The despicable remark Lou Reed made after the death of Jim Morrison
As the frontman of The Velvet Underground, one of the most influential garage rock bands of the 1960s, Lou Reed epitomised the avant-garde spirit of New York rock and roll. However, although Reed is still revered, his abrasive personality has made him a deeply polarising figure. Struggling with mental illness, drug addiction, and a penchant for violence, the musician has displayed abusive behaviour towards his romantic partners, once publicly shamed his sister in his song lyrics, and even simulated drug use on stage.
Recognising that any press is good press, Reed was unafraid to prove his audacity in interviews. In some way, you could probably interpret Reed as simply a cantankerous figure, a gifted musician with the discernment to differentiate between pretenders and genuine artists. However, some opinions that he shared veered too far into the downright disrespectful.
When Jim Morrison passed away in 1971, fans were grief-stricken at losing their beloved The Doors vocalist. His prowess also inspired many fellow musicians, including Patti Smith, who paid tribute to the late musician in more ways than one. When she crafted ‘Dancing Barefoot’ from her album Wave, Smith even said that she “always imagined Jim Morrison singing it, which resulted in me singing and recording it in a lower vocal register”.
However, Morrison also had detractors, chief among which was Reed. “Somebody got a phone call saying Jim Morrison had died in Paris in a bathtub,” he quipped, “And I said: ‘How fabulous, in a bathtub in Paris!’ I had no pity at all for that silly Los Angeles person”. From his formative years with the Velvet Underground, Reed held a hostile view of The Doors, emblematic of his overall scepticism toward the West Coast music scene.
Reed’s fundamental assertion was that the Velvet Underground were “really, really smart” and the California bands were “really, really stupid. It was purely a matter of brains”. This hostility was likely intensified by the Velvet Underground’s West Coast debut at The Trip, a fashionable nightspot in Los Angeles, in May 1966, where the band faced a barrage of jeers.
The audience included celebrities like John Phillips, Cass Elliot, Sonny and Cher, Ryan O’Neal, and members of The Byrds. Cher, who left the event early, was quoted in the next day’s newspaper as saying that the Velvet Underground’s music “will replace nothing, except maybe suicide”. Other reviews of the performance were equally uncharitable.
Throughout his career, Reed never shied away from sharing his unpopular opinions. Ultimately, he didn’t think The Doors deserved half as much praise as they received. Even before Morrison’s death, Reed shared his opinion on San Francisco bands and his rock and roll peers, saying, “They were just painfully stupid and pretentious, and when they did try to get, ‘arty,’ it was worse than stupid rock and roll. What I mean by ‘stupid,’ I mean, like, The Doors.”
