Preface To A Tribute To Lou Reed: Why I Cried When Lou Reed Died

It's Halloween but the weather in Lexington is awful - a storm's coming, the winds are crazy - & I'm sitting here thinking about the best way to show how much I loved & admired Lou Reed.

Neil Gaiman wrote this beautiful piece & c'mon for fuck's sake I'm going to be able to say anything better than Neil Gaiman?  I feel a little unworthy when I say we shared the same experience.  I'm not a musician or a writer but I know that feeling - that feeling that happened when you first put on The Velvet Underground & Nico - the first time you heard "Sunday Morning" - your brain changed for good.  Forever.  For good.  The rest of the album confirmed your greatest hopes & fears: music would be forever changed.

I remember lying on the floor late at night listening to "Sister Ray."  I was just a teenager, I didn't know what the fuck was going on.  I was mesmerized but unlike most mesmerism my brain was working fine, all the synapses firing twice their normal speed.  I wasn't hypnotized I was made to think & to feel & to understand.

Later on, much later on, I remember seeing a shitty band opening up for Elvis Costello, I think I was with my friend Stacy, & I told her, "Why are these assholes listening to late 70s classic rock radio & writing songs like that?  If they want to learn how to write good pop songs, they should be listening to the third Velvet Underground record!"  I made a promise then & there - a promise I of course never kept - to always carry a copy of that CD to throw on stage to encourage shitty bands not to be so shitty.  Shitty bands!  Listen to that record!  You will learn how to write good songs!

& I grew up listening to classic rock radio.  I grew up with older brothers who, when some song like "Takin' Care Of Business" came on the radio, they nodded wisely to themselves & said, "Mm, good song."  Because they never knew there was anything else.  How could they?  All they knew was on commercial radio!  This past week I was reminded that at one time I said to someone whom I've forgotten, I said, "Do you know?  The Velvet Underground made Loaded to demonstrate what a classic rock album should be."

I don't want to discount the many years after the Velvets that Lou Reed made music.  I paid attention, I did, & I've enjoyed reading all the articles about how Transformer brought gay culture into the mainstream & how Metal Machine Music is an example of how to make music entirely from spite.  I loved how Lou approached everything & even if I found it unpalatable ("I Wanna Be Black"? Was that ever funny?) I appreciated his leaning & reaching & digging & discovering.  I will spend the rest of my life going over the Lou Reed I haven't spend so much time with.

(Before he died, I was listening a lot to The Blue Mask.  I didn't know about his liver transplant.  I didn't know anything about his current situation.)

Here's the thing: I do this dumb radio show & it's filled with music I love & I can say with certainty a frightening amount of the music I love would not exist if Lou Reed hadn't become roommates with John Cale & started writing from his heart.  From his broken soul.

That's why I cried when Lou Reed died.