The Velvet Underground -- "Jesus"
Sex, drugs, rock and roll -- and Jesus.
I haven't read up enough on The Velvet Underground to know exactly what Lou Reed was thinking here. On the surface, this song seems to be completely unironic -- something you can take at face value, and it offers little to remind the listener of the famous line from "Heroin" -- "and I feel just like Jesus' son" -- other than the fact that both songs were written by the same man. Certainly, the song does fit in thematically with the rest of the VU's third album. After the jittery energy of "What Goes On" and the weary lows of "Pale Blue Eyes," we might be looking for some direction ourselves. It's quite apt also that, to follow up on "Jesus," we get the modest jubilation of "Begginning to See the Light."
The Velvet Underground pushed the boundaries more than any other band of their era, and this song might have pushed some other kind of boundary. The harmony here is about as smooth as you can get when you've got Lou Reed -- who's generally at his best when his voice is more spoken than sung -- as a lead vocalist, and the instrumentation minimal, just enough to keep the melody afloat. If the VU's first two albums were about seeing just how far you could go in deconstructing rock music without destroying it altogether, the last two VU albums are about taking things in the opposite direction: how pretty can you make the songs without taking the edge off completely? If that was the goal, the VU, by this point directed almost entirely by Lou Reed's vision, succeeded mightily.
No comments:
Post a Comment