But let's face it: For all his critically acclaimed, groundbreaking Brooklynese wordplay and shootin'-from-the-hip urban panache, Lou's also a bit of an embarrassment. Things backfire. Once in a while, he's the chump who can't quite get it right. In a career spanning four glorious decades, Lou Reed has launched more than his fair share of egregious clunkers. For example, this inimitably apoetic petard -- from the second verse in song two on 1982's Blue Mask -- makes me wince in agony every time: "I used to look at women in the magazines/I know that it was sexist but I was in my teens/I was very bitter, all my sex was on the sly/I couldn't keep my hands off women/and I won't until I die."
Lame. What makes these lines so excruciating isn't their content, but rather the very specific artlessness they exhibit, their anti-quality of eavesdropping on emotionally sloppy talk. My first impulse, as a loyal Lou Reed fan, is to seek some accidental sort of redeeming genius in this utter lack of grace -- but Lou is just too arrogant, too calculating, and far too self-aware to be properly considered an idiot savant. There is, however, a kind of reckless bravery in these poorly constructed lines with their goofball rhyme scheme: a stuttering candor that might be, in the end, even better than genius. There's no rephrasing or uncluttering the sentiment, because the good, the bad, and the shameless are inextricable in Lou's lyrics, and necessarily so. How the words are put doesn't matter; the fact that he has the dumb guts to put them at all is what makes Lou Reed great.
An inordinate, almost obscene level of self-confidence compels Lou Reed to speak, to sing, to play guitar -- none of which he does with much technical proficiency. His talent and his talentlessness are one and the same. Because of this, Lou is the pre-eminent all-American rock star: self-determined, long-winded, short-tempered, loud-mouthed, thick-skulled, street-smart, aggressive, opinionated, and unrepentant. Lou Reed has a stubborn drive to be none other than Lou Reed, average guy, schmuck, and saint: to say absolutely everything on his mind and to say it however it happens to come out, with no fear of repercussion or concern for critical disapproval.
Lou's one of the few people around you can actually believe when he says, "I don't give a fuck what you think about me." It's due to this very sentiment, ultimately, that you trust him -- and that you forgive a song like "Hookywooky," because the same guy also pulled out of his hat such magnificent epics as "New Age," "Perfect Day," "Beginning to See the Light," and "Romeo Had Juliette." Lou's gargantuan attitude, his blatant disregard for prettified truths, his sudden eruptions of pure, sparkling brilliance -- all of these things make him endlessly interesting, endlessly important. Lou always means business.
"I got a hole in my heart the size of a truck/It won't be filled by a one-night fuck." This is the refrain of "Like a Possum," the droning, 18-minute-long, sexually degenerate funeral march that forms the centerpiece of Ecstasy, Lou Reed's new album. Like 1989's New York, this record is full of litter, jism, lust, fear, disillusionment, and just the faintest glimmers of hard-knock hope. The music is pounding and repetitive; Lou's fondness for middle-aged white boy funk is fully indulged. The jams sometimes strain too hard for the kind of groovy, apocalyptic aura that made New York such a compelling album; self-indulgence, though, is just the flip side of arrogance.
Ecstasy finds Lou staying perfectly in tune with the times; with a wizened, klutzy, unmistakably arrogant rush of anger, song after song, he skewers the modern world. That's the important thing. Some people will love this record. Some, like me, won't like it so much -- for reasons that have nothing to do with its vitality, composure, confidence, or relevance. As long as these qualities remain intact, anything Lou does is great, even if it ain't that good.
