Lou Reed: The British shouldn’t play rock ‘n’ roll…
A writer never intends for truth to be practical or of much help to anyone else. A writer's job is to dress truth in its best disguise. But yet for all the bells and whistles of deceitful prose, truth is then less magnanimous, and therefore more prone to sneaking under the sheets of our subconscious.
From far away, we can pick at the truth; polish it, shit on it, spit on it, break it, and rebuild it into our own choosing; then it’s ours to play with, like the story of Venus in Furs - truth is then our sex slave.
Lou Reed once said that the British should not play rock ‘n’ roll…that’s quite the statement coming from someone who only ever made about three actual rock ‘n’ roll records. It would be a stretch to call Velvet Underground and Nico a rock ‘n’ roll album…although its influence on the genre is undeniable. Most of his albums are more poetry plastered into three chord sequences, inherently limited, and not transcended, by this three-chord philosophy: “One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.”
Still, there is something to be said about the quirkiness of this slice of “distant truth.” Somewhere deep down it feels like he’s a little right, despite the countless British bands who did further the genre/attitude along. And still, for the endless list of one great after another, it feels like the British are overcompensating - they always approach music like they have a lot to prove, whereas the Americans are arrogantly not so. They could take music or leave it. I think this is a reason the British are overall better songwriters than American musicians.
Hypocrisy mostly props these “versions of truths” that writers are sometimes apt to spin. Take, for example, Lou Reed’s most “British” album: Transformer, produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson. The album revived Reed’s career and shot him into the mainstream.