Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock
Titolo: [x Enrico] Lou Reed e il punk americano (lungo)

Lou Reed's influence on punk rock in New York and Britain was unequaled. So
important was Reed's worth that in Roman Kozak's documentary of the club
CBGBs, This Ain't No Disco, the author asks if, "had there been no Velvet
Underground a couple years earlier, would there have been a CBGB?" (Kozak
xiv). With his band the Velvet Underground Reed gained the status of punk's
forefather. Though Reed left the Velvet Underground by 1970, Reed's
songwriting and collaboration with the Velvets left its mark on the New York
live music scene.
The Velvets began performing in New York City in 1966 and became the
earliest example of the nihilism punk would later act out. The Velvets far
surpassed the artistic pout of Dylan and the Stones and clarified the
political ravings of the 1960s protest genre. According to Fred Bronson's
book, Billboard's Hottest Hot 100 Hits, popular music in the late 1960s was
fattened with songs like "I'm A Believer" by the Monkees in 1966 and Lulu's
theme to the 1967 movie "To Sir With Love." As in the later years of punk,
the music in New York City was in no way reflected on the pop charts. In New
York, Lou Reed's songwriting portrayed the horrors of alienation and drugs
in the Big City. The 1967 release of the Velvet Underground's first album,
"The Velvet Underground & Nico," contained songs like "Heroin," which
changed rock music forever. The song was an ode to a killer narcotic, and it
basked in a subtle moral decay that had never before been heard in a rock
song. Other Reed songs had undercurrents of sadomasochism, for example the
first album's "Venus in Furs," a song that hinted at the aggressive fashion
to come in British punk fashion scene. Reed's lyrics described "Shiny boots
of leather/Whiplash girl child in the dark." Years later British punk would
offer its equivalent. Malcolm McLaren's clothing shops sold "strict fetish
clothing in rubber, leather, and vinyl" (Savage 68), which seemed the
obvious evolution from Reed's lyrics.
Lou Reed wrote graphic songs about drug abuse and sexuality that disturbed
rock critics but inspired fans. His depiction of drag queen Candy Darling in
"Candy Says" though beautiful and insightful, deviated completely from the
blanket puritanism enforced by most white pop. In his book The Rockin'
Fifties: The Decade That Transformed the Pop Music Scene, Arnold Shaw
describes the groundwork for white pop music. With roots in Tin Pan Alley,
white pop evolved out of the post WWII time frame and was meant to soothe
(Shaw xv). Tin Pan Alley specifically
"lived on three other types:
ballads, i.e., romantic songs;
rhythm tunes, considered light
weight, like `I'm Looking Over
A Four-Leaf Clover' or `Cruising
Down the River,' and novelty songs
like `I Taut ITaw a Puddy Cat' or
`Papa Loves Mambo' --these were
either overnight smashes or bombs."
(Shaw 14)
Tin Pan Alley's effect on white pop was noticeable. Shaw also noted that
"Direct references to physical
contact or sex were taboo. But
lyric writers had a drawerful of
Victorian euphemisms that conveyed
the idea." (Shaw 15)
This pattern continued into the next decades of pop. Pop music shunned
mentioning practices that deviated from the norm, and the 1960s did little
to bring pop music out of its Victorian age. The bubblegum shyness of 1969's
Tommy James & the Shondell's hit "Crimson and Clover" was much more typical
than 1969's sexually suggestive Rolling Stones' hit "Honky Tonk Women."
