Lou Reed was the first "rockstar death" that actually shook me, like, "Damn, my heroes are going away", I spent more than a year just remembering it out of nowhere "oh my, Lou Reed is dead", and getting sad until i got used to it. When Bowie died, i guess i was kind of used to that feeling already
He was mine as well. At the time I was a huge Velvets fan and almost all of his solo albums. Still do but at the time it was an obsession. The day sucked.
Growing up in small-town Oklahoma, The Velvets were the first band that I made my own as a teenager... A band that nobody else in my shitty town knew about. I devoured "The Velvet Underground and Nico" because it was the only Velvets record that the local shop could get, and I only bought it because I recognized the Warhol art on the cover and had to have it. So in 1997 I was suddenly hearing the Alpha... The Genesis source of so much other music that I could hear in so many other later bands. I wore that album out while everyone else listened to Korn and Deftones and Kid Rock. For years I determined new acquaintances coolness by whether or not they knew the Velvets. Then I moved away to college, got an internet connection, and discovered Television's Marquee Moon, which I consider is a direct descendant of the classis Velvet lineup. When I read that Lou had died, I realized that I had never even tried to catch him in concert, as I have my other musical heroes... I wasn't sad really... I was just thankful for the first album and the weird circumstances that produced it, and for the secret power it gave my confidence in the professional embarrassment dojo known as high school. It helped me figure out what creativity really was. Yes Loy's candle burned down to nothing, but we still have the Black Angels Death Song, Lisa Says, Heroin, Waiting for the Man, and all the other seminal pop-art masterpieces tgat Lou gufted to us.
So many tragic figures in Warhol's factory, Nico and Edie, and that's what attracts us to them, we can vicariously live through them without the tragedy of being them.
Tritty Bowie, Iggy, and Reed (among with Kraftwerk and New Order) don’t get the recognition they deserve as far as their influence on music as a whole goes. Most people know they’re great artists but all 5 of them drastically changed and innovated the music scenes they were in, and I don’t see they get mentioned as much.
It would be great to hear your thoughts on Nick Drake or Elliott Smith. They were both very gifted with melodies, but also had some wonderfully insightful lyrics as well!
Nah this is crazy. I heard this song fully for the first time a mere what 5 hours ago? And I was like wow that’s a really amazing song and then polyphonic comes out with this video it’s gotta be fate 😂
lou reed is my favorite writer/musician too. but never, not even once i've looked the other way to how much of an asshole he was. i think it is important to separate those things, to understand how human people can be and accept it.
Lou Reed is in my top 10 favorite artists, as is/was Ryan Adams. Regardless of one's opinion of his music, he left a huge body of work and his being an ass made him, and his music pretty much disappear. Don't know where I stand on him. Lou will live forever.
William Michonski You don’t know where you stand on Ryan Adams? If so, I’m glad I’m not the only one. Heartbreaker and Gold are 2 of my all time favorite records but holy fuck he was/is a shitty person.
He’s not my absolute favorite but he’s definitely one of them. The Velvet Underground changed my life and outlook on music as a whole. His solo career is really underrated too. That said, he certainly wasn’t a great person.
Watching his interviews later in life show him as a gentle, kind, loving person. His past behavior is certainly not excused, but I think he eventually found his way back to who he was before he turned into a monster.
People like you which is the majority of the population cannot be trusted or ever loved. Technology is a time machine and yall constantly go back to a individuals past and use it against him. Focus on your own life bud.
He frequently talked about his heroin addiction in interviews and wrote quite a few songs about heroin, the most notable being “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting For the Man”
@@desmondpoppy4511 agreed. I was also a heroin addict, but during gigs and times I needed to work, I also used speed. It's not like you have to choose *one* specific drug and only do that.
He shot up.on stage. In NZ the "homebake" he used was so strong he didnt go on. He apologised to fans and did the concert the following day. It was one of his best ever performances
@@huepix Haha, no he didn't. He cancelled the gig because he was way too fucked up, yeah, but he mimed the injection as part of the act with a mic cable wrapped around his arm. It was all just an act that got exaggerated so many times by word of mouth retellings that it ended up becoming legend.
Hello, I've just saw your video. And I've just read the biography of Lou Reed written by DeCurtis. And I cannot be more agree with you. We, the Reed's fans, have to talk about this complicated legacy. When I've just finished the DeCurtis book, I was devasted. He didn't talk about things that I've not know before. Lou Reed was a brilliant poet and a brilliant rock and roll animal. But he was a monster too. With his first wife, with Rachel. Abusive with oh so many friends of him. But he was one of my favorite artists of all time. How can I cope with all that (specially with a cancelled culture upon us)? And that's why I thank you for your video. Yes, we have to talk. We all have some dear uncle or cousin that was abusive or a really bad person. We have to stop loving her or him? We have to bury her or him under a rug? I don't think so. We have to talk about it. Again, thanks a lot.
Related to this: I listened to a podd were two people (the host and the guest) talked about Cornelis Vreeswijk. A brilliant poet and songwriter who wrote many beautiful and many witty "visor" (Swedish folk-songs, though the man was from the Netherlands originally, he lived and worked in Sweden and wrote his songs in Swedish). But the man was also an alcoholic, a male chauvinistic pig at times, and homophobic. They asked each other in the end who you can reconcile that with the art. And I love their conclusion: First of all, we need to accept that our heroes are humans and humans are flawed. Part of growing up is realising your parents aren't perfect gods nor (as some think during their teenage years) evil tyrants, but humans and not everything they taught you was right. Does that mean throwing everything they said out? No. You keep the good stuff. Same thing with artists you like. Because enjoying or endorsing someones good stuff doesn't mean you endorse or like the bad stuff they've done. I think it's odd that we think this way. After all, no sane person would think that just because you're a fan of say, Martin Scorsese, you consider every film he's ever made a masterpiece. Neither would being a fan of Lou Reed make you think that everything he did was right. Especially not his abusive side. Speaking of Cornelis, his work was very much on the side of the down-and-out, he was a cynic (one of his more famous choruses are that "it might get better but it won't get good") who nonetheless loved the beautiful in the world and wanted to celebrate it. His chauvinistic and homophobic side very seldom came out in his work, especially not his best stuff. And that's the stuff about him that's still being played and celebrated. Also important to remember (and this is me slightly paraphrasing an internet-friend of mine who said it first, I just added the Lou Reed part): Lou, and every other "bad" person, from creeps, to miscreants, on up to criminals or even predators, are all themselves victims. Victims of genetics, of environment, of upbringing, of circumstance, of their brains, of bio/neuro-chemistry, and so forth. Only by recognising the humanity in those we look down on or dislike or even hate can we address the root causes and try to fix/mitigate them. Hate and disdain are easy. Understanding is more difficult, but it yields better results. It doesn't make what they've done "okay". But to condemn and moralise is never interesting because it doesn't bring about understanding. Like previously stated, we need to talk about it. And we should talk about it, especially in order to understand it so we can prevent it from happening again.
