Lou Reed
Rock and Roll Heart

"Hey Carlo. It's been a while since I've seen you around. Where did you get that jacket?"

" Damn. Buddy, I didn't buy this jacket. I swiped it off James Dean himself."

"Tell that to someone else! James Dean died in 1955. Long before you were born..."

"Forget it, kid. You don't know what you're talking about."

Down in the city, I've made a certain reputation for myself. In the evening, I wander around bars with my jacket and sunglasses, having a few drinks and telling tall tales, which is what I've been best at lately. The usual is that I've put together a rock 'n' roll band and that with my guys, we're recording a record that will change the history of music in this damn country. Something so powerful that even the old and flabby white butt of some record executive around New York, in the States, would jump off the couch. In truth, I do have a band, but we've been idle since last September. The drummer left us to join a group that plays salsa and merengue on cruise ships, the Sydney Pollocks. He earns one thousand three hundred euros a month, net of contributions and the taxes to pay to those state bloodsuckers. The lead guitarist is bedridden with back pain, and lately, I haven't been feeling too well myself. Anyway, it's a good story, and people usually believe it. Saturday night I was talking about it with one - with a girl, that is - who bartends in one of those places downtown. One of those smoky basement dives that are cheap and even less square meters. She's thirty, thirty-five years old, with brown, curly hair, and she's not exactly one of those that my friend Angus - Angus, the guitarist of the Felloni del Punk, just so we're clear - would go so far as to call a "goddess." But she's not bad either. And besides, I haven't had many women around lately. In any case, I must say I particularly liked her, and I had already downed an entire bottle of whiskey... Okay. Let's say I wanted to have a go without any fuss because I was feeling lonely on Saturday and had nothing better to do, and let's leave it at that, alright?

Saturday night the place was packed with those Spanish students who, if you're clever, you can get their panties off with a couple of glasses of wine. However - and those who know me know this well - except for rare exceptions, and I'm thinking of people like Picasso, Vázquez Montalbán (not so much), Andoni Zubizarreta, and Julio Salinas, I've never particularly liked the Spaniards. It's a long issue related to the history of their country over the last hundred years, but I'll gladly tell you all about it and much more on another occasion. These Spaniards were really too young for me, and in any case, I had drunk so much that they would have slipped away before I could even feel the firmness of their butts. Additionally, as if that wasn't enough, the real problem with these students is that they always want to dance, and so the place was playing some garbage. That techno music that is so fashionable at those rave parties where everyone does drugs and hallucinogens just to be able to tell their friends the next day, "Hey, damn, I was so wasted and saw the ghost of Aldous Huxley!" I tell you, a guy once told me exactly that. So I replied, "Listen... No, okay, let's drop it." I've known that kid since he wore shorts. His brother used to play bass in a really tough band, they were called Buffalo Bill is Dead and Davy Crockett Too, and I think I've seen all their concerts between June and September 1987. Then once during a concert, the band's singer, a certain Bob (his real name was Pasquale, but he went by Bob), during a particularly punk and driving version of the classic "Give My Love To Rose," which if you don't know, then you're just rotten bastards, started throwing the speakers and amplifiers off the stage. It was a memorable performance. A brief experience for the Buffalo..., but too expensive, so they decided to quit after that night. Anyway - I think it's understood - I've personally never been fond of rave parties.
So I looked her in the eyes - the one with the curly brown hair from earlier - and I said, "Damn, can't we change the record? This stuff reminds me of that time I almost got killed in the toilets of one of those damn dives down in California." I had exaggerated a bit about my alleged troubles with a major music mafia boss during my American period. She smiled at me, gestured to wait, and put on a record. Rock, of course. But it's something I had never heard before. She looks at me and says, "The Motorpsycho are great, aren't they?"
Well. I've never heard a single Motorpsycho record. I'm not doubting it, they must be a great band. Only, I've never listened to them. But I didn't want to disappoint her, so I said, "Yeah, they're really great. Unlike that crap they make today in San Francisco. Get me another beer, sweetheart." That conversation was becoming too demanding for my taste.

"Listen - she said to me - but what are the five albums you'd take with you to a desert island?"

The five albums I'd take with me to a desert island? Damn. Have you ever been asked such a question? "What are the five albums you'd take with you to a desert island?" I don't know. That was the first time - and luckily the last - that I was asked this question. "Listen, I need to think about it. Yeah, I need to think about it." I needed to buy time. "You, what are the five albums you’d take with you to a desert island?"

"Let me think... Well, I'd take this Motorpsycho album, [followed the title of the album in question, which naturally I was too drunk to memorize]. Then, I'd definitely take a Radiohead album. Maybe OK Computer. Perhaps The Bends. Nevermind by Nirvana, Dirt by Alice In Chains, and then a De André album, because I think an Italian album is necessary. Probably Non al denaro, non all'amore né al cielo." She seemed satisfied.

Even De André! It was too much. That evening had really gone sour, and had it not been for that bottle of whiskey I drank a few hours earlier, I would surely have bolted out of the bar without her, nor anyone else present, realizing it. Not even those damned Spaniards would have understood a thing. "De André's never been my favorite - I said, though my mind was on other things - but I think I'd definitely take a Lou Reed album."

"Which one?! Transformer? New York? Berlin? Coney Island?" I kept shaking my head at all her questions. "Something by The Velvet Underground? The one with John Cale?"

"The one with John Cale is called Songs For Drella, and it's one of the best albums of the eighties, dummy. Chiara gave it to me a few months before leaving me. If I think about it, it’s probably the only gift she gave me all the time we were together. Or maybe there were others, but I don't remember them now, and anyway, I wouldn't tell you who doesn't even know that album is called Songs For Drella, damn it!" I thought. "Songs For Drella," I said to her, smiling. "But that's not even it. There's only one album I'd take with me to a desert island right now, and that album is Rock and Roll Heart, because, you see, right now, my head beats like a drum. It's a ticking time bomb about to explode. Yet my drummer is on a cruise ship off the Antilles, Cayman Islands, Trinidad, Grenada, or Barbados."

Then she said nothing and started preparing some of those damned colorful cocktails that people drink in the evening when they go to one of these bars. She probably hadn't understood a thing about what I said. But how could I blame her? On the other hand, I wasn't understanding anything either, and if my head was about to explode, it wasn’t her fault. Certainly that damned techno music. Maybe the alcohol. I was completely drunk. "Because, you see - I had to add - there's nothing more important in the world than good old rock and roll." But clearly, she hadn't been listening to me for at least five minutes. It went badly again this time. I left ten euros on the counter. I thought they must be enough to pay for the three or four beers I had taken - but of course, it wasn't - I struggled to get up from the stool and dragged myself out of the bar. On the way out, I greeted Nicola, the bouncer, with a pat on the shoulder. He was my personal trainer at the gym, a few years ago, but due to a bad sciatic nerve inflammation, he had to stop training. Anyway, he was a good guy. He always hung around with his partner, a certain Ciro, who today runs a hardware store on the outskirts, in Ponticelli, and has given me more than a great tip to build some decent abs. Outside, it was freezing. I was thinking of Chiara, who is opening her first photography exhibition this week, and the fact that I won't be there.

I felt like yet another damned victim of rock and roll. But even for that night, it was fine like this.