Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Lou Reed Rock N’ Roll Poet, Singer and Musician died this week at the age of 71. To my mind he was a far greater artist than the world gave him credit for being. What made him special besides his guitar virtuosity; the distinctive sound of his music; his unique voice; was that his lyrics reflected his raw emotional reaction to the life he saw around him. We see many of the Rock N’ Roll Idols of our youth trade their revolutionary sentiments for a knighthood and celebrity lifestyle. Yet Rock N’ Roll in its inception began as outlaw music in the 50’s. The main cause of R&R’s horrifying the mainstream in America was that it was White musicians copying the blues styles of what were then called “Race Records” because they were performed by great Black artists. The initial horror at Elvis wasn’t just the movement of his hips, but the fact that this quintessentially southern White boy was singing Black music. The music industry soon tamed Elvis as it tamed those to come with some exceptions. Lou Reed was never tamed and was never really listed in the top tier of Rock Legends by a public that found his lyrics too raw and too filled with what was the seamy side of American life. What follows are the lyrics to one of Lou Reed’s angriest and greatest songs as pertinent to America today as it was when he wrote it in 1989. Afterwards you can hear him sing it. To me one of the two great American poets of the last 100 years died this week and people think he was just another Rock N’ Roll singer.
Dirty Blvd. by Lou Reed
Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel
He looks out a window without glass
The walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet
His father beats him cause he’s too tired to beg
He’s got 9 brothers and sisters
They’re brought up on their knees
It’s hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs
Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man
But that’s a slim chance he’s going to the boulevard
He’s going to end up, on the dirty boulevard
He’s going out, to the dirty boulevard
He’s going down, to the dirty boulevard
This room cost 2,000 dollars a month
You can believe it man it’s true
Somewhere a landlord’s laughing till he wets his pants
No one here dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything
They dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard
Get to end up, on the dirty boulevard
Going out, to the dirty boulevard
He’s going down, on the dirty boulevard
Going out
Outside it’s a bright night
There’s an opera at Lincoln Center
Movie stars arrive by limousine
The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
But the lights are out on the Mean Streets
A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
He’s selling plastic roses for a buck
The traffic’s backed up to 39th street
The TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck
And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming
He’s found a book on magic in a garbage can
He looks at the pictures and stares at the cracked ceiling
“At the count of 3” he says, “I hope I can disappear”
And fly fly away, from this dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly-fly-fly-fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly away
I want to fly
Fly, fly away
I want to fly
Fly-fly away (Fly a-)
Fly-fly-fly (-way, ooohhh…)
Fly-fly away (I want to fly-fly away)
Fly away (I want to fly, wow-woh, no, fly away)
Notes on Dirty Blvd.
Dirty Blvd is the 3rd of 14 tracks on Lou Reed’s 15th solo album, New York, released in 1989 to broad critical acclaim. In New York, Reed builds upon on his longtime theme of documenting New York City’s underbelly and its most stigmatized and downtrodden residents. It is regarded as one of his most conceptual albums, and in the liner notes Reed himself instructs listeners to take in the whole album in one sitting, “as though it were a book or a movie.” Apologies to Lou for breaking it down song-by-song.
Dirty Blvd describes the life of Pedro, a boy living and hustling in seedy areas of Manhattan. Pedro’s wish to magically disappear is his only respite from an abusive father, abysmal living conditions, and a bleak future that Reed portrays as near-inevitable. Reed’s deadpan delivery implies that he’s seen many unfortunate youth like Pedro end up “dealing on the dirty boulevard.”
More broadly, Dirty Blvd is a lament for the poor and vulnerable in a New York that, in the late 1980s, was beginning its obsession with “cleaning up” its most notorious districts of crime and vice. Longtime NYC mayor Ed Koch was leaving office and future mayor Rudy Giuliani was beginning to rear his ugly head. The NYPD was growing in power, and police-inflicted violence against the homeless was becoming commonplace:
“Your poor huddled masses, let’s club ‘em to death
And get it over with and just dump ’em on the boulevard.”
This comes from the website Rock Genius: http://rock.rapgenius.com/Lou-reed-dirty-blvd-lyrics
Twenty-four years after Lou Reed wrote this song the Billionaire who bought the New York City Mayoralty will soon be leaving office having accomplished all that Lou Reed Predicted. I will miss this great poet of the underbelly of our society.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Otteray Scribe
1, November 2, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Mike,
Archie lost out on the Heisman to Pat Sullivan. A generation later, who remembers Pat Sullivan?
