A Songwriter’s Appreciation:
Lou Reed’s 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 Stones—perhaps 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 won’t-run-can’t-hide presentational approach that torched all chances for misinterpretation.
Since then, the tradition
continues from mid to late 70’s 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 80’s
& 90’s 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 society’s 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 society’s 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 Roll’s
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 “you’re welcome if you’re 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 clean—or broadly dirty—presentations
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 Reed’s glib style which stands starkly and undeniably expressive,
with imagery abiding in scandalous cahoots with primal rhythms and
multi-entendre word craft.
It’s this hybrid brew of narrative
styles that I find the most effecting throughout the Lou Reed catalog. It’s 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 Reed’s 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 Pedro’s 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 writer’s alone. It’s 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 off…it’s 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 doesn’t 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 Frost’s 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 desecrating—the 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
streetwalker’s 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 Pedro’s 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, Pedro’s 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 Pedro’s 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
