written and performed by Lou Reed
I was born in 1952, which meant that I was 15 when in 1967 the Sexual Offences Act was passed by parliament, which decriminalised private homosexual acts between men aged over 21. This received significant newspaper and t.v. coverage at the time and not everyone was in favour of it with protesters seeing it as a further disintegration of morals via the ‘permissive society.’
What I’m now going to say will be difficult for people to believe who live in the 21st century but prior to this it had never occurred to me that men had sex with other men. Why would it? As it was illegal nobody ever discussed it, and anyone who was ‘gay’ would certainly keep any relationships they had very discreet.
Of course, what I was aware of was a whole range of ‘camp’ performers on radio, tv and films. For example, every Sunday lunchtime in the early 1960s there were a series of regular programmes on the ‘Light Programme’, one of which was ‘Round The Horne’. Listening figures were around 15 million so this was very much in the mainstream. The show followed a similar format each week including a section where Kenneth Horne (the presenter) interviewed Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick who were supposedly between work actors, about what they had been doing during the past week. Williams and Paddick’s characters were called Julian and Sandy and their conversation was made up entirely of gay/theatrical slang spoken in camp voices. The writers of the show, Barry Took and Marty Feldman liberally sprinkled their scripts with double-entendres that were familiar to the gay community but which the BBC censors knew nothing about. So popular were these characters that they have been credited with helping to bring about the 1967 change in legislation.
Christmas pantomimes always involved, and still do, a man dressed up as a woman, playing the ‘dame’. Probably the most popular of these was Danny La Rue, who regularly appeared on television including several appearances on the Royal Variety Performance. As he was often also seen dressed as a man the ‘comic in a frock’ as he liked to be known was perceived as a costume actor rather than the gay man he was.
So, that was my entire knowledge of the gay community when in the summer of 1970 I went for my first ever job interview as a ‘Sales Assistant’ in a record shop. I’d been given the address of 15 Old Compton Street, right in the heart of London’s red light district and the companies name was Soho Records, but the job I was after would be based at Barnet, North London near where I lived. I arrived fifteen minutes early for my ten o’clock appointment and it was lucky I did as I really thought I was in the wrong place when I stood outside as it was clearly some sort of cabaret/strip club a la the Folles Bergère. Fortunately, a woman who worked at Soho Records head office arrived for work, guessed why I was standing outside looking confused, and showed me that the entrance to their offices was just inside the glass doors of the nightclub and up some stairs.
Brian, the man who interviewed me was responsible for running the 20+ shop chain. He was the most impeccably dressed man I had ever seen, except in films of course. His light blue made to measure suit was complimented by a dark blue shirt and blue floral kipper tie. His hair was perfectly coiffured into shape at a time when over the collar long hair was the norm, and his fingernails were superbly manicured. He was a soft spoken intelligent man who asked me a series of questions designed to establish my music knowledge and suitability for the job and an hour later I walked out of their office knowing that I was starting work in a record shop on the following Monday morning.
I discovered later that Brian was the first gay man I ever met, but working in the music business for fifty years I can tell you that I have known many gay men, including flatmates, work colleagues and my eldest son, and whilst Brian was a stereotype for the 1960s idea of a gay man the one thing I have observed about gay men is that in the same way that there is no typical ‘man’ there is no such thing as a typical ‘gay man.’
The 1960s and early 70s was of course full of stereotypes, as the generation who had lived through world war two struggled to understand a changing society. Any boy who had hair over his collar was a ‘long haired yobbo’. Any girl wearing a mini-skirt was ‘asking for it’. A leather jacket instantly meant a hooligan – rather than someone who rode a motorbike, and conversely any young man wearing a smart suit and having short hair was admired in his office during the daytime by the middle-aged women as a ‘nice boy’ and avoided at night as a ‘skinhead’.
This was also the period when families sat in the living room and watched TV together, with one of the highlights for teenagers being ‘Top of The Pops’ on a Thursday night. With a national audience of 19 million at it’s peak, this was when the ‘older generation’ came face to face with pop culture. BBC1 wasn’t broadcast in colour until November 1969, so psychedelia and flower power all looked very bland in black and white, but ‘glam rock’ arrived in 72/73 at just the right time. Men with glitter and make-up, wearing brightly coloured lycra clothes and patent leather boots with huge heels, produced the immortal phrase uttered by so many dads to their children ‘what do they look like!’
When David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust, the TOTP audience didn’t see this as a character, they saw this simply as Bowie. The lightning bolt make-up, the spiky flame coloured mullet and the lycra jump suit set fashion trends that were equally at home on boys and girls, making him totally a-sexual. Between December 72 and February 74 he had six top ten hit singles meaning that he would have appeared on TV screens almost weekly. ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ album was released in June 72 and reached No.5 in the album charts and has achieved double platinum sales. ‘Hunky Dory’ the previous album which had been released in the previous December was re-promoted by RCA Records, and reached No.3 in the charts, and platinum status.
