Listening to Lou Reed's 1982 album, The Blue Mask, I realized that track 8, "Waves of Fear", is the greatest rock and roll song ever. I'm guessing with lyrics like "Looking for some pill/the liquor is gone", the song is supposed to be some kind of paean to drug paranoia or something; Christ knows that Lou, whose dalliances with speed and heroin back in the VU days are essential part of his Gutter Elvis foundation myth, probably could write a billion songs about the ins-and-outs of the ups-and-downs and whole albums about hitting rock bottom. Yet "Waves of Fear" seems a little bit bigger than that; like a human mind trying vainly to saw its way out of a skull.
Musically, it's a driving, aggressive piece, repetitive in a way that causes each new iteration to gather more intensity to its breast, like an armload of bowling pins or toasters. Reed's sonic metier, here abetted by former Velvets associate and Voidoids guitarist Robert Quine, has always bounced around the rock and roll mainstream (save 1975's legendary, inscrutable feedback collage, Metal Machine Music), and his best work has only been experimental in the sense that it plays with rock's building blocks and arranges them in interesting ways - more drone, feedback, askew lyricism, and a pervasive (albeit subversive) doo-wop influence. "Waves of Fear" sits at the heavier end of his spectrum, with Reed and Quine's guitars piling up like a car accident, while Doane Sanders' loose, assured drumming provides firm direction.
Reed's vocals are on another level altogether, a departure from the slick cynical mumble-singing hybrid typifying much of his work (though far from all of it, as Coney Island Baby devotees can attest). Here he is alternately a vortex and an oubliette, raging against the words, reciting them with venom. It's a kind of riding-the-bomb demented glee mixed with sheer terror; by the end of the song Reed is a apocalyptic street preacher, clutching at our lapels, drawing us closer, shouting "waves of fear, waves of fear" in our faces.
Maybe Reed isn't a millennial, though. Maybe, rather than his fear controlling him, there's a symbiosis at work. Another addiction:
I'm too afraid to use the phoneJimmy Breslin once said the Son of Sam was watching the world from "his attic window." Reed, again:
I'm too afraid to put the light on
I'm so afraid I've lost control
I'm suffocating without a word
I cringe at my terror, I hate my own smellThis is murder music, emotional fascism. Lou Reed is one sick fuck.
I know where I must be, I must be in hell