James' song sweetly declares, "I don't hardly know her/ But I think I could
love her/ Crimson and Clover." Songs like this were much more plentiful than
the Stones' sexual frankness in "Honky Tonk Women". The Stones's song opens
with the lyrics, "I met a gin soaked barroom queen in Memphis/ She tried to
take me upstairs for a ride." The frankness of "Honky Tonk Women" was a
rarity, but the Stones were popular enough to get away with it. "Honky Tonk
Women" was one of 1969's most successful songs, but most pop songs failed to
crack the veneer of sexual innocence that record producers and radio
broadcasters tried to maintain. Reed's subject matter broke open the myth of
the pop chart's sterile sexuality, enabling future pop stars to wear clothes
or sing songs that were outside of the cultural norm. His daring lyrics
influenced English pop star David Bowie's glam (glamour) rock pose and set
the stage for New York's glam/punk band the New York Dolls. Though marginal
in cultural acceptance and isolated within New York punk glam rock's
outrageous costumes and sexual suggestiveness provided the perfect foil for
the punk aesthetic. Glam's theatrics, in turn, made punk look harder and
more dangerous.
Throughout his career, Reed wrote and performed songs of questionable
subject matter and often musically brutal content. This made its impression
on the generation coming of age during the late 1960s. Reed and the Velvet's
effect on 1970s punk bands was obvious. During 1970, the Velvets last year
together, they were the house band at Max's Kansas City for a month. Max's
was a club in lower Manhattan that reflected its audience with such room
names as the "Oscar Wilde Room." The Velvet's reign as house band at Max's
laid the floor plan for the New York Doll's explosion onto the Manhattan
scene. But in order to understand the New York Dolls and the significance of
glam rock, one must trace glam's roots back to Reed's songs.
On the Velvet's third album, released in 1969, Reed wrote the monumental
ballad, "Candy Says." A narration of Candy Darling, a drag queen in the
Warhol scene. The song starts out softly as the listener overhears, "Candy
says she's come to hate her body/ And everything it requires in this world."
Reed's adoption of Darling's drag queen perception, and unflinching
portrayal of Darling's sexual identity were completely different from the
ultra-manly heterosexual rock'n'roll culture of the era. Reed anticipated
the early 1970s' trend of sexual openness and promiscuity, pre-dating Marc
Bolan, the flamboyant centerpiece for the English rockers T. Rex. Reed also
set the stage for Detroit's most self-indulgent and violent act, the
Stooges. Iggy Stooge toyed with Reed's aggressive vocal sneer, and began was
cutting himself up on stage five years before Sid Vicious sliced the name
"Nancy" into his chest. In turn, Reed's indirect influence on the likes of
Bolan and Stooge was adopted by a brilliant performer named David Bowie, who
took the Eastern World's rock market by storm.
With a prepackaged rock star that would make the Monkees look like the
cartoon characters they were, David Bowie turned glam rock into a household
name--"Ziggy Stardust." Bowie's creation of the Ziggy Stardust character was
a brilliant career move that manipulated an image to its maximum (Henry 33)
(a tactic only to be achieved again by the likes of the Sex Pistols and
later Madonna). Ziggy was the quintessential glam rocker. Where the Dolls,
T.Rex, and even Iggy Stooge fell flat, Ziggy soared. He was the bisexual
Martian who had fled a world doomed with only "Five Years" to survive. The
mammoth album told a story of young Ziggy (note Iggy tribute), who through a
series of Reed-inspired character sketches tries to find "Soul Love" and
"falls asleep at night" dreaming of being a "Rock'n'Roll star" (RCD 10134).
Adding to the twisted maze of allusions and homage, Bowie produced Reed's
second solo album, which contained the single "Walk on the Wild Side" (Henry
37). Reed's commercially successful single became the calling card of his
generation. "Wild Side" was like a Warhol film chock-full of cameos from
larger-than-life characters, an impressive name dropping of the who's who of
the late 1960s/ early 1970s New York City scene. Poet Jim Carroll kept a
diary that period. In his second book of published diary excerpts, Forced
Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971 - 1973, Carroll notes that during the
Velvet's Max's Kansas City month-long residency, the band played twice a
night, six nights a week. Often within his diary entries, Carroll describes
his habitual journey to Max's to see the band play. He describes it as if it
were Andy Warhol's funhouse: many of Warhol's associates are mentioned as
part of Max's scenery.Reed and his band provided New York's downtown scene
with musical entertainment and a cultural meeting ground that would
influence the coming generation.