@@theyakkoman Thank you for that thoughtful post. I think that cancel culture is an error, a toxic error. I think it will go away when people start to wise up. I hope that's soon.
I think you're right - "cancel culture" has become a toxic thing, lacking in nuance or ability for redemption.people have - I would like to think - good intentions in highlighting abuse and bigotry, but it's really just another toxic by-product of social media; a corporate megalith of which humans are the product, and sensationalism and intrigue drive engagement. we really just need people to better understand the consequences of world social media usage, and the way we interact with it. people are complicated, nobody is perfect, and the idea that an artist's creative output can be written off because they have personality flaws is a pretty misguided one. I've known hundreds of artists, and most of the really talented ones have struggles and shortcomings which shouldn't necessarily undermine the things they create. i think it's overly simplistic to expect artists to be perfect people.
Rachel was NOT Reed's first wife. Rachel was Reed's live transvestite boyfriend for a while in the mid 1970's. And stop calling him a *monster*. That's an incredibly offensive term reserved for the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.
'Rock n' Roll' has and always will be my favourite song. I identify so strongly with the 'Ginny' character, and the way Reed describes these realistic and flawed characters in so many of his songs (like 'hanging round' one of the best) is just unmatched. Thank you for this video!!
Right on, sister. I feel the very same way re: Ginny. I honestly don't believe I would have made it as far as I have without the life affirming power of Rock and Roll. I would've given up on life years ago. Thanks Lou. RIP
I saw him in a music store signing records. It was around 2000, "Ecstasy" had just been released. Just five minutes prior to my Reed-sighting, I sold a fairly old pressing of a Velvets record so I could get money. That was a Lou Reed day alright.
Seriously like don’t get me wrong it was a good video but he totally left out how he got cleaned in the 80s and I’m all for addressing the abuse but let’s be real if you’re gonna go after Lou than why not John Lennon or all the underage girls bands like Led Zepplin slept with
@@ceejay1794 There's a lot of pain in life. A lot of people assholes in their youth, grow out of their assholeness. In the muy macho culture of the 60s and 70s in particular, it would be all the more challenging for a young man thrust into the raunchy, hedonistic and chauvenistic world of rock and roll and avoid being a first class jerk at all. It's hard for people who live average lives to be perfect all the time, too.
@@conormanning8621 Did you even watch the video? He is in NO WAY "going after" Lou Reed. If anything the tone of this video shows he is clearly one of Lou's biggest fans-you have to really love something in order to be able to look at it critically in such a complex and in depth way as this. This is a conversation that a lot of music consumers will refuse to have about their favorite musicians, because it makes them uncomfortable, but it NEEDS to be had, regardless of whether Lou reformed later in his life or not.
Yeah... Lou Reed, grew an changed throughout his life. The person who talks in the video acts as if his life started and ended with, Perfect Day. I think his last album LuLu, was a masterpiece.
alex summers he didn’t do surface-level research. He just gave one example and expanded the ideology towards that one song. If you want a documentary then this isn’t the video for you.
@@aimingalex I would argue that, for a 10 minute RUclips video, focusing on one single song in depth yields FAR greater sophistication and insight than a shallow deep dive on his entire life's discography
There are two stories here : Lou's relation to society, and his personal life. Regarding his personal life, allegations have been made of mistreatments that have to be taken seriously (by Bettye and in DeCurtis' book), but statements from other relatives at the time also came to defend Reed. So I guess this a complicated story of its own. But it could be misleading to keep this complexity on a personal level, through Lou's fight with addiction, mental illness, fame or sexual identity. This darkness is very much linked to his bleak perception of society, norms and social deviance, which is why he was such an important figure for punk (Iggy's nemesis in some way). His message is disturbing, but it's not (or not merely) because he was disturbed. Many troubles he described was those he witnessed in society. What seems even more interesting is that he didn't coin his critiques in a "moral" way, like say Dylan. He seemed closer to the very dark, almost relativist stance of a Burroughs. That adds to the disturbance of his message.
I picked up Lou reed when I was a yellow cab driver in Chelsea one time. I was so shocked and in awe like oh man it’s Lou reed. He was kind of in a bad mood. I never really would bother celebrities if I pick them up. But I loved reed … he wasn’t necessarily mean to me just grumpy. . Anyway that’s my Lou reed story.
Lou Reed is one of the most underrated artists in today’s society. Not only is his solo work amazing but his stuff with The Velvet Underground was truly revolutionary, and yet many people in today’s society have never even heard his name.
No, you mean many millennials and z generations, the others know him. By the way for the revolution in the VU we should give more credit to John Cale and Tom Wilson (also producer of Zappa and Bob Dylan) than Lou Reed.
@@marlowename3713 It's a very good thing, but I think the majority of young people doesn't know Lou Reed. I'm 25 and VU is my favorite band as well, some know them but if I say Lou Reed people look at me with a confused face.
Really a poor look at the actual life and legacy of Lou Reed. First of all, I'm surprised that you indicated that Lou's main drugs of choice were heroin and alcohol and stopped there. Lou was a known and prolific speed user up until 1984 or so. Watch any interview/live performance of his between the years he started and 1984 and 9/10 he is going to be wide eyed and spun as hell. White light/white heat is about methamphetamine. Lou was shooting that shit up during the VU days, and i'm sure later on too. But anyway, with a title like that, all you really talked about was a single song in his discography and allegations from an ex of his (which I totally believe) and said that this is why he is complicated. It's like... ok? You aren't going to talk about his step into transcendental mediation in the 1990s/2000s? Or his relationship with Laurie anderson? This video makes the claim that Lou is complicated, but really fails to show how he is exceptionally more complicated compared to other artists/people. Lou's legacy was his music, and you didn't even scrape the surface of his work besides Perfect Day. I really don't see how his legacy is so complicated. Yes, he was an abuser and he was, as they say, fucked up. But that's not his legacy
I rather have him do a video about good albums or songs or about an important event. Lulu is a complete mess and a terrible idea from the start. Nevertheless there is some interest in talking about terrible works of art. I mean I spent a lot of time in the past watching things about Tommy Wiseaus The Room as well as on Cory Feldman´s Angelik 2 the Core.
