‘Satellite of Love’: The “worst kind of jealousy” at the heart of Lou Reed’s classic
Right from the beginning of his career until his final releases, it was always evident that Lou Reed was a gifted songwriter who approached his work in a way that few others were capable of. While his output as the co-leader of the Velvet Underground is perhaps the most celebrated portion of his career, where he helped to lay the foundations for punk rock that emerged in the following decades, one might argue that his finest and most impressive body of work arrived shortly into his solo career.
Released in 1973, Transformer is an exceptional record that sees Reed suspend his desire to work in avant-garde and experimental elements in order to focus on more direct songwriting, and for this reason, it ends up being one of his most immediately grabbing releases. Recorded with close friend David Bowie as producer, the album is an astounding piece of work that highlights Reed’s prowess as a lyricist and worker of gorgeous melodies and features a number of his most enduring songs, such as ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and ‘Perfect Day’.
However, one of the album’s highlights has its origins firmly in the Velvet Underground days and was even originally written by Reed with the group in mind. ‘Satellite of Love’ is one of the standout cuts from Transformer, but it had been recorded alongside the full band many years before in a much heavier style that reflected the sound they aimed to produce, only to fall by the wayside and fail to make it onto a studio album.
The original version can be heard as a demo on the Peel Slowly And See boxset, but it is dramatically different from the version we’re treated to on Transformer. The jaunty piano line that runs through the song is absent, and numerous other elements that Reed was seemingly unsatisfied with on the original recording were eventually ditched when he chose to revisit it years later.
One of the more notable changes he made to the final cut of the song for Transformer was the altered lyrics in the song’s bridge section. While we might be used to hearing the line “I’ve been told that you’ve been bold with Harry, Mark and John” in the officially released version, the song was initially written with three other names – ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ – which Reed had borrowed from a 19th-century children’s poem by Eugene Field.
While those three names still scan well with the phrasing of the line, they feel a little out of place with the themes of the rest of the song, and Reed’s reason for removing them was so that the middle section of the song wouldn’t suddenly be thematically at odds with the rest of the track. In a 1994 interview, Reed claimed that the original line was “best left forgotten” before stating: “I probably wanted to make sure I wasn’t using a name that really meant something to me. I mean the song is about the worst kind of jealousy.”
With the track being about Reed harbouring negative feelings towards a romantic partner who has been running around with other men, featuring three whimsical-sounding children’s characters as names in the lyrics was perhaps not the best idea if he wanted to be more impactful in the track’s meaning. As it stands, the final version of ‘Satellite of Love’ is perhaps as close to perfection as it gets on Transformer, while the original Velvets demo is indeed “left forgotten”, and with good reason.
