



In the July 4, 1971, issue of Crawdaddy there appears a most curious article authored by Lou Reed, recently of the Velvet Underground, on the subject of spectacle. This poem appeared during one of the most interesting phases for Reed, after his departure from Velvet Underground but before his trip to London to record his first solo album with Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe, among others. Months before that solo album appeared on the horizon and having recently worked in his father’s accounting firm, in the spring of 1971 Reed might well have thought of himself as a “former” rock musician and more of a poet, or a hybrid of the two.

As a rock and roll musician, Reed, in the prose section of this Crawdaddy contribution, understandably isolates “spectacle” as the terrain dominated by big, famous rock groups with large-scale, expensive stage shows, what was surely the state of the art in spectacle at that moment. Is there any envy in these words, or more like an avant-garde artist’s insistence on the values of a smaller coterie?



Prancing and dancing, mincing and twisting, jerking and bumping and grinding to the incessant pounding, to the beat of the drums, as they say, and back to the burlesque houses and g-strings and fingers inserted in orifices, drugs ingested so the audience won’t miss a thing, the air thick with pot, the belly dancer with the snake round her spine, the carnavore guitar, the mountainous amps, the display of POWER, electrical power interplaying with the sinewy vibrations of the many-tentacled audience, writhing in collective spasms for the moment, waiting for the moment it will happen, and all will explode in a giant frenzy of shriek, howl and whistle, stomp, boot, clap and coo.



From this slightly contemptuous portrayal of big expensive showbiz (so very Greenwich Village of him), Reed then transitions to the question of what is the version of that spectacle scaled down to the level of the individual, rather than the group, and concludes that the natural representative of spectacle is ... the town drunk. Reed argues that the aimless patter of the dipsomaniac harks back to the oral tradition as embodied by The Iliad, and from there to the ballad as “a fine method of enlightening others and boring some, a situation which can only be termed successful when the person involved has been bodily ejected from the pub, hence, made a spectacle of himself.”

Tongue lodged firmly in cheek, Reed tells of a “ballad I found written on the men’s room wall of the Houston St. subway station,” which he claims to have memorized and intoned at “the Third Avenue Blarney Stone,” an act that caused him to be ejected from the premises. The title of that ballad is “There Are Devils Outside That Door.” Then, confusingly, Reed then switches from that song to a second “tasteless morsel” called “Janis, Jimi, and Me” that he discovered a “14-year-old derelict” singing in Tompkins Square Park. Reed insists that it should be “recited in a nasal, twanging monotone, preferably with the sounds of sniffing and o.d.ing supplied by a friend.”

The article ends with that ballad, a long one, with thirty verses, most of them quatrains, a poem with what appears to be two titles (both titles would fit the material equally well), a poem to which Reed assigns two different provenances (subway graffiti & the teenage derelict). Reed was working overtime to obscure his authorship of this bitter little piece of versification.

But here’s the strangest aspect of this bit of poetry: I can’t find the merest reference to it on the Internet, and that includes any reference to the Crawdaddy prose section, which is entitled “Spectacle and the Single You.” By “Google” I am also referring to plenty of full-length books about Reed and VU, of course, although that investigation is necessarily incomplete. If anyone out there is aware of this Reed composition, they’re doing an excellent job of concealing it. I couldn’t find any of the titles associated with this article in conjunction with Reed, and I also couldn’t find several of the lyrics when entered into Google as a string.

The poem itself is written in an “old-timey” mode, something akin to an Irish drinking song or a pirate shanty, or both. The poem, if it means anything, is about the perils of the local wastrel taking his or her gift for spectacle on the road in search of a wider audience, i.e. rock superstardom. The poem is about a blacksmith who joins “a minstrel show” and betrays his beloved Rosie with “that harlot Red Mary.” Eventually the poem segues to the subject of Woodstock—the spectacle to end all spectacles—and ends as a kind of joyous death dirge, complete with gongs being chimed (BONG), for the untimely demise of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, who had died about a year before this poem saw publication.

What to make of it? Now, I’m completely ready to accept this as a Lou Reed composition. There’s only one detail that seems out of place, and that is the copyright credit after the poem, which reads, “Lyrics Reprinted with the Permission of Cowardly Lion Music.” Which is supposed to mean one of two things, that “Cowardly Lion Music” is a reference to Reed’s publishing company or that this song had appeared in a musical or something. Again, Google was no help.