Other than “heroin” , street hassle is the song I can relate to the most as an addict making yet another attempt at recovery, the way he portrays the melancholy of city life and this wanting to slip away is beautiful and Ironically is one of the reasons I go back to fentanyl so often
why is everyone so concerned with defining artists legacies with analysis and judgement of their private lives? we are all flawed individuals. artistic outputs are just that - outputs. These become inputs to the observers of the art. The outputs are of the moment that they were created, not the summation of a lifetime. i like your channel and you are a good creator. i am just wearying of the comtemporary trend in analysis that overweights biography over craft.
His sister said because it was depression that he went to electroshock and not for his sexuality. But imagine being open about your sexuality in that time. Would give me depression too
Wow what a great video! That line "Just perfect day, you made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else, someone good" has always resonated with me. At the time it reflected the way I felt not good enough for the girl I had split up with but as I got older I realised it was about someone not good in their own right trying to escape for a precious few moments. Very moving.
This was beautiful. This song has always struck a chord somewhere very deep. Loved your analysis of it and the repetition of simple understated images, like the song itself. Appreciate your work and the time you put into it 😘
Thank you for this one! I love a lot of Lou Reeds music and after reading his biographies and finding out what a terrible person he could be even if it was brought on by addiction and mental illness and I had to stop listening to his work. And unlike a lot if other artist whose work I can set aside because I can’t forget their behaviour Lou Reed I really missed. Your idea of learning from his work for what he was striving for instead of what he was is a new way to look at it. I’m also just really glad you weren’t just celebrating his music without addressing how terrible he was
Great video on why it is so complicated to talk about art and artists; some great art can come from people who do reprehensible things. But love really is rewarding when you can understand, give people a chance to heal and atone, and become someone good.
Lou Reed was the most important influence on my musical taste, from his time in the Velvets, to the end of his career. 'Berlin' must be one of the saddest, yet most operatic albums ever. 'Perfect Day' always made me feel a bit melancholic, as did 'Candy Says'. Reed is a seriously underrated and complex artist.
This was a sensitive and honest discussion of a great song and musician that was beautiful and ugly all at once. Thank you for bringing his life into communication with his music.
I absolutely love Lou Reed, but once you start to scrape the surface and realise what people where actually like, it’s hard to see them in the same light, I’m still going to admire his musical skill and pure artistic talent but I think this is a good example of consumers having to look past the image and understand that these are real people with real experiences and emotions... I don’t really know where I’m going here but I wanted to comment to get you more views:))
10 September 1983 live in Rome at the Circo Massimo. I was 15, with three friends, my first concert ever. Incidents with the police, tear gas that arrived on the stage, and after the concert the four of us stuck inside a Metro Station that had been closed immediately after the last train arrived. Unforgettable night !! Saw him again in Milan maybe 20 years after that, an intimate show in a theatre. Lou Reed touched human nature in its raw essence.
Wow! You just SUPER impressed me with THE most inspired and poignant analysis of one of my all time favourite artists. You got yourself another well deserved fan. I’m checking out all your channels and spreading the word! Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!
9:09 - This is a compelling conclusion to your analysis. Expanding on that, I would say there is one love that can save someone, and that is self-love. Holding yourself accountable and being honest about your own flaws is the only way that can be achieved. People often seem to think that being loved by someone else will make them feel better about their own insecurity and lead to happiness. And often it does for a period of time. But in the end that happiness or completeness they seek is lacking. It can also be dangerous because that mindset makes you vulnerable to abusers who will exploit that vulnerability. None of us are perfect lads, so don't be so hard on yourself. If you don't love you, then you can't expect someone else to.
Perfect Day has a dozen chords, a middle-eight, and an outro. It completely contradicts Lou's quote about chords. It's at least feasible to suspect that he wrote the lyrics but not the music. When I listened to Satellite of Love, it struck me as a David Bowie song with Lou lyrics. Are there really any other Lou Reed songs as elaborate and complex as those?
also i see so many comments abour how wrong this video is about his life, how he was not a monster, and how heroin wasn't his drug of choice. but art rarely has anything to do with facts. once you start being more concerned with facts you're not appreciating art, you're just relaying facts. the stories an artist puts out there about oneself, whether intentional or not, is larger than the artist's actual life experiences. you can say perfect day is a song about reed's fantasy about going on a mass killing spree and no one can say you're wrong. even reed himself didn't know what he was singing about all the time. electricity comes from other planets and its reach goes beyond even that. it doesnt belong to any one specific individual. it's communal.
I wonder why we have so much trouble with the fact that great artists are not always great people. We SHOULD acknowledge that our idols have clay feet. But we should also ask why we expect more of them. I think we idolize these larger than life figures because we want to see the best of ourselves in them. But we are shocked we see the worse parts of our selves in them.
Perfect timing! I’m in the middle of several VU documentaries- including a fantastic three part Sterling Morrison series by Cam Forrester. Lou INDEED is a most complicated character.
This is pure nonsense. Lou had used heroin early in his career but his 'drug of choice' was amphetamine. Practically everyone in the arty crowd was on speed.
@@breakfastline the biography this is using as a source is a biphobic slanderous peice. He was on good terms with his exes and after hitting his wife actually (crazy) inproved himself and later sobered up?
Yeah who the fuck was he? Never been a hardcore fan but as all people I love Velvet. Bowie. The whole scene but I realise I don't know shit about him except that he actually made beautiful songs
Amphetamines and alcohol were Lou's drugs of choice. Besides his admitted history (speed is the reason we have "Metal Machine Music", his countless lyrical references to amphetamines) his use of speed is incredibly obvious in his mannerisms and bodily side effects he displayed from the 60s until the early 80s. If you've ever noticed how he would constantly move his jaw while talking and singing...speed. If anything he made it very clear that he was never a heroin addict. F**king "Trainspotting".
This video is a completely idiotic attempt to define an extremely complex man, Lou Reed, using one song and a subjective interpretation of that man's lyrics. Yes, Lou did drugs in the 1970's. EVERYBODY did drugs in the 70's. Reed is ultimately defined by his work, his music, his performances, his writing, his photography, his own words. His legacy is his Art, not anyone's opinion about his personal relationships. And btw Reed had a very stable, mature, drug free relationship with his 2nd wife Sylvia Morales for ten years and then another stable relationship with Laurie Anderson for the last 20 years of his life.
Song writing, just like poetry, is the art of packing dense, complex meaning into the fewest possible words, with rhyming patterns as a bonus, but not essential. I believe it is the most demanding and difficult form of writing.
Gotta call bullshit on this video. I spent a day with Lou Reed in '89. He was good friends with my friends in The Del Lords. He was a normal guy just trying to stay sober and play music. No monster to be found.
Like a lot of "creative" people, Lou was an asshole one-on-one a lot of the time. Extremely dismissive of "fans". Liable to screw your career up if you seemed like you were going to overshadow him. As for this being "one of the truest expressions of love", dude, glad I'm not your companion.
