I first hear Lou Reed in the early seventies when he released his Transformer album. At the time I was besotted by David Bowie so whatever he had a hand in I went out and bought. Which sounds a little crazy until you recognise the absolute taste the man had. I came away with a love of Velvet Underground, Iggy and the Stooges and the New York Dolls right at a crucial moment of my musical formative years. These influences would kick in a few years later when just as I turned eighteen and got my first car, a Datsun Bluebird, and started going to parties the whole punk thing came riding into my life. Parties I went to played these records. In 1977 for a very small part of Melbourne these bands were hip. Before this I would be at parties listening to horrible horrible stuff. But when we started to hear about the Sex Pistols something changed. There wasn't any punk music because it hadn't been recorded yet. So we went for other cool sounds. Early Rolling Stones. Garage bands. For some it was Kraftwerk.
I loved the Velvet Underground. The songs were dark and lo fi and messy and dealt with the bad stuff at the dark end of the street. But I also though Lou reed wrote great catchy pop songs. I f i was going to start imitate anyone in my writing this was a good place to start.
White light was a particular favourite. I knew it would be a good song as soon as I saw the title. It drives along like a locomotive. Like many VU songs it's rock and roll from another planet. And I love the backing vocals and their "White Light" shout outs at the beginning of each line. Great song.
The other night we were driving home from seeing a local band, Even, doing the Ziggy Stardust album . We were with our friends Susie and Mark. They put on a Velvet Underground CD. We sang along all the way home. A great way to end to a night.
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