I bought my first, then my second Velvet Underground album. I thought I would like nothing more than to inhabit Lou Reed’s Manhattan, to sit high up in an apartment and watch “the tinsel light at starbreak” or to engage in a “New York Telephone Conversation”.Īs the months passed I made more connections. What’s funny about discovering an album like that before you’re of an age at which you can, well, act on it, is that it becomes all the more powerful as fantasy. And as my TDK copy spooled round again and again in my bedroom, Mum was overheard asking whether this was really the kind of music I should be listening to. As it was, I had to rely on my babysitter (another friend of my brother’s) to explain what giving head was. But what was the “Up-all-oh”? “Angel dust”? “Giving head”? What about “hustler”? Oh, how Google would have helped me then. “Shaved her legs and then he was a she” I could work out. If the swooping basslines and whooping choruses drew me in, the lyrics kept me riveted and puzzling. Transformer is an incarnation of Reed at his most tuneful and accessible, just right for an almost-teenager. So-and-so likes him more than I do, he said. For me to take an album to heart, it couldn’t be the focus of my brother’s attention, it had to stand somewhere on the sidelines.Įnter Lou Reed. I might have looked up to him and his gang of friends, but I wasn’t about to sacrifice all individuality. After a brief flirtation I found I wasn’t as keen on the Doors, Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. I was lucky then, that my brother Daniel had decent records. Without having to do any of the hard work, the angst, the alienation, you’ll find the selection has already been made: your taste-defining album is ready and waiting for you. The beauty of having an older sibling, though, is that you only need to wait till he or she’s 16. I f these pages are anything to go by, 16 is an age when people are particularly susceptible to powerful musical experiences.

Lou reed transformer back cover