The two ballads that changed Lou Reed’s life: “I can’t do those things”
While Lou Reed may be perceived by some as the godfather of punk rock, it’s always been widely known that his influences draw from a far wider range of origins than this specific area.
It was always evident from the music that, despite its rebellious nature, he always liked to draw from a wider variety of places rather than simply leaning into this particular area of interest. Besides, punk rock as we know it didn’t really exist prior to his emergence as the frontman with The Velvet Underground, and wouldn’t come about until much later either.
What Reed did was lay the foundations for what was to come, and he was clearly so far ahead of the curve in terms of his vision for making transgressive art that was designed to shock and provoke with its subversive themes and raw, jagged edges.
So what was he influenced by? The roots of Reed’s musical output all stem from a healthy mix of soul, pop, jazz and early rock and roll, and despite the fact that some of these aren’t necessarily audibly present in what he would go on to create in his own career, there are definitely certain aspects that were prevalent from even the earliest portion of his discography.
What all of these interests of Reed’s have in common was that they were seen to be transgressive at one point or another, and that they were created as examples of counterculture, or designed with the intention of disrupting what was considered the norm or the safe option at the time. While many accept these changes now as being important turning points in the history of contemporary music, they were shocking to anyone hearing them for the first time in the 1950s, just as the young Reed would have done.
Moving on through his career, Reed explored an even wider range of different styles, and towards the end, he began to deliver more ballads, especially on his penultimate solo album, The Raven. Created as a tribute to the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe, incorporating many experimental elements, it also saw Reed returning to some of his earliest influences in a more obvious fashion.
Reed was asked what had brought this decision about during a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, and it was clear that despite the darkness of the record, he was keen to explore his roots in a way that he had never been able to prior, largely because of how his perception of his own capabilities had changed.
When questioned what ballads had influenced him most, he responded by sharing that Lorraine Ellison’s ‘Stay With Me’ was something that stirred him. “My life changed when I heard that,” he claimed, before adding, “I also listened to a lot of Otis Redding. I can’t do those things vocally. But I can do a lot more than I used to.”
These are, of course, important records for Reed, and a bold choice for him to revisit this during the latter stages of his career given how he was known for striving to create something new throughout most of the rest of his career. As much as he would have perhaps loved the opportunity to do this earlier on, he also perhaps needed to use his youth as an opportunity to be a trailblazer, before slipping into something more comfortable for the twilight years of his career.
