It’s safe to say that 1972’s glam-infused Transformer will always be ex-Velvet Undergounder and Andy Warhol acolyte Lou Reed’s signature album, his biggest crowd pleaser and the one he’ll best be remembered for. It was certainly the album that finally transformed him (see “album title as self-fulfilling prophecy”) from cult figure amongst the decadent NYC demimonde to rock star—songs like “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Perfect Day” finally brought him a listenership commensurate with his talents. But is it his best album? Is it even a great album? Hell, is it even a good album? Does it live up its exalted rep?
One thing is certain—Reed would never record a solo album that matched the brilliance of the albums he released with the Velvet Underground. Never even came close. He released strong albums, weak albums, middling albums, annoyingly boring high-brow albums (1992’s Magic and Loss), viscerally powerful albums (1982’s The Blue Mask), depressing-as-fuck albums (1973’s bummer Berlin) and eleven live albums that ran the gamut from great (1974’s Rock n Roll Animal) to beyond-belief bad (1978’s “comedy record” Lou Reed Live: Take No Prisoners).
He also bequeathed us perhaps the biggest fuck you to his fans this side of Dylan’s Self Portrait (1975’s immortal Metal Machine Music) and a couple of collaborations both pretentious and boring (1990’s Songs for Drella with John Cale and 2011’s much-denigrated Lulu with Metallica). Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t trade the lot of them for the Velvet Underground’s final album, 1970’s Loaded. Hell, the only Reed solo albums I ever listen to are Rock n Roll Animal, 1975’s Coney Island Baby, and The Blue Mask, and I’m rarely at a loss for reasons NOT to listen to them.
Everybody knows the background of Transformer. Reed’s debut solo album was a good-to-excellent commercial dud, and Reed (as he always had) wanted to be a star. Who doesn’t? So along comes David Bowie who’s like the It Person of the Galaxy thanks to his androgynous space alien Ziggy Stardust shtick and Lou, smitten by glam and Bowie’s openness about his bisexuality and hoping some of the Zigster’s glitter dust would rub off, asked Bowie and Spiders from Mars guitarist and mad genius arranger Mick Ronson to produce his next album.
Ronson did much of the heavy lifting, coming up with the arrangements and contributing both great piano and his usual guitar flourishes. The sessions were anything but a perfect day in the park. When Bowie wasn’t depressed to the point of retreating to the studio bathroom and curling up in a little ball around the toilet, Reed was depressed but not in the studio bathroom curled around the studio toilet, and Ronson was prone to studio-clearing rages. Illicit drugs may have had something to do with this.
But Reed got what he wanted; the album was a commercial success that allowed him to escape a musical ghetto where he was beloved by the elite few and unknown to most everyone else. Sure, he would come to resent the the notion that the album’s success was Bowie’s doing, but Lou Who? was Lou Who? no more. Which isn’t to say the album was met with universal acclaim. Critics, and by critics I mean plenty of critics, had downright rude things to say about Transformer. Lou told an interviewer at the time, “What I’ve always thought is that I’m doing rock and roll in drag,” but many found Transformer to be a drag of a rock and roll album.
Ellen Willis of The New York Times (who later did a volte-face and praised the damn thing) wrote “What’s the matter with Lou Reed? Transformer is terrible—lame, pseudodecadent lyrics, lame pseudo-something-or-other singing, and a just plain lame band.” Lester Bangs, in one of his famously contentious (and hilarious) interviews with Reed, snapped, “Bullshit, man, when you did Transformer you were playing to pseudo-decadence, to an audience that wanted to hear a reprocessed form of decadence.”
The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, who despite being abused by name on Take No Prisoners remained perhaps Reed’s greatest champion, wrote “All that’s left of this great singer and songwriter is his sly intelligence, and sometimes I’m not so sure about that.” He then went on to call the album “… effete, ingrown, stripped to inessentials.” Rolling Stone’s Nick Tosches praised some songs, but added “Reed himself says he thinks the album’s great. I don’t think it’s nearly as good as he’s capable of doing.” And Lisa Robinson hated the album so much she actually strong-armed the critics in her little cabal to collectively say nasty things about it. I’ve been unable to find her review, but we can only assume it was unneighborly.
Of course nobody but music critics (including yours truly) cares what other music critics (including yours truly) think, but as a thinking music critic it is my nobody-cares opinion that there’s a lot of truth in what is said above, although I wouldn’t go so far as most of them. When I listen to Transformer what I hear is a good but far from great album with a few timeless songs on it performed by a Lou Reed who often sounds effete indeed, to say nothing of enervated—this Lou is by no means the manic-impressive Lou of Loaded or the demented Lou of “Sister Ray” and “I Heard Her Call My Name.”
