“A phone call from Lou Reed wasn’t good news…”
“In some ways,” comments a friend of Lou Reed in Anthony De Curtis’ admirable Lou
Reed: A Life, “he was one of the most miserable people I’ve ever known.” It’s a statement which gains not only credence, but nuance, during De Curtis’ weighty and damn near definitive study of Reed’s life and music. His loneliness, paranoia and aggression were indubitably linked to the electro-convulsive treatment his parents consented to while he was a teenager, intended to ‘cure’ his deviant tendencies. Instead, Reed rejected their neat middleclass life on Long Island, cultivating the sexual and narcotic demi-monde that he would – almost singlehandedly – make a legitimate topic for rock’n’roll with The Velvet Underground and beyond.
Here, the group come alive as a band of musicians rather than a shadowy myth. They play a show at the Playboy Mansion in 1967 and break up over money and control, as most bands do. Solo, Reed follows the Bowie-curated success of
Transformer with the punishing Berlin, its lurid centrepiece, “The Kids”, inspired by the early family experiences of his first wife, Bettye. “Hearing a character based on her mother essentially described as a bisexual whore and drug addict in a song written by her husband was quite a blow,” writes the author, with some understatement. The marriage ends soon after, in a flurry of bruises and black eyes.
Eventually, Reed embraces sobriety and heterosexuality, first with his second wife Sylvia, then with Laurie Anderson. He demands a golf lesson from John Mellencamp, though some vices linger. Bumping into Keith Richards in Jamaica, Reed asks the Stone to score him some weed – “I didn’t hear any complaints!” wheezes Keef – while a Warners exec notes drily: “A phone call from Lou Reed wasn’t good news… I made the big mistake of giving him my home number.” nevertheless, by the time of his death in October 2013, his liver finally failing, he’s something of a genial elder statesman.
De Curtis marshals a stellar cast of contributors and writes with knowledge and insight. A friend of Reed in later life, he uses his access wisely, unearthing treasurable nuggets which serve to humanise his subject. We learn that Reed loved the beach, and that in the insanity of the mid-’70s some semblance of normality prevailed. In the “sparkling” flat on East 52nd St he shared with his lover, Rachel, Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic was on prominent display and the fridge was empty apart from “a package of bacon, a quart of milk and an almost empty quart of Tropicana”. We also learn Reed died listening to Hall & Oates on Spotify. How’s that for fucking with the myth?
Chris Difford’s Some Fantastic Place begins with a vivid evocation of prefab life in 1960s Greenwich – “A cardinal-red doorstep and a budgie called Joey” – and ends with the Serenity Prayer. It’s a fair indication of the arc of the book.
The Squeeze guitarist and songwriter is at his best recounting a nervy adolescence of drink, drugs, girls, music, street violence and bedroom poetry. His account of the ascent of Squeeze, by contrast, is light on detail, but possesses a kind of hurtling energy. John Cale produces their first album, an exercise in brutal lunacy. “He made us swap instruments then turned all the lights off in the studio, telling us he wasn’t going to let us out until we’d perfected ‘Amazing Grace’,” writes Difford. “He hated the name Squeeze and wanted us to change it to Gay Guys.” Elvis Costello takes the reins for East Side Story, his regime proving far more congenial: “Cider but not lager, as I recall.”
It all flies by at whirlwind speed – which is no doubt how it felt at the time, but makes for slightly unsatisfactory reading. Difford rushes towards the story he really wants to tell, which is his descent into divorce, bankruptcy, alcoholism and depression in the late ’80s and ’90s. A keen advocate of counselling, sharing these troughs feel like the book’s raison
d’être. His candour is a double-edged sword. He’s disarmingly frank about his failings and writes thoughtfully about his complicated relationship with Glenn Tilbrook, but at other times the book is a litany of mea culpas and banal ‘blessings’.
Having sobered up, with Elton John as his sponsor, recently Difford has balanced Squeeze and a solo career with management work for Marti Pellow and The Strypes. There’s a fine chapter on being hired as a dogsbody for the imperious Bryan Ferry. “I was nervous and shaking with fear – which was just how he liked me, as it turned out.” In the end, Ferry buys him a chauffeur’s cap. “The gesture would have been funny if it wasn’t so loaded.” Sentimental, romantic, amusing and easily bruised, Difford comes across as both charming and bloody hard work. Twenty-five years sober, you get the sense his equilibrium remains a fragile thing.