The composers Lou Reed said were too narrow for his taste: “I listen to rock”
“What is beautiful in the conventional sense?” No, they are not the words of a proverb: it was just Lou Reed on any given day.
In many ways, more than any other exorbitant rock star out there, Reed could be seen very much as the man with the mouth, the gift of the gab, and the talent for tall tales. Essentially, he would constantly lie through his teeth – but somehow also bewilder and entangle you in his web of stories while doing it. It was actually quite remarkable.
However, by the same token, there was no getting around the fact that this also proved to be a complete pain in the arse for anyone who had the misfortune of interviewing him. You could walk in, thinking you were the boss, only for the tables to suddenly turn and Reed to ensnare you in his grasp. Everyone else was the prey, and he was totally the captor.
In this sense, the roles of a typical interview could very much be reversed at any moment, with Reed probing the poor unsuspecting souls at a moment’s notice and interrogating them on the questions they had so dutifully planned. That’s where things could obviously often go awry – but just sometimes, they also gave way to the most revealing truths.
So, “What is beautiful in the conventional sense?”, Reed began, to which the interviewer cited the composers Bach and Mozart as two of the most prime examples. “Don’t you think that’s a little old?”, the rocker replied, before then beginning to spiral a little out of control. “For whom are they considered beautiful? Who? What people?”
If you weren’t already heading into a panic after that blizzard of words, unfortunately for you, the attack wasn’t quite over yet. “You are talking about the narrowest palette available,” Reed seemed to sneer. “I don’t listen to Bach and Mozart very much. I listen to rock.” Indeed, for any rock and roll diehard, that was the absolute mantra in sticking it to the man and rebelling in the boldest way possible.
To everyone else, did it come across as a bit snobby and ironically pretentious for the sake of it? Perhaps just a little, but that sense of normalcy and humility might just have been the only words that the musician didn’t know the meanings of in his personal dictionary. At the end of the day, the man was nothing but a wind-up, and relished in every second of keeping people on their toes.
It’s difficult to say, given that I never specifically stared into the whites of Reed’s eyes, but there probably wouldn’t be a person on Earth who wouldn’t be unnerved by that presence. Sadistic and cruel as it may have been, that was all part of what you got with him, and if you hadn’t prepared to take that into account – well, woe betide you.
So, with their armour and bulletproof vests at the ready, many more journalists took on the beast that was speaking to Reed, and it was testament to their own tenacity what results they yielded. Some got sprawling stories, others got barely a word, and a select few got certain missiles and home truths, such as his disdain for classical music. It really was the luck of the draw.
