The ‘80s brought some changes in music, while others ignored them. Lou Reed was more concerned with getting sober than anything else, but in the process worked to make his albums more literary. (We’ll leave it to others to say whether they’re poetic.)For whatever reason—and it couldn’t have been blockbuster record sales—he went back to RCA for The Blue Mask, which works as both a new beginning as well as a continuation of his life’s work. He sounds like he’s trying to bring it back to basics, from the borrowing of the cover photo from Transformer to the basic two guitars, bass and drums (you know, just like the Velvet Underground).
Lou saw each of his albums as chapters in his ongoing Great American Novel, often blurring the line between fiction and autobiography, and here the album is bookended by odes to his then wife Sylvia. “My House” references both his recent marriage and his attempts to contact the spirit of his mentor Delmore Schwartz. The problem is his attempt to apply a melody to his lyrics, almost as an afterthought. “Heavenly Arms” is a doo-wop song in all but arrangement, complete with the use of his wife’s name as the chorus.
More sentimentality is upfront on “The Day John Kennedy Died”, a surprising recount of that event, balanced with an expression of hope for good in a dark world. “Women” opens with a beautifully gentle guitar piece, before turning into an ode to the gender that rides the line between sarcasm and apology for much of his earlier misogynistic work.
His alcoholic ways are explored in “Underneath The Bottle”, but one would hope that the scarier imagery in “The Gun” isn’t from personal experience. “Waves Of Fear” has a great band sound, and while “Average Guy” tries to rise above its jokey punk vocal, its snotty portrait is best left to actual comedians. A little better is “The Heroine”, a solo performance that has only a cosmetic lyrical relation to “Heroin” from the first VU album. The blistering title track is a journey back to the depths of decadence.
If anything, The Blue Mask is a very cohesive album, helped by the band and anchored by the fretless bass of Fernando Saunders (an acquired taste to be sure) and featuring Reed disciple Robert Quine of the Voidoids on the other guitar. It was better than most of his recent work, hardly a masterpiece, but a welcome reaffirmation of his worth.
Lou Reed The Blue Mask (1982)—3
Well, well, this ain't gettin' better, seems like you are determined to destroy all that I love... Just kiddin' (or not?).
ReplyDeleteBut please tell me one thing, if you'd be so kind: why is it that you barely mentioned or in some cases even skipped over Sally Can't Dance, Metal Machine Music (well, that's fair), Coney Island Baby, Rock'n'Roll Heart, Street Hassle, The Bells and Growing Up In Public while dedicating instead a whole entry to Lou's first album, which you reasonably considered "transitional" and "an oddity"? I don't get it. I am not saying these albums are masterpieces or so (even If I strongly love CIB & SH), but it seems a little weird to me.
Changing of subject, you didn't say a word about Take No Prisoners' artwork controversy (by the way, I see this record as a unique piece of "bad vibes standup comedy rock", an absolute masterpiece); maybe it's because you didn't know about it in the States, but here in Spain it still resonates. Do you know the story?
Nacho
The main reason for the omission of those album is: I don't have them and haven't heard them.
ReplyDeleteAs for the TNP artwork, I didn't know there was a story. Explícame, por favor.
Well, it's an interesting little story about plagiarism and arrogance. In 1976, an underground Spanish magazine called Rock Comix dedicated a monographic issue to Lou and the Velvets; the front cover was an illustration by a comic artist from Barcelona called Nazario. Some Spanish journalist who went to London to interview Reed showed him the magazine and Lou apparently enthused about it and said he would like to use it in some way.
ReplyDeleteAnd so he did: that illustration appeared two years later as the cover art on TNP, slightly adapted and with Nazario's signature removed. And of course without giving any credit to him or the original editors, who renounced to sue Reed and RCA because it was too expensive for them (in Spain, where they would have had a chance, the album was published with a different cover). But the affair caused a great controversy on the musical press and among Nazario's fans (he'd become a very popular comic artist by then), and when Lou was asked about it by Spanish rock journalist Diego Manrique, he angrily replied: "They used my name on that magazine without my permission, they were the thieves!" (Yeah, he's a ray of sunshine, as you said).
Finally, when TNP was reissued on cd in the nineties, this time with Nazario's drawing even credited to Brent Bailer, the author thought that was too much and sued the label. And in 2003, twenty-five years after TNP's original release, he partially won the case: RCA had to compensate him with some money, but still refused to give him any credit on the record.
The saddest (and funniest) thing is that Nazario was a huge fan and said: "If Lou had wanted it, I would gladly have given it to him, for sure. I was just upset by theirs ignorance and arrogance."
Hope you liked the story.
Nacho
Aha. All of which only proves what a major a-hole Lou can be.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the background!