Today would’ve been Lou Reed‘s 78th birthday. Reed, the founder of The Velvet Underground who then went on to a solo career, was never as commercially successful as his music was memorable. Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Lou Reed created a sound that is New York City. At times it’s the bleakness and despair of waiting for the D train to take you back to Brooklyn at 4 in the morning and wondering if you’re going to fall asleep (or worse) on the platform; at times it’s the sound of heading out for a gonzo night on the Lower East Side, or being in the midst of it.
It’s raw, it’s pure, it’s authentic and it’s messy. It’s New York. And Reed’s look was as inimitable as his sound. Sunglasses, black leather jacket, that massive rug of thick dark hair. He was his own caricature, his own character.
Last night we took a walk on the wild side and saw a Lou Reed/VU tribute band play a set down at the Bowery Electric. On a dirty boulevard. Here are five songs by Andy Warhol’s favorite band/artist worth listening to on this day:
5. Femme Fatale (1967): Sung by Nico, the lovely German model who was part of the Velvet Underground, but written by Reed. Inspired by Warhol, who gave Reed the line, “Oh, don’t you think she’s a femme fatale?” about one of Warhol’s top film sirens, Edie Sedgwick. Only four years later, in 1971, Sedgwick herself would die at age 28 of a drug overdose.
4. Heroin (1967) : Released on the band’s debut album, it was actually written by Reed in 1964. Here’s Reed describing how it came about: “I was working for a record company as a songwriter, where they’d lock me in a room and they’d say write ten surfing songs, ya know, and I wrote “Heroin” and I said “Hey I got something for ya.” They said, “Never gonna happen, never gonna happen.'”
3. Oh! Sweet Nuthin (1970): The final track from the band’s fourth and final album, Loaded. The album’s title comes from their record company’s request to come back with a record “loaded with hits.” The Velvet Underground never wrote hits; they just wrote songs that future musicians (R.E.M., Nirvana, Billy Idol, the Black Crowes, etc.) would cover over and over and over. This song could’ve been written and sung by Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers.
2. Walk On The Wild Side (1972): From Reed’s second solo album, and produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson. His best-known song and most commercially viable, climbing to No. 16 on the Billboard charts. Doo, da-doo, da-doo-doo-doo….
- Dirty Blvd (1989): From Reed’s album New York, this hit No. 1 on the Modern Rock charts.
Further Listening (We couldn’t stop at 5):
- Sweet Jane (1970), also from Loaded:
2. There She Goes Again (1967) : Later covered by REM.
3. I’m Waiting For The Man (1967):
Great tribute to Lou JW! Check out Street Hassle (with a cool Springsteen cameo rap at the end. “You know tramps like us, we were born to pay……”. ) And the entire live Rock and Roll Animal album.
You know I will, Randall. Wish you could’ve been at the show last night. They crushed it.