Keith, Mary Gauthier, Rosanne Cash, and Joan Jett Lead the Pack
The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed, had me with its opening track: Keith Richards' version of "I'm Waiting for the Man." The seminal Velvet Underground song (and one has to watch the way one uses "seminal" with Lou Reed) is about a white guy who goes up to Harlem to connect with his heroin dealer. Do you think Keith Richards is on solid ground selling this song to the listener? You better believe the needle marks and scars tattooed on his brain, if not his arms. I couldn't stop laughing from the moment I heard about it. It is the best rock and roll joke since Lou performed "Foot of Pride," the most obscure Dylan song he could find at the time, at the 30th annual Bob Dylan celebration concert in 1992. "Foot of Pride?" Son, you must be joking.
Video directed by Jane Rose
The enormity of the gesture of Keith doing "Waiting for the Man" is not sustainable, as the eco-warrior said to the oil well. As these projects go, there are some wonderful moments, but it all depends on the pairing of artist and song. Here's how my tip-sheet looks, in order, after Keith's track No. 1. The album was released April 20 by Light in the Attic Records.
2. "I Can't Stand It," which is the opening song on Reed's first RCA solo album, the 1972 Richard Robinson-produced Lou Reed, has long been a favorite. The hapless lyric: "It's hard being a man/living in a garbage can," is Reed caricaturing himself as Oscar the Grouch from "Sesame Street." At least in my home movie. This version is by Maxim Ludwig and Angel Olsen. Ms. Olsen has her alt-rock singer-songwriter bona fides, recording for indie rock label Jagjaguwar. For "I Can't Stand It," she teams up with fellow thirtysomething Ludwig, a rocker from L.A. with a rep as a party-guy, if you believe what you read online. They rock the track fine.
3. "Perfect Day" by Rufus Wainwright. Despite his talented pedigree, I'll take either of his folks (witty folk singers Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle) over Rufus' precious preference for art song, cabaret, Judy Garland, operas and the like. He's too capable to sing this song: The charm of Lou Reed's songs of yearning is in the flatness of his voice, as if he's trying to push beyond his limits. For Rufus, it's all too easy listening.
4. "I'm So Free" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. This is an excellent pairing because Jett, like Reed, has made a virtue of her contained vocal range, without ever seeming virtuous. There's no artyness, no self-consciousness, just Jett and the Blackhearts delivering the goods. The song is the title from a collection of Reed demos in what I think of as a "copyright dump," called I'm So Free: the 1971 RCA Demos, released in 2021. Jett speeds it up, toughens it, adds a rhythmic bounce. Jett could do her own whole Reed tribute album: "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll" would be natural for her, and then she’d have more than 100 others from which to choose.
5. "Sally Can't Dance," by Bobby Rush. Rush is a long established bluesman with a leaning towards the frisky, but this dutiful rendition is just what we used to call "shuckin' and jivin'." It’s the inverse of Canned Heat or a British band with an early 1970s name like Slopdog trying to play the blues. Reed may have loved to listen to the blues, but what made him so distinctive for 50 years was his resistance to writing songs based on the blues- and R&B-based rock of his contemporaries.
6. "Walk on the Wild Side," by Rickie Lee Jones. On paper, a good match. But Rickie Lee's slow-walking beatnik act has been stale for years. She had a chance to open up, to, you know, go on the wild side. Instead, she slows it down to a creep. Most appalling, she cleans up the lyrics: I kept re-listening to make sure I didn't miss the song's most transgressive verse, about Candy Darling "giving head," but it appears Jones chose to leave it out. She also leaves out the "colored girls sing" background "doots" from what was, back in 1973, Reed's only charting single. I don't see the point of this.
7. "I Love You, Suzanne," by the Afghan Whigs. Acceptably average performance of an average Lou Reed song by an average band.
8. "Coney Island Baby," by Mary Gauthier. Besides Richards, the best track on the album, and the best imaginable version of this song. Gauthier sings as if it is about her own outsider adolescence, desperate to fit in, even desiring to "play football for the coach." But Gauthier finds a subtext here to which Reed's elliptical version never commits. Over seven minutes, she let's you experience the smell of the jockstraps, the nude showering, the locker room awkwardness for the high school athlete panicked by feelings never faced before, erupting like acne on teenage skin. And when the song evolves to its "glory of love" summit, it becomes a rainbow anthem no one else dared to summon. Extraordinary.
9. "Legendary Hearts," by Lucinda Williams. I loved – even, defined love – by Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the 1998 album that was the standard of excellence for what is referred to as "Americana" ever since. But for my taste, she's never come close to that peak again. Though she has had her health setbacks and has remained a stalwart performer, this is just Lucinda being Lucinda, a personal taste more than it ever was. Your choice.
10. "New Sensations," by Automatic. A song as generic as the name of the act. Not as good as "New Sensation" by INXS, the Australian band that rocked the 1980s with something like new wave rock and mass appeal hooks. About what you'd expect from an L.A. band named after a Go-Go's song.
11. "Magician," Rosanne Cash. Cash is a superb writer, singer, and interpreter who finds fresh angles in everything she does. Reed recorded his version in the 1992 album, Magic and Loss, mourning the late Doc Pomus and not sounding too good himself: in fact, he sounded like he was dying, was sure he was dying, terrified of dying. A junkie's lament, no matter what he was or wasn't on. It was a false alarm, he still had 21 years left, even discovering a later-in-life soul mate in Laurie Anderson. Cash summons the magic on "Magician" that Reed could barely believe in; he was too caught up in the "loss."
12. "The Power of the Heart," by Brogan Bentley. A CD and bonus download track exclusive. Covered by Peter Gabriel in 2010, written, in 2008, as a marriage proposal to Anderson. Reed's own version was on a free compilation called "Love By Cartier" for a promotional campaign (also 2008) by the jewelry company.
Brogan Bentley is a San Francisco based musician who is the son of this compilation's executive producer, former Warner Records exec, and devoted Reed friend and fan Bill Bentley, to me a longtime fond music biz acquaintance. Rarely heard, here is Lou's version, from an Italian Lou Reed fan website.
Video mix by Daniele Federici
This article originally appeared in Wayne Robins’ Substack and is used here by permission. Wayne’s Words columnist Wayne Robins teaches at St. John’s University in Queens, and writes the Critical Conditions Substack, https://waynerobins.substack.com/.
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