Lou Reed
Growing Up in Public

I don't feel like writing anything, neither for work nor for Debaser... empty like a can in a landfill, apathetic and exhausted from a summer spent between hospitals and doctors... then it happens that while rummaging through the records I stumble upon Growing up in public, the same day I meet Mr. Rossi who 39 years ago was with me on a June day (??) in Bologna to see Lou Reed's concert and you understand that fate demanded the effort from you... well, let it be fate then that in the meantime I celebrate my 4000 days on the site.

The purchase was mandatory near the concert and as often done in cooperative (I buy it and keep it, you contribute 25% and I put a C60 and copy it for you... the next one we'll do the opposite...). Half disappointment? Maybe total! The record flowed well, well played, but where the hell was the rock & roll animal?

The chronicles talked about a changed Reed, new, far from the marriage with Rachel, new home in New Jersey, determined to change a lifestyle that seemed to be sensed in the almost poppish that came out from the traces of Growing. Already lately he was also getting on my nerves after the rant against Patti Smith on Take no prisoner and the "fuck off" on Radio Ethiopia... then that live, Take no prisoner, and the umpteenth variations of arrangements didn't seem to me at the top level, accustomed anyway to the sound of previous live shows. Let's also put the new marriage with Morales, a dancer in an NY sado-maso club married on February 14 (romantic!!) just 2 days before the album's release, and the question seemed obvious... could it be that good old Lou had lost his mind?

Of the concert then, I remember very little. It doesn't seem like I witnessed anything transcendental, but maybe due to the stadium's grass (not just that) the memory is faded and surely just being there was enough.

Spends time...

Re-evaluating or diminishing records over time is normal, especially if you bought them at 17, then maybe it's also a hair problem, and now that I'm bald, I see myself better (again) in it.

Growing doesn't seem so bad to me now. I recognize a care for the sounds not yet heard in Reed's works, and an almost pop, almost AOR, almost R&R lightness, almost perfect. Away with the horns of The Bells, guitars and keyboards take center stage. Almost an appearance of "normality" which when talking about Reed is a particularly difficult word to pronounce. It's also evident from the cover, just look at it to understand what might be inside. Then who knows if really it was what he felt compelled to compose or just a pandering act intended for a larger audience.

The voice is also particularly calm; it remains his personal system of whispering and almost narrating his songs, but rarely as here is his voice clear and confident. And despite the "reassuring" context, the lyric level is very high and socially engaged as always... and so the boy traumatized by the family and the overwhelming presence of the father:

“a son cursed with a hag of a mother, or a father no more than a whiner, raised to stage the classic eternal themes, of filial love and incest”... and again the problem of alcoholism in The Power Of Positive Drinking, but also much "autobiographical" sentiment tied to the recent marriage:

“and so he woke her up with a jolt

To offer her his heart

Once and for all to keep his heart

And the first words she heard him say

Were the sweetest

He asked her to marry him and think it over”

And then, and I'll be quiet, that which seems to restore "trust and temperance" (quote) distant words from being Reedian in the grand finale of Teach the Gifted Children:

Teach the gifted children
Teach them to have mercy
Teach them about sunsets
Teach them about the moonrise
Teach them about anger
The sin that comes at dawn...
Bless and forgive them
Father, because they do not know.

(for the lyrics I was helped by Paolo Bassotti)

I'm not rereading it and I'm not correcting it, I said I don't feel like it... I'm just thinking if now, wherever he is, he's walking and humming, who knows with whom, and with that beautiful green V-neck t-shirt.