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LOU REED LIVES
by Daren Foster

Lou Reed Lives

DAREN FOSTER PODCAST about his recent columns - July 14 2009!

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LOU REED LIVES
by Daren Foster

***Lou Reed's Berlin shows an artist at work.***

While watching the concert film of Lou Reed’s Berlin directed by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), I was struck by an odd thought: Michael Jackson. Not particularly odd, I guess, given that, since his death on June 25th, it’s been all MJ all the time, pushing the upheavals going on in places like Iran and China from the headlines. I shouldn’t be surprised by this elevation of celebrity worship to a seismic event, but it never fails to astound me when it happens. Thus, I had sought refuge from the Michael Jackson Deathwatch Mania©® in some more esoteric fare like Berlin but even that failed to shield me from the onslaught.

Upon further reflection (and a film like Berlin allows for much reflection), it dawned on me that despite their glaring differences as musicians and performers, Lou Reed and Michael Jackson had quite a lot in common. Hear me out on this before getting all up in my face. Hear me out.

Despite an age gap of 16 years, their musical careers oddly coincided. In the late-60s, they were both members of bands that amassed huge appeal; The Jackson 5 commercially, The Velvet Underground influentially. Both ultimately rankled under the creative pressure brought to bear by their respective band’s overseers. In Jackson’s case, it was a combination of his father, Joe, and Motown label owner, Barry Gordy. For Reed, he battled with the New York art scene’s hipster’s hipster, Andy Warhol, who had helped the band establish its alternative avant-garde presence. In 1972, Reed and Jackson went solo and both experienced fairly substantial mainstream success at which time their paths diverged in completely opposite directions.

In a nutshell, Lou Reed became an artist while Michael Jackson became a celebrity.

OK. So, it wasn’t that neat and tidy. Jackson’s artistry was on full display on his albums, Off the Wall and Thriller while throughout the 70s, rumours of Reed’s personal life sometimes made as much of a splash as his music. But I do think it’s safe to say that by 1982, Michael Jackson’s best work was behind him while Lou Reed would continue his musical legacy for what is now just shy of three decades. As can be seen by the deluge of morbid gruesomeness surrounding his death, music was no longer central to Michael Jackson’s life. It had become all a cult of personality. Fans adored Jackson. Musicians adored Lou Reed.

Again, that’s not completely true. It wouldn’t be difficult to throw a rock in any direction and hit a musician who could wax on about Michael Jackson’s influence. Certainly, the man almost single-handedly brought the music video firmly into the mainstream. Yet, catching the last 20 minutes of American Idol’s tribute to Michael Jackson, I think he has a lot to answer for as well. The shockingly histrionic excesses that seemed to be uniformly applauded by the judges should be traced directly to Jackson’s increasing dependence on spectacle over song writing and musicianship as he sought to remain in the public eye. Whatever claim to artistic significance Jackson once had, gave way to being a full-fledged celebrity.

Lou Reed’s Berlin represents the anti-Michael Jackson. The 1973 follow-up album to one of Reed’s biggest hits, Transformer, Berlin was a critical and commercial failure. So much so that legend has it Reed never performed anything from it at concerts in subsequent years. In 2006, he and filmmaker friend Julian Schnabel decided to mount a performance of Berlin in its entirety for 5 nights at a Brooklyn venue and make a movie of it.

Despite the presence of a choir and six back-up singers and musicians, the resulting concert film is surprisingly spare. It’s austere in tone and bleak thematically until the last song from the album called, ironically enough, Sad Song, which allows for brief glimpses of hope to peek through the clouds. Toe-tappingly infectious it ain’t, but at times the film is nothing short of mesmerizing. Berlin proves to be terrific viewing regardless of its content of depression, drug abuse and relationships gone bad.

Where the movie begs the Michael Jackson comparison is in the use of video. One indisputable fact about the King of Pop was his pioneering innovation with the nascent music video industry. While Thriller is the one that immediately springs to mind, Jackson had made 7 previous videos which MTV was slow to put into its rotation. Once they did, Jackson’s popularity burst wide and elevated the music channel’s fortunes as well. The Thriller video was immediate cheese; its production cost so enormous that few other musicians were willing or able to follow suit. Billie Jean and Beat It were the ones that truly set the standard for future videos.

Admittedly, nothing about Berlin smacks of music video. It is a silent movie projected on stage behind the performers and, at times, in the forefront onto the TV screen. Not a direct representation of each song, Schnabel’s film-within-the-film traverses the general arc of the story Reed is singing, emphasizing and enhancing themes rather than overriding or ignoring them. As a movie, it might be able to stand on its own visually but would lack any emotional punch. They are moving pictures intended to showcase the music. Arguably from Thriller on, Jackson’s videos were ostensibly concerned with showcasing the performer and, ultimately, the man. No longer with any pretence toward an art form, they were little more than promotional vehicles for Michael Jackson the Product.

On a recent episode (for me) of Elvis Costello’s Spectacle with… Lou Reed, the man, sat with Elvis, talking music. Now an official senior citizen, Reed no longer personifies the hardened rock’n’roll animal he once was. He came across as affable, thoughtful and in possession of a good chunk of hard won wisdom. As he and Costello chatted about musical influences and ideas, I realized that I knew next to nothing about the man himself. Married? Kids? Ownership of an exotic pet? Nada. Just as it should be. The man and his music.

When Julian Schnabel joined the two on stage, they talked briefly about the Berlin film but what featured most prominently was their discussion about the death of Schnabel’s father. Neighbours in New York, Schnabel crossed the street to bring Reed back to the house just after his dad had died at home. Standing over the dead body, Schnabel put on Reed’s album, Magic and Loss. Through music they seemed to gain a certain sense of acceptance if not comfort with the inevitability of death.

Lou Reed has spent most of his career looking at and examining the darker aspects of life. At 67, he seems to have come to terms with them. Michael Jackson spent his entire adult life pretending they didn’t exist or didn’t apply to him. Lou Reed has survived and lives on to continue creating. Michael Jackson didn’t and had long since stopped creating much of anything of value outside of gossip fodder. Perhaps there’s a lesson in there somewhere for all of us to learn.