Lou Reed: The Last Great American Whale
I saw the news. Lou Reed died yesterday. It’s 8am Hawaii time, and way too early for that kinda knowledge.
There’s much that has, is and always will be said about his influence on music and art. He was an extraordinary poet, musician and composer. Very much a New Yorker, very much an American man, but from the edges of whatever it means to be in the love-hate relationship conscious Americans have with that identity.
I never met him, but I saw him perform once at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. He came out on stage and said something like, “I’m very sad for your city tonight,” then proceeded to perform a show that was more like a wake than a concert. My friend and I assumed he was talking about the verdict in what became known as the Rodney King trial, wherein LAPD officers were acquitted for the brutal beating of King. Unbeknown to us, at that moment, riots raged and parts of the city were burning.
Personally, his work inspired me with a sense of the incalculable value of being honest through one’s art, keeping things real, raw, and stripped […]