“My own song”: Lou Reed’s introduction to music
He might have been unwavering in curmudgeon, but Lou Reed had more of an impact on popular music than nearly any other artist of his generation, bar The Beatles and Bob Dylan. When broaching the topic of the New Yorker, we can often get lost in his many spats with journalists or outrageous takedowns of other artists, but behind those black shades and torrent of insults was a creative mind like no other.
People often laud The Beatles as the most significant band of the 1960s, with Dylan on a level standing as a songwriter. Without him, the Fab Four wouldn’t have embarked upon their artistic, magical mystery tour in the second half of the decade. Broadly speaking, both points are true.
Whether it was the Liverpudlian quartet advancing rock with bold experimentation and little regard for public opinion, or Dylan encapsulating the spirit of his era in protest songs before elevating his artistry by going electric, these two acts shaped the music of the decade—and everything that followed—in profound ways.
This is all well and good, but Reed did something that went against the grain in a different way: he humanised music. This was not in a politically charged manner like Dylan or through discussing other emotional topics like The Beatles, but by lifting the lid on the side of humanity that everyone knew existed but was reticent to discuss in public.
Reed examined sexual kinks, drug use, and other behaviours deemed transgressive at the time, bravely peeling back the curtain on everyday folk, directly inspired by Michael Leigh’s book The Velvet Underground, which analysed the sexual subcultures of the early 1960s. Not only were Reed and his band musical innovators doing away with tradition, but the themes examining the salacious, kinky side of life were the frontman’s specific forte. It was the perfect soundtrack for a decade where drug use was becoming popularised, free love was in the air, and social mores were shifting.
Reed’s discussions of heroin, sado-masochism and death in The Velvet Underground were massively ahead of their time. In his glam rock era, when he went solo in the early 1970s, typified by 1972’s Transformer, he would delve even further into this aspect of life, bringing to life the colourful cast of characters he rubbed shoulders with in a nightmarish Big Apple.
It’s no surprise that a man who so brilliantly packaged the essence of human nature into music should have been something of a child prodigy. When speaking to Classic Rock in 2004, he was asked what he remembered of his first song and reflected on the recording, which, despite being his introduction to music, received airplay on the radio when he was just 14.
Reed recalled that in high school, he was in a band called The Shades, featuring him and two other friends. “I wrote the songs and sang in the background. I wasn’t upfront. At the same time. there was a group from East Meadow, Long Island, called The Bellnotes, and they recorded a song called I’ve Had It. I’ve Had It became a regional hit; my songs: nothing, zero,” he said.
Adding: “So then [radio DJ] Murray the K was supposed to play our song one night, but he was sick, and his replacement did. I actually heard my song on the radio when I was 14, my own song, once. That was it. And I received a royalty check for two dollars and 49 cents, and that was that.”
The kick Reed got out of making a minor splash with his anonymous first song was enough to change the course of his life. While his route to the top would be complicated, with him having to navigate panic attacks, strict parents, debilitating mental health issues that led to electroconvulsive therapy, as well as other things, these life experiences would all be critical in shaping the Lou Reed that altered the course of music with his alarmingly real vignettes.