Also signed to RCA Records was Lou Reed. Lou had been a founder member along with John Cale of New York band The Velvet Underground in the 1960s. Their music was basic, what we would now call ‘punk’ or ‘garage’, just guitars and drums with plenty of energy and definitely no studio production to enhance the sound. Avant-garde artist Andy Warhol was their patron, giving them art-rock credibility and leading to a record deal, but their songs with titles like ‘Heroin’ and ‘Waiting For My Man’ were about drugs and the harshness of urban street life; a far cry from the peace love and understanding of Californian music or the flowers in your hair pop songs of the time.
It’s sometimes overlooked that a musician who is seen as ‘punk / garage / grunge’ call it what you will, who may write with venom and anger about society in general and life on the streets, is still an artist and a writer/poet. As a person, this means that they are observational about their surroundings and use words to paint pictures of what they see, in the same way that Charles Dickens was. Poetry is not limited to beautiful words about flowers and stars, it is also a medium to help the reader visualise depressing uncomfortable places, peopled by unsavoury characters and the unfortunate or exploited.
Lou, although born in Brooklyn, grew up in Freeport, Long Island. He came from a respectable middle class family but in his early years he suffered from panic attacks and depression. When the time came for him to attend college in New York, it wasn’t long before he was back home having suffered a mental breakdown. Part of his treatment for this condition involved ECT (Electric Shock Treatment) which he refers to in one of his later songs as being administered for his homosexual urges. When he’d recovered, he resumes his studies at Syracuse University, in the early 1960s where he first starts to explore the NY music scene.
After the demise of VU, Lou had signed for RCA, but his first solo album released in 1972 was not a commercial success. Recorded in London, it was a collection of un-released Velvet Underground songs played by Lou and various session musicians. It lacked a coherent band sound and, specifically from the record company’s point of view ‘had no hits’. But RCA believed that Lou was a talent, who they knew from VU could write great songs so it was just about finding the right environment/producer. David Bowie had been a big fan of VU, and when RCA suggested that he and Mick Ronson his guitarist should produce Lou’s next album ‘Transformer’, he was totally up for it, if by his own admission a little terrified.
‘Walk On The Wild Side’ was the first track released as a single from the ‘Transformer’ album. It came out in May 1973 and reached number 10 in the UK charts. Musically, it was unusual and unlike the guitar sound which Bowie and Ronson had created for Ziggy Stardust, featuring a slow bassline to the forefront with Lou almost talking the lyrics with girl backing singers and a long sax fade-out at the end. With hindsight some of these are elements of Bowie’s future albums but not his trademark sound at the time. Just how different it was can be gauged by the singles that outsold it at the time: Tie A Yellow Ribbon – Dawn, Welcome Home – Peter & Lee, Rubber Bullets – 10cc and Stuck In The Middle With You – Stealers Wheel were all above it in the charts and more typical of the songs on the radio.
Apart from the overall sound, what made it ground-breaking were Lou’s lyrics. His observations of the characters that inhabited the bars, streets, alleyways and less salubrious nightlife of New York City in the 70s, included male prostitutes, transgender people and references to oral sex and drugs. Surprisingly, bearing in mind that the BBC were quick to ‘ban’ records that they thought were not suitable for broadcast, it received plenty of airplays, including on daytime radio. Maybe, as with ‘Round The Horne’ the BBC censor believed that the words being used would only be understood by those who already knew their meaning, or maybe they thought society was now more liberal in what could be said, or maybe they simply didn’t realise what it was about – I’ll leave you to form your own conclusions.
Singles in those days had two sides, an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ side, and the other track on the single was ‘Perfect Day’, also from ‘Transformer’. This above all was the track that made people realise that there was a lot more to Lou’s writing than the seamier side of New York City. It is a love song without the word love in the lyrics. Is it a man describing his day with a girlfriend, or with his boyfriend? Maybe it’s a man talking about the time he’s spending with an aged parent, or maybe he’s the parent talking about his time with his child – maybe even a father who only sees his child at weekends. Above all, it’s a song of positivity, describing simple pleasures like going to the park and the zoo and saying this time together makes him a better person. Again, as with ‘Walk On The Wild’ side it’s a song ahead of it’s time, but so was Lou Reed.
Click on the link above the photo to view the album on CD, vinyl (if available), or as an MP3, or to stream.
Click on the link below to access Amazon Music and then type into the search box ‘Lou Reed Walk On The Wild Side’ to access the track.
DAD MUSIC 