Anthony DeCurtis, author of “Lou Reed: A Life”, joined Sean Rocks on Arena to discuss the fascinating life and work of one of music’s most storied artists, Lou Reed.
Sean began by asking why he had decided to take on the challenge, given Reed’s complex life and polarising nature. Anthony told Sean that he had interviewed and socialised with Reed a number of times over the course of his life and felt he was well-placed to do an even-handed job of writing about him.
“That I wanted to take it on really resulted from the fact that I knew Lou…I felt like his story had not really properly been told. I felt that either he was the…saint of…underground rock or he was just villainised. I felt like I had encountered a real person, a three-dimensional human being.”
Sean remarked that Reed’s childhood and adolescence must have been ripe for dissection, “eventful, to say the least”. Anthony agreed, describing the effect the family’s move from New York to suburbia had had on Reed.
“They were making a move in the 50’s…to what they perceived as a kind of ‘Suburban Eden’. But I think…their children – and certainly Lou Reed – often experienced that as not so much going to some great place but running from something else. And I think partly because of that New York and everything it represented became very, very important to Lou Reed as a person and as an artist“.
Anthony cited Reed’s experience of electroshock therapy as a teenager as another pivotal point in his life and a great influence on his work. Sean was curious, had they ever discussed this part of his life during their meetings?
“After a certain point in his life, he stopped talking about it publicly…very rarely even privately. He had the electroshock treatments when he was in his first year of college. He had been having pretty severe mood swings. He’d been using drugs. He was acting out sexually…sneaking off to gay bars...the collection of those actions confounded his parents.”
Anthony believes that Reed’s song, “Kill your sons” is a clear example of Reed expressing his feelings about this time in his work, as it describes his time in psychiatric wards.
“I think Lou came to view it as a kind of torture that he underwent...but it kind of suited his notion of himself as besieged…For him, it became symbolic of a kind of opposition. An attempt to destroy his creativity.”
Listen back to the full discussion of the life and work of Lou Reed on Arena here.