The Bob Dylan song Lou Reed listened to every day for two months
There are a lot of parallels that one can draw between the careers of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed; both of them were hugely influential songwriters who favoured simplicity over complexity in their compositions, and the course of popular music would arguably be radically different if it weren’t for their contributions. So many songwriters in today’s world still look up to these icons of the 1960s as sources of inspiration, and that’s simply because their styles of songwriting are so timeless and remain just as captivating as ever.
While another parallel between the two is the fact that neither of them had particularly strong singing voices, it was their rawness that made them so special, and they were always capable of eliciting intense responses through their emotive lyricism and impassioned delivery. Whether or not the melodies had imperfections in them, they still managed to carry a certain affecting charm, and this is what made them both stand out as singular songwriters in their own respective manners.
However, by the time the 1980s had crawled around, both Dylan and Reed had been actively releasing music for close to 20 years, and their popularity began to dwindle as they released records that were considered to lack the same emotional heft as before. Perhaps they were running out of steam, but these creative droughts were something that they both had to endure at this particular stage of their careers, and the diminishing returns that fans were met with from their output in this decade saw their notoriety decline.
While Dylan may have been releasing albums that disappointed even his most devoted fans and was struggling to retain his position in the limelight, a certain Mr Reed was still enamoured by his work. He was even full of praise for the works that didn’t even find their way onto his studio albums during this period.
The Dylan song, ‘Foot of Pride’, was originally recorded during the sessions that produced Infidels, a 1983 album that was met with lukewarm critical and commercial reception because it failed to offer anything new or inspiring. Many considered this release to be the start of Dylan’s decline due to how it took very few risks and felt flat and unfocused compared to his previous efforts, and perhaps ‘Foot of Pride’ and some of the other outtakes from the album should’ve been included in the release given how they’ve managed to amass plenty of praise after making their way onto bootlegs.
Reed was particularly complimentary about the track and chose to include a cover of the song as part of his live set during the ‘90s, including at a tribute concert to Bob Dylan held in Madison Square Garden in 1992. While there are plenty of other songs that Reed could’ve chosen to cover from Dylan’s extensive repertoire, his reasoning for choosing this obscure offcut was simple. “I’d been listening to it almost every day for two months,” he claimed.
Further discussing his love for the song, he noted how its sprawling length and tomes of lyrics were what drew him to it in the first place, as well as Dylan’s offbeat sense of humour. “It’s so fucking funny,” Reed claimed, citing the line, “Did he make it to the top? Well, he probably did and dropped,” as being a personal favourite. “There are so many verses, it was impossible to learn,” he continued. “GE Smith, who was playing with me, turned the pages. There is a lot of anger here. It’s not the Three Stooges.”
It may be one of Dylan’s angriest songs, and certainly not one that will give you a belly-laugh, but it does have that dry wit that Dylan has always been known for. He may not have been at the top of his game during the ‘80s, but tracks like this prove that he hadn’t lost his touch completely.
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