Song – Lou Reed ‘Walk on the Wild Side’

Lewis Allan Reed (1942 – 2013) was an American songwriter and musician. Prior to his  long solo career, he was the principal songwriter, guitarist and singer for the rock band ‘The Velvet Underground’, which group – well after its demise – was characterised as one of the progenitors of underground and alternative rock music.

Reed was a poet and a musician. His poetry is published.  As a singer he harboured a deadpan voice.  His songs, and performance, however, were – and remain – haunting and listenable. With few exceptions (eg ‘Perfect Day’) the theme of many of his songs was that of decadence, drug addiction, domestic violence, adultery and prostitution. His best known single was ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ which – according to his Wikipedia entry – was:

‘a salute to the misfits and hustlers who once surrounded Andy Warhol in the late 1960s and appeared in his films.  Each of the songs’ five verses describes a person who had been a fixture at Warhol’s ‘The Factory’ during the mid to late 1960s:  (1) Holly Woodlawn, (2) Candy Darling, (3) ‘Little Jo’ Dallesandro, (4) ‘Sugar Plum Fairy’ Joe Campbell and (5) Jackie Curtis’.

That song – see the link below – was from his second solo album ‘Transformer’, which was released just over 50 years ago.  It was co-produced by David Bowie, no less, and released as a double A-side with the song ‘Perfect Day’.

While the lyrics of the song canvassed taboo topics at the time such as transgender people, drugs, male prostitution and oral sex – and included intros to supporting African-American singers with the language ‘… and the coloured girls go doop de doop …’, – it largely avoided the clutches of radio censorship in the US, and elsewhere.

For those unfamiliar with the song, listen to it once – perhaps twice – and probably you will be hooked.  It is a simple chord progression alternating between C-major and F-major.  The song is noteworthy for its twin ascending and descending portamento baselines.  The baritone saxophone solo in the fade out of the song is memorable, if not haunting.

In 2010 ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine ranked ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ as the 223^rd greatest song of all time.

Upon his death in 2013, Luc Sante wrote in ‘The New Yorker’ magazine:

The least you could say about Reed is that he was complicated. He was lyrical and crass, empathetic and narcissistic, feminine and masculine, a gawky adolescent and an old soak, a regular guy and a wilful deviant, and artisan and a vandal. As a teenager he was administered electroshock, intended to cure him of either homosexuality or generalized waywardness, depending on which interviews you read.

In the anthology ‘No One Waved Goodbye – a Causality Report on Rock and Roll’ – compiled in 1971 by Robert Somma’ – Reed wrote:

‘It simply requires a very secure ego to allow yourself to be loved for what you do rather than who you are, and an even larger one to realise you are what you do. The singer has a soul but feels he isn’t loved off stage, or, perhaps worse, feels he only shines onstage and off is wilted, a shell as common as the garden gardenia. But we are all as common as snowflakes aren’t we?