What defines Lou Reed’s best work—besides fearlessness, beauty, intelligence, and switchblade New York City wit—is what places it at the highest level of art making: its empathy. Reed wrote his way into other voices, not all of them pretty, some belonging to “the other half/the irredeemable half”. These kindred humans, regardless of gender, spoke as if with Reed’s own voice, a compassionate ventriloquism that always seemed geared toward understanding both the subject and himself. And when you sensed Reed was indeed writing about himself—in a song like, say, “Waves of Fear,” as visceral a depiction of end-stage addiction and the panic-attack hellscape of withdrawal as any musician is ever likely to record—he seemed to be doing it to commiserate as much as to exorcise. New York, his most consistent and satisfying album attacked the greed and hypocrisy of America’s poisoned political and economic systems as they played out among the haves and have-nots on his hometown streets. And toward the end, in a storybook denouement, he achieved a kind of redemption, and grace, in large part through love.
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“It was a devastating thing for me,” Reed said of Kennedy's assassination. “I thought Kennedy could change the world.” Indeed, a generation looked to Kennedy—the youngest president in history, elected at forty-three—and Jackie Onassis as the ultimate inspiration. Even that nascent counterculture skeptic Bob Dylan was impressed. “If I had been a voting man,” he affirmed in one of his memoirs decades later, “I would have voted for Kennedy.” John Cale believed that Reed’s “fears about sanity” led him toward “provocative behavior, actively and purposefully trying his darnedest to set people off. That made him feel he was in control, rather than living in a state of uncertainty or paranoia. This put him in the position of perpetually seeking a kind of advantage for himself by bringing out the worst in people.” Lou Reed often combined Desoxyn with heroin. Desoxyn was straight methamphetamine, stronger and longer-lasting. Either way, speed was the ideal New York City drug. Distributed widely via legit prescriptions from psychiatrists and general medical practitioners, as well through gray-market diet clinics and assorted black-market channels, it’s estimated that between 8 and 10 billion amphetamine tablets were ingested annually in the United States between 1963 and 1969.
Lou Reed remarked about “Waves of Fear”: “It’s about anxiety and terror about which nothing can be done. Terror so strong that the person can’t even turn a light on, can’t speak, can’t make it to a phone. Afraid to turn a light on for what they’ll see—for what he is.” “What motivation,” Bruno Blum asked, with astonishment, “could you possibly have to approach that subject?” Reed responded flatly and plainly, as if there was just one conceivable answer: “Empathy,” he said to the French author and journalist Bruno Blum. Reed was performatively frank about his tastes. He called the Beatles “garbage” and claimed he never liked them, while the Doors were “painfully stupid and pretentious.” He expressed dislike for Stephen Sondheim (“Broadway music I despise”) but admiration for Randy Newman. Reed was largely dismissive on the topic of Bowie. —Lou Reed: The King of New York (2023) by Will Hermes
Jeff Tweedy: "It’s hard to believe that someone with a reputation for being as relentlessly thorny and unkind as Lou Reed could write something as empathetic and tender as “Candy Says.” But he did. This is all my way of saying that I don’t quite believe the nasty image most of us have of what Lou Reed was really like. I don’t doubt the stories of his mistreatment of people that deserved better. But what doesn’t make sense is the idea that any amount of bad behavior could conceal a heart big enough to write “What do you think I’d see/If I could walk away from me?” I love this song so much. And I love that Lou Reed that belongs to only me, partly fictional as Lou might be for me. That Lou Reed made of a powerful magic able to move one’s mind behind someone else’s eyes. Maybe surrendering to an unwanted emotion is the only way we survive without getting trapped in our sadnesses and angers and jealousies... at least I think that’s how it works."
Jeff Tweedy: My girlfriend had left Belleville to attend SIU–Carbondale college. She met a guy there during her first semester away while she and I were still technically dating. I was devastated. I’d experienced rejection before, but not that world-shattering feeling of betrayal. That feeling marked the beginning of the first identifiable pattern of depression in my life. When you’re prone to depression, this is the kind of catalyst that can bring it on and turn something upsetting into something debilitating and seemingly insurmountable. I drove down to Carbondale to see her, and I found her walking hand in hand with a guy toward her dorm room. And then I knocked the door. They were already in bed. God, it was a full-on catastrophe. Almost comically hurtful. And as inconsequential as it would be in the grand scheme of things, at that moment I couldn’t see it as anything less than the end of my life. I wrote “Gun” a little while after that: “It hurt much worse when you gave up/which way I oughta run/Crawling back to you now/I sold my guitar to the girl next door/She asked me if I knew how/I told her, I don’t think so anymore.” That was probably the most honest and direct I’d ever been in a song up to that point. Telling the world that I’d sold my guitar wasn’t saying I’ll kill myself, but it was close. To me, it was almost the equivalent of killing myself at that point. I was in so much pain I was willing to give up the one thing in the world that was sustaining to me, the only thing that mattered. That might seem like a martyrdom fantasy—“If I can’t have what I want, I don’t want anything!” It is grandiose, but I was serious about it. The feeling that “anything is better than this,” even giving up the only thing you love if it would just make it go away, is real. I can still identify with that. When I play Gun, that’s what hooks me in.
While Sam Jones's "I am trying to break your heart" documentary progressed, Jay Bennett started pitting people against one another, whispering rumors and stoking paranoia. If you weren’t in the room, he was talking behind your back or diminishing your contributions. I heard about all the nasty things he’d been saying about me when I wasn’t around—I guess it never occurred to him that the rest of the guys in Wilco would compare notes—and when it was just Jay Bennett and me alone in the studio, he said the rest of Wilco wasn’t pulling their weight. I suggested to create sounds that didn’t involve us, like an organ with some keys taped down, or a tape echo feeding back on itself, an electric fan strumming a guitar. The plan was to come back the next morning, turn all of our self-playing instruments back on, and hit record. But when I got to the Loft, Jay Bennett was already there, walking the camera crew and talking about how he’d put it all together, the whole room was buzzing, and he was fielding questions from Sam Jones about 'his' sonic experiments. I didn’t say anything—I knew that was petty and I didn’t want to get into another fight in front of the cameras—but I was furious. That was an idea that I’d suggested. There were many reasons I didn’t want to make music with Jay Bennett anymore. I fired Jay Bennett from Wilco because I knew if I didn’t, I would probably die. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s really not. I told him I knew what was going on. That’s one of the first things I said to him. “You’ve been getting FedEx packages full of pills.”
The guy who was running the Loft for us would see him there in the mornings, counting his pills on a desk in the back. I told Bennett we would help him. If he wanted to find somebody to talk to about addiction and maybe get into a program, we would pay for everything. But he was incredulous, saying: “If I had a problem I would admit it.” I had to confront my Vicodin addiction in rehab. My thoughts were: “I’m not some junkie who wants to disappear. I have real migraines. I have real panic attacks. And I’m only being responsible by finding a way to control them so I can keep doing my job.” Some fans thought I should have stayed with Jay as a sign of loyalty for the band. But I think that kind of devotion, to something entirely made up like a “band,” is silly and even dangerous. There are only three people I’ve committed myself to completely for the rest of my life: my wife Susie, and my sons Spencer and Sammy. My actual family.
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