Five surprising songs that were loved by Lou Reed
The late frontman of The Velvet Underground and pioneer of glam rock, Lou Reed, was one of music’s foremost temperamental characters, invariably throwing barbs at unexpecting peers, journalists and fans alike. Possessing a lightning-quick wit and acerbic tongue, Reed’s vitriol was so potent that there were many instances in which he reduced people to tears. Although it was entertaining at points, for the most part, witnessing Reed give people a dressing down was uncomfortable, to say the least.
However, this was still Lou Reed. He was arguably one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and what he did for the advancement of alternative music and contemporary culture cannot be understated. Life today would be very different without his tenure in The Velvet Underground his back catalogue speaks for itself.
The artistic heights that Lou Reed reached over his long career gave him such a platform and forced people to listen. He never stopped being a fascinating creature of habit, for better or for worse. On numerous occasions, Reed was asked about many prominent artists over the years, and more often than not, he totally dismissed them outright, heavily criticising their work in the process. Famously, Reed didn’t have kind words to say about the most significant act of all time, The Beatles. “No, no, I never liked the Beatles,” he told PBS in 1987. “I thought they were rubbish”.
However, The Beatles weren’t the only ones who Reed took a pop at. He relentlessly managed to speak of his work in the most glittering of terms whilst doubly managing to criticise that of everyone else. “I know it sounds pretentious,” he once opined. “The other stuff couldn’t come up to our ankles, not up to my kneecap, not up to my ankles, the level we were on, compared to everyone else.”
With that said, believe it or not, there was music that he liked that wasn’t his own. While it was infrequent for Reed to covet the works of others, across his career, he did share praise for certain tracks. Join us, then, as we list five songs Lou Reed surprisingly loved.
Five surprising songs that Lou Reed loved:
John Lennon – ‘Mother’ (1970)
Although Lou Reed was dismissive of the ‘Fab Four’, he held a special place in his heart for this solo cut by the former frontman of The Beatles, and the authenticity of ‘Mother’ was a far cry away from what he perceived as the “corny” rock of the Liverpool band.
Just after Lennon dropped the hard-hitting track in 1970, Reed surprised everyone when he had a lot of praise for it. “That was a song that had realism,” he told Bruce Pollock. “When I first heard it, I didn’t even know it was him. I just said, ‘Who the fuck is that? I don’t believe that.’ Because the lyrics to that are real. You see, he wasn’t kidding around. He got right down to it, as down as you can get. I like that in a song.”
Bob Dylan – ‘Brownsville Girl’ (1986)
Following on from Reed’s comments about the realism of Lennon’s track ‘Mother’, there can be no surprise that he mentioned his love for the most realistic rock songwriter there’s ever been, Bob Dylan. There were many obvious choices that Reed could have picked, but instead, he opted for the 11-minute-long ‘Brownsville Girl’ from the album Knocked Out Loaded, which was co-written by playwright Sam Shepard.
“Other than Dylan, there’s not much there,” he said of quality rock ‘n’ roll songwriters. “The thing Dylan did with Sam Shepherd, ‘Brownsville Girl’, I mean, I think that is one of the greatest things I ever heard in my life. I fell down laughing. You can listen to that, you can listen to the words going on and it’s tremendous.”
“I always go out and get the latest Dylan album,” he told Rolling Stone in 1989. “Bob Dylan can turn a phrase, man. Like his last album [Down in the Groove], his choice of songs. ‘Going 90 miles an hour down a dead-end street’ — I’d give anything if I could have written that. Or that other one, ‘Rank Strangers to Me.’ The key word there is rank.”
Reed concluded: “I can really listen to something like that. The rest of it is all pop. I have zero interest in it. But Dylan continuously knocks me out. ‘Brownsville Girl,’ the thing he did with Sam Shepard, he said, ‘Even the SWAT teams around here are getting pretty corrupt.’ I was on the floor. I have that same reaction to some of my own stuff. And the only other person I can think of who does that for me is Dylan.”
Fats Domino – ‘The Fat Man’ (1949)
When speaking to Rolling Stone in 2003, Reed was asked to name the “most surprising” song that he loves, and many were perplexed as the answer wasn’t that surprising at all. Any musician worth their salt from his generation cited blues legend Fats Domino as a hero
Reed explained why he chose the classic track, and this was because it had a profound impact on him during his teenage years. He hated life on Long Island, but the power of Domino’s music whisked him away to other, much more desirable settings.
Reed said: “‘The Fat Man,’ by Fats Domino. I was a big fan of Meade’ Lux’ Lewis and Albert Ammons — those great 78s of boogie-woogie piano. Then I heard ‘The Fat Man,’ and I went, ‘Oh, my God!'”
The former Velvet Underground man continued: “It was one of the first records I ever bought, out on asshole Long Island, the armpit of the world. That’s what I wanted to be doing. Put a guitar to it, mix it together with ‘Ooby Dooby,’ by Roy Orbison, and ‘Red Hot,’ by Billy Riley — and you’ve got me.”
The Beach Boys – ‘I Get Around’ (1964)
This is perhaps the most surprising entry on the list, as you don’t get much more sugary than the early work by Californian surf rock legends The Beach Boys. In fact, ‘I Get Around’ is stylistically at odds with much of Reed’s work.
However, when you scratch beneath the surface a little more, it becomes clear that the iconoclasm of Reed and Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson connects them, as the latter’s record Pet Sounds is one of the most pioneering records ever made.
Back in 1966, Reed reviewed The Beach Boys in Aspen Vol 1 No 3 Section 3. “California plastic people came up with California plastic chord changes,” he said. “Which meant sticking in a Bb before your G, and after your C. Jan and Dean, the Beachboys, as opposed to Negro cooings in the East with shiny saxophones, California plastic concentrated on white twirps and falsetto chirps”.
The rocker continued: “(Sidewalk Surfin – the angel chorus- ‘shake your B. . .uns.’) The cult of the celestial choir. There is no god and Brian Wilson is his son. Brian Wilson stirred up the chords. Deftly taking from all sources, old rock, Four Freshman, he got in his later records a beautiful hybrid sound, (‘Let Him Run Wild’, ‘Don’t Worry Baby’, ‘I Get Around’, ‘Fun, Fun, Fun — and she had fun, fun, fun till her daddy took her t-bird away’)”.
“Like demented unicorns the East went West, and, it, all, made, it. It wasn’t really a long cry from such early classics as ‘Peppermint Stick’ by the Elchords (in N.Y. there are stores which sell old rock records for as much as $500).”
Neil Young – ‘Danger Bird’ (1975)
One of the most heartbreaking songs that Neil Young ever wrote, from his most depressing album, even the stoic Lou Reed was moved by its incredibly bleak essence. A cutting metaphor for a doomed relationship, the song discusses Young and Carrie Snodgress’s split, who incidentally was the mother of his son Zeke. In it, he addresses her infidelities, with it leaving a mark on all those who have been through similar.
In David Downing’s 1994 book, A Dreamer of Pictures, Reed labels the guitar playing on ‘Danger Bird’ the best he’d ever heard, revealing that it reduced him to tears. He said: “It makes me cry, it is the best I have heard in my life. The guy is a spectacular guitarist, those melodies are so marvellous, so calculated, constructed note to note… he must have killed to get those notes. It puts my hairs on end”.
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