I'm quickly coming into the understanding that if you are a fan of music you have to stand for queer rights ant the Rights of the LGBTQ alphabet soup whatever ( thank you Polyphonic for the education) . I'm not a fan of trends like # I'm with Her or Times up, Gay Pride or the # Woke generation, because as sure as they have gained influence they will fall in their influence influence given the proper time. But really all these movement are really about at their core is expanding human dignity and our birth right to freedom and equality and who is against that.
I could never get into lou reed, his music is abraisive and i don't see the value. music is subjective, and i'm aware if there's any objectivity in the universe about this stuff, i am pretty sure my musical taste would be certified "shit" by God. But seriously, could not ever fucking get the appeal. At all. If anyone came along and changed my mind about this i'd probably appreciate it. I feel like i'm missing something but.... nah not feeling it. Polyphonic can't even make the case, which is dire.
Who do you think you are calling Lou Reed a bad person? I think you got it right in the title to say he's complicated. That is a good editorial take. Your definitive good/bad judgment is a just ridiculous. Lou had, by all accounts, a healthy and long relationship after these dark years. And even if he didn't, such narrow binary judgment is not evolved, no matter how evolved you pretend to be.
Good vid, but what thing I gotta point out- I wouldn't call Heroin an ode about dedicated to a drug because it suggests praise when the song really just describes the effects of usage.
Great video as usual! But for me, this song is about an addict who is able to spent one sober day with a loved one and enjoy simple things of live without drugs... Even knowing sobriety will not last...
This video seems poorly researched, because I'm positive I've read interviews with Reed where he said heroin was never his DOC. Dude was a massive meth-head/speed freak and was quite open about it. I don't see any reason why he'd be proud of shooting speed and ashamed of shooting dope, so I don't think he was lying. Not all of his songs were autobiographical, and "Heroin" was one of those songs about other people, not necessarily Reed himself.
Lou was not a savage monster... He was a normal good person who had trauma that wanted to numb his pain and by going towards his addiction with drugs (portals that makes decision making easily wrong and with bad intent). Addiction is the driving force with the sex/drugs that are the portal to being that "monster" you speak of. Of course everyone is responsible for their actions and their intent with how they acted evil. Though it needs to be understood clear and cut these types of people that hurt and follow addiction arent all bad they just chose a bad path. Should they be held accountable? Yes. Should it be understood though they were stuck in the evil influences because of being confused themselves following addiction? Completely yes... These people are allot different from people who are just evil with bad intent even without addiction... Those ones are just evil with no excuse nor sympathy... The others are not simply evil and deserve sympathy
Lou Reed was the first "rockstar death" that actually shook me, like, "Damn, my heroes are going away", I spent more than a year just remembering it out of nowhere "oh my, Lou Reed is dead", and getting sad until i got used to it. When Bowie died, i guess i was kind of used to that feeling already
He was mine as well. At the time I was a huge Velvets fan and almost all of his solo albums. Still do but at the time it was an obsession. The day sucked.
We've still got Iggy! I hope he's immortal!
Same, but Bowie's death hurted like hell to me, I remember I was in the University and a friend told me and I felt so sad out of nowhere
Growing up in small-town Oklahoma, The Velvets were the first band that I made my own as a teenager... A band that nobody else in my shitty town knew about. I devoured "The Velvet Underground and Nico" because it was the only Velvets record that the local shop could get, and I only bought it because I recognized the Warhol art on the cover and had to have it. So in 1997 I was suddenly hearing the Alpha... The Genesis source of so much other music that I could hear in so many other later bands. I wore that album out while everyone else listened to Korn and Deftones and Kid Rock. For years I determined new acquaintances coolness by whether or not they knew the Velvets.
Then I moved away to college, got an internet connection, and discovered Television's Marquee Moon, which I consider is a direct descendant of the classis Velvet lineup.
When I read that Lou had died, I realized that I had never even tried to catch him in concert, as I have my other musical heroes... I wasn't sad really... I was just thankful for the first album and the weird circumstances that produced it, and for the secret power it gave my confidence in the professional embarrassment dojo known as high school. It helped me figure out what creativity really was. Yes Loy's candle burned down to nothing, but we still have the Black Angels Death Song, Lisa Says, Heroin, Waiting for the Man, and all the other seminal pop-art masterpieces tgat Lou gufted to us.
The heroes are gone.
So many tragic figures in Warhol's factory, Nico and Edie, and that's what attracts us to them, we can vicariously live through them without the tragedy of being them.
I wonder if Warhol was a bad or a great influence
Tritty Bowie, Iggy, and Reed (among with Kraftwerk and New Order) don’t get the recognition they deserve as far as their influence on music as a whole goes. Most people know they’re great artists but all 5 of them drastically changed and innovated the music scenes they were in, and I don’t see they get mentioned as much.
@@HotStrange I liked John Cale ruclips.net/video/-mnNRhLuAIA/видео.html
@@welcometothejazz Warhol had a little to do with Iggy, and even less with Bowie.
@@tompanoname3579 Yeah, Bowie wrote the song about Warhol before he even met him, and that probably wasn't more than twice.
"Perfect Day." Is a song that plays on your car ride home from the doctors office after you were just informed the cancer has spread to the brain.
christ
Thats so depressingly accurate for some reason
Do not glorify depression.
What
Goodness.
Danm, the minimalistic style of this video really converses well with the content. Brilliant job.
Damn*
Homeboy just turned my least favorite Lou Reed song into one I can’t stop listening to. That’s talent.
Honey, I found a reason to keep living
And you know the reason, dear, it's you
Superb tune!!!
And I've walked life's lonely highways...
It would be great to hear your thoughts on Nick Drake or Elliott Smith. They were both very gifted with melodies, but also had some wonderfully insightful lyrics as well!
Totally agree with you!
Jacob Borg nick drake is the goat
Also Nickelback. they were great post-grunge
Agreed! To fill the time, you might wanna check out Lie Likes Music's video on Elliott Smith
You should check out Townes van Zandt
Nah this is crazy. I heard this song fully for the first time a mere what 5 hours ago? And I was like wow that’s a really amazing song and then polyphonic comes out with this video it’s gotta be fate 😂
Welcome to the world of lou reed. An awesome world it is.
That damn YT algorithm really gets inside...of everything.
Pale Blue Eyes....
Linger on …
The smell of thought I'd check cracked my spine
I’m gonna cry now cuz it reminds me lost loves
the fact that you are married just proves you’re my best friend.
But it’s truly,truly a sin
Perfect Day and Pale Blue Eyes. Among the two best songs of their kind.
