Sunday, March 2, 2014

Lou Reed’s Dirty Blvd. --A Songwriter's Appreciation




 
A Songwriters Appreciation:

Lou Reeds Dirty Blvd.

Anyone passingly familiar with the mystique and work of Lou Reed would be aware of his status as one of the primary progenitors of the new honesty in rock: an unflinching stylistic trend that preceded "punk" in the mid to late 70's. Ian Hunter & Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, NY Dolls, Iggy & The Stooges, Alice Cooper, etc. were fresh new voices that returned to and embraced a stark expressionism. Vivid and lyrical, it was not altogether nascent, but a return to the blunter styles of early blues and rock. Eric Burdon & The Animals, early Rolling Stonesperhaps even Buddy Holly-- were punk in that the delivery was direct, forthright and unadorned with productions stripped down to big notes and sounds with a wont-run-cant-hide presentational approach that torched all chances for misinterpretation.

Since then, the tradition continues from mid to late 70s to now with New Wave/Punk icons The Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, The Stooges, Buzzcocks, Patti Smith, Black Flag (continually Henry Rollins) into the Post-Punk 80s & 90s with B-52s, Talking Heads, Gang of Four, Severed Heads, R.E.M., Mission of Burma, U2 and on to post-punk revivalists like The Strokes, Social Distortion,etc: those who embrace a more direct style to convey many and varied themes, tales, rants and laments, the last of which may hazard to be romance and love if those particular yarns were abjectly truthful, proud and with nary a nod to vulnerability. Sweetness for its own sake was elementa non grata.

Lou Reed was the principle writer of the Velvet Underground before a long career of collaborative adventure and solo works, and among the first of these artists to lyrically present societys underbelly, its underdogs, the under-served and under-represented writ large and under-explored. His social commentaries were largely delivered through the lenses of vividly drawn characters, and singling out societys soulless and villainous entities, dulcet-toned rants of street-corner commiseration. 

"Lou Reed doesn't just write about squalid characters, he allows them to leer and breathe in their own voices, and he colors familiar landscapes through their own eyes. In the process, Reed has created a body of music that comes as close to disclosing the parameters of human loss and recovery as we're likely to find. That qualifies him, in my opinion, as one of the few real heroes rock & roll has raised."
—Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, (1979)


Mainstream pop music, as with film or any other medium, might include the merely sincere among its myriad characteristics, but it was Punk that flipped the switch refreshingly back to Rock and Rolls original proclamatory (and in the purest sense, mandatory) adherence to the ethos of saying what you mean with as little incidental packaging as possible. The superfluous is an obstruction, no lightweight consideration especially when constructing a narrative arc no longer than a 3 minute record.

During his final few years alive Reed returned to radio hosting along with old pal producer and alas, recently departed Hal Wilner--the gleefully received eclectic weekly 5 hour New York Shuffle on Sirius-XM which at this writing still continues, with the implicit youre welcome if youre doing something interesting playlist policy. His broad-scope spin choices revealed other interesting aspects to his top-shelf artistic taste.
Throughout his artistic life Lou Reed maintained a loyalty to all that is straightforward and sure-handed, even when the musical facility was perhaps a bit precarious.

As a performer, Reed mostly recorded and/or performed cleanor broadly dirtypresentations and portraits that relied on his deft ability to wrangle as much potency from a cunningly considered lyric, a true gift to be appreciated again and again throughout his generous canon of well-turned phrases.


During his early growth as a student of journalism, film-making and creative writing he was profoundly impressed by the high-octane possibilities of well deliberated minimalism, propelling his lyric writing ever more toward that ideal.            

 The basic, aurally strong-boned construction of punk provided the perfect accommodation for Reeds glib style which stands starkly and undeniably expressive, with imagery abiding in scandalous cahoots with primal rhythms and multi-entendre word craft.

Its this hybrid brew of narrative styles that I find the most effecting throughout the Lou Reed catalog. Its sneaky, as though there may all the while be one continuous chaotic sub-text, a slip-stream cum river raging beneath a mundanely dead-pan commentary. I find Reeds dryly elegant effusiveness a deceptively rich archeological terrain begging to be upturned for closer scrutiny.

One of my personal all-time favorite songs can be found on the1989 album Lou Reed release New York, a contiguous three-act collection that was performed (sometimes stubbornly) in its sequenced entirety during its initial promotional tour.

 For those allowing the indulgence, I’ve chosen the song Dirty Blvd. for a somewhat overly-granular if not duly reverent unpacking: an “under the hood” look at why I consider it an exemplary piece of great songwriting, its layout so vivid and masterful that I had somehow managed to overlook it’s mostly spoken delivery for years (after recently listening with a college class of young aspiring songwriters, one student exclaimed that it was “the weirdest rap song” he’d ever heard).

The song's urban universe revolves around the ambiguously young, cursedly poor, dreamily wistful Pedro. One might deduce that within the described relentless and cruel environment that his pragmatic coping devices will inevitably mature along with his hopelessness into more insidious escape mechanisms and an illicit and morally deficient adult existence.

Bleak? Undoubtedly. But truthful and credibly fashioned as only a native empath of the mean streets would manage. Over the years the images and impressions within this haunting tale would come to wrap ever closer around my head much as this harsh reality would tighten intractably around pitiful Pedros choked future. See if you might experience the same reaction.