=========================================================
you mean pat sullivan the quarterback for the auburn tigers who was well known for his passing game? most notably to his favorite receiver terry beasley.
haha actually i don’t care much for football but at that time i could get into auburn home games free as a boy scout. we just had to usher before the start of the game.
Wow! I don’t need to read it, I heard that interview back when it played. I don’t know that he wrote TKAM, but this is not dispositive. When a person writes one book, and it’s a classic, and then doesn’t write another, well it’s curious. Combine the fact that she’s friends w/ a great author and well?? Nell helped Capote on his books, maybe he “helped” her back on her semi autobiography. I loved the book and movie, whomever wrote it.
Letter Puts End to Persistent ‘Mockingbird’ Rumor
by Melissa Block
March 03, 2006
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5244492
Excerpt:
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Melissa Block.
In the decades since Harper Lee published TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in 1960, her novel has been shadowed by a persistent rumor. The speculation has been that Lee’s long time friend Truman Capote either wrote or heavily edited the book, which would go on to be a bestseller and win the Pulitzer Prize.
Well, now a letter from Truman Capote to his aunt, dated July 9, 1959, should help put that rumor to rest. Joining us to talk about it is Wayne Flynt. He is a retired history professor at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. And he has researched the writings of both Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Welcome.
Dr. WAYNE FLYNT (Auburn University): Thank you.
BLOCK: Let’s talk first about this letter from Truman Capote. It’s now been made public. It was, as I understand it, given to a museum from a cousin of Mr. Capote. What does it say and how does it help quash this rumor?
Dr. FLYNT: Essentially, it says that a year before the novel was published in July of 1960, that Capote had seen the novel, had read much of the book, and liked it very much, and commented that she has great talent. And nowhere in the letter does he claim any involvement whatsoever in the book.
BLOCK: And by saying that he’s seen it would appear to put some distance at least with it?
Dr. FLYNT: That’s correct. That’s correct.
BLOCK: How did this rumor get started in the first place?
Dr. FLYNT: Well, some claim Pearl Belle, who is a literary critic and editor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has actually claimed that Capote implied to her that he had written the book or had a good deal to do with the writing of the book. I think probably the rumor results from the fact that TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is the only published book that Harper Lee ever did.
BLOCK: Yeah, that that would fuel it. In other words, she was one and done, and if she were such a great writer, why wouldn’t she keep writing great books?
Dr. FLYNT: Exactly. Which basically judges her by the standards of our own culture, which is once you’ve got a taste of fame and fortune, why in the world wouldn’t you continue it?
BLOCK: If you look closely at TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and the writing of Truman Capote, do you see anyway that Truman Capote could have written TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?
Dr. FLYNT: No. The voice of the characters in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is a totally different literary voice. Some have claimed that he’s so brilliant that he could have simply assumed the voice of his good friend Harper Lee. I don’t believe that for a minute. Writers simply don’t assume another voice, another persona, another kind of literary style.
There are a million “maybe’s.” Folks who knew him, worked w/ him, said he was lazy.
Nice spin on just bein’ lazy.
Many people think Capote wrote it.
Harper Lee wrote just one novel–but it won a Pulitzer Prize and became a modern American classic.
RTC: “the flaws might be integral to what drives the talent. I think it’s important to separate those flaws from the distinctions.”
***
To a god extent that’s one of the reasons artists, in many fields, get a pass from the population at large. As long as the notion exists that a ‘normal’ person couldn’t do or write or sing like that, couldn’t make the magic’ without the ‘crazy’ being just under the surface then the excess’ are minimized in the public mind. There’s nothing quite as publicly sad as an artist that has stopped delivering the magic but retains all of the public excess.
I try not to get too involved in the personal life (through the media) of artists I like, I get judgmental and have abandoned them because they were bent in ways that were repugnant to me.
Good article Mike. Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground, and speed. LOL, there was crazy stuff going on in NY.
To me his most commercial success took his least pointed poetry and put them squarely in a compelling musical form. After “Rock and Roll Animal came out I never listened to music (as a set-aside block of time) stoned, or straight without the long intro/Sweet Jane and other songs on that album as selections. I guess I’m a Lou Reed lightweight but Rock and Roll Animal was my favorite Lou Reed album though I enjoyed his music all the way back to Transformer. Rock and Roll Animal captured the energy of the crazy below the surface. Whod’a thunk a song about heroin could be that compelling?
RIP
And as for being lazy, maybe he simply emphasized quality over quantity. Harper Lee wrote one book, for crying out loud.
If he was as money grubbing as you accuse of him being, he would have been cranking out shit like so many other lesser talents that try to capitalize on their moment of fame
I’m not sure that authenticity required Lou Reed to live any particular place, or especially in poverty. He wrote about what he saw, he commented about what he thought was true, and rather than exploiting his subjects, he tried to get his audience to appreciate and care about them. That’s what many artists do. He made lots of money; that’s what every artist hopes to do.
I just don’t see how that makes him a poseur.
RTC, One flaw no one has touched on regarding Reed is he really didn’t produce much of anything the last years of his life. Andy Warhol, who worked w/ Reed says what others who worked w/ Reed have said, that being Reed was lazy, he didn’t have a work ethic.
Finally, and HOPEFULLY for the last time, some are missing my point. I have said, I can accept almost any lifestyle, it’s part of being a libertarian. But, if that lifestyle is antithetical to their image, than they’re a phony @ best, hypocrite @ worst. Lou Reed wrote and sang w/ passion about the marginalized in our society. But, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about them. It was all part of the image. It’s how he made millions. He lived on Long Island. He knew about the Dirty Blvd. from his heroin days. He saw it. He wrote and sang eloquently about it. So, that’s a good thing. But, that’s where, in my mind, it ends. He wasn’t “down w/ the struggle” as was his image. He just was able to write, sing and play about it superbly. We agree on almost everything.
PUT THIS TO MUSIC:
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS, a book by Jared Taylor, also studies crime statistics by race. It must be stressed that blacks make up only 12% or so of the population according to the U.S. census (so black males number about 6%), but they commit a vastly disproportionate number of violent crime. Mr. Taylor reveals:
(1) 58% of all arrests for weapons violations are blacks.
(2) 46% of all arrests for violent crimes are blacks.
(3) 73% of all “justified self-defense” killings are committed by blacks.
(4) 60.5% of all blacks are armed with some type of weapon at all times.
(5) 98% of all youths arrested for gun fights in Atlanta are blacks.
THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
author@johnwfountain.com
Last Modified: May 6, 2012
Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict.
Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I.
Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now picture all of them dead. The national tally of black males 14 and older murdered in America from 1976 through 2005, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics: 214,661.
The numbers tell only part of the story of this largely urban war, where the victims bear an uncanny resemblance to their killers. A war of brother against brother, filled with wanton and automatic gunfire, even in the light of day, on neighborhood streets, where little boys make mud pies, schoolgirls jump rope, where the innocent are caught in the crossfire, where the spirit of murder blows like the wind.
It is, so far, a ceaseless war in which guns are often the weapon of choice, and the finger on the trigger of the gun pointed at a black male is most often another black male’s.
The numbers alone are enough to make me cry — to wonder why — we as African Americans will march en masse over one slain by someone who is not black, and yet sit silent over the hundreds of thousands of us obliterated from this mortal world by someone black like us, like me. It is a numbing truth borne out by hard facts:
From 1980 through 2008, 93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks.
Translation: For every Trayvon Martin killed by someone not black, nine other blacks were murdered by someone black.
In 2005, — blacks — accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population but 49 percent of all homicides. The numbers are staggering, the loss incomprehensible.
Add to the tally of black males 14 and older slain across the country from 1976 to 2005, another 29,335 (slain from 2006 to 2010), and their national body count rises to 243,996, representing 82 percent of all black homicides for that 35-year period. What also becomes clear is this: We too often have raised killers. And this war is claiming our sons.
But that’s still not the end of the story. Add to that number 51,892 black females ages 14 and older, plus five whose gender was not identifiable, and the total, not counting children, is 295,893 — more than the combined U.S. losses of World War I, the Vietnam, Korean and Mexican-American wars, the War of 1812 and the American Revolutionary War.
Is the blood of these sons and daughters somehow less American?
Two hundred ninety-five thousand eight hundred ninety-three . . .
Imagine the United Center, Wrigley Field, U.S. Cellular Field and Soldier Field nearly all filled simultaneously with black boys, girls, men and women. Now imagine that twice over. Now imagine them all dead.
As far as I can see, that’s at least 295,893 reasons to cry. And it is cause enough for reticent churches, for communities, for lackadaisical leaders, for all people — no matter our race, color or creed — to find the collective will and the moral resolve to stamp out this human rights atrocity occurring right under our noses.
Just imagine the human carnage and the toll to us all if we don’t.
I can’t. I won’t.
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
Vincent van Gogh,one of my favorite artists, was a tortured soul. Many painters, writers, composers, and other artists have their demons and view the world/things in different ways from much of society. They are able–unlike most of us–to express their visions/create art from their own imagination and provide us with unique perspectives on the things we may see every day…and the things that may lie hidden beneath the surface.
*****
Excerpt from a children’s book titled “I’ll Meet You at the Cucumbers”–written by Lilian Moore:
Amanda was thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, “I think it’s the way poets see things–as if everything were new. Then we read the poems and we feel, ‘Yes that’s the way it is.'”
When I think of Cobb, I’m reminded of something Dan Akroyd said about John Belushi’s drug use after he died. It was along the lines of how great talent sometimes requires certain vices to feed it. Cobb had many vices and meanness was certainly one of them. It was what helped propel him to the top of Major League baseball; it was a rough game played tough men. But he was also extraordinarily gracious and generous at times.
People made a big deal out of it when Micheal Jordon turned in a stellar performance while sick with the flu during a game in the Championship series. Ty Cobb, suffering from a throat infection, went out and played a game of baseball after having half his tonsils cut out by a hotel barber. He returned after the game and had the remainder removed, before getting on a train to take him the next town for another series. You just gotta mad dog mean to get through something like that.
Nobody likes to learn the flaws of people whose achievements we admire. But it’s important to separate the works of the artist or the politician from the man or woman. My wife soured on Bill Clinton because of the Lewinsky affair. I soured on him for other reasons; however, they have more to do with his performance as President than his failings as a husband. Thomas Jefferson was a scoundrel, but made a great President. Ginger Baker is a great drummer with a nasty disposition.
I think flaws are often based on needs. I’m not suggesting that anyone should be excused for being a jerk because they can hit a golf ball 375 yards straight down a fairway, but as Akroyd tried explaining about Belushi’s drug habits, the flaws might be integral to what drives the talent. I think it’s important to separate those flaws from the distinctions.
Mike S.,
I think I recall Ry Cooder in Austin back in the 70/80’s…. Some things are a still a little fuzzy….. I know I went to see John Prine too I have the recollection …. That was a lost weekend or week as well…. Oh well…. I took many a walks on the wild side….
Nick,
Where in the article was Lou glorified….. You seemed to be pickin and choosing ….. But this is just my opinion….. I on the other hand know folks that think they are somebody and folks that are somebody know that they could be anybody…. But they are just regular folks….
If you’re bitting your tongue for me…. It could be better spent bitting it elsewhere…. Play nice…. Be civil…. I think that’s what folks have requested of you…. Pretty simple….
Mike,
Archie lost out on the Heisman to Pat Sullivan. A generation later, who remembers Pat Sullivan? Archie never played for a winning team, so he never got a chance to play in a Super Bowl. All of us who know him feel he is now vindicated by the fact his sons have three Super Bowl rings between them.
A year after he went to the Saints, I got a chance to ask him how come he didn’t scramble in NOLA as he did when he quarterbacked at Ole Miss. His reply was priceless, “Hey, them big ol’ people will HURT you.”
Self-effacing as usual. He took personal responsibility instead of blaming his inability to scramble on the fact his front line leaked like a sieve and gave him almost no pass protection. Despite being sacked 396 times, he was always a gentleman.
raff, That’s what I was saying. I was happy to buy his music on its merits. I didn’t buy the image which was well honed. targeted and disingenuous. The problem w/ people buying into the image, produces people like Kirby Puckett. Great ballplayer, nobody doubts that. But, up until he died, Kirby was “lovable Kirby.” He was the ebony Pillsbury Doughboy. Well, in actuality he was a philandering, alcoholic, sexually assaultive, abusive man. So, the IMAGE was fake. It was honed and targeted to get lovable Kirby endorsements..$$$. And it was enabled by the sports media who knew the truth and didn’t have the balls to print it until too late.
I didn’t take to Reed initially. His New York style was at odds with the Chicago blues scene I was into at the time. I would go down to Maxwell Street, where musicians would run extension cords out to vacant lots and play music ranging from gut-bucket blues to horn-laden soul. Plus, I didn’t know what to make of the junk fetish.
My appreciation for Reed came about with his release of “Busload of Faith” record. Great album through and through. It seemed looser to me than his previous work, and I got a sense of the maturity he gained as an artist who had survived; no small accomplishment, given the scene back then.
I don’t know what he’s done lately, but I think what ever he would have done next would have been pretty good.
Thanks Mike, for the chance to reappraise his work.
“I went to school with Archie Manning”
OS,
The “Swamp Fox” was as great, if not better quarterback than his sons who are also great. He just was plagued by a lousy team around him. I loved to watch him play. When I hear him interviewed today he does strike me as a good person.
Cobb was not a nice person, nor was the great Rogers Hornsby, yet one could admire their prowess.