along first album, New York City, 1966 trists are giving you electro with Lou—one minute shock he’s your best friend and the next not waiting for the other shoe to drop, ney, George Harrison, Keith Richards, They say, they let you live at he’s outright abusive,” said the you’re waiting for Chekhov’s gun— Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, home, with mom and dad vital organ, describing its ongo- except that you never know when it is Bono, and countless other rock stars, Instead of mental hospital ing collaboration with the former going to go off, or what form the sacri- and some of these interviews were col- But every time you tried to read Velvet Underground front man as fice will take. lected in his anthology In Other Words a book “strained at best.” “He just has this Bettye Kronstad’s account of her (2005). DeCurtis had a natural rapport You couldn’t get to page 17 way of making you feel completely marriage to Reed is not for the squea- with Reed, too, and even quotes Reed ’Cause you forgot, where you inadequate. I can tell he doesn’t re- mish. “Whatever joy Lou brought me, as saying, with uncharacteristic gra- were spect me at all. In fact, I’m pretty there was an equal amount of pain,” ciousness, “People always say to me, So you couldn’t even read sure he’s already thinking about Kronstad recalled. “Lou Reed was the ‘Why don’t you get along with critics?’ Don’t you know, they’re gonna replacing me.” devil incarnate to many people.” Then I tell them, ‘I get along fine with An- kill your sons came the transgender Rachel, who lived thony DeCurtis.’” The joke worked because it was so with him for three years, in a relation- That little moment of sweetness He made his listeners relive the expe- true: anyone who got close to Lou— ship described by a friend as a “mar- would probably not have lasted much rience in Metal Machine Music (1975), bandmates, lovers, archivists—invari- riage made in the emergency room.” longer than a chilled- out Q&A at the an entire album devoted to the aural ably had such an experience after a After their breakup, Reed never spoke 92nd Street Y, or the nearly twenty simulation of electroshock with gui- while. of her again. While his marriage to minutes of the Velvet Underground’s tar feedback and noise—no hooks, no It is a recurring theme in Anthony Sylvia Morales was falling apart, he ex- loud and nasty masterpiece “Sister melodies, no lyrics, no free jazz–level DeCurtis’s new book, Lou Reed: A travagantly hit on Suzanne Vega in the Ray.” Reed was slightly dyslexic and chops. The liner notes ended with this Life. Lou goes to Syracuse, falls under presence of both Morales and Vega’s had a short attention span when it came kicker: “My week beats your year.” the spell of a completely ruined Del- boyfriend. We are ready to have an in- to many things, including most of the At Syracuse, Reed hosted a free jazz more Schwartz, writes “Heroin,” gets tervention with the saintly and brilliant people he ever cared about. radio show and edited a literary jour- busted for pot, makes enemies. He Laurie Anderson, Reed’s final better DeCurtis admits that the biography nal called Lonely Woman, named for moves to New York City, falls under half, before we even meet her. is “not something he would ever have the Ornette Coleman song. He played the spell of Andy Warhol, ditches Throughout this whole business, wanted, and while he was alive I would in R&B cover bands at frat parties and him, collaborates with the classi- some of it inspiring, much of it sordid, not have written it.” Now, four years studied with Delmore Schwartz, the cally trained John Cale—who adds Lou Reed is consistent with nothing but after Reed’s death, he has given us a first of a few crucial father figures, who viola and avant- garde credibility to his honesty and the purity of his work: thorough and vivid portrait of an artist was nearing the end of his tortured life Lou Reed’s limited musicianship— he never pretends to be someone else, who, he shows us, was even darker than and believed that Nelson Rockefeller forms the Velvet Underground, the much less “someone good.” During her we knew. Testimony from expert wit- was tapping his phone. (Other substi- most influential small- time band in speech for Reed’s posthumous induc- nesses—musicians, exes, friends—is tute patriarchs for Reed included War- the history of rock and roll, balks at tion to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame balanced with thoughtful descriptions hol and the songwriter Doc Pomus.) sharing credit, and ditches Cale. He as a solo artist, Patti Smith, through of albums that demonstrate a shrewd Schwartz, Reed would recall, was meets the captivating German model tears, said, “You were good, Lou. You understanding of the music business. the first great person he knew.

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