I wouldn’t say lame—I’d say tamed. We’re dealing, for the large part anyway, with an Apollonian, not Dionysian Lou Reed on Transformer, and while there’s nothing wrong with that per se (the guy could be brilliant in both modes) the results are a bit pallid, bloodless, and over-the-top campy in places—every bit as pallid, bloodless, and over-the-top campy as the glam Frankenstein gracing the album cover. But the most damning thing about Transformer is that too many of its songs are forgettable—I hadn’t heard the album in years, granted, but it was as if I was hearing some of its songs for the first time. Not good.
But let’s turn to the songs. “Vicious” IS memorable, a hard rocker with savage guitar (played with frenetic abandon) by Ronson. Andy Warhol gave Reed the title and even contributed the brilliantly dumb “You hit me with a flower” (and how vicious is that?). Reed’s in Dionysian mode on this one—spite always brought the best out of him, and the line “Hey, why don’t you swallow razor blades?” is Lou the heartless bastard at his best.
“Andy’ Chest” (which dates back to the days of the Velvet Underground) is less memorable—rather dull at the beginning, better when Ronson comes in on guitar and those glam backing vocals kick in. The title refers to the scars left on Warhol following his near-assassination by Valerie Solaris, but the lyrics go elsewhere, and they’re far from Lou’s best: lines like “’Cause you know what they say about honey bears/When you shave off all their baby hair/You have a hairy minded pink bare bear” are silly bad, And the stanza on the surreal transformation of Daisy Mae (which ends with the line “Now, when people say her feet smell, they mean her nose”) stink and are in need of some good foot powder.
“Perfect Day” is archetypal romantic perfection, a simple song about an idyllic day in the park—or is it? Reed’s vocals are perfect, as is Ronson’s arrangement. Ronno plays that lovely piano, the song’s every bit as strings-drenched as “Yesterday,” and the tuba and trombone add the perfect coloration. But Lou, complex fellow that he was, does some weird things in it and they’re worth noting. The stanza that goes, “Just a perfect day/You made me forget myself/I thought I was someone else/Someone good” speak to Reed’s understanding that he was not a good person. He could be spiteful, treacherous, fickle, duplicitous, violent (he liked to punch women and David Bowie, in that order) and was in essence a kind of NYC Iago—”motiveless malignity” sums up his character quite nicely.
And then we have the seemingly inexplicable close, where he repeats the old admonition that “You’re going to reap just what you sow.” What’s THAT doing there? I’ve heard various interpretations but none satisfy. Some have called it a love song to heroin, but Reed was never a heroin addict—he was a methamphetamines and booze kind of guy. MY interpretation is probably more far-fetched than most, but what the hell. What I hear is a warning to the subject of the song, his future wife Bettye Kronstad, who reaped the whirlwind when she married him because Lou promptly proceeded to smack her around cuz he thought she was stupid and boring. Reed hated everybody including himself, and perhaps the reason he married her is because if he’d lived alone he’d have been giving HIMSELF black eyes.
“Hangin’ Round” is another rocker with shake appeal—Ronson sets fires with his guitar and plays great honky-tonk piano, while Reed is his old excitable self. The song has kick galore, but it doesn’t stick to the ribs—it’s one of the songs I couldn’t remember hearing—and I think the lyrics are to blame. It’s one of Lou’s spite odes—Lou said of Transformer, “Last time (meaning his eponymous 1972 debut album) they were all love songs, this time they’re all hate songs.” The statement is hyperbole and more of Reed’s usual bullshit but it applies to this one—the problem is the lyrics are mostly bad surrealism and the storyline, as such, doesn’t make a lasting impression. You may remember the chorus (“Oh-oh-oh, you keep hanging ’round me/And I’m not so glad you found me/You’re still doing things that I gave up years ago”) but then again you may not—“Positively 4th Street” this one isn’t.
“Walk on the Wild” side is a quintessentially hip anthem about coming to New York City to finally become your fabulous transgender (or gay) self/ salute to Andy Warhol’s “superstars.” To say nothing of being the least likely radio hit of all time. Giving head? How did that one pass the censors? The lyrics are great, touching even, but how great can the song be (I ask myself) if I grew sick of hearing it years ago and turn it off when it comes on the radio? I’ve listened to “All the Young Dudes” and “Sweet Home Alabama” thousands of times and can still hear them every day!
Sure, if you look at it from a certain angle Lou’s making hay out of what could be called “pseudo-decadence” by titillating the straights with what they consider a parade of freaks, but there’s an honesty and poignance to the song that belies that callow interpretation—Reed seems to authentically care about these people. And musically it’s great. Lou talk-sings over a cool shuffle while the “colored girls” (actually the Thunderthighs) echo his laid-back doo-wop and Herbie Flowers plays double bass lines. And the baritone saxophone solo by Ronnie Ross (who taught Bowie how to play!) at song’s end is to die for.
“Make Up” is so-so, forgettable fare and only important insofar as it features a notoriously apolitical and anti-social Reed actually advocating for gay liberation. Lou was undoubtedly bisexual, but many doubted the depth of his gay side—it was play-acting, they felt, Reed trying to live up to his image as drug-abusing deviant. Said one: “If Lou Reed is supposed to take drugs and have a weird sex life–well, then, it has to be.” But the lines, “Now, we’re coming out/Out of our closets/Out on the streets/Yeah, we’re coming out” are as unambiguous as Lou gets—I think.
