The one singer Lou Reed always wanted to sound like: “I just couldn’t do it”
The mastermind of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, had a dry sense of humour and a capricious nature that occasionally rubbed his peers up the wrong way. His strong songwriting abilities were at odds with a degree of self-consciousness. A resultant veneer of aplomb meant that artists whom Reed disliked or perhaps envied could meet some rather scathing criticism.
On the other hand, Reed occasionally spared some time to praise his crucial artistic influences and peers. To illustrate how delightful Reed’s character references could be if you were in his good books, I bring to your attention a magazine interview feature Reed undertook in the 1970s. Of Andy Warhol, his artistic mentor from the early Velvet Underground days, he kept it short and sweet: “I really love him”.
Similarly, he had nothing but praise for David Bowie, the man who rescued Reed’s solo career in 1972. “I love the guy,” Reed said about Bowie. “He’s got everything. The kid’s got everything… everything.”
Reed was never considered a fantastic singer; his range was rarely put to the extremes, and for good reason. However, like Bob Dylan and even David Bowie, he was a brilliant vocalist: his unique timbre seldom failed to convey the gravity of his lyrics.
As a young, aspiring musician, Reed was inspired by a healthy variety of singers and songwriters, but in the former, nobody quite struck the same chord as the soul legend Al Green.
In an old interview recently resurfaced on Al Green’s official Instagram page, Reed discussed his early ambitions as a singer. “When I started out, I wanted to sound like somebody too,” Reed began.
“Who?” the interviewer interjected.
“Al Green,” Reed asserted. “I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to humiliate myself by even trying in public to do that. I wanted to sound like Al.”
“Now, I met him once at some award show,” Reed continued. “One of my people said, ‘Do you want to meet Al Green?’ And I said, ‘Oh wow! Sure, I wanna meet Al Green!’ So, we go up and meet Al Green, and I go, ‘Hi Al Green, I love you.’ And then he said, ‘Now, I don’t know the name, I know the face… I know the face! Your music has meant so much to me – influenced me so much!'”
He added: “But in fact, you know, those guys who could sing like that really did mean everything to me. Those incredible Black musicians without whom we wouldn’t have this music at all. All this music goes back to Black gospel and blues. And when it stepped out of the church, that was the beginning of the whole thing, and here we are today, but that’s where it comes from.”
Elsewhere, Reed also once named Green’s 1977 album Belle as one of his ten favourite records of all time. Considering the contemporaries found on the astonishing list and Reed’s own prestige as a foundational songwriter, there is little to suggest that Reed saw Green as anything other than a hero.
In August 2023, Al Green released a cover of Lou Reed’s 1972 song ‘Perfect Day’ as his first single in five years. Hear that song below.
