Life's Good, But Not Fair at All

When Lou Reed Stopped for Death

Rock and roll is no stranger to death, but, since it tends to be a youthful genre--even though if it were a person, it would be nearly 70, and its first practitioners would be in their 90s-- it’s usually the morbid young version.  Like, death. I can’t believe it.  I’m not prepared for it.  Or, I’m Jim Morrison, and I romanticize it, and this will be hugely popular, because there are so many like me, and they buy records.  Bobbie Gentry made a lovely shaggy dog story out of suicide on “Ode to Billy Joe,” and Lucinda Williams consolidated the language and got straight to the point.

The pounding of your heart's drum
Together with another one
Didn't you think anyone loved you?

See what you lost when you left this world
This sweet old world 

“Leader of the Pack,” “American Pie,” how about “Fire and Rain”? Go back further. “Gloomy Sunday” was known as the “Hungarian Suicide Song.” (“Szomorú vasárnap”) “Billie Holiday” got to the bottom and went further. She was a natural. There was a fear that the song would inspire people to jump out of windows. László Jávor is only known for the one song.

Death is no dream
For in death I'm caressing you
With the last breath of my soul
I'll be blessing you

These songs are about very rock and roll emotions. I love you so much I want to die. Or, I’ve seen fire and rain. What a beautiful song. I heard it an airport and I thought, really? But it slaps, in a young and tragic way. Like, I’m young and sexy James Taylor. I just got signed to Apple Records. I’m mental—love me. Then I’ll straighten out and be seriously mellow for most of my career.

Life is the subject—always. And when death is the subject, life is usually still the subject. But then there’s dying inside, dying from within, cultural death, spiritual death. The fucking Beatles broke up, and two of them left us. We’re still in denial, hence the AI song. Someone is dead to you—classic. Or death is Biggie and Tupac, or wiping out on a Harley. Joni Mitchell wrote a great song about losing her cat, because she’s Joni Mitchell and she can do anything.

But what about when death and disease become real? And what if you have to hold it together? You could look back, further than “Leader of the Pack,” further than “Gloomy Sunday.” There was no rock and roll in the 17th century, and no indoor plumbing, and the germ theory was still getting the kinks worked out. Plus, some people just drowned.

And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,

And now was dropt into the Western bay;

At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:

To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new

“Lycidas” takes its time to get to pastures new. It’s young Milton—he could still see. It’s an elegy, somber and lovely, like a Protestant service. But what if you don’t want that? What if you want something without extra blood sacrifice, when the one in front of you is enough? Where the only ritual is the one of listening?

Lou Reed never pretended to be a nice guy. That’s an understatement. I met him and was struck by his general lack of warmth. I had been prepared for it, but it was still shocking. Whatever. He gave us what he gave us. That’s what the money is for. When I was 19, I loved dark and disturbing art that was way beyond my experience. I was already into Lou—all of the Velvet Underground, and I was keeping up in real time with New York, Songs for Drella, and, the moment I could buy the CD, Magic and Loss. We knew that Lou was mourning the songwriter Doc Pomus—he gave us The Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance” and Ray Charles’s “Lonely Avenue”—who died of lung cancer at 65. Lou was in search of father figures—Delmore Schwartz, Andy Warhol, Pomus—and when he lost them, he took it hard, but it took him years to learn how to do it. There were things he could say in song that he couldn’t say in person.

Andy, it's me
Haven't seen you in a while
I wish I talked to you more when you were alive
I thought you were self-assured when you acted shy
Hello, it's me

He felt iced by Andy sometimes. How often did people felt iced by Lou? He learned from the best. Lou was making it to 50. If you make it to 50, you are no longer tragic. You are a survivor. He had been trying his hand at marriage and sobriety. When you turn 50, you ask yourself how all this looks. If you are the guy on the Honda motorcycle commercial, the Godfather of Punk or whatever, more people are looking. When you’re 50, if it’s in you, you can try something new.

Will Hermes’s recent Reed biography said that the other dedicatee—privately, underground, indeed—is Rachel Humpheries, Reed’s trans significant other from another life, when other substances were ingested, when bad behavior went with all that love.

Right after Lou’s tribute to Warhol, he was in a staring contest with grief. The house always wins, but Lou did something for grownups. He had been contemplating doing something inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but the magical realism thudded in the face of grief, the thing that you try to avoid, but it waits for you, like all other inevitable things. Almost all of popular culture is in denial of this. This album didn’t sell—what a shock. But the people who got it really got it. It helped that Lou is the least sentimental songwriter, yet he feels just like the rest of us, in his tough guy way.

What good is life without living?
What good's this lion that barks?
You loved a life others throw away nightly
It's not fair, not fair at all

Fair, I learned as a child, means no clouds. As an adult, the unfairness will come to you one way or another. Most people do throw it away. The thing that is good is the thing that will be gone. Maybe it is good because it will be gone. Maybe it takes getting to the end of things to make sense of the whole thing. Give someone your heart. If you lose them, you are haunted. Now you are getting it.

Visit on this starlit night, replace the stars. the moon, the light
The sun's gone
Fly me through this storm and wake up in the calm

Some things are too hot to touch. And some things are too cold, even for Lou Reed. Lou lived another 20 years after Magic and Loss and never made anything else like it. This is how it should be. Whatever you think of POETry or Lulu, his collaboration with Metallica, it was right that he did not repeat himself. But death—where do you go from there? Lou chose life. He found his soulmate in Laurie Anderson, and, after one last masterpiece that was largely about treating her terribly, he turned to the kinds of literary works he dreamed of tackling as a Syracuse undergrad, when he was Delmore’s blushing acolyte. David Bowie told Anderson that Lulu was Reed’s masterpiece. It would take a while for the world to catch up. Lou must have thought about Magic and Loss when he was dying of liver disease. Or maybe he didn’t. He wrote it for himself, but he left it for us.

They say in the end the pain was so bad that you were screaming
Now you were no saint but you deserved better than that

Life’s good, but not fair at all. We are lucky to get the good stuff while we’re here. In an earlier moment of bravado, on an album entirely comprised of feedback, Lou told us, “My week beats your year.” What a badass. But when he was making Magic and Loss, there was no competition, no being cool.

Sitting on a hard chair, try to sit straight
Sitting on a hard chair, this moment won't wait
Listening to the speakers, they're talking about you
Look at all the people, all the people you knew

I do what I do to commune with the dead. I can push a button, turn a page, and they’re still right there. Lou Reed is now among them. He didn’t care about me in this life, but when I hear him on my speaker, he’s telling me how to get through, not a wasted word. We’re all fucked, I’m sure he’d say. But then I can go back and hear him telling me that, while I’m here, it is possible to save my life with rock and roll.