According to Ed McCormack's article, "New York City's Ultra - Living Dolls,"
in Rolling Stone (#119, 10-26-72,p14), the Dolls were the talk of the town
by 1972. In the same issue, Reed's effect on the New York scene described in
an article about hiss upcoming album, "Transformer." The biggest hit of
Reed's career, "Walk on The Wild Side," was on this album. The song
anticipated the Dolls' glam rock pose, and set the mold for the era's sexual
personae. Tricia Henry noted that
"By placing the lyrics of
`Walk on the Wild Side'
within a popular musical
structure, Reed laid the
groundwork for tolerance
of gender blurring and other
previously unacceptable subject
matter by mainstream audiences."
(Henry 34)
In Mick Rock's article, "Velvet Memories: Lou Reed Sees The Future, Darkly,"
the author catches Reed discussing his legacy on the New York City scene.
Rock notes
"And there's a band now
causing a few ripples called
the Dolls. `Something might
happen with them, y'know.
I seem to inspire transvestite
bands'." (RS #119 10-26-72 p12)
Reed's single, "Walk on The Wild Side," was bathed in references to Reed's
observations of the Warhol era--a scene filled with two-bit performers with
stardom in their eyes and a willingness to exploit themselves for the sake
of stardom. Reed made note of these characters, occasionally referring to
them in earlier Velvet Underground works. But in "Walk on the Wild Side" the
effect was more obvious. Each verse contained an image that completely
deviated from accepted sexual norms.
"Holly came from
Miami F-L-A
Hitchhiked her way
across the U.S.A.
Plucked her
eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs
and then he was a she
She says,
`Hey babe, take
a walk on the wild side'"
(Reed p 42)
Though Reed's decedents, the New York Dolls, were practicing heterosexuals,
their obsession with clothes and sometimes with female attire could not have
been permissible without the go-ahead from a scene already accustomed to
sexual ambivalence in their music. For the Dolls, their love of dressing up
evolved into a game of rock'n'roll charades. For most of the rock community,
glam rock, though making the notion of homo-or bisexuality less taboo, just
meant that straight guys could get off on dressing up in girls' clothes--so
did the girls (Savage 60). While the idea does not seem so ground breaking
today, the climate of sexual permissiveness within the pop industry as
Arnold Shaw described it was quite unnerved by the Dolls. Their image and
drag were not popular within the industry, and they were shunned (Savage
61). If not for the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed's daring subject matter,
the glam era would had no impact.
Reed's influence on the punk scene went beyond sexual politics. Reed's punk
progeny took cues from his poetic credentials as well. While in college at
Syracuse University in the mid-1960s, Reed studied with mentor Delmore
Schwartz, an alcoholic poet who threatened to haunt Reed if he did not make
an effort not to sell out. Reed dedicated the first Velvet Underground
album's "European Son" to Schwartz. The importance of poetics within rock
music was restricted to the likes of sophomoric love poems in the teen pop
genre and the protest arena of Bob Dylan's music. Dylan, though a lyricist
of poetic merit, conveyed his chilling cynicism in a more global direction.
Interested in politics and wars, he obsessed over forcing his alienation
onto his listeners. Whereas Dylan refused to acknowledge the origin of a
song's subject matter directly, Reed flaunted his. Reed's cynicism was
devastating. He wrote locally, named the parties concerned, and talked about
his paths taken on the city streets. His narratives of the day-to-day
occurrences of Union Square in the first album's "Run Run Run," and his list
of so-and-so says songs--"Candy Says," "Stephanie Says," and "Lisa
Says"--were based on personal experience. Where Dylan alludes to a
conversation in his songs, Reed would relay the words spoken verbatim.
