‘Men of Good Fortune’: The Lou Reed song John Lydon adored
Can a punk truly destroy their legacy? Surely a concept that high-minded has no place in the gritty, down-to-earth world of smashing the system? Where all that matters is now, and the idea that anything you did in the past matters is a bourgeois tool of oppression. One meant to force you to conform to standards of civility and acceptability. If someone wanted to argue that, I’d listen. My counterargument is pretty foolproof, though: the recent development of John Lydon into a MAGA bootlicker.
Sure, some will say that the man formerly known as Johnny Rotten turning into a Tory blowhard with the eloquence and cultural understanding of a syphilitic panto villain is “real punk rock”. That my being “offended” proves he’s still got it. Maybe they have a point. Maybe the feckless little failures who sat on Bill Grundy’s show caked in swastikas really didn’t stand for anything other than the ability to say naughty words in public.
I don’t think it’s just a case of “what happens when rich folks get old”. Sure, when the royalty cheques start piling up and life becomes effortless, some people seem to actively seek out things to be angry about just to feel anything at all. Plenty of the idols we grew up admiring eventually let us down. But there are still musicians who managed to hold onto their integrity, even when they became grumpy old men.
Case in point: the late, great emperor of disdain himself, Lou Reed—a man who’d rather roast and devour a music journalist than entertain their questions.
Reed’s seemingly endless supply of bile never, ever dimmed as he got older. However, probably because he actually stood for something in his entire life, the target of his ire was rarely, if ever, those less fortunate than him. One can see that in his music, particularly his empathetic yet still shockingly bleak 1973 album Berlin. One track of which even managed to stir something within Lydon.
In a playlist made for the BBC, Lydon listed his favourite songs of the 1970s, and the heartbreaking ‘Men of Good Fortune’ found a place on it. A strange choice considering that Lydon would, quite bafflingly, blame the heroin addiction and later death of his bassist/pet Sid Vicious on how much Velvet Underground he was listening to before calling Reed a “vacuous fat slob” in an interview for The Daily Star. That said, I’m asking for consistency from this man, so really, it’s my mistake.
If there’s one good thing that can come from all this, it’s a few more listening to one of Reed’s underrated masterpieces than there were yesterday. Berlin was a gigantic flop upon release, a record too harsh and realistic for the pop audience he was targeted at. The fact that it’s essentially a Ken Loach film as a pop record has come from its critical re-evaluation. Reed even toured the record in full in 2007.
It’s the kind of record that builds a legacy one can be truly proud of. That might not matter to those who invoke radical iconoclasm to cover up base self-interest. To those who actually stand for something, though, it’s worth keeping alive.
