Why did Lou Reed call the counterculture a joke?
Any mere mention of 1960s America immediately conjures up rose-tinted images of flared jeans, protest marches, and colourful flowers painted on the side of Volkswagen Beetles, but not every artistic avenue of the counterculture age was quite so convinced of that ‘peace and love’ manifesto, with Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground existing in direct defiance of hippie flower-power.
Despite emerging from the New York underground at roughly the same time as their fellow musicians started to grow their hair out and buy Jesus sandals, The Velvet Underground never adopted the conventions of the hippie age. Carving out a much more abrasive and experimental sound than any of their tripped-out West Coast counterparts, the band never made any secret of their detest of hippiedom.
Even their respective experiments with LSD weren’t enough to send Reed and the gang on a path to flower-power enlightenment, instead sending the band further down the path of musical experimentation and a subversion of the musical norm.
They were never going to appear on the bill for Woodstock – not that they would have wanted to – but The Velvet Underground were arguably far more impactful for the future of rock and alternative music, driving the scene forward through their ambitious sonic experiments and dedication to artistic principles, rather than merely becoming another voice in the increasingly saturated counterculture scene.
It would appear, however, that the Underground’s qualms with the counterculture period stretched far beyond the quality of its musical output. Namely, Reed seemed to take issue with the hippie tendency to trivialise drug use, presenting the likes of LSD as a means of conjuring up kaleidoscope imagery and Sgt. Pepper-esque sounds. “It was very funny – until there were a lot of casualties. Then it wasn’t funny anymore,” Reed told Rolling Stone back in 1987.
Of course, the songwriter himself was deep in the throes of drug addiction during his time with The Velvet Underground and beyond, with heroin being the typical choice. Still, perhaps that addiction helped Reed to recognise the danger of the counterculture’s unwavering and typically unserious focus on drugs.
“I don’t think a lot of people realised at the time what they were playing with,” he theorised. “That flower-power thing eventually crumbled as a result of drug casualties and the fact that it was a nice idea but not a very realistic one.”
Perhaps if the counterculture movement had taken itself a little more seriously, rather than spending every waking moment tripped out on acid staring at their own hands, the political aims and anti-war message would have been more impactful. In many ways, hippiedom trivialised the anti-war and pro-civil rights message it claimed to hold dear through its focus on LSD, which might be what Reed was getting at.
“What we, the Velvets, were talking about, though it seemed like a down, was just a realistic portrayal of certain kinds of things,” the songwriter concluded. And, indeed, when you look back upon the 1960s when stripped of its flower-power nostalgia, the harsh abrasion and noise of The Velvet Underground seems far more fitting than anything pumped out by acid-riddled hippies preaching peace and love.
