Lou Reed’s Turbulent Life
The first time I heard a Lou Reed song I was 18 and floating down the Chattahoochee River in a canoe. A shirtless Georgia teenager stood on the riverbank slapping his paddle at kids swimming nearby. At one point the paddle made contact with a young boy’s skull. I heard a loud “thwap” and the boy went under. The bully laughed as the boy’s friends pulled him to safety. All the while, a boombox blasted “Walk On the Wild Side.”
There was something magnetic about Reed’s sound, the raw and minimal guitar riffs, the repetitive beat, the risqué lyrics. Most rock music was safe. Reed was dangerous. His music had a dark energy, an urgent power with distorted guitars and atonal vocals.
The first Reed album I bought was Transformer (1972). From the moment he sang the words “Vicious, you hit me with a flower” I realized there was something deeper going on, ironic storytelling in a way I’d never heard in music before. On “Perfect Day” Reed sings, “You made me forget myself, I thought I was someone else, someone good.” The line encapsulated my teenage angst, self-doubt and dim hopes for the future. As Reed repeated the refrain, “You’re going to reap just what you sow,” the words penetrated my soul like a warning, a call to pay attention to my own deeds.
When I discovered the Velvet Underground, I was spellbound. The music was real and edgy as if made in someone’s…