Also Metal Machine Music. That one has deep lyrics
@@EclecticoIconoclasta tears me up
lou reed is my favorite writer/musician too. but never, not even once i've looked the other way to how much of an asshole he was. i think it is important to separate those things, to understand how human people can be and accept it.
Lou Reed is in my top 10 favorite artists, as is/was Ryan Adams. Regardless of one's opinion of his music, he left a huge body of work and his being an ass made him, and his music pretty much disappear. Don't know where I stand on him. Lou will live forever.
William Michonski You don’t know where you stand on Ryan Adams? If so, I’m glad I’m not the only one. Heartbreaker and Gold are 2 of my all time favorite records but holy fuck he was/is a shitty person.
He’s not my absolute favorite but he’s definitely one of them. The Velvet Underground changed my life and outlook on music as a whole. His solo career is really underrated too. That said, he certainly wasn’t a great person.
Watching his interviews later in life show him as a gentle, kind, loving person. His past behavior is certainly not excused, but I think he eventually found his way back to who he was before he turned into a monster.
People like you which is the majority of the population cannot be trusted or ever loved. Technology is a time machine and yall constantly go back to a individuals past and use it against him. Focus on your own life bud.
Actually he wasnt a heroin addict. He was a speed addict who happened to write a song about heroin and made it part of his image.
He frequently talked about his heroin addiction in interviews and wrote quite a few songs about heroin, the most notable being “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting For the Man”
@@desmondpoppy4511 agreed. I was also a heroin addict, but during gigs and times I needed to work, I also used speed. It's not like you have to choose *one* specific drug and only do that.
@@desmondpoppy4511 He said a lot of bullshit during interviews. He was either lying or his biography is wrong.
He shot up.on stage.
In NZ the "homebake" he used was so strong he didnt go on. He apologised to fans and did the concert the following day.
It was one of his best ever performances
@@huepix Haha, no he didn't. He cancelled the gig because he was way too fucked up, yeah, but he mimed the injection as part of the act with a mic cable wrapped around his arm. It was all just an act that got exaggerated so many times by word of mouth retellings that it ended up becoming legend.
Now you need to do a video about Zappa, or he's gonna be jealous
Hello,
I've just saw your video. And I've just read the biography of Lou Reed written by DeCurtis. And I cannot be more agree with you. We, the Reed's fans, have to talk about this complicated legacy. When I've just finished the DeCurtis book, I was devasted. He didn't talk about things that I've not know before. Lou Reed was a brilliant poet and a brilliant rock and roll animal. But he was a monster too. With his first wife, with Rachel. Abusive with oh so many friends of him. But he was one of my favorite artists of all time. How can I cope with all that (specially with a cancelled culture upon us)?
And that's why I thank you for your video. Yes, we have to talk. We all have some dear uncle or cousin that was abusive or a really bad person. We have to stop loving her or him? We have to bury her or him under a rug? I don't think so. We have to talk about it.
Again, thanks a lot.
beautifully put!
Related to this: I listened to a podd were two people (the host and the guest) talked about Cornelis Vreeswijk. A brilliant poet and songwriter who wrote many beautiful and many witty "visor" (Swedish folk-songs, though the man was from the Netherlands originally, he lived and worked in Sweden and wrote his songs in Swedish).
But the man was also an alcoholic, a male chauvinistic pig at times, and homophobic.
They asked each other in the end who you can reconcile that with the art.
And I love their conclusion:
First of all, we need to accept that our heroes are humans and humans are flawed. Part of growing up is realising your parents aren't perfect gods nor (as some think during their teenage years) evil tyrants, but humans and not everything they taught you was right.
Does that mean throwing everything they said out? No.
You keep the good stuff.
Same thing with artists you like.
Because enjoying or endorsing someones good stuff doesn't mean you endorse or like the bad stuff they've done. I think it's odd that we think this way. After all, no sane person would think that just because you're a fan of say, Martin Scorsese, you consider every film he's ever made a masterpiece. Neither would being a fan of Lou Reed make you think that everything he did was right. Especially not his abusive side.
Speaking of Cornelis, his work was very much on the side of the down-and-out, he was a cynic (one of his more famous choruses are that "it might get better but it won't get good") who nonetheless loved the beautiful in the world and wanted to celebrate it. His chauvinistic and homophobic side very seldom came out in his work, especially not his best stuff. And that's the stuff about him that's still being played and celebrated.
Also important to remember (and this is me slightly paraphrasing an internet-friend of mine who said it first, I just added the Lou Reed part): Lou, and every other "bad" person, from creeps, to miscreants, on up to criminals or even predators, are all themselves victims. Victims of genetics, of environment, of upbringing, of circumstance, of their brains, of bio/neuro-chemistry, and so forth. Only by recognising the humanity in those we look down on or dislike or even hate can we address the root causes and try to fix/mitigate them. Hate and disdain are easy. Understanding is more difficult, but it yields better results.
It doesn't make what they've done "okay". But to condemn and moralise is never interesting because it doesn't bring about understanding.
Like previously stated, we need to talk about it. And we should talk about it, especially in order to understand it so we can prevent it from happening again.
@@theyakkoman Thank you for that thoughtful post. I think that cancel culture is an error, a toxic error. I think it will go away when people start to wise up. I hope that's soon.
I think you're right - "cancel culture" has become a toxic thing, lacking in nuance or ability for redemption.people have - I would like to think - good intentions in highlighting abuse and bigotry, but it's really just another toxic by-product of social media; a corporate megalith of which humans are the product, and sensationalism and intrigue drive engagement. we really just need people to better understand the consequences of world social media usage, and the way we interact with it. people are complicated, nobody is perfect, and the idea that an artist's creative output can be written off because they have personality flaws is a pretty misguided one. I've known hundreds of artists, and most of the really talented ones have struggles and shortcomings which shouldn't necessarily undermine the things they create. i think it's overly simplistic to expect artists to be perfect people.
Rachel was NOT Reed's first wife. Rachel was Reed's live transvestite boyfriend for a while in the mid 1970's. And stop calling him a *monster*. That's an incredibly offensive term reserved for the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.
'Rock n' Roll' has and always will be my favourite song. I identify so strongly with the 'Ginny' character, and the way Reed describes these realistic and flawed characters in so many of his songs (like 'hanging round' one of the best) is just unmatched. Thank you for this video!!
Right on, sister. I feel the very same way re: Ginny. I honestly don't believe I would have made it as far as I have without the life affirming power of Rock and Roll. I would've given up on life years ago. Thanks Lou. RIP
I saw him in a music store signing records. It was around 2000, "Ecstasy" had just been released.
Just five minutes prior to my Reed-sighting, I sold a fairly old pressing of a Velvets record so I could get money.
That was a Lou Reed day alright.
