goodbye lou

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

When you're all alone and lonely

in your midnight hour

And you find that your soul

it's been up for sale

And you begin to think 'bout

all the things that you've done

And you begin to hate

just 'bout everything

But remember the princess who lived on the hill

Who loved you even though she knew you was wrong

And right now she just might come shining through

and the -

- Glory of love, glory of love

glory of love, just might come through

So Lou Reed died, yesterday. I’ve already made the joke about how it was amazing he lived this long. He lived so on the edge, it’s been hard not to imagine him half-crossing the line most of his career anyway. Now he’s gone over to the other side of the edge. But he left his mark.

Lou Reed was central to a major moment in my own determination of cultural taste in life. In December, 1973, on the day school got out for Christmas Holidays, I had enough money left over after seasonal buying to buy one record for myself, on sale at the legendary Winnipeg music store, Opus 69. I didn’t have many records then -- I was 16. And there were an awful lot of records that I wanted. Practically all of them were on sale.

So I remember I took what must have been at least 2 hours deciding what to buy. I passed up all the obvious popular choices, and somehow kept circling back to Lou Reed’s Berlin. The only Lou Reed song I had heard at that time was the ubiquitous Walk on the Wild Side. But I’d read a review by Andy Mellon in the Winnipeg Free Press of Berlin, and he waxed ecstatic about the disc without managing somehow to convey its true nature to my adolescent mind. So I finally took the plunge and handed over my hard earned $2.50 (yes, I’m that old) and bought Lou Reed’s Berlin.

Was I surprised. And right before Christmas too.

Side Two of Berlin contains what are unquestionably the saddest songs ever written. The album is such a downer, it transcends depression. Somehow, if you come out the other side, you’re a better person ...

I had trouble with the album at first. Compounded by the fact I soon got a job and could afford to buy a lot more records, Berlin soon sort of disappeared towards the bottom of my most-played pile.

But it kept on rising up again ...

Within a year I also owned Transformer and Rock’n’Roll Animal. Within a year and a half I was sporting a Sally Can’t Dance tee-shirt. And I kept on buying Lou Reed albums, and filled in all the gaps with old Velvet Underground albums, as they were the only group that continued to make more sense as I grew older, not less like everybody else. And I followed the initial Christmas investment up to two years ago, when, once again in December and on sale, I bought Lulu, the miserably reviewed collaboration Lou did with Metallica.

Hey, outside of Andy Mellon, not very many people thought much of Berlin when it came out at first either.

So for helping to shape my sensibilities in directions I probably wouldn’t have found on my own, for forty years, thank you, Lou Reed.

It must be nice to disappear

to have a vanishing act

to always be looking forward

and never looking back

How nice it is to disappear

float into a mist

with a young lady on your arm

looking for a kiss

(and the colored girls go doo doo doo doo doo doo doo ...)

Lyrics from Coney Island Baby, Vanishing Act, and Walk on the Wild Side, by Lou Reed.