Chapter 11 - Lou Reed - Rock and Roll Heart


Chapter 11 

I know you probably think i'm quite familiar with Lou Reed. You think i've almost certainly heard at least Metal Machine Music, and probably even Lulu, but i haven't. I've heard some of the things he helped create for Verve/Pickwick, i've heard covers of his songs, but of him actually making his own music i know exactly Walk On The Wild Side, same as everyone on the cotton overground. I really should listen to the two albums i mentioned because they are right up two of my many favorite alleys, but in the meantime we're listening to what is widely considered one of his worst solo albums, the 1976 debut of Lou Reed on Arista, Rock & Roll Heart, as i guess a personal philanthropy project by Clive Davis (former president of Columbia Records and later Chair and CEO of RCA Music Group). If people who love to hate Lou Reed don't like this album, then it definitely has a home in one of my alleys. Supposedly the follow up, Street Hassle, is one of his best, but i say show me what you can do in the mouth of a gift horse and let me process it on my own terms (it is chicken day here on the farm, after all). Ain't no shame in verse/chorus pop songs, we all hate that we love to hate that we love 'em. Or maybe it's we all love that we hate to love that we hate them? Same difference, probably. Either way, let's get dizzy. 

I Believe In Love is just pure unadulterated sarcasm, right? We're not out on the dance floor, we're snickering into our drinks at the people out on the dance floor while Lou Reed is up there winking at us. 

Banging on my drum. Nope, no subtext, that's literally the only lyric for the entire song. Just mindlessly banging on my drum, making Glen Danzig's Return of the Fly look like a Mensa application. 

You wear [the image] so well. You hide [the pain] so well. Look, if that strikes you as a compliment rather than a backhand, then we are completely different people. 

A Sheltered Life, Temporary Thing, maybe i'm the one who's crazy, this album just feels like the anthem of the dumb American, dripping with cynicism and contempt for polite society. The whole thing sounds like an inside joke. "Stay away if you have no moral compass," he himself joked about Berlin. 

I don't think i'm wrong, though, this is unadulterated sarcasm ala Frank Zappa. Critically speaking, his albums tend to alternate between love and hate. They loved Transformer, hated Berlin, mostly liked Rock 'n' Roll Animal, Hated Sally Can't Dance. Audience-wise though, fans ate it all up and asked for seconds so much that RCA was demanding a follow up to Sally Can't Dance as fast as possible, so he handed them Metal Machine Music because they were contractually required to publish whatever he handed them. Obligatorily publish it they did, but pulled it right back off the shelves after 3 weeks because 40 something minutes of feedback and grinding noises was just too embarrasing. Then the critically acclaimed Soft Rock album Coney Island Baby that apparently left him on the edge of bankruptcy? None of it makes much sense to me, this stuff all happened a decade before i was born. 

The standard line about Rock and Roll Heart is that he was playing it safe and trying to make a lucrative album for his "new sponsors" at Arista. Yeah, no, i hear exactly the opposite, a whole album of Lou Reed asking "is this who you think i am? Jokes on you, losers." The music's not a joke, it's serious 50s Rock and Roll, the joke is Lou Reed making a 50s Rock'n'Roll album with a really stellar backup band in 1976 about a character in a button down shirt with a pocket protector proclaiming his Rock'n'Roll pedigree while barely scratching the surface of any cogent semblance of reality. Honestly, i'm asking here, how could you possibly hear this album at face value? I just feel like everyone is conveniently forgetting what a nasty piece of work Lou Reed was in the late 60s/early 70s. Remember, we're talking about a time period that prompted Archie Bunker and Mr. Kotter trying to grow up and learn how to be role models. 

Jeez Bottle, why must you be such a cynical man? I dunno, i guess i just have a Rock'n'Roll Heart.

Chapter 12

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