Lou changed a lot over the course of his life. Just look at his relationship with Laurie Anderson.
Seriously like don’t get me wrong it was a good video but he totally left out how he got cleaned in the 80s and I’m all for addressing the abuse but let’s be real if you’re gonna go after Lou than why not John Lennon or all the underage girls bands like Led Zepplin slept with
Agreed! He grew up in a drug culture with a spotlight on him. But he grew up!
Conor Manning John Lennon was the first artist I thought of after the video pointed out the yin yang of the man Lou. Lots of pain in art.
@@ceejay1794 There's a lot of pain in life. A lot of people assholes in their youth, grow out of their assholeness. In the muy macho culture of the 60s and 70s in particular, it would be all the more challenging for a young man thrust into the raunchy, hedonistic and chauvenistic world of rock and roll and avoid being a first class jerk at all. It's hard for people who live average lives to be perfect all the time, too.
@@conormanning8621 Did you even watch the video? He is in NO WAY "going after" Lou Reed. If anything the tone of this video shows he is clearly one of Lou's biggest fans-you have to really love something in order to be able to look at it critically in such a complex and in depth way as this. This is a conversation that a lot of music consumers will refuse to have about their favorite musicians, because it makes them uncomfortable, but it NEEDS to be had, regardless of whether Lou reformed later in his life or not.
I've been getting into the Velvet Underground this last year. I must've listened to New Age over a 100 times during the last two months.
There's ALOT more to this story than just this one song and relationship.
Joel Rizzo Yeah, you can tell this guy did REALLY surface level research.
Yeah...
Lou Reed, grew an changed throughout his life. The person who talks in the video acts as if his life started and ended with, Perfect Day. I think his last album LuLu, was a masterpiece.
alex summers he didn’t do surface-level research. He just gave one example and expanded the ideology towards that one song. If you want a documentary then this isn’t the video for you.
@@aimingalex I would argue that, for a 10 minute RUclips video, focusing on one single song in depth yields FAR greater sophistication and insight than a shallow deep dive on his entire life's discography
This is creepy as I had perfect day stuck in my head
Thanks, beautiful video.
Would you considering making a King Crimson video someday?
Crazy how I just watched _Trainspotting_ for the first time tonight, then saw this video in my subscription feed. Great breakdown as always
There are two stories here : Lou's relation to society, and his personal life. Regarding his personal life, allegations have been made of mistreatments that have to be taken seriously (by Bettye and in DeCurtis' book), but statements from other relatives at the time also came to defend Reed. So I guess this a complicated story of its own.
But it could be misleading to keep this complexity on a personal level, through Lou's fight with addiction, mental illness, fame or sexual identity. This darkness is very much linked to his bleak perception of society, norms and social deviance, which is why he was such an important figure for punk (Iggy's nemesis in some way). His message is disturbing, but it's not (or not merely) because he was disturbed. Many troubles he described was those he witnessed in society.
What seems even more interesting is that he didn't coin his critiques in a "moral" way, like say Dylan. He seemed closer to the very dark, almost relativist stance of a Burroughs. That adds to the disturbance of his message.
I picked up Lou reed when I was a yellow cab driver in Chelsea one time. I was so shocked and in awe like oh man it’s Lou reed. He was kind of in a bad mood. I never really would bother celebrities if I pick them up. But I loved reed … he wasn’t necessarily mean to me just grumpy. . Anyway that’s my Lou reed story.
Lou Reed is one of the most underrated artists in today’s society. Not only is his solo work amazing but his stuff with The Velvet Underground was truly revolutionary, and yet many people in today’s society have never even heard his name.
Jack Hagberg he’s not mainstream but he has a pretty loud cult following just like Elliott Smith, Lou’s music is not for everyone and that’s alright.
No, you mean many millennials and z generations, the others know him. By the way for the revolution in the VU we should give more credit to John Cale and Tom Wilson (also producer of Zappa and Bob Dylan) than Lou Reed.
ncmsc n I’m 13 and VU r my favourite band
@@marlowename3713 It's a very good thing, but I think the majority of young people doesn't know Lou Reed. I'm 25 and VU is my favorite band as well, some know them but if I say Lou Reed people look at me with a confused face.
ncmsc n yeah I get you it’s pretty annoying when people don’t know one of the most influential bands of all time
I love Women, I think they're great
-Lou Reed (Song: Women)
Velvet underground and nico is the best album ever
true - but white light white heat is better
Really a poor look at the actual life and legacy of Lou Reed. First of all, I'm surprised that you indicated that Lou's main drugs of choice were heroin and alcohol and stopped there. Lou was a known and prolific speed user up until 1984 or so. Watch any interview/live performance of his between the years he started and 1984 and 9/10 he is going to be wide eyed and spun as hell. White light/white heat is about methamphetamine. Lou was shooting that shit up during the VU days, and i'm sure later on too. But anyway, with a title like that, all you really talked about was a single song in his discography and allegations from an ex of his (which I totally believe) and said that this is why he is complicated. It's like... ok? You aren't going to talk about his step into transcendental mediation in the 1990s/2000s? Or his relationship with Laurie anderson? This video makes the claim that Lou is complicated, but really fails to show how he is exceptionally more complicated compared to other artists/people. Lou's legacy was his music, and you didn't even scrape the surface of his work besides Perfect Day. I really don't see how his legacy is so complicated. Yes, he was an abuser and he was, as they say, fucked up. But that's not his legacy
I think you wanted a whole documentary in order to be satisfied. This is a video only about a single song and its context in time and place.
@@EclecticoIconoclasta Well, the title of the video is "The Complicated Legacy of Lou Reed", the title is not "Lou Reed's Perfect Day"
@@itsgonnbeok7249 i agree, this is shallow af
Agreed.
It's a 12min video just scatching the surface.
I'd love to see your more complete, in depth video.
When will you be completing that?
You should do a video on Lulu, i think it's such a misunderstood album
Depression Cherry agreed!! I’d love to learn more about this album
Nice name, great album
@@DrJimmy93 thank uu :D
I rather have him do a video about good albums or songs or about an important event. Lulu is a complete mess and a terrible idea from the start. Nevertheless there is some interest in talking about terrible works of art. I mean I spent a lot of time in the past watching things about Tommy Wiseaus The Room as well as on Cory Feldman´s Angelik 2 the Core.
Exactly, I think people don't understand the concept
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for finally making a Lou Reed video! Dirty Blvd. and Stephanie Says are both among my favourite songs.
And Street Hassle of course!
Ramona Mahabir My favourite is either Coney Island, Baby or Sad Song
Am I the only one who believes that Heroin is not an ode to the drug, but rather quite a harsh critic of the society?
