Making money off a dead corpse is still very in vogue, strangely so I might add.
He seems to have mellowed enormously in his later years when married to Laurie Anderson.
Dead men tell no tales, so barring a Mark-Twain like cache of documents, there’s money to be made rewriting their narrative.
I don’t have time to click through to the article right now. So, just tell me, is this another dildo post?
No, it’s about Lou Reed.
Wait, what?
Except that all the people who observed (and suffered) his behavior first-hand are still very much alive…
I seriously hope so.
I wonder how much of that was because he finally found someone who understood him and either figured out ways to not trigger his bipolar so much or could reassure him and not get scared off when he was having a bad episode. It’s amazing how much a supportive environment can make a difference with mental health conditions, but sadly one of the most overlooked areas.
I dunno…was he as bad as Brian Jones?
I know a few artists and for the most part they believe that suffering in some way contributes to their art.
The difference between suffering from yourself and forcing others to suffer you often gets lost somewhere in the mix. Only human, I guess.
Most creative types - and I consider myself one of 'em - tend to want to create all the time. And ti doesn’t seem to matter what’s created - music, paintings, cake, chaotic relationships - just so that “I gotta make something!” urge is satisfied. The irrational, more emotional creative impulses overcome the rational, more logical creative impulses in cases like Mr. Reed’s.
Well, that’s what I think, for whatever the heck it’s worth.
I think it’s a combination of a lot of things: living with someone supportive, getting off of heroin and other drugs, exercising and doing yoga/meditating, and generally cleaning up his life. I can’t imagine Laurie Anderson willingly living with a wife-beating prick (as he’s explicitly described here).
And his music sucks.
I hate how the article correlates his mental illness as a possible reason for being terrible. I worked as a psych nurse for a decade. The vast majority of the people I worked with were not terrible or abusive to others.
I’ve wondered the same about Laurie Pepper, who helped her husband (Art Pepper) write Straight Life. I love his music but Christ, what an asshole. (FWIW it seems he’d readily admit that, I mean he really did not leave anything out of that book.) She has since written ART: Why I Stuck with a Junkie Jazzman which is on my wishlist.
P.S. Some of this info about Lou isn’t too surprising, having read some of Lester Bangs’ interviews with him from the 70s. (I also remember Lou being disappointed that Psychotic Reactions was going to be published, regretting the things he’d said back then and blaming it on “the bottle talking.”)
Lucky you. If you do, keep your Force Quit or Task Manger window open so you can torpedo Flash every five seconds so the goddamn scroll works.
To Daily Beast’s webmaster: please come within range of my cluebat!
especially if he’s a monster that looks like frankenstein in that picture!
Alternatively, disable flash in your browser.
Look up how to make Flash click to play, it’ll make your life better.
Or alternatively just uninstall it.
