Day 300. Set the twilight reeling (27/10/13)

It used to be that my vinyl collection was the most important thing in my life; back in the days when I lived in one small room in my parents' home and I wore my taste in music as even more of a badge of pride than I do now.

In those days I was able to put my hand instantly on exactly the LP that I needed. Not that the collection was categorised in any way, it was held thematically at best - all the Liverpool stuff would be together, ancient and modern (1980ish) Psychedelia would share a box, I just knew where everything was.

But life changes, formats change; vinyl still looks gorgeous but I will argue endlessly that CD sounds better (look, I've been in enough studios in my lifetime, I know for a stone cold fact that there are no crackles on the source tape, there's clarity. Sod this 'warmth' argument, CD has a purer, more accurate, sound) so the vinyl is in the loft (that and, once again, I'm not in possession of a working turntable) and it's not in the order that it was.

I can't find the LP that I need so I'm doing this off the top of my head. Apologies for any inaccuracies but when the truth and the legend disagree 'print the legend' and all that.....

I think that it was actually a review of a John Cale album that started it. 'Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense'. 80/81 IIRC. The review listed him as a member of The Velvet Underground, a name that I'd heard bandied about in articles on The Bunnymen but not heard. It likened a track to The Teardrop Explodes. My curiosity was piqued. In closing the review pointed out that the sleeve was (and I remember this vividly) 'by Andy of course'.

I had no idea who Andy was.

I loved 'Honi Soit...' I'll still point it out as a defining moment in my listening taste. I started to look deeper.

Now remember, this was in the days before we had this total availabilty that we enjoy/suffer now. We had to search for treasure in those days.

Obviously I'd heard 'Walk On The Wild Side' at the time of it's original pop chart glory but I had no way of connecting that one off single to a still obscure New York band. My first real exposure to the brutal genius of the Velvets was a compilation album; 'Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground Featuring Nico', its front cover a pair of lips descending on a straw protruding from a Coke bottle, the opened gatefold showing the bubbles spilling from the bottle in true pop art suggestiveness.

Being young and influenced by the inkies (NME, Melody Maker) I concentrated on the noise pop that made the Velvets so notable. Glorious as the likes of 'Run, Run, Run', 'There She Goes Again', 'Here She Comes Now' and 'I'm Waiting for the Man' were in their primitive garage rock beauty, sleazy as 'Heroin' and 'Venus In Furs' were in their depiction of a sleazy underbelly that music didn't touch at the time, furious as 'Black Angel's Death Song' 'European Son', 'I Heard Her Call My Name' and the 17 minute 'Sister Ray' that churned so repetitively on the same groove that I didn't realise for 6 months that my copy stuck was, it was the fragility of 'Sunday Morning' that held the VU's true genius. The second I first heard it, the moment that I noticed that somebody only decided to turn on the reverb halfway through the guitar solo, it became my favourite song of all time. It has remained that way ever since. It always will. It will play at my funeral.

I moved forwards and sideways, dug through Lou's solo stuff in a haphazard manner, Transormer (not actually as great as you'd think but God there are moments on it) New Sensations, his 'New Wave' album, Lou showing that he could take on the new kids at their own game. Berlin, the bleak masterpiece that gave birth to the story that the producer locked his children in a cupboard and told them that their mother was never coming back in order that he could tape their hysterical crying.

I was working in time for New York, his great comeback from the wilderness years, his love song to the city that his art was so entwined with, I was able to watch as the album outperformed all expectations, as Lou established himself as a commercial presence once again.

Obviously he sabotaged this with 'Magic & Loss' a second bleak masterpiece following a pop hit, this one a concept album about cancer. It was genuinely beautiful, what it wasn't was popular.

I saw the 'Songs For Drella' album, Lou and his old cohort John Cale paying tribute to Andy Warhol (I knew exactly who Andy was by now) lead to talks of a reunion, I didn't see the reunion, I heard bits of it - Lou at his most bloody minded deliberately skewing the melodies to his old songs - I think I'm glad that I missed it.

I endured The Raven, Lou's Edgar Allen Poe album. Once. Just the once and never again. Utterly unlistenable. I did manage to get through 'Metal Machine Music' twice though, which is quite possibly twice more than Lou did - I'm more than happy to subscribe to the theory that he leant the guitars against the amps, pressed record to capture the ensuing feedback and left the room. I enjoyed it.

I read the interviews, the last one only last week, despite knowing that he would never answer a simple question; he was a curmudgeonly old sod although it may have been an act - there's a fantastic live album 'Take No Prisoners' where he points out that 'I can do Lou Reed better than anybody' before spending half an hour deliberately not playing 'Walk On The Wild Side' instead telling the audience how he wrote it and roundly abusing every figure mentioned in the original lyric. It may well be the greatest live album of all time.

When the Lou Reed/Metallica album 'Lulu' was announced, a friend (a Metallica fan, Hi Dave - coincidentally the man who let me know the news tonight) told me that Lou Reed fans would be gutted about this. I replied that the Metallica fans should be the ones to worry, we were well used to Lou letting us down, it was part of the lot of the Lou Reed fan.

Lulu was an absolute dog of an album but still, but still...Lou never really let us down, he was just being Lou, he liked to test people.

And now he's gone, probably the biggest surprise should be that he ever made it this far. Who would have put money on Lou Reed making it to 71 years of age?

We lost a genuine great today. If, as Colonel Tom Parker put it, 'death is a great career move' then we may see a new generation checking out the work of an actual legend. They're in for a hell of a ride.

RIP Lou and thanks.