Sterling morrison likes this video
Tough video to make. Really good, thank you
Street Hassle is an incredible song by Reed. It really shows his excellence in poetry, storytelling, and musical simplicity.
Other than “heroin” , street hassle is the song I can relate to the most as an addict making yet another attempt at recovery, the way he portrays the melancholy of city life and this wanting to slip away is beautiful and Ironically is one of the reasons I go back to fentanyl so often
@@Notmyrealname69420 I really relate to Waves Of Fear as I've been there many times.
sha la la man
Makes me think of Baker skateboards.
Man... every video I see in this channel fills me with gratitude.
Your channel is a treasure.
Greets from a Brazilian friend.
*Insert Joke about Lulu*
A truly underrated record, as David Bowie himself knew:
www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/20/david-bowie-lou-reed-masterpiece-metallica-lulu
I like that album I don't care what anyone says
Perfect Day is wonderful love song, because its almost not a love song. Its sincerely honest in a world of cliched rock lyrics.
You made a really beautiful video, the esthetics, script and editing is awesome. Thank you.
why is everyone so concerned with defining artists legacies with analysis and judgement of their private lives? we are all flawed individuals. artistic outputs are just that - outputs. These become inputs to the observers of the art. The outputs are of the moment that they were created, not the summation of a lifetime. i like your channel and you are a good creator. i am just wearying of the comtemporary trend in analysis that overweights biography over craft.
Her life was saved by rock and roll!
His sister said because it was depression that he went to electroshock and not for his sexuality. But imagine being open about your sexuality in that time. Would give me depression too
Wow what a great video! That line "Just perfect day, you made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else, someone good" has always resonated with me. At the time it reflected the way I felt not good enough for the girl I had split up with but as I got older I realised it was about someone not good in their own right trying to escape for a precious few moments. Very moving.
This was beautiful. This song has always struck a chord somewhere very deep. Loved your analysis of it and the repetition of simple understated images, like the song itself. Appreciate your work and the time you put into it 😘
Opinion on Tranqilize by The Killers and Lou Reed? Was my most listened to last year!
hey poly your one of my favorite youtubers and your content is really great keep it up
If Lou were still alive he would hate this video and tweet that you're full of shit. RIP
Thank you for this one! I love a lot of Lou Reeds music and after reading his biographies and finding out what a terrible person he could be even if it was brought on by addiction and mental illness and I had to stop listening to his work. And unlike a lot if other artist whose work I can set aside because I can’t forget their behaviour Lou Reed I really missed. Your idea of learning from his work for what he was striving for instead of what he was is a new way to look at it. I’m also just really glad you weren’t just celebrating his music without addressing how terrible he was
I totally thought that song was about heroin.
Great video on why it is so complicated to talk about art and artists; some great art can come from people who do reprehensible things. But love really is rewarding when you can understand, give people a chance to heal and atone, and become someone good.
Your writing and delivery have come so far. Great job man, keep it up!
Great work as always. Perhaps
Warren Zevon would be a good topic for a video?
Lou Reed was the most important influence on my musical taste, from his time in the Velvets, to the end of his career. 'Berlin' must be one of the saddest, yet most operatic albums ever. 'Perfect Day' always made me feel a bit melancholic, as did 'Candy Says'. Reed is a seriously underrated and complex artist.
I grew up on Lou Reed because of my father. I played Perfect Day at his funeral... It was the perfect song for that day.
This was a sensitive and honest discussion of a great song and musician that was beautiful and ugly all at once. Thank you for bringing his life into communication with his music.
I absolutely love Lou Reed, but once you start to scrape the surface and realise what people where actually like, it’s hard to see them in the same light, I’m still going to admire his musical skill and pure artistic talent but I think this is a good example of consumers having to look past the image and understand that these are real people with real experiences and emotions... I don’t really know where I’m going here but I wanted to comment to get you more views:))
For me the best line is ". ..i thought i was someone else. .. .Someone good"
The velvet underground is the best band ever, the song "Sister Ray" is their best work
You had a great video going UNTIL you had to succumb to advertising at the end......NOT COOL
10 September 1983 live in Rome at the Circo Massimo. I was 15, with three friends, my first concert ever. Incidents with the police, tear gas that arrived on the stage, and after the concert the four of us stuck inside a Metro Station that had been closed immediately after the last train arrived.
Unforgettable night !! Saw him again in Milan maybe 20 years after that, an intimate show in a theatre. Lou Reed touched human nature in its raw essence.
Wow! You just SUPER impressed me with THE most inspired and poignant analysis of one of my all time favourite artists. You got yourself another well deserved fan. I’m checking out all your channels and spreading the word! Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!
9:09 - This is a compelling conclusion to your analysis. Expanding on that, I would say there is one love that can save someone, and that is self-love. Holding yourself accountable and being honest about your own flaws is the only way that can be achieved. People often seem to think that being loved by someone else will make them feel better about their own insecurity and lead to happiness. And often it does for a period of time. But in the end that happiness or completeness they seek is lacking. It can also be dangerous because that mindset makes you vulnerable to abusers who will exploit that vulnerability. None of us are perfect lads, so don't be so hard on yourself. If you don't love you, then you can't expect someone else to.
Perfect Day has a dozen chords, a middle-eight, and an outro. It completely contradicts Lou's quote about chords. It's at least feasible to suspect that he wrote the lyrics but not the music. When I listened to Satellite of Love, it struck me as a David Bowie song with Lou lyrics. Are there really any other Lou Reed songs as elaborate and complex as those?
I was listening to take a walk in the wild side when this was uploaded, crazy coincidence
I was humming it in my head and then the video showed up a few minutes later lol
A similar thing happened to me, I was just watching a Lou Reed interview.
@@hypershadic9858 wow, crazy im not the only one
Me too
google listens to us through devices
i love lou reed. his lyrics are a prophesy for the ups and downs (mostly downs) of life.
also i see so many comments abour how wrong this video is about his life, how he was not a monster, and how heroin wasn't his drug of choice. but art rarely has anything to do with facts. once you start being more concerned with facts you're not appreciating art, you're just relaying facts. the stories an artist puts out there about oneself, whether intentional or not, is larger than the artist's actual life experiences. you can say perfect day is a song about reed's fantasy about going on a mass killing spree and no one can say you're wrong. even reed himself didn't know what he was singing about all the time. electricity comes from other planets and its reach goes beyond even that. it doesnt belong to any one specific individual. it's communal.
I'm pretty sure he'd given up heroin by the early 80's. How about Lou's relationship with Rachel? Lou Reed fans know the story.
I wonder why we have so much trouble with the fact that great artists are not always great people. We SHOULD acknowledge that our idols have clay feet. But we should also ask why we expect more of them.
