No fan has the right to expect a performer to die for his art, or reduce himself to a semi-functional drug burnout.
But the questions remain: Do creative people who clean up their personal lives produce equally good work when sober and content? Is suffering a necessary prerequisite for great art?
Reed is only one of many rock and rollers to whom this applies. Is the post-methadone Johnny Thunders exuberantly rocking with the Uptown Horns better than the caustic Heartbreakers-era junkie? Is the now-sober great-wise-father-of-heavy-metal Ozzy Osbourne just as interesting as the biting-heads-off-bats alcoholic maniac?
Reed has obviously done some heavy thinking about all this, coming to terms with both himself and his audience. After successfully kicking drugs and alcohol, Lou Reed is still going strong at age 44, and 1986 is proving to be a big year for him. With his new and very accessible album, Mistrial hitting the Top 50, Reed is definitely back in business.
The New Lou is a definite break from the original jaded, angry, drugged-out, street-smart model of years gone by. To many die hard fans he has abandoned his roots to forge ahead in new, disappointing directions. His music no longer heralds the degenerate lifestyles and attitudes from the underbelly of society. From some fans comes the charge that Lou Reed should have packed it in or died years ago.
But Reed's new music is different as a result of genuine changes in his life, and he has always been unflinchingly honest, informing his audience with no holds barred about the current state of his existence. This constant soul-baring is at the core of his art, and few other performers in pop music come close to it.
Now, whatever his music has lost -- the sense of danger, eloquent obsession with death -- has been replaced with a joyful belief in the glory of love and an appreciation of life's simpler pleasures. The vicarious thrill seekers who flock to witness public self-destruction will be disappointed. Reed knows this and rightfully expresses his anger at those who will not allow him to change in the title cut from Mistrial ("I want a mistrial to clear my name, I want to bring my case to the people of New York City.") The only thing he can be faulted for is implicitly apologizing for his former attitude in the same song.
Reed's hostile, depressed, former persona produced some of best rock and roll in the genre's history. He has nothing to be sorry for, and should take the advice of another rocker, Joan Jett -- "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation."
Whatever his relationship with his past, the 1986 Lou Reed put on a hot show. Amidst shouts of "LOOOUU!" from the packed dance floor, he launched into a rocking "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together," performed in the upbeat version included in the terrific Velvet Underground collection, VU/Another View, rather than the moody, disembodied (and not compelling) cut off Street Hassle.
Although the set consisted mostly of new material, Reed's pick of his classics ("Sweet Jane," Satellite of Love") purposely stuck with happier songs, omitting all of his druggie anthems. This was the part of Reed's change-of-attitude trade-off which was hardest to take; "Heroin," Waiting for My Man," and everything on the dark, brilliant Berlin record remains his very best work, and the thought that he will never perform those songs again is really sad.
Lou also seems overly fond of the mid-tempo, guitar-heavy sound featured on Mistrial, and tended to homogenize his old material into that style. This helped modernize some songs, but stripped others ("Street Hassle," "Vicious") of their original dynamics and punch.
Reed's new band (with long-time co-workers and co-producer Fernando Saunders on bass, J.T. Lewis on drums, Woody Smallwood on keyboards/synthesizer and Rick Bell on saxophone) understandably enough, also seemed more at home on his recent material, performing with a cleaner, more high-energy sound than on recent tours. For once, Reed handled all the guitar work himself, drawing attention to his long-underrated expertise as a lead guitarist.
The band was at its best on the tilt-a-whirl music rave-ups (like "I Love You Suzanne," "No Money Down") that comprise the bulk of his new sound, and on the ballads which express Reed's new-found happiness and optimism -- "New Sensations," "I Remember You" and "Tell It To Your Heart" (which could easily have been titled "Satellite of Love, Part 2").
The very best examples of Reed's new sound and attitude were "Turn To Me" and "Doing The Things We Want To," both from New Sensations. "Turn To Me" is a moving plea for love, trust and mutual support, ending with the amazing (considering where Reed used to be coming from) line: "remember, Lou Reed loves you."
"Doing The Things..." had a country hoedown feeling in its arrangement; the song itself is both an homage to fellow artists Sam Shepard and Martin Scorsese, and an anthem to personal freedom. As Reed commented, "that's the story of my life."
The story of his old life was remembered in one song which was also, somewhat ironically, the high point of the show: "The Last Shot" from Legendary Hearts. Reed has often said that he sees his songs as journalism, and this song's lyrics -- with "I shot blood at a fly on the wall" and "you always wish you knew it was your last shot" -- are chillingly accurate.
Lou's delivery on "Shot" was the most intense, compelling moment of the evening, with the feeling of someone who has been saved looking back at his demons. It was also the only number that even hinted at his former, legendary, intense, live performances. His old shows were adventures in self-destruction and abuse; they had a feeling of danger, like anything could happen. Reed could be any number of different personalities depending on which drug he was on at the time, frequently going off on long tirades about God-knows what, quenching the voyeuristic audience's thirst for vicarious cheap thrills.
The Ritz show climaxed with "Walk On The Wild Side" -- probably the only Top 10 record ever with pointed references to gay hustling, oral sex, hard drug abuse and transvestism. To a standing ovation Reed appeared for an encore comprised from four different albums/phases of his exceptional career: the poignant ballad "Legendary Hearts," "Spit It Out" from Mistrial, and the light-hearted "Down At The Arcade" from New Sensations.
He closed with the classic "Rock And Roll" from the Velvet's classic 1969 record, Loaded. "Rock And Roll" is the quintessential Lou Reed anthem of alienated middle-class youth whose "life was saved by rock and roll." The uplifting, and surely autobiographical song, like much of Reed's work, tells us something about ourselves on the most basic level -- it is, in essence, the story of us all.
That song could also be seen as Lou Reed's plea for release from his past, a better one than "Mistrial." Reed has been saved, then almost destroyed by rock and roll. It's now time to let him get saved by it again. More than anyone else in Rock history, Reed has paid his dues to his art. He deserves his new sense of peace and serenity.
Originally published in The East Coast Rocker on July 30, 1986