It’s difficult for me to credit Lou Reed actually seeing Jimi and Janis with an un-jaundiced eye, but I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed that Reed would have written “Jesus” either, if all I knew about him was “Walk on the Wild Side” and “I’m Waiting for the Man.” The poem is in that old-timey register, which doesn’t seem all that Reed-ish, and its apparent valorization of Hendrix and Joplin is double-edged at a minimum.



Dear,

There is sanctity in my domain

that separates us from evil

If you cross the door no good will come

for outside there are devils. I was a blacksmith years ago

I made the anvil ring

But since my Rosie up and died

niether of us sing. My children went away long ago

to far and distant shores

leaving me to beg and steal

copper pennies from the whores. Often when it rains out

I make a spot of tea

and concentrate on consequence

and how I left Rosie. And seeing how you look so much

as she once did before

I thought that I would tell you

There are devils outside that door. When I was but a smirky youth

I joined a minstrel show.

I covered my face with red paint

And told a joke or two. I thought that I was quite the lad

but experience has shown

I was only made of wood while

castles require stone. Rosie saw my failure, clown,

and loved me with it all.

A mother’s heart beat in her breast

as it does in women all. So I opened up a smythe shop

and shoed the horses round

till sin came on silken heels

And took my Rosie down. Her name was Mary, what a laugh

no Virgin Mary she.

Her perfume took my breath away

and liquor made me sing. I did for her my minstrel prance

and even got a laugh.

But the joke was on me for that night of stealth

snuffed out my Rosie’s life. My daughter, an apprentice seamstress,

was wandering through the snow

and hearing her dear father’s song did

peer through the window. And Savage Grace please set me loose

the night that she did see

was her own father intimately intertwined

with that harlot Red Mary. And I like drunken sailors do

the next morning had a head

and when I went unto my berth

I found my Rosie dead. In her hand I found a note

Crushed to her still opened eyes.

In it she’d writ in letters big

“There are Devils Loose Outside” So you see my dear

why I’ve brought you here

Please let an old man speak

For your eyes are clear

and you have no fear

and I am far too weak

to ask but only for one thing

and it will not take long,

let an old man spill his heart

out in a little song: “Oh fairy maid and garden rose

I’ve loved you for a time

and if I send for Black McGhee we’ll

have a good old time. “The waters flow and dancers strut

for camaraderie now

so let’s get off to the beerman’s pub

and laugh and drink and love. “Oh I’m a friend of Black McGhee

and he’s a friend of me

and both of us have had our sport

of life without money. “And though our wives be black as death

we’ll always have our times,

so here’s to sport and here’s to love

and here’s to my friend McGhee.” So you see my girl it isn’t long

to have your portrait done

I do it with my eyes and words for

of paint I do have none But my mind has of late come obsessed

all stories sound the same.

Rain to me seems winterish

and sunshine lays no claim. McGhee is gond, my children too

and Rosie far too soon.

while age creeps round me like a withering vine

that makes me seem the prune. So I hope that you will understand

when I say as but before,

be careful when you leave this room

there are Devils outside that Door. * * * I am no longer afraid of dying

I am no more afraid of death

for I know what does await me

when I take that final step. I will go to Woodstock Heaven

and listen to the guitars there,

all the singers who are waiting

to serenade me in the sky. Ohhh Janis, Jimi, and me

will dance among the moonbeams and the clouds,

and no one there will ever hassle us,

it’ll just be Janis (BONG) Jimi (BONG) and me. I no longer listen to the radio,

my favorite music is no more,

all the musicians are in the Woodstock Choir

following the manic depressives law. There is Frankie Lymon in his Golden robe

and Brian Jones is on the flute

and Baby Huey is softly playing

in a beautiful silver suit. Oh I’m going to Woodstock Heaven

and dance among the moonbeams and the clouds.

And no one there will ever hassle us,

It’ll just be Janis (BONG) Jimi (BONG) and me.

BONG . . . . . .BONG . . . . .BONG Janis, Jimi, And Me: Lyrics Reprinted with the Permission of Cowardly Lion Music) (BMI). C. 1971



Here’s the page from Crawdaddy; you can see a larger version by clicking on this image.







I found this issue of Crawdaddy at the Rock Hall’s Library and Archives, which is located at the Tommy LiPuma Center for Creative Arts on Cuyahoga Community College’s Metropolitan Campus in Cleveland, Ohio. It is free and open to the public. Visit their website for more information.