1992 in albums: Magic and Loss, Lou Reed

An aging rocker goes toe-to-toe with death

By 1992, many of the first generation of rock’n’roll icons were gone. Elvis had died in ’77. John Lennon was shot and killed in 1980. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison — all dead, frozen in eternal youth.

For the ones who survived, an even worse fate awaited.

Middle age.

1992 saw Lou Reed turning 50, by which point he had already had two careers. First as the enigmatic lead singer of The Velvet Underground, a band that revolutionized art rock with a little help from Andy Warhol (Warhol died in 1987). Later, he became a mainstream solo star thanks to the album Transformer, produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson (Ronson died in 1993).

Magic and Loss is a stark record, bare as a hospital waiting room, that talks about this moment in life, when all your friends are dying and you’re not sure why the universe has decided that you should stick around.

This is Reed at his most humane, humble and vulnerable as he’s ever been. Describing a friend’s funeral in ‘Goodby Mass’, he sings, “Trying hard to listen to your friends who have come/Some of them are famous and some are just like me.” Visiting a terminally ill friend in ‘No Chance’, he thinks “I see you in the…