“You think it’s alright…but in your heart, you know it’s shite.”
— One of the most memorable lines from the film ‘Trainspotting’, and pretty grim assessment of the post-Velvets/Stooges careers of both Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.
Two artists who have in common the fact that, for better or worse, they have been made figureheads, sybmols of the whole anti-mainstream, dark, heavy, smack- rock genre. And, playing up to it or not, the both of them have had every single release of theirs since, compared to a body of work they both did when they were young, full of spunk and didn’t know any better.
It is of course a tad unfair. But when bands as precious as the Velvet Underground come along, they are destined to be put on a pedestal forever. And as lead singer/songwriter, Lou Reed, in most peoples eyes was/is the Velvet underground. A notion he himself has never done anything to dispell! Even though any scientist will tell you, any band this good must be an amalgum of certian special ingrediants, in this case: The mean streets of New York in the 60s, a genious Welsh man miles form home, lots of speed, disgruntled feelings and a whole host of trannies, rent boys.…I could go on.
Peolpe forget that those were different times, especially considering human nature loves to declare a once frightening talent redundant. This said however, much of Lou’s seventies work is lacklustre, even with the Velvet’s out of the equation one can still hear the work of a writer unsure of who he is. Transformer, generally lauded as his last career high, isn’t even that great. How special can an Englishized, camp, glam pop parody of himself really ever be? (apart from fuckin great!!)
Ironically however, It is exacltly these half hearted attempts at the mainstream, these ‘Coney Island weed-outs’ that hardened the man & got the bile rising again, enabling Lou to create his true “Fuck You” masterpiece; so at the dawn of punk, and the tail end of that vicious, cracked-glossy decade came: Street Hassle.
Much of it is wisely recorded live, with a new band and Lou, thankfully tired of prancing round the stage conversley trying to ape the Bowies and Jaggers who were in fact, most in awe of him, playing the guitar again. Playing it like a demon.
His vocals on these tracks are delisiously twisted, delivered with a stutter and a sort of lisp! The middle class boy from Long Island perfects his street-hustler, junky wise ass at last: hard as ice.
The song titles speak for themselves: Dirt, I Wanna be Black, Leave Me Alone.
All venom spitting, sardonic and not without a sense of humour, on ‘I Wanna Be Black’ he sings, “I wanna be like Martin Luther King, Get myself shot in the spring…and have a big prick too.”
It is however the title track which is most impressive. A gentle lament for lost love, a hymn of impending doom or just another story from the streets; who ever’ll miss another dead junky?
It is the Junky hustler speech Lou delivers in the middle of the song, to a distraught party guest whose girlfriend has just OD’ed, that best sums the album up: He comes on like he’s known you for years, squeezes in beside you, looking for an angle to make you comfortable — until you realise, he’s telling you to pick up your dead girlfriend and get the fuck out!