The Ballads of Lou Reed
A definitive bio, new tribute album, and select discography reveal the tender rock & roll heart beneath Lou Reed’s “bad ass” persona
“Was he searching for something in his life, and in the end did he accomplish it?”
It was a simple question addressed to Will Hermes, author of Lou Reed: The King of New York, at a standing-room-only conversation about his recent book with The New Yorker music writer Amanda Petrusich, at the CUNY Graduate Center of New York.
Hermes replied with an anecdote about Lou Reed, the subject of his decade-long biographical journey. “One of the last things he said to a friend — he might have said this to a number of people — was, ‘I don’t want to be erased,’” Hermes noted. “He felt that with his work, by and large, people didn’t really get it. I just found it so touching: he didn’t want to be erased.”
Fat chance of that happening. Reed’s legacy has only grown since his death in 2013 from liver disease. Hermes’s biography is a 444-page page-turner that celebrates the artist without hagiography, conveys critical views without dwelling on them, and uncovers the 71 years of Reed’s complex life in glorious detail without bogging down in the weeds.
“I think if you spend enough time studying any person’s life, following their years on the planet, you kind of have empathy for people’s bad behavior,” Hermes related to Petrusich. “Writing the book was an exercise in giving somebody the benefit of the doubt, just trying to nail down the facts as best you could — and sometimes that was tricky.”
A Jury of Peers
A new covers album — The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed — drops on April 20, leading off with a funky version of the Velvet Underground rocker “I’m Waiting for the Man” by Keith Richards with assorted cohorts (and nary another Stone, unless you count drummer Steve Jordan).
The album reconfirms Lou Reed’s prowess as a balladeer. The most striking rendition comes from Rickie Lee Jones, who takes “Walk on the Wild Side” to New Orleans and reveals the late-night smoky-bar torch ballad brimming under its surface. Rufus Wainwright strips “Perfect Day” to its essence, with a melliferous vocal and warm-hued guitar and harmony by Madison Cunningham. And Mary Gautier transforms “Coney Island Baby” (with a bit of gender bending) from the lament of a kid who “wanted to play football for the coach” into a triumph of overcoming loneliness.
The whole set showcases Lou as versatile tunesmith, from Joan Jett’s grunge-pop “I’m Set Free” to Bobby Rush’s blues-funk “Sally Can’t Dance” to Lucinda Williams’ grunge-blues “Legendary Hearts.” Rosanne Cash lends country-R&B perfection to “Magician,” Lou’s haunting ode to mortality, decades before he faced it himself.
All of this follows Todd Hayes’s brilliant documentary The Velvet Underground (2021), and the all-too-short-lived archival exhibition Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars at New York’s Performing Arts Library, which still houses Reed’s archives.
A Matter of Perspective
At their CUNY talk, Hermes and Petrusich discussed Reed’s oft-abrasive persona. “He contained multitudes as a person,” Hermes said. “He had a reputation for often being nasty. I heard that from so many people — mostly people who didn’t really know him that well — and he definitely had a hair-trigger temper.”
For her part, Petrusich shared her experience of a 2007 phone interview with Reed — in which she was one of the select journalists who had an altogether pleasant exchange with him.
It may be little coincidence that Petrusich, writing for Pitchfork, favorably looked back on Metal Machine Music, Reed’s oft-derided (and oft-returned) 1975 double-album of electronic noise — and tied it his 2007 ambient noise album Hudson River Wind Meditations, which the artist created as background music for his spiritual practice of tai chi.
“I don’t know which Lou Reed I got,” Petrusich marveled.
Hermes related a story of how Reed once said, “I can play that guy Lou Reed really well. The character he created was a bad ass … but he was never 100 percent that character.”
In a heartfelt speech marking Lou Reed’s 2015 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his wife Laurie Anderson said that “Lou could take off his fame like one of his leather jackets, or he could decide to use it.” Along with endearing anecdotes, she shared three things the pair considered “rules to live by”:
- Don’t be afraid of anyone.
