“I believe in the power of punk.” So stated Lou Reed in September 2013, only a month earlier than he handed away. It’s the form of factor that Reed stated all through his lengthy profession, one wherein he performed a defining position, not only for punk, however for rock music as an entire. Even after his passing, Lou’s music continues to fascinate and captivate audiences world wide.
Reed’s model of punk started with the Velvet Underground, the band he shaped with John Cale, who stated of Reed’s demise. “The world has lost a fine songwriter and poet … I’ve lost my school-yard buddy.” Whereas the Velvet Underground achieved solely modest success within the Sixties, when their albums had been launched, it was as a band that influenced a lot that adopted. As Brian Eno stated of their 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico, “Everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” Others have known as it “the single most influential album in rock history.”
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Idiosyncratic solo profession
With the demise of the band, Lou Reed started his idiosyncratic solo profession within the early Seventies, befriending David Bowie, and releasing albums together with Transformer and Berlin. Reed’s success, and his significance, lay not in gross sales however within the affect he had and the thought processes he dropped at bear on all issues rock. His was not a comfortable sycophantic relationship with the press, his was confrontation on an industrial scale. Hardly ever, if ever, did a journalist come away from interviewing Reed unscathed, however nearly each journalist additionally got here away understanding simply what makes rock music an vital artwork kind; arguably crucial artwork kind on this planet.
A principal architect of punk
The inventive melding of classically skilled John Cale with Reed, who famously stated that “if you played three chords, you are playing jazz,” offers us perception as to what helped to make him one of many principal architects of punk. With out his advanced character, and his typically advanced music, punk wouldn’t have occurred. His understanding of every part from doo-wop to thrash metallic, even earlier than it was known as such a factor, was a necessary power that made punk what it was and allowed music to lurch as soon as once more from the protection of the charts to the unknown, the brand new and the difficult.
Whereas a few of Reed’s songs appeared mild, whimsical virtually, they virtually by no means had been. His was a stroll on the darkish facet, with topics that had hitherto been shunned by nearly everybody. Whereas Reed didn’t invent using imagery in rock music he took it to an entire new stage.
His affect on Bowie and Roxy Music helped to push music into artwork, to take the previous guidelines and throw them away to create what now we have come to name glam rock, once more, with out Reed it could by no means have occurred.
However the man who all the time believed within the energy of punk left one other legacy, the post-punk motion, the darkish facet of goth; serving to, though circuitously, New York grow to be the hippest place on the planet for some time within the late Seventies.
Whereas Reed lived comfortably in New York, he practiced Taiji with Bowie’s long-time producer Tony Visconti for a few years. “We heard the news in our Taiji class this afternoon. We are devastated,” stated Visconti. Reed by no means offered albums within the portions of lots of his contemporaries, in some way that by no means appeared to matter. Possibly he even thought it a great factor.
Lou Reed is a type of musical happenings that appear to return out of nowhere, utterly unique, like Hendrix, who’ve issues to say that power individuals to pay attention. However most of all they make individuals change, to do issues in another way. We’ve seen few folks that even vaguely come near Lou Reed within the final thirty years. Arguably we’ll see fewer nonetheless within the subsequent few a long time. We now have grow to be prisoners to conformity, we’re safer than protected, no trace of any incorrectness, political or in any other case.
Initially launched as a CD field set, The Velvet Underground’s The Full Matrix Tapes made its vinyl debut as a restricted version, eight-LP, 43-track field set that may be purchased right here.
