Not Such A Perfect Day

And so earlier this week we lost Lou Reed … rock legend. Whether as part of the Velvet Underground or as a solo artist, Reed was one of the genre’s single greatest influences across the last half century.

I’m not about to embark on any sort of clumsy obituary, but yesterday I was on the receiving end of a mailing list email from Metric’s Emily Haines, and I thought her heartfelt tribute to Reed was well worth reproducing here …

When Lou Reed asked me, "Emily Haines, who would you rather be, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones," I shot back, "The Velvet Underground." Quick thinking, sure, but also the truth. In our song "Gimme Sympathy," we lament the fact that none of us living today are likely to achieve the stature or saturation the signature acts of that era enjoyed. But for me none of that music comes close to the contribution Lou Reed has made to the world. It's immeasurable. Famously cranky, his integrity is unrivaled. He irritated everyone with difficult music. He refused to spend his life re-writing "Walk on the Wild Side," effectively sparing himself a lifetime of boring conversations with fools. Anyone who couldn't see that his tough exterior was an essential shield for the man who gave us "Pale Blue Eyes," with all its intimacy and relatable sadness, has missed the point of his life completely.

I'm not one to proclaim fated encounters, but it seems as though everyone I know who had the power to bring Lou and me together used it to make it happen. A strange combination of forces channeled Hal Willner through Kevin Drew through Kevin Hearn through Neil Young's "A Man Needs a Maid" and that was that. When we finally did meet, it was obvious and easy, like an idea that's been floating around for years and then one day emerges effortlessly, fully formed. Our connection was free of the fawning fandom and nauseating idolatry that so often characterizes such show biz interactions between a young woman and an older man. He was never condescending. I didn't worship him. We talked about my late father Paul Haines' recordings of Albert Ayler, we talked about Escalator Over the Hill, we talked about Roswell Rudd and Henry Grimes. This thin man with gold teeth and clear engaging eyes was a thrill to be with, and his barbed wire wit made hanging with him like a tightrope walk. You couldn't drift.

People always seemed afraid to be straight with Lou but I wasn't. At the rehearsal for our performance at Vivid Festival at the Sydney Opera House in 2010 (an event he curated with Laurie Anderson), he couldn't remember the guitar part for "Cremation," the song he wanted me to sing with him. I said, "You have to remember. You have to play the guitar," and the room fell silent as though I had hit the height of blasphemy. But he just looked at me and said, "You're right."

Persuading him to play "Pale Blue Eyes" when he joined Metric onstage for "The Wanderlust" at Radio City Music Hall in 2012 required a more nuanced approach and I'll always remember the golden look of approval he gave our guitarist, Jimmy Shaw, when he played that delicate guitar line onstage that night.

An essential thing people seem to miss when they think of Lou Reed is the scope of his sense of humor. When he invited me to play with him at the Shel Silverstein tribute concert in Central Park in 2011, I was the straight man, backing him up on piano and vocals as he turned the song "25 Minutes to Go" into a roast of Mayor Bloomberg's New York for billionaires.

 

Near the end, there were things Lou wanted to do that his poor health prevented. We had planned to perform together at Coachella but he wasn't well enough and had to cancel. More recently, his visit to Toronto became impossible and I found myself standing around talking to Mick Rock instead, looking at photographs of the glamorized Lou when really the person I wanted to see was the man that had made it through all those years and married Laurie Anderson, the man who continued to live and love and create. I hijacked the DJ's playlist at the gallery, forced everyone to listen to "O Superman" and gave a big drunk speech about it. I guess you could say it was an early expression of the grief that was to come.

Kevin Hearn has played in Lou Reed's band for years. Hearn and I have been working on some new recordings of my songs, just vocals and piano. A survivor of blood cancer himself, Kevin visited Lou and Laurie many times throughout Lou's treatment in Cleveland. It appeared for a while there that Lou was on the mend, but in recent weeks his condition declined. When Lou called for him a few days ago, Kevin feared the worst.  He wrote to me late last night, "I went to see Lou in Cleveland. He had to go back in the hospital. He is not doing too well I'm sad to say. Laurie was there too. They asked what I have been up to and I told them about the songs. They wanted to hear something so I played them 'Dedicated.' I hope you don't mind. They really liked it." I fell asleep last night hoping my voice had been of some comfort to him. And when I woke up, I found out he was dead.

The first time I sang "Perfect Day" for him, Lou said, "You have to bring more pain to it. You're not singing about a fucking picnic." Consider it done.

Playing "Cremation" with Lou was heavy enough at the time, but now that he's gone the lyrics just break my heart. "The coal black sea waits for me me me/ the coal black sea waits forever/ when I leave this joint/ at some further point/ the same coal black sea/ will it be waiting?"

In his last message to me, Lou wrote, "I'm so sorry Emily I would've if I could have but I'm a little under the weather but I love you."

I love you, too.

 

Perfect. And if I can offer anything it’s a song in the form of a clip. For all that ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ has its own unique place in rock’s rich tapestry, and for all that ‘Perfect Day’ has gone on to become a latter day cross-generational classic, this is the Lou Reed track that left the greatest impression on everythingsgonegreen …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Albums of 2012 # 9: Metric – Synthetica

Confession time: I’ve always reserved a special place in my heart for that guilty pleasure otherwise known as synthpop. No matter how sugary, how cheesy, or how blatantly commercial it may be, give me a half decent synthpop album to listen to, and your author instantly transforms into a very happy boy indeed.

Given that my formative pop music listening years coincided with the first wave of synthpop - Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan et al - I guess that none of the above should come as any great surprise. Those earliest musical influences can be very hard to shift from the psyche.

And in 2012 it would seem that the genre was very much alive and well. Some would even say it was thriving. Whether it was the retro styles of Hot Chip, the aggressive synthrave of Crystal Castles, the more offbeat variation as presented by Grimes, or this, Synthetica, the fifth studio album by Canadian four piece Metric, it felt like a fresh synthpop fix was never too far away during the year under review.

I’ve followed the work of Metric for a number of years now, with the 2009 album Fantasies also being one of the best albums of its year (according to me, obviously). Fantasies is certainly the release that tends to get the credit for providing the band with its most sustained commercial breakthrough, albeit a relatively minor breakthrough in big picture terms. I’m not really sure whether or not Synthetica will ultimately be recalled as a better overall album than Fantasies, but it feels like the band’s most consistent body of work yet, a better collection of songs, and an album void of anything in the way of obvious filler.

The voice of Emily Haines is pivotal to everything Metric does. Haines has a great vocal range – from gravelly and vulnerable, to silky smooth and assured – and on Synthetica we get a masterclass vocal performance from the ex-Broken Social Scenester. Right from the opening lines on album opener ‘Artificial Nocturne’ (... “I’m just as fucked up as they say, I can't fake the daytime, found an entrance to escape into the dark” ...) Haines grabs each track by the scruff, every word utterly believable, every song a short journey into the shadowy and frequently tumultuous world of Metric.

Musically a lot of Synthetica is synthpop-by-numbers (perhaps the clue is in the title) – glossy, lush, and often multi-layered, but where the band really excel is in the art of creating great pop hooks. Just as Haines wears her heart on her sleeve, the band itself is not afraid to present an unrepentantly commercial front. Even without its warm electronic vibe, even if those layers of synth were stripped away, there would still be a fairly formidable power-pop core right at the very heart of this album.

And while that might seem a little too conventional and possibly even a bit retro for some in 2012, it certainly isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Not when it is done this well.

Highlights: ‘Artificial Nocturne’, ‘Youth Without Youth’, ‘Speed The Collapse’, and ‘Breathing Under Water’ ... look out too for the appearance of Lou Reed on the less impressive ‘The Wanderlust’.

Here's 'Artificial Nocturne':