The Night Lou Reed Died: A Tribute to a Rock and Roll Poet

1942-2013

Thanks to Jon Hall for this tribute to a legend.

I was about to enter The Bungalow when I got a text off my friend, recently married. Shit, they aren’t getting divorced already are they? Or did I offend someone at The Reception? “Lou Reed,” is all the message said. And I knew we had lost a God.

“No, No, No!”, “Please don’t say he is dead.” I thought he was immortal. We all did. S and P text me too. “Lou Reed is dead,” they said. And there was a storm brewing in the United Kingdom. My old home Cornwall was expecting a tempest bordering on hurricane. But they never quite got what they were expecting. In the North, the October leaves barely left the ground. It was a shame. I wanted to hear Lou in the howling gales and in the thrash of the rain. I asked Dragon, have you heard of Lou Reed? “No,” he said.   

“Yes you have. Everybody has.”

I played him ‘Take a Walk on The Wild Side.’   

“And the colored girls go
Doo do doo, doo do doo, doo do doo
Doo do doo, doo do doo, doo do
Dooooooooooo…”

Me, Dragon and M shared a smoke. By the time the song reaches its Jazzy Climax, I’m high. It’s a fitting tribute. I want to put The Velvet Underground on but there is too much melancholy. The Velvets are sexy. Sexier than Death. You can hear heroin in every needle prick note. 71 years that liver lasted. He shouldn’t have made it past his thirtieth birthday. We went bowling and drank some beer. Most people were asleep or watching TV. Only Rock Stars, Murderers and Poets do anything exciting on a Sunday. Bowling isn’t murder but it’s better than nothing. I wished all night, that I was in a dungeon. With Venus in her furs. My young white arse high in the air. Waiting for its punishment. Or reward? It makes no difference. Don’t cry for Lou. He grew too big for this world and now he’s a Satellite of Love. Our Satellite of Love. And if there are aliens out there somewhere, at least they’ll know now, that us humans ain't all bad.

So watch him twinkle in the night, as you recover from your lashes.

“Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather,
Whiplash girlchild in the dark, 
Severin, your servant comes in bells,
Please don't forsake him,
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart.”