I was going to write something about how much I love – and I do – The Velvet Underground. I was going to write about their influence on bands like R.E.M., Big Star, The Feelies, Yo La Tengo, The Strokes, Titus Andronicus… oh, and everybody else. I was going to write about hearing The Velvet Underground and Nico and trying to imagine what people hearing that record in 1967 must have thought of the sound and subject matter. But, for me, when I think of Lou Reed, I think of his finest solo record, New York.
My girlfriend’s dad turned to me at a party – I feel like, maybe, it was some type of birthday celebration for my girlfriend’s grandfather or something. “Did you hear that new Lou Reed song ‘Dirty Blvd.?’”
“No. Not yet.”
“’Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor. I’ll piss on ‘em. That’s what the Statue of Bigotry says.’ You’ve gotta hear it.”
This was 1989, so I imagine that I just had to keep my ears peeled for the song to show up on WNEW or something. It wasn’t like I could go to YouTube and watch the video. I must have heard the song soon after, because New York was with me for the rest of my time at NYU. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say, that for the next 3 years, I listened to that record a couple of times a week.
New York opens with “Romeo Had Juliette,” the opening guitars of Mike Rathke and Reed setting the scene for the anger and the grit that’s to come over the next 57 minutes. Reed (“The Original Wrapper”) talk-sings his way through a song full of moments that, when I listen to it now, I wait for with an excitement that hasn’t faded over the years:
“Romeo Rodriguez squares his shoulders and curses Jesus. Runs a comb through his black pony tail.”
“And her voice was like a bell!”
“I’ll betcha I could hit that light with my one good arm behind my back, says Little Joey Diaz.”
“Manhattan’s sinkin like a rock into the filthy Hudson. What a shock. They wrote a book about it. They said it was like ancient Rome.”
I was at NYU at the time, living first at Washington Square, then Union Square, then Third Avenue at St. Mark’s Place. When I hear those lyrics, any of the lyrics on the album really, I think back to my experience in New York in the late 80s – early 90s. Not always things specifically related to the songs, necessarily -- just images and moments, like those words, that have lodged themselves in my brain:
- There was a girl in one of my classes. I don’t remember her name. We became friends. She told me her dad was from Croatia; and, as a 19-year-old kid, I didn’t know where that was. We went to see a Brecht play together – In the Jungle of Cities, maybe. Then she was gone. I think she left school.
- My roommate and I had an unlimited membership at Kim’s Video on St. Mark’s. I watched every weird, independent movie they had there. I loved Hal Hartley’s Trust. When Adrienne Shelley was murdered a few years ago, I actually cried.
- We all used to go drinking at places like Holiday, The International, Mars Bar, 7B, Sophie’s. I’m pretty sure I was underage most of that time. Nobody ever asked for my ID.
- When you were looking for an apartment, you’d go wait at the newspaper box in front of the Astor Riviera Café, so that you could get the Voice as soon as it came out on Tuesday night and get a jump on the listings.
- Ed Koch and David Dinkins were the mayors.
“In the back of my mind, I was afraid it might be true. In the back of my mind, I was afraid that they meant you.”
For a kid from the Jersey ‘burbs, that parade was a sight to see. I loved it, but I was only a spectator, an outsider. On that song, Reed makes us all insiders and you can feel the sadness and the fear that were big parts of New York at the time.
On songs like “Beginning of a Great Adventure” (“redneck lunatics… …with their tribe of mutant inbred piglets with cloven hooves,” “I’ll be as progressive as I can possibly be, as long as I don’t have to try too much”), “The Last Great American Whale” (“Americans don’t care for much of anything, land and water the least.”), and “Strawman” (The baseball fan in me always liked to believe that the “Strawman” of the title was some kind of reference to the Mets’ Darryl Strawberry as a symbol of the excesses listed in the song.), Reed is critical of both the right and the left, each of whom sat in their own wing of a really nice house looking down on the little people. That rich/poor divide – yuppies, “gentrification” – was also a big part of the atmosphere of 80s and 90s New York.
I was always kind of scared of Lou Reed, like, if I met him, I’d be afraid that I would say the wrong thing and he’d just dismiss me as the idiot I was. New York reinforced that image of Lou Reed for me, and that just made him cooler to me. And the record, musically, just sounds cool. It probably started the third or fourth or whatever garage rock revival and gave us bands like The Strokes who tried to imitate Lou’s cool, but didn’t truly have it flowing through their veins like he did.
This was a ramble, I know. But I love New York. I love Lou Reed. And I love New York. CoolMom came home from the grocery store yesterday and found me with a whiskey in my hand and tears in my eyes.
I told MomVee once that I view my life as one long radio show or rock concert with songs or albums representing specific moments. For me, Lou Reed and New York will always represent the time I spent not only living in New York City, but also growing from a kid to an adult and finding out who I was.
Lou’s next album, Magic & Loss, didn’t speak to me in the same way as New York. Maybe that’s because it was so personal for Lou. But I always enjoyed the song “What’s Good.”
“Life’s like a mayonnaise soda. And Life’s like a space without room. And Life’s like bacon and ice cream. That’s what life’s like without you.”
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