- Get a really good bullshit detector.
- Be really, really tender.
Many a journalist, bandmate, or befuddled NYC waiter could attest to Reed’s affinity for the first two. As for that last part about being tender, we see evidence in Lou’s most touching ballads. Here’s a short list.
Candy Says
The Velvet Underground, 1969
When the Hermes and Petrusich talk ended, this was the outro tune, with good reason: It was singled out by Reed himself as “probably the best song I’ve written.” Not bad for an ode to a transgender woman. That would be Candy Darling, one of the “superstars” in Andy Warhol’s Factory. She later popped up in Lou’s signature hit “Walk on the Wild Side,” but as Hermes points out, she’s treated with “far more empathy” here.
As the opening track to the VU’s third album, The Velvet Underground, “Candy Says” featured new recruit Doug Yule singing (probably for vocal-range reasons), but Reed performed it live — it was the last song he sang in public in 2013, shortly before he received a liver transplant (which later failed). By then the lyrics took on new meaning: “I’ve come to hate my body / And all that it requires in this life.” But he found solace in watching the bluebirds fly.
Notable cover: Garbage, 2002.
Pale Blue Eyes
The Velvet Underground, 1969
Here’s one of Reed’s earliest ballads, as evidenced by his demo tape made with John Cale in 1965 — Reed mailed the reel-to-reel to himself as a “poor man’s copyright”; the unopened package was found among his records by archivists after he died. That folksy rendition — now heard in the 2021 release Lou Reed: Words and Music — featured Reed and backup singer Cale channeling both Dylan and the Everly Brothers, with more vindictive and jejune lyrics than would appear on the Velvets’ ’68 version (alas without Cale, as Reed had fired him by then).
On the hauntingly spare VU track (with Moe Tucker playing the world’s lightest percussion), Lou’s revised lyrics waxed eloquent about a lovers’ farewell, complete with guilt about adultery. Hermes notes that the title was an “inside joke to Shelley Albin,” Lou’s first true love and early muse, whose eyes were actually brown. “This was written for someone I missed very much,” Reed wrote in his lyrics volume Between Thought and Expression. “Her eyes were hazel.” Split the difference.
Notable cover: Patti Smith & Lenny Kaye, 1996.
Sunday Morning
The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967
This is the first time most of the world heard Lou Reed’s voice. The Velvets’ groundbreaking debut album had a long gestation and lots of delays. Andy Warhol “produced” the sessions by booking the studio and staying out of the way. When the record was “done,” the real producer, Tom Wilson, still wanted a “hit” to lead it off. At Warhol’s suggestion, Reed and John Cale wrote this ballad about paranoia in early morning hours.
“Sunday Morning” is “about how you feel when you’ve been up all Saturday night and you’re crawling home while people are going to church,” said VU guitarist Sterling Morrison.
On stage the duties went to German chanteuse Nico, but in the studio Lou took the mic (with Nico on backup). Cale contributed the lovely celeste lines — much like those he later added to Nick Drake’s love song “Northern Sky” — which elevated this into dreamland. It never took off as a single, but it was an album opener for the ages.
Notable cover: Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs, 2015.
I’ll Be Your Mirror
The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967
Lou wrote this for Nico, symbolizing the bond between two artists who were temporary bandmates (and even more briefly lovers). Nico had been paired with the VU by Warhol, adding her striking Germanic mien and sultry vocals to the brooding band as they played at the Factory and toured with the roadshow Exploding Plastic Inevitable. But Reed wasn’t keen about ceding the spotlight. After one show, Nico reassured him, “Oh Lou, I’ll Be Your Mirror,” which inspired his touching lyrics: “Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know.”
The song became the band’s first single in 1966, paving the way for their debut album, but the single sank and the LP was delayed more than half a year. When it finally appeared, sporting Warhol’s spare banana cover (and signature), the baffled public wondered whether Andy had become a musical artist. In time the album would be iconic. While it may have sold just 30,000 copies initially, Brian Eno famously quipped: “Everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”
Notable cover: Lou Reed, 1997
Perfect Day
Transformer, 1972
When Reed needed a lift, he got one from an uber-fan: David Bowie. After Ziggy Stardust shot Bowie into orbit like a satellite of glam, he offered to produce Reed’s make-or-break second solo album, Transformer, with multi-talented wingman Mick Ronson at his side. Here Ronson provided piano and string arrangements that would make Elton John blush, behind Lou’s most unabashedly romantic lyrics.
The words go out to his girlfriend (soon-to-be first wife) Bette Kronstad, who started dating Lou when he split from the Velvets and moved in with his parents on Long Island. “The goal of our relationship was to launch his career,” she reflected. He repaid her with rare sincerity: “You made me forget myself / I thought I was someone else / Someone good.” The song took on a new life after its prominent role in the 1996 film Trainspotting and, more recently, Vim Vinders’ film Perfect Days. Myriad remakes made it Reed’s biggest potboiler.
Notable cover: Lou Reed & various artists, for BBC Children in Need.
Hello It’s Me
Songs for Drella, 1990
After two decades of estrangement, VU founders Lou Reed and John Cale reconciled at the funeral of Andy Warhol, the benefactor who’d ushered them into the limelight. They created Songs for Drella as a Warhol tribute, sharing song credits and vocals, and duetting with Reed on guitar and Cale on viola. The Velvet twins lock in on the album closer, Reed’s frank confession to Warhol: “I wish I’d talked to you more when you were alive / I thought you were self-assured when you acted shy / Hello it’s me.”
It was as if Warhol, the mentor who Reed had inexplicably jettisoned from his art, was as indelible as the sidekick Cale, with whom he’d done the same. The project likely led to the 1992 reunion of the Velvets … which was equally glorious and short-lived. (Lots of flying egos, according to the fax trail that Hermes uncovered.) But for a brief time, the former bandmates rekindled magic.
Notable cover: Lou Reed & John Cale, 1989
Magician (Internally)
Magic and Loss, 1992
Magic was on Reed’s mind when he set out to follow up his seminal ’89 solo album New York, still settled in with second wife Sylvia Morales and contemplating spirituality. Then another of Reed’s mentors — storied songwriter Doc Pomus — contracted cancer. Reed found himself confronting death, as an onlooking survivor, as well as mortality as a human artist. The result was Magic and Loss, a somber song cycle that reads like a set of connected short stories.
“Magician (Internally)” is the album’s touchstone, an inner dialog between a dying narrator and an imaginary savior somewhere beyond modern medicine and the Almighty: “Doctor, you’re no magician, and I am no believer / I need more than faith can give me now.” It simultaneously strikes tones of resignation, bravery, and wonder about what lies ahead.
Notable cover: Amit Erez, 2013
The Power of the Heart
LOVE Cartier, 2008
This is a little-known gem, released on a streaming-only set called LOVE Cartier, which promoted the jewelry line. But it’s a touching ode to Reed’s longest-serving partner, Laurie Anderson, who became his third wife that same year. Anderson plays violin behind Reed’s confessional lyrics: “I think I’m dumb, I know you’re smart / The beating of a purebred heart / I say this to you and it’s not a lark / Marry me today.”
Along with Reed’s beloved sister Merill Reed Weiner, Anderson inherited Reed’s estate upon his death, wisely donating his archives to the New York Public Library and organizing a 2013 tribute concert at New York’s Apollo Theater. At that event, Anderson declared “The Power of the Heart” as her favorite song by her late husband. In a rendition by Brogan Bentley, it serves as the title tune of the new 2024 tribute album — a star-studded testament to the idea that Lou Reed’s music will never be erased.
Notable cover: Peter Gabriel, 2011
