In 1973 I was mostly bored and lonely. My grades started to drop and I think I spent a lot of my time after school listening to AFN, pretending to do my homework and fighting with my sister.
Copying someone's homework on the bus in the morning, trying to stay awake during lessons and so on. All that time wasted on Latin irregular verbs, the finer aspects of the Thirty Years' War, morphological traits of the European swifts and that black hole called maths. Never enough money.
Lou Reed's Transformer was one of the first albums I bought and I remember holding it in my hands on the bus home, reading the track list on the back cover and the curious looks from the person sitting next to me. Well, I was 14. And since my English was very poor I hadn't a clue what he was singing about. It was the doo-doo-doo, doo-doo chorus that got me hooked. But within a very short time, Lou Reed provided education, valuable, seriously needed and liberating education. A glimpse of a strange, mad, wild freedom.
Even after so many years Walk on The Wild Side can still raise the hairs on the back of my neck. In a dark but wonderfully seductive way.
ReplyDeleteMust confess that I don't know his music well - aside from the more famous songs (Perfect Day, Waiting for the Man). Maybe I should research further.