“To achieve what they did”: The four writers Lou Reed wanted to be compared to
Aspiration knows no bounds. Musicians don’t only look up to musicians; writers don’t only look up to writers; art’s beautiful nature is cyclical. Films, books, songs, paintings and beyond all get tossed into a mutual marketplace of inspiration and the names and faces that made them can be picked out as aspirational by other artists existing in whole other genres to them. That’s always how Lou Reed operated, as the people he looked up to weren’t musicians but were writers.
It makes sense. Reed’s work was never plain and simple rock and roll, inspired solely by other legends of the sound. Instead, his musical career really began in the classroom, in the English department at Syracuse University. Reed’s musical mind was opened less by songs and more by lectures as he was deeply inspired by the poet Delmore Schwartz, who taught him, calling the writer “the first great person I ever met”. It was that teacher and that class that impacted his songwriting most, stating he taught him, “With the simplest language imaginable, and very short, you can accomplish the most astonishing heights.”
The impact of literature and writers from the very start was the foundation of Reed’a own artistry. So when it came to discussing the artists he admired more and looked up to as an aspirational source of inspiration, it’s no surprise that he named writers, not rockstars.
“Hubert Selby. William Burroughs. Allen Ginsberg. Delmore Schwartz,” he said, stating his goal was “To be able to achieve what they did, in such little space, using such simple words.” Alongside his mentor and teacher Schwarts, Reed picked out three other essential and deeply impactful American authors.
William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg are well-known names that have always bridged the gap between music and literature. Burroughs, as the writer of novels like Naked Lunch and Junky, inspired work from names including Patti Smith, David Bowie and even collaborated with Kurt Cobain. His cut-up method of piecing together seemingly disjointed and contrasting bits of thoughts and stories was radical, casting aside all ideas of meaning in a way that proved deeply inspiring for artists across all mediums and genres.
Ginsberg was the king of the Beat movement. His epic poem Howl is arguably the most influential text from the era and one of the most important pieces of countercultural text ever written. It made him a mainstay in the scene as he toured with Bob Dylan and interacted with artists like Andy Warhol and countless other filmmakers, musicians, writers and beyond.
But Hubert Selby feels like an interesting one. While his name might not be as widely known, his work is. Selby wrote Requiem For A Dream, the relentlessly dark story that was adapted to film in 2000. It’s easy to see how that text would inspire Reed as his records like Berlin didn’t shy away from the same kind of onslaught of anxiety and dread and darkness.
“I thought if you could do what those writers did and put it to drums and guitar, you’d have the greatest thing on earth,” he said to Spin magazine, “You’d have the whole pie. It’s a simple thought. There’s nothing complicated about me. I’m as straight as you can get.”