Reed's poetic viciousness affected the punk rock to come and resurfaced in
his desire to return to poetry in rock lyrics during the New York punk
movement. Reed's influence combined French Symbolist poetry and song lyrics
and titles modeled after the beat writers. Those involved with the punk
scene made it seem as if the connection were obvious. New York Doll David
JoHansen likened his songwriting to that of Rimbaud (Savage 58), and the
June/July 1976 issue of Trouser Press states that Patti Smith played her
first gigs with guitarist Lenny Kaye as "Rock'n'Roll Rimbaud readings" (Rose
28). One-time Television band member, Richard Hell, borrowed beat poet Rod
McKuen's "Beat Generation," to write the punk staple, "Blank Generation" in
1977 (Savage 90). Patti Smith achieved the same accusatory viciousness of
Reed's lyrical honesty in 1978's "Rock'n'Roll Nigger" on her album "Easter."
The next generation's musical output was inspired by Reed's attempt to
describe his literary ambitions through rock music. Reed, like many others
of his generation, felt compelled to write the all-American novel. In a 1987
interview with Rolling Stone, Reed says he saw the possibilities of
capturing everything a novel would, but in the shape of rock songs (RS #512
12-10-87 p.292). Even more than the literary tone of Reed's subject matter,
the Velvet Underground as a band set the musical tone for punk rock to come.
The abrasive guitars and unrelenting rhythms, along with the distorted wail
of John Cale's electric viola in the early Velvet's material, set the
standard for a sound that would flirt with punk aggression. The Ramones used
Velvet Underground-inspired rhythms in almost all of their songs, a driving
4/4 beat propelling itself like a locomotive. The band Television used the
Velvet's two-guitar dynamics to fill pockets of sound answering itself
melodically and brilliantly. The Velvet Underground added guitar distortion
and feedback to rock's vocabulary. Drummer Maureen Tucker's unusually
spastic drumming added an impulsive chaotic rush to the music, and her style
was so different it is impossible to imitate.
Fashion wise as well, the Velvets created the image before there were words
to describe it. The early Velvet Underground promotional pictures set the
standard for the nihilistic anti-social atmosphere that later flavored most
punk wardrobes. The Velvets dressed in black, an obvious departure from the
flowery garb of the hippie era. Reed and company wore wraparound sunglasses,
creating an obstacle between performer and audience. While stardom created
this obstacle for most 1960s performers--the limousines and arena concerts
of the Beatles and Rolling Stones being a perfect example--the Velvets were
merely acting out their separation from the mainstream. Later punk
exemplified even more dramatically this self-imposed alienation through
fashion.
Richard Hell is said to have created the punk look. Hell looked perpetually
fresh out of bed--tousled cropped hair, torn t-shirt, and
straight-off-the-street jeans and sneakers (Kozak 15). None of the
calculated (or at least more obviously thought out) wardrobe of the
established arena rock stars was this simplistic or unkempt. Ironically, Sex
Pistols promoter Malcolm McLaren was so enamored with the potential of
Hell's fresh-out-of-bed appeal that he tried to convince the unimpressed
Hell that he could be a star in England if he would join McLaren's ranks.
Hell stayed in the States, but McLaren took note of Hell's image and
formulated the blueprint for what would become the emblem of punk fashion,
the Sex Pistols (Savage 92). Another Malcolm McLaren side project that took
note of the Velvet's image and fashion was the New York Dolls. The Dolls saw
how fashion, even if subtle (as in the case of the Velvets) could make an
impact. What better way to comment on the ridiculous name dropping
flamboyance of their era than by dressing the part? The New York Dolls
realized that wearing certain clothes could personify and highlight certain
aspects of music and image. They learned this lesson from the Velvets.
Establishing themselves and recording ten years earlier than most of the
bands on the punk scene, the Velvets were the quintessential punk band.
Their influence on rock music, be it punk, glam, American, or British was
enormous. No other band, save for the Beatles, has had so much influence on
the rock music that would succeed it (Kozak xiv). The band's four albums and
five years on the New York City scene created a style that is still present
twenty years later.
©1993, 1999 Jessamin Swearingen

 Lou Reed's influence on punk rock in New York and Britain was unequaled.
Grazie martino.
L'ho salvato e me lo rileggo con calma.
--
Enrico 'magic' - 
mma...@tiscalinet.it
 -
"Between thought and expression
                lies a lifetime"