First, the lyric only:
(The mix of the recording is wonderfully narrator-centric, as if the storyteller waits just out of the frame during the compellingly simple guitar intro before stepping in, immediately nose to nose with us listeners)


Dirty Blvd. 
(Lou Reed) 


Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel
He looks out a window without glass
The walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet
His father beats him 'cause he's too tired to beg

He's got 9 brothers and sisters--they're brought up on their knees
It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs
Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man
but that's a slim chance, he's going to the boulevard

He's going to end up, on the dirty boulevard
He's going out, to the dirty boulevard
He's going down, to the dirty boulevard

This room cost 2,000 dollars a month, you can believe it man, it's true
Somewhere a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants
No one here dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything
they dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

Get em out, on the dirty boulevard
Going out, to the dirty boulevard
They're going down, on the dirty boulevard
Going out

Outside it's a bright night, there's an opera at Lincoln Center
Movie stars arrive by limousine
The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
But the lights are out on the mean streets

A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
He's selling plastic roses for a buck
The traffic's backed up to 39th street
The TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck

And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming
He's found a book on Magic in a garbage can
He looks at the pictures and stares up at the cracked ceiling
"At the count of 3" he says, "I hope I can disappear"

And fly fly away, from this dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard
I want to fly, fly, fly, fly, from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly away
I want to fly 


Now with some notes, just for fun:
(Of course, these thoughts, interpretations and suppositions are this writers alone. Its perilous to analyze songwriting. Most writers recoil from the prospect and I apologize if the reader is repelled by this overstep. On the other hand, step offits just a song and it's exceptionally good, as is always discussion)


Dirty Blvd. 
(Lou Reed) 


Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel
He looks out a window without glass
(The stage is economically set within 5 seconds with these  first two lines.Taken literally: abject poverty.  Figuratively, it might suggest there is no lens or protective layer of shelter between outside and in: One reality. Pedro doesnt live IN the Wilshire (will share?) Hotel, he lives out of it.

The walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet
His father beats him 'cause he's too tired to beg
(Further establishing the environment as deprived, abusive, flimsy to the point of ephemera)

He's got 9 brothers and sisters--they're brought up on their knees
It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs
(The begging is reiterated as we learn there are many others there, and they are brought up on their knees, raised to believe that they are lower and worth less than most)

Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man
but that's a slim chance he's going to the boulevard
(Back to Pedro, he dreams. To wit, his pathetic visionary aspiration is to one day murder his parent. And our credibly world-wise narrator dryly and jarringly dashes even that demented hope as futile, pointing out that Plan A is sadly:)

He's going to end up, on the dirty boulevard
He's going out, to the dirty boulevard
He's going down, to the dirty boulevard
(The signifiers here are quick and potent: end up, going out, going down)

This room cost 2,000 dollars a month, you can believe it man, it's true
Somewhere a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants
(Reed introduces what will be a recurring device here and elsewhere throughout the album, using defecation as a handy expression of a total lack of dignity and respect.)

No one here dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything
They dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard
(Here again is the insistent mention of dreams, a term for aspirations, but now they lead irrevocably back to the dirty boulevard, perhaps as Robert Frosts After Apple Picking refers to the hauntingly perseverating images which cannot be dispelled by an exhausted laborer at the end of a long day) 

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

(Boldly animating--then desecratingthe Lady in the Harbor, taking four lines to further dehumanize the immigrants to so much rodential detritus thereby conflating to national policy the landlord laughing while he wets...”)

Get em out, on the dirty boulevard
Going out, to the dirty boulevard
He's going down, on the dirty boulevard
Going out
(Now we are introduced to the third act which offers some specificity to the job descriptions on the boulevard. Going out is a streetwalkers standard pitch, while going down is often at offer)

Outside it's a bright night, there's an opera at Lincoln Center
Movie stars arrive by limousine
(We stay out, outside Pedros world, and the privileged and well-heeled are antithetically busy in theirs. Their night is bright, although Lou slyly and seductively reforms the word limousine into the name of a drug like mescaline or Dexedrine. Just as this listener is thinking this, the following lines affirm the theme)

The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
But the lights are out on the mean streets
(No explanation required.)

A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
He's selling plastic roses for a buck
(I discovered that The Robert Frost poem alludes to “stem end and blossom end” as well as other salient images and themes that correspond not too remotely.) 

The traffic's backed up to 39th street
The TV Whores are calling the Cops out for a suck
(A vivid scene,with metaphors for those who are looking. Economical phrasing right down to numbers and acronyms.)

And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming
He's found a book on Magic in a garbage can
He looks at the pictures and stares at the cracked ceiling
"At the count of 3" he says, "I hope I can disappear"
(The cracked ceiling: figurative, literal with multiplied metaphoric weight and now, after all, Pedros dream and hope, is to disappear)

And fly fly away, from this dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard
I want to fly, fly, fly, fly, from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly away
I want to fly

(The Doo-Wop style backsing remember the doot da doot in Walk On The Wild Side?function as Greek Chorus and Uriah Heep, ushering the listener and Pedro to whatever comes next. Another voice --a grown man-- assumes Pedros persona with the vociferous desire: I wanna fly)

 This song is to me a wonderful example of how a simple, thoughtfully considered lyric can achieve amazing and transporting results.

Many Thanks, Lou.
 ~JC