It´s one hundred years from today, and everyone who is reading this is dead.I´m dead.You´re dead. And some kid is is talking a music course in junior high, and maybe he´s listening to the Velvet Underground because he´s got to write a report on classical rock´n´roll, and I wonder what that kid is thinking.
I wish they would invent a machine that could find out everyone´s biggest secret – yours and mine and Lou Reed´s. The difference between movies and rock ´n´ roll is that rock ´n´roll doesn´t lie. It never promises a happy ending. I´d have to say the Velvet Underground wrote and played sad music. When I listen to either, I think about people I won´t ever see again. But that´s the story of the world of art. Van Gogh cuts off his ear, and parents sign permission slips for field trips to museums.
The Velvet Underground must have scared a lot of people. What goes trough a mother´s mind when she asks her fifteen-year-old daughter, « What´s the name of that song you´re listening to? » and her daughter replies, « Heroin. »
I wish I was writing this hundred years from today. Then, I´d be writing about music made by dead people.There´d be a beginning and an end. As it stands now, I don´t know where this album fits in. I think all of the people on this album are alive today. I know that at least one of them is still at it. I don´t know if this will be considered one of Lou Reed´s greater or lesser contributions. What will be mandatory listening for that classical rock ´n´ roll class?
I think this is great rock ´n´ roll. I think Alexander the Great, Lord Byron, Jack the Ripper, F. Scott Fitzerald, Albert Einstein, James Dean, and other rock ´n´ roll stars would tent to agree with me.
And maybe it´s 1969, and some kid is borrowing his parents´ car and driving into the city and doing things he´d never done before and getting home later than he´s supposed to and getting into trouble, but it´s because he knows he´ll never be the same again. (That´s what this album is about.)
Rock ´n´ roll people tend to live on the edge.(That´s what this album is about.)
Rock ´n´ roll has always been and still is one of the few honest things left in this world. (That´s what this album is about.)
Anyway – I could analyze each and every song, but that´s what look all the fun out of chemistry. I hope someday they´ll teach rock ´n´ roll history. I hope that the music of this album is among the more important elements olf that class. I hope parents will still get scared when they find their daughter listening to this music.
I wish it were a hundred years from today. ( I can´t stand the suspence.)
ELLIOT MURPHY