Glam rock is the most underrated and shallowest of all rock genres. Possibly the goodest. Folk rock is a bit serious, country rock more than a bit rednecky, progressive rock is simply way too top-heavy with elves, and hard rock has an excessive amount of Jethro Tull and not enough Aerosmith. Glam brought for one shining hour men in feather boas and makeup swanning around making twelve-year-olds scream.
That is what rock is supposed to be. Marc Bolan of T. Rex delivers the short sexy warlock stuff right to the edge of the enchanted guitar forest for you to wonder on. Mr. Bolan had a bad car wreck and went to meet the fairies way too early, but he is undeniably what makes glam tick. He is a boy who wants a girl, but he also wants to write poetry naked in a forest being chased by nymphs. Trippy flying saucers, cloaks full of eagles, sexy vampire bites, dangerously exciting gong banging—it is all there, like a romantic novel with drums. Produced by the acute Tony Visconti, who went on to collaborate on thirteen albums with Bowie, the sound is scaled down and the mood is get me-some-mescaline-and-mascara, I-need-a-hug-on-the-fur-carpet. Wear a giant hat while you do your nails and listen, then throw the file down and rock out. By the way, we don’t dance, we dahnce.
Lou Reed was given electroshock therapy as a teenager to quell his homosexual impulses. His parents did this, as parents so often do, for the child’s own good. Lou Reed found himself in New York after college and met John Cale, the classically trained multi-instrumentalist. Sterling Morrison was an old school friend of Reed, and Moe Tucker, the lady drummer, was their buddies’ sister. She played standing up, and the weirdest art band of all time was formed. When Paul Morrissey, the director who worked with Andy Warhol, saw them at the perfectly named Café Bizarre playing songs about drugs and kinky sex to a room full of tourists, it was game on. The Velvet Underground is the most famous band that never sold any records. Though it has been said and attributed to Brian Eno that everyone who bought an album started a band. Lou Reed brought the avant-garde to rock as well as the underground of heroin, hustlers, and homosexuality. Transformer has four Velvet Underground songs on it, which informs its tough, startling, fluid sexual sensibility. Bowie and Mick Ronson, the guitarist and producer, tried like mad to serve Lou to the male-dominated rock public, and “Walk on the Wild Side,” a semi-rapped, midnight jam about drag queens, male hustlers, and fellatio references, was a solid hit and is still shocking. But Lou Reed was a sensitive poet type, and his raw flame of honesty, along with the drone, pop, and fuzz, wasn’t meant for mainstream. Transformer has rock ’n’ roll and art and sadness and all manner of ambiguity. “Perfect Day” is a love song or an ironic put-down or both. Singular in his bold vision and poetry, Lou Reed is a fearless master and drugged-up lunatic. America never wants to reveal its complex underbelly, but that is precisely why we are at all interesting. Lou Reed gives poetry to the hidden class. Lou Reed is your detached, hip, jaded friend taking you on a tour of tenements full of burning mattresses and mad love for life. Light up a fag. Any kind.