I think we idolize these larger than life figures because we want to see the best of ourselves in them. But we are shocked we see the worse parts of our selves in them.
I came from a conservative family "take a walk" introduced me to a new world as a teen.
Lou Reed was a human being. He had his flaws as well as his merits and he looked at them as both beautiful. That's a true artist. RIP Lulu.
Sane in an insane world perhaps?...
Perfect timing! I’m in the middle of several VU documentaries- including a fantastic three part Sterling Morrison series by Cam Forrester. Lou INDEED is a most complicated character.
I fucking love Lou Reed
I am so glad you did this video I love lou and I was just hearing take a walk on the wild side
I wonder how Laurie would respond...
This is pure nonsense. Lou had used heroin early in his career but his 'drug of choice' was amphetamine. Practically everyone in the arty crowd was on speed.
swoop swoop oh baby rock rock
I mean, I wouldnt say you're videos get tanked...
If anyone wants to check out new music I'm uploading originals and covers weekly!
As always, great video! It’s fascinating how much the context of Reed’s personal life adds to the meaning of Perfect Day
Why would his legacy be "Complicated"?. Lou Reed is the finest artist, and his music is the best shit ever
He wasn't a good guy
@@breakfastline the biography this is using as a source is a biphobic slanderous peice. He was on good terms with his exes and after hitting his wife actually (crazy) inproved himself and later sobered up?
@@reebes54 why the question mark.
Great job; very thought-provoking.
i genuinely went into this video thinking it was about lou bega, i was so ready to hear about the deep and meaningful backstory to mambo no. 5
Trainspotting is one the best movies of the 90s, very recommendable. Nice video, it would be nice to see something about Nick Cave too.
Yeah who the fuck was he? Never been a hardcore fan but as all people I love Velvet. Bowie. The whole scene but I realise I don't know shit about him except that he actually made beautiful songs
“Perfect Day” is about heroin, full stop. It’s not a love song. And Reed’s legacy isn’t “complicated,” he just liked fucking with people.
Amphetamines and alcohol were Lou's drugs of choice. Besides his admitted history (speed is the reason we have "Metal Machine Music", his countless lyrical references to amphetamines) his use of speed is incredibly obvious in his mannerisms and bodily side effects he displayed from the 60s until the early 80s. If you've ever noticed how he would constantly move his jaw while talking and singing...speed. If anything he made it very clear that he was never a heroin addict. F**king "Trainspotting".
This video is a completely idiotic attempt to define an extremely complex man, Lou Reed, using one song and a subjective interpretation of that man's lyrics. Yes, Lou did drugs in the 1970's. EVERYBODY did drugs in the 70's. Reed is ultimately defined by his work, his music, his performances, his writing, his photography, his own words. His legacy is his Art, not anyone's opinion about his personal relationships. And btw Reed had a very stable, mature, drug free relationship with his 2nd wife Sylvia Morales for ten years and then another stable relationship with Laurie Anderson for the last 20 years of his life.
Song writing, just like poetry, is the art of packing dense, complex meaning into the fewest possible words, with rhyming patterns as a bonus, but not essential. I believe it is the most demanding and difficult form of writing.
"The love alone was not enough"
In my head "Not enough, not enoughghghghghgh"
(MSP song, for the record)
Same!
Hey man that was really beautiful and well summarised. Well done and thanks for uploading this
I understand his complex mind, I respect where he's coming from, but he fucked up big time by making Lulu with Metallica.
Lou was never a heroin addict. He dabbled with it in his very early years, but was never a junkie.
Gotta call bullshit on this video. I spent a day with Lou Reed in '89. He was good friends with my friends in The Del Lords. He was a normal guy just trying to stay sober and play music. No monster to be found.
Lou Reed never suffered fools gladly, you fall into that category. Yes. YOU.
Lou was a genius despite having such a screwed up life. Perfect Day and Venus in Furs are still my favorites.
Like a lot of "creative" people, Lou was an asshole one-on-one a lot of the time. Extremely dismissive of "fans". Liable to screw your career up if you seemed like you were going to overshadow him. As for this being "one of the truest expressions of love", dude, glad I'm not your companion.
I'm quickly coming into the understanding that if you are a fan of music you have to stand for queer rights ant the Rights of the LGBTQ alphabet soup whatever ( thank you Polyphonic for the education) . I'm not a fan of trends like # I'm with Her or Times up, Gay Pride or the # Woke generation, because as sure as they have gained influence they will fall in their influence influence given the proper time. But really all these movement are really about at their core is expanding human dignity and our birth right to freedom and equality and who is against that.
I could never get into lou reed, his music is abraisive and i don't see the value. music is subjective, and i'm aware if there's any objectivity in the universe about this stuff, i am pretty sure my musical taste would be certified "shit" by God. But seriously, could not ever fucking get the appeal. At all.
If anyone came along and changed my mind about this i'd probably appreciate it. I feel like i'm missing something but.... nah not feeling it. Polyphonic can't even make the case, which is dire.
Who do you think you are calling Lou Reed a bad person? I think you got it right in the title to say he's complicated. That is a good editorial take. Your definitive good/bad judgment is a just ridiculous. Lou had, by all accounts, a healthy and long relationship after these dark years. And even if he didn't, such narrow binary judgment is not evolved, no matter how evolved you pretend to be.
Good vid, but what thing I gotta point out- I wouldn't call Heroin an ode about dedicated to a drug because it suggests praise when the song really just describes the effects of usage.
Great video as usual! But for me, this song is about an addict who is able to spent one sober day with a loved one and enjoy simple things of live without drugs... Even knowing sobriety will not last...
This video seems poorly researched, because I'm positive I've read interviews with Reed where he said heroin was never his DOC. Dude was a massive meth-head/speed freak and was quite open about it. I don't see any reason why he'd be proud of shooting speed and ashamed of shooting dope, so I don't think he was lying. Not all of his songs were autobiographical, and "Heroin" was one of those songs about other people, not necessarily Reed himself.
Lou was not a savage monster... He was a normal good person who had trauma that wanted to numb his pain and by going towards his addiction with drugs (portals that makes decision making easily wrong and with bad intent). Addiction is the driving force with the sex/drugs that are the portal to being that "monster" you speak of.
Of course everyone is responsible for their actions and their intent with how they acted evil. Though it needs to be understood clear and cut these types of people that hurt and follow addiction arent all bad they just chose a bad path. Should they be held accountable? Yes. Should it be understood though they were stuck in the evil influences because of being confused themselves following addiction? Completely yes...
These people are allot different from people who are just evil with bad intent even without addiction... Those ones are just evil with no excuse nor sympathy... The others are not simply evil and deserve sympathy