It bears remembering that the singer of “Make Up” mocked his own brief flirtation with putting on make-up: “We were just kidding around,” he said, following a series of black eyeliner and lipstick shows in London before the making of Transformer, adding “I’m not into makeup.” Which didn’t stop newly dubbed “Phantom of Rock” from donning make-up galore for the photo on the cover of Transformer. As was the case with David Bowie, Reed’s bisexuality had a bit of épater les bourgeois to it—shocking the masses was both good fun and good publicity. As Bowie famously put it, “People like Lou and I are probably predicting the end of an era, and I mean that catastrophically. Any society that allows people like Lou and me to become rampant is pretty well lost.” Now that’s the way to sell records.
“Satellite of Love”—which dates back to Reed’s days with the Velvet Underground—is a lovely piano ballad and ode to, oddly enough, banality—the lines “I watched it for a little while/I love to watch things on TV” speak volumes. The middle section about Harry, Mark and John—which for all I know are the given names of the three wise men—is tres catchy, but what makes the song is the way it builds—I love the way its steady, low-key progress slowly gives way to a finger-snapping launch into orbit. The tail end swings—Reed repeats the title with Bowie singing back-up, while the trumpet and tuba add lift.
“Wagon Wheel” is negligible. There’s a lot of T. Rex in its DNA—the intro is pure Marc Bolan—but the song is anything but glamtastic. Reed’s “just kick her in the head and rearrange her” takes on new resonance when you consider his wife-beating, and the whole “wagon wheel” conceit goes nowhere. As do the lyrics in general—Lou Reed may have been NYC’s rock poet laureate, but there’s nothing memorable about the lyrics to this one. And the melody, T. Rex notwithstanding, is anything but inescapable.
“New York Telephone Conversation” is a glorified novelty song with (let’s face it) overly clever lyrics and an annoying melody, and while I found it catchy the first time I listened to it I never, ever, wanted to hear it again. Ever. Hell, that even beats the record set by the Velvets’ novelty song “The Gift,” which I actually managed to listen to twice. Lou’s sing-song doesn’t make you want to sing along, and is too cutesy for its own good, right down to his very New Yawk pronunciation of New York. What’s the word I’m looking for? Insufferable, that’s the one.
“New York Telephone Conversation” is what you might have gotten had Paul Simon suffered a serious brain injury while writing “The Dangling Conversation.” And I know it’s a digression but here we have all these great songs about the telephone from Chuck Berry’s “Memphis” to Blondie’s “Hanging on the Telephone” to X’s “The Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not” and so on, and then we have… THIS. Hell, I’d sooner listen to England Dan & John Ford Coley’s “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight,” which is sung in the form of a phone call although most people don’t know it because unlike me they’re too smart to listen to it.
“I’m So Free” is perfunctory hard rock—the verses don’t jump out at you and the chorus is anything but catchy. I do like the handclaps and the lines “Yes, I’m Mother Nature’s son/And I’m the only one” because they’re absolutely hilarious coming from Lou who probably despised nature because it wasn’t made out of concrete. What a joker. I’m also a big fan of Ronson’s ferocious guitar solo, and while the gospel fervor at the end will hardly make you jump and shout, it ain’t bad. But the lyrics are baby-pool shallow—the Velvets’ “I’m Set Free” it isn’t, for the simple reason that it had spiritual depth.
Closer “Goodnight Ladies” (another one dating back to Velvets days) is bad tuba/trumpet cabaret and the kind of throwaway lazy and complacent artists like to foist on defenseless listeners at the end of their albums. Reed swipes lines from T.S. Eliot and W. Shakespeare and for all I know Dean Koontz, and once again demonstrates that he’s a boring person, singing as he does about watching the network news and his TV dinner. But hey, to Lou’s credit he knew he was boring, and even said as much (“I’m a dull person, really”) to photographer Mick Rock.
Lou Reed was quite the complex character—a nasty enigma who hated his fans almost as much as he hated himself and dutifully gave them what they wanted and gave it to them good and hard. (Thanks to H.L. Mencken for that one.) “Lou sure is adept at figuring out new ways to shit on people,” wrote Robert Christgau, but despite his spite and polymorphous perversity Reed wrote some immortal songs, including the ones on Transformer, hence transcending his shittiness as a human being or at the very least differentiating himself from your common variety lout.
And Lou being Lou and the butchest dude around it’s only fitting to give him the final word on Transformer, which Lou being Lou is an amusing combination of bullshit, self-condemnation, and epic hubris: “[Transformer] did what it was supposed to do. Like I say, I wanted to get popular so I could be the biggest shlock around, and I turned out really big shlock, because my shit’s better than other people’s diamonds.”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B-
