LOU REED drops...and becomes THE LEGEND, GREATEST, MOST INFLUENTIAL...

Shakespeare was ok. He's no Lou Reed.

Shakespeare a legend? Influential? Fuck...ol' Bill got it SO wrong when he wrote: "The evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones..."

Whatever, dude. Take the case of Lou Reed, who hasn't been a factor in rock music in 40 years. He drops due to complications from a liver ailment, at 71, and on a slow news day his evil (if you paid good money for them) experimental albums are forgotten, his mediocre shit forgotten, and some barely in-print Velvet Underground things and his lone hit "Walk on the Wild Side" make him...THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ARTIST OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

Bloggers, newspaper hacks, progrock fan boys who weren't even alive when Lou sucked his first cock...they ALL are raving about the man as an INFLUENTIAL LEGEND.

I think only a few have been level-headed about Mr. Reed...that he wrote a few good songs, had a strong personality, and despite his sometimes obnoxious exterior, could be a really sweet guy. Veteran writer Jim Farber was very good in pointing out the latter. Too bad so many have gone overboard with parroting "he was the most influential...." and "he was a legend..." or suggesting that his death somehow deprives the world of an artist who was at the peak of his powers and coming up with brilliant material.

Lou Reed's death is sad news. While he was not doing anything that interesting, and (as this blog noted) he sometimes was saying things that were eye-rollingly foolish, it's too bad he's not around to enjoy his royalties, his wife, and (mostly in New York) his fame. It's possible part of the reason he's gone is that he was too much a part of the stupid side of the rock lifestyle: the drugs. You use heroin, you get an overdose at worst, and Hep C at best..which means a damaged liver.

Snarks used to say about Steve Allen and his thousands of self-penned songs, "Can you name TWO?" The answer would be "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" and, uh, uh, uh, "Gravy Waltz?" With Lou Reed, it would be "Walk On the Wild Side" and....uh, uh, uh, "Sweet Jane?" Something about heroin, maybe. Wanting to be black? Let me check the label and see what droning thing on "White Light" was his...uh...

But here's Rolling Stone telling you how great Lou was, and gosh, that great quote about how rock and roll shouldn't have more than two chords...

If you want to see what the lunatic fringe has been writing, here's an inane piece that has been syndicated into hundreds of (lazy, low-budget) newspapers via the WASHINGTON POST.

Wow, Lou Reed, the legend, the greatest, the most influential...produced ONE SECOND OF GLORY. That fanboy writer really needs a shot of heroin in his ass and a dick down his throat...anything to keep him from writing more articles like that.

Let's have a reality check. I was around back then and buying records and listening to FM radio, and NOBODY was that fucking keen on the Velvet Underground, even the late night disc jockeys. You could pick that stuff up pretty cheap. Somebody accurately wrote that their first album sold 30,000 copies..."but those 30,000 were to people who then decided to form rock bands." Maybe. But fortunately, they weren't all influenced to sound like the fucking Velvet Underground.

What, exactly, did the fucking Velvet Underground do that was so unique? Get a contract without having any real ability to play their instruments? To sing well? Hey, wasn't Leonard Cohen droning before Lou Reed? Wasn't Bob Dylan out there being noisy before this group of boho nitwits? Weren't there a whole bunch of black jazz artists singing about drug use? You really want to stick to this notion that a poseur like Andy Warhol, who made shitty movies and fooled the public with soup can "art" actually put together a great rock group? Warhol was a promoter, and the Velvet Underground was about fashion, decadence, the usual trivia. They just had enough authentic drug use and sexual perversion in the band to make people say "they aren't putting us on." Not completely.

Reed was an adequate session musician on budget record labels before Velvet Underground. He wrote some decent songs after, although most people don't even own a "greatest hits" on him. He was, among MANY, able to stand up on a stage and ooze a certain attitude...from bored hipster to zonked junkie. He was a better-than-average rock star, maybe, and certainly in anybody's Top 100 or 200 if you want to name someone worth a listen.

But MASSIVELY INFLUENTIAL?

That's what Rolling Stone wrote in the first line of their obit. MASSIVELY INFLUENTIAL!

Lennon was. Hendrix was. Even Lizard Queen Jim Morrison. NOT LOU REED.

This fact is being ignored, so that people can have something to feel good about feeling bad about. They want to eulogize. They don't want to say "By the way, also on Verve at the time was...Frank Zappa. Sort of an influential motherfucker, wasn't he?" As for influencing rock, nobody's going to mention The Troggs and others like them...mediocre garage bands making it on snotty attitude and droning chords. Of course not. Don't say the Velvet Underground listened to any of that...instead pretend they emerged totally unique, and that there was no druggy music out there (like George Harrison's sitar stuff on Sgt. Pepper or weird shit on the Rolling Stones' "Request" album). Funny, those shouting about the Velvet Underground the last few days didn't seem to mention the other vocalist on that first album: Nico. She sounded like a bored, off-key Marlene Dietrich but no, she was completely original, like Lou Reed.

It's been kind of surprising to see just how elevated into rock stardom Lou Reed was...when he had such few hits, when his competition was, at various times, anyone from Frank Zappa to David Bowie, and when he spent the last decade or so trying to re-invent himself as a Poe scholar (one who apparently bought into the trendy-if-insane notion that Poe died of rabies). Reed's death has been a fucking hurricane of tributes...when Jim Carroll died, it barely caused a fart.

To me, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground deserve inclusion in any encyclopedia of rock (you're welcome). That they may have influenced a lot of assholes and publicity seeking eccentrics and novelty acts (the New York Dolls, Wayne-Jayne County etc.) is not necessarily something to be proud of. That Lou was grandpa to a Patti Smith or Jim Carroll, and some of his scent rubbed off on a Bowie or Iggy...fine. Death does sometimes turn someone into LEGEND. And if Lou Reed IS as influential as some of the maniacal, uneducated punks and come-lately bloggers say...well...you'll be seeing a few extra bi-sexual junkies with guitars over their shoulders and bumping into you at night wearing dark glasses and muttering self-important "get outta my way" grunts. My advice is when you see 'em coming toward you on the sidewalk...take a walk on the OTHER side.