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Rating: When reviewing such a famous artist, one inevitably risks falling into the trap of the "already heard."
Nevertheless, the reason why I believe it's worth recounting a somewhat unpublished Lou Reed lies in the words of Anthony DeCurtis.
It's clear that this is not the usual gossip monger searching for material to print about the latest doomed rockstar.
The biography on Reed, however, does not aim to mythologize him, but rather to pay tribute by also revealing the blunders and the negative sides of the rock n' roll animal.
DeCurtis points out how the much vaunted decadence of I Can't Stand It Anymore and Rock & Roll tends to show an optimistic side, albeit veiled by a certain sarcasm. In fact, the phrase "It's all right" is heavily present throughout Lou's lyrics. In the first, he claims that if the enigmatic Shelly came back, everything would be resolved, while in the second, the little Jenny, despite her big problems, can still dance listening to the radio.
DeCurtis met Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson in a completely casual way. Someone introduced them at the Cleveland airport; the flight they were all supposed to take to the Big Apple had been postponed.
"You reviewed New York a few years ago... how many stars did you give it?"
"Four out of five stars."
"You should have given it five!" replied Lou with a smile.
Soon after, he asked what he thought of Laurie's works; from there, it becomes clear how much Lou cared about his wife.
Anthony highlights how the mutual respect between the two was born thanks to their completely informal acquaintance. They were never interviewer and interviewee; those roles didn't suit them.
Lou also told Anthony about his problem in re-listening to Berlin. That album still hurt the songwriter, to the point where he considered it his biggest plunge into his own emotions. A danger, in short.
The characters in the concept are incapable of loving properly; they are addicts perpetually at the mercy of themselves and domestic violence, abuses. And there are also the children taken away, prostitution, and inadequacy that prevents them from living happily. The characters were not only the fruit of the author's imagination but also semi-biographical. During the same period, Lou and then-wife Bettye Kronstad were at the mercy of dependency and the nastiness of the ex Velvet Underground. Endless promises of change never fulfilled inevitably led to the end of the relationship.
The woman was also shocked by the fact that Lou had included references in the lyrics to her relationship with her own mother.
At the time of production (1973), Lou had never been to Berlin; he chose the city's name as the title because he liked the idea of "division"; it was a metaphor.
To avoid potential spoilers, I decided to write just a few interesting anecdotes about one of the albums that I find essential.
The anecdotes, the interviews, it's all really well executed. Although I don't particularly appreciate posthumous works of any kind, I feel compelled to recommend reading A Life for the quality writing that DeCurtis has undertaken.
The book was released in Italy with the very original title A Walk On The Wild Side: Vita e Opere di Lou Reed.
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