Transformer - Lou Reed

Here's an image you didn't ask for or want: we put on our skinny black jeans and sexy danced in the lounge room to Vicious, the opening track of Lou Reed's seminal album Transformer from 1972.

This is a wacky album. It's theatrical, but grungy. Like some kind of musical about homeless crackpots on the streets of a dead American city. Suppose that what's you get when you put Lou Reed and David Bowie together. Transformer has glorious, momentous songs. But the overwhelming impression is of Reed creating show tunes - about the theatre of the lives he has witnessed. Reed is an observer. This album has more of a pop sensibility than the Velvet Underground. The songs are not as loose, not the creative ambitious mess that some of the Velvet's best work was. Perhaps Bowie had a role in the neat song construction. 

The only wedding you should hear Perfect Day at is a junky's. Perfect Day is a majestic waltz. A dichotomous song - orchestral and overwrought but about simple, impoverished, troubled love. It is sinister, beautiful and malicious. It may be a song about love but it's not a love song. It's about raw, bad-for-each-other love. A relationship that brings out the worst in you.

Walk on the Wild Side. What a song. From the very beginning it has depth to its sound created by the electric bass and double bass playing the same riff at the same time. "But she never lost her head, even when she was giving head." Such a good line that we can  forgive Reed for rhyming head with head.

Satellite of Love sounds like a saccharine pop song, but it drips with derision for hollow human achievement. Forget progress - the smallness of human life and love on earth is more than enough. The coda with Reed's tinny vocals, the simple percussion and Bowie's soaring falsetto (layered about fifty times over itself into a massive choir of Bowies - what a wonderful thought!) is one of the most exciting, triumphant moments of pop music. Satellite of Love was written for the Velvet Underground. Thank god he recorded it again with Bowie.

Transformer is an incredible album. Lou Reed has inspired countless boys to form bands. His influence is immense. Transformer made him a superstar. (Which is why it is so devastating to see this. A great song completely and utterly decimated. Lou Reed, Bono, Bowie, the woman from M People, Tom Jones, and others carpet bomb a village. It could almost be a funny as a satire except it is a BBC promotion from 1997. Shame.) If you watch that clip, don't leave it as the final taste in your mouth. Do a shot of whiskey and listen to Walk on the Wild Side one more time.