Music
Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” Makes Us Complicit in Drug Use
Lou Reed’s Master Stroke of Brilliance
Velvet Underground’s Velvet Underground and Nico was an album universally hated by critics and most consumers when it first came out.
And it’s easy to see why. No other album in 1967 featured lyrics about BDSM, pimps and prostitutes, and heavy hard drug use.
However, those naysayers in ’67 missed an album that was ahead of its time. Today, the infamous banana-adorned record sounds like something Joy Division or The Talking Heads could have created.
The track “Heroin” is a highlight from this album. While many of the tracks illustrate a snapshot of the skeletons in the ’60s “Summer of Love” closet, this one is the most brilliantly written. What could have been another cliched rock and roll song about drugs, the songwriter Lou Reed takes an alternate route by illustrating a user’s mindset while taking a hard drug and their inability to overcome it.
How the Song Begins
It starts quietly and with a steady pulsing acoustic guitar and drumbeat. In the background, an electric viola hums consistently on the same note.
By the time the lyrics come in, we have had anticipation build for a full fifty seconds. At this point, Reed begins singing slowly, drawing out each word as if every single one is the first time he’s said it:
“I don’t know where I’m going
But I’m going to try for the kingdom if I can”
It takes him twenty seconds to sing both of these lines. You can feel every single pause between each one of these words. You’re lost in the same haze he is, wondering where he is going with all of this.
Then unexpectedly, the music begins to pick up. The drums start increasing their tempo, the viola’s buzzing becomes stronger in your ear, and the guitar's strumming gets heavier and distorted. Reed finishes the next five lines in the same time it took him to do the first two:
“Cause it makes me feel like a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I’ll tell ya, things aren’t quite the same
When I’m rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus’ son”
The song feels like it’s building towards some sort of climax, but it doesn’t. Instead, we go back to Reed singing that “he just doesn’t know,” and we feel the music slow back down to a snail’s pace.
In this way, we feel like the speaker is being pulled into another heroin-fueled haze. We think it fulfills us, but it doesn’t, just as we expect the resolution from a climax in the music that doesn’t come.
But It Gets Darker
Reed confesses that “he’s made a big decision” and that he plans to “nullify his life.”
When he says this, the music builds again, the guitar driving harder as the viola’s humming increases, even more incessant.
Reed tells us he’s “closing in on death.” This time the song doesn’t speed up as much, but the intensity of the viola is still there. Louder. Stronger.
The song continues with Reed wishing he was born years ago and details a scene of him being on a ship. We drift into his dreams and how he’s trying not to blame himself and put the burden on his circumstance. If he was born at another time or in another place, things would be better.
After this, he speaks the words “Heroin” for the first time in the song, at about four minutes in. Then he sings:
“Be the death of me
Heroin
It’s my wife, It’s my life”
We see that there is a flash of understanding that the song's speaker can’t continue this path. It won’t work out for him. He doesn’t even want to admit the source of his problems, which is why it takes him so long to sing “Heroin.” But as soon as this moment of realization hits him, he shoots up, and it escapes.
This Is Where Things Get Really Interesting
The viola begins to screech, telling us that something is really wrong. Its increasingly dissonant and scratchy tone command the listener’s attention, becoming almost painful to listen to.
However, the singer ignores it, continuing to sing with the band playing the song behind him.
This is when we see the full picture. The singer is lost and has given up. They’re pushing past it, even though their body (the viola) is telling them to stop. To stop doing the drugs, to stop destroying themselves. In addition, the band (all the singer's friends and family) don’t hear it either.
The real tragedy?
Everyone is choosing to ignore it. And in doing so, the whole song crumbles around them. The distortion and screeching of the viola pervade the piece, louder and louder, begging you to do something.
Something.
Before it’s too late.
The worst part? The speaker is happy about choosing to ignore it. They’re glad the drug helps them do this:
“Then thank God I’m good as dead
Then thank your God that I’m not aware
And thank God that I just don’t care.”
It isn’t until the last words in the song are sung:
“I guess I just don’t know…”
that we have resolution, and the viola stops.
But that’s for a different reason.
The speaker has died.
“Heroin’s” Brilliance
Not many songs willingly — purposefully — put distortion and painful auditory elements in a song. Music has tension and resolve in it, but building a song around the pain of listening is unique.
“Heroin” does this masterfully. Whether we choose to analyze the song’s lyrics and musicality or let this song wash over us emotionally, we are present inside the mind of a drug user, regardless of our walk of life.
Reed implies something as we listen to:
We’re listening, heard the signs, and did nothing. Does that make us responsible?
Why didn’t we stop him?
And here’s the most chilling part:
There’s no good answer.
I’m Bill. I write about music and spirituality.
I’m listening to 1001 Must-Hear Albums Before You Die in a Year and documenting